March 22, 2023 • 38 mins
In this episode, Melissa Pang speaks with Joe Flanders and Manish Vakil of Tumbles Kids Fitness Gym
Joe Flanders is the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Tumbles and is the go-to guru for streamlining processes and overseeing franchisee operations support. He manages the interior design and buildout of Tumbles locations, finds and facilitates third-party partnerships for equipment, designs our STEAM curriculum, maintains the integrity of our brand identity, and develops strategies to grow our program offerings and meet the changing needs of our customers. With 14 years of experience as a franchisee owner-operator, Joe brings a wealth of franchising and kid’s business experience to the Tumbles family. Joe has a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management from the University of Georgia, where he spent four years playing trumpet in, and as a soloist for the Redcoat Marching Band in front of over 86,000 adoring fans. Go Dawgs! For Joe, helping shape the minds and bodies of kids isn’t just a career calling—it’s a family affair. His wife, Katerina, is a biology teacher and educational specialist in curriculum development and has presented science and literacy topics both nationally with the NSTA and internationally through programs offered by Columbia University. And his three kids—Lexi (15), Nate (12) and Maddie (9)—are competitive year-round swimmers with Olympic aspirations. Joe and his family love to travel, especially if their trips incorporate active endeavors, including hiking, swimming and enjoying nature.
Manish Vakil is the founder and CEO of Tumbles and ensures that Tumbles’ success is about more than making money—it’s also about fighting obesity and making a difference in the lives of kids and families worldwide. Manish oversees all aspects of the company—from helping franchisees build profitable businesses to expanding our mission around the globe to ensuring our programs make every kid who walks through our doors smile. Manish has a B.S. in Finance from Rutgers University and over 15 years of experience in franchise sales, operations, marketing, price negotiation and accounting. In addition, he has a history of owning and operating a variety of profitable kid-focused businesses, including a tutoring center, kids’ gym and children’s STEM education program prior to founding Tumbles. When he isn’t busy helping Tumbles’ franchisees build successful businesses and bringing fun fitness and STEAM education programs based on developmental milestones to kids around the world, you’ll find Manish playing tennis, watching movies or experiencing new people and cultures while traveling the globe with his wife and twin boys.
Tumbles is a growing kids’ gym and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) franchise. Our mission is both simple and ambitious: Shaping the minds and bodies of the future. Based on developmental milestones, our proven programs encourage kids to get active, take measured risks, explore independently, and interact with their peers in a fun, safe and clean environment.
More... https://futureoffranchising.com/podcast/episode-215-joe-flanders-and-manish-vakil/
Franchise Friday, where you can watch or listen as we explore franchising, entrepreneurship, and small business ownership, speaking with the franchise industry thought leaders and subject matter experts that shape the Future Of Franchising. #FranchiseFriday – For more about our podcast, visit our website: https://futureoffranchising.com/ Produced by Franchise Source Brands International and The Entrepreneur’s Source.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:14):
Hey everyone. Welcome to today's episode of franchise
Friday. My name is Melissa Pang.
I'm the member relationshipstrategist here at the
entrepreneur source and it is mygreat pleasure to have these two
gentlemen here with me today wehave Manish vakeel. Did I say
that correctly, Manish? Yes, youdid. Great. He's the CEO over at
tumbles kids fitness gym andsteam. And I have Joe Flanders
(00:38):
here the C O at tumbles kidsfitness, gym and steam. So
welcome to the both of you. Howare you?
Absolutely fantastic. It's 70degrees here today. Well,
great brag. It's 40 Somethinghere it's cold. Yeah, I'm
(00:59):
here in Connecticut. And it's Ithink like 20. So that's not the
so at least man He's just havinga good day. Joe and I were
working on it. But and it wasquick little overview here on on
both of these fine gentleman.
MANISH oversees all the aspectsof the company. So from helping
(01:20):
franchisees build theirprofitable businesses to
expanding the mission of tumblesaround the globe, which is
ensuring that our not ourensuring that the tumbles
programs make every kid whowalks through the doors smile.
And Joe is the go to guru forstreamlining processes,
overseeing franchisee operationssupport, is there anything this
(01:42):
man does not do? He manages theinterior design, build out of
the locations, finds andfacilitates third party
partnerships. For equipmentdesigns, the steam curriculum
maintains the integrity of brandidentity and develop strategies
to grow the program offerings.
So we know who's doing all thework here,
obviously, just just a few hats,that's okay.
(02:05):
But anything else you guys wantto add anything you want to
tell? Tell the people about whatyou do?
Well, we can add a couple ofareas. So franchising is one
side that we have, right? We'reour mission is combating
childhood obesity, right? Sofinding the people you don't
have everyone comes out and saysprofit that you know leads to
purpose, our businesses morepurpose that is leading to
(02:28):
profit. And that's a keydifferentiator, especially when
you're dealing with first time,you know, business owners that
are coming into it. So when youhave a passion when people tell
you well get into business forthe passion, with with tumbles
it that's, that's very easy tofind. Because I don't want
anybody who doesn't like kids.
Or you know, because peoplealways spend money on kids. So
(02:50):
even if you like profit eitherway, you're going to end up in
our realm, you know, and it'sfun, which is the cool part,
right. So as our logo says youcan do a cartwheel upside down,
that's what this is, right? Oryou can go like this and do a,
you know, a muscular build bodybuilder, if you want to do that
as well. So, so that's the funside of it, that a lot of
people, I would love it, youknow, for them to realize what
we are. So that's kind of theunder the underlying mission and
(03:12):
all the different areas that wehave that people don't realize
just by looking at the brand andthe clients
love it the purpose before theprofit, and but at the end of
the day, you get all of it underunder the tumbles umbrella. And
I didn't know you got it all.
Joe, anything from yourperspective as CEO all wearing a
(03:33):
lot of hats, anything from yourperspective to add?
pigment is covered that prettywell. Again, just just following
that mission, trying to do whatwe can to move the needle on
childhood obesity, making surethat kids know that they don't
have to be on a device to havefun, they can have a bead of
sweat rolling down theirforehead is far more beneficial
(03:54):
to them far, far more beneficialto the habits that they will
form and carry into adulthoodand have very, very healthy,
productive lives.
Love it, again, not leading withthe profit side of it. It's
something that really you arespeaking to people on a
different level. I think a lotof people can come into business
ownership and franchising andsay, How much money can I make?
(04:15):
And that's the first question.
And I love that there's not themission. Here. There's something
much much deeper than that. Butand yes,
sorry. But there is profit, andit does come. So we do want to
say that because it is Yeah,agreed, otherwise we wouldn't be
(04:38):
here. But I do think that's animportant distinction and a
differentiator for tumbles aswell. And what I think
entrepreneurs are is we talk alot about franchising as a
vehicle. So our clients arelooking at self sufficiency, and
they're exploring different waysto do that. A lot of them are
coming from a job environment,that classic kind of nine to
five You know, corporateoftentimes job, but we're saying
(05:02):
listen, there's other ways toget to self sufficiency, whether
it's a startup, whether it'sbuying an existing business, you
know, some stocks orinvestments, you could, you
know, make money there as well.
But for you, and I'll start withhuman age, why why franchising
as the vehicle, you know,creating and being the, the CEO
(05:25):
of this franchise brand. Why wasthat something that you looked
into and followed that path?
So, you know, I've gotten thisquestion a lot, but my answer
has actually changed over time.
Be honest on that, right. Andthe reason being is originally,
you know, franchising was like,hey, you know, what, you find a
(05:45):
lot of people to open thebusiness, and then you support
them. And then you make moneythis way, right. And that was
the original idea. I mean, 1012years ago, whenever someone who
originally thought about it, nowtumbles isn't around for seven
years. And what I realized moreand more is, in order for our
mission, which is shaping theminds and bodies of the future,
we need people who have a, apurpose driven mindset. Now, as
(06:06):
I mentioned earlier, the idea ofhaving this purpose allows you
to enjoy what you do, and then aprofits automatically follow
because you enjoy going to work.
And having those types of peoplecoming in and they have a vested
interest, because they havetheir money in the business as
well, at a tumbles facility. Nowthey're going to go into their
(06:27):
community, and actually reachout to the kids over there and
run a program that is actuallygoing to have an impact. For as
Joe mentioned, you know, alifelong impact, you build those
habits, right. Now, in order tofind these people, you have a
vested interest, everyone'sinterests are completely aligned
top to bottom. And there's nobetter way than franchising.
(06:48):
Because when people are comingin, we get you get to train
them. We have the systems inplace, you get to work with
people with like minded, samephilosophy. And that just crazy
enough to say it makes a hell ofa lot of fun. Like, you know,
you guys say Monday is myfavorite day of the week. I
mean, I literally and Joe'sheard me say this a billion
times, right? Because itliterally it I believe it says
(07:09):
it's my favorite deck, right?
And because you're starting off,and Friday comes along, and I'm
like, that's nice. But I'malways looking forward to that.
Because of that reason. So yeah,franchising works well. And I
think it's buildingentrepreneurs at the same time,
and it's a stepping stone. Soall these people who are coming
in as franchisees, new businessowners, we get to work with
them. They're excited, thepassion is there. And that makes
(07:30):
it all worthwhile. even forgetabout the fact of making kids
smile, your franchisees arecoming in, we're actually
smiling and having a blast.
And I feel to like thefranchisees, when you look at
franchising, it's people whohave, like, raised their hand to
say yes, and I'm investing, youknow, it's not, I'm just going
(07:50):
to sign my employment agreementor whatever it is, like, I
believe in this brand, I want tocarry through the mission. I
want to bring this into mycommunity. I can see how much
good this would do so you havethose brand ambassadors that are
saying yes, and I'm willing toinvest time energy resources
money into this as well which isawesome.
(08:12):
Yeah, it's like that idea whenyou come on and say, I'm
literally going to put my moneywhere my mouth is. Yeah, and
that's you're going Yeah,and you have these awesome
invested invested franchisees,Joe for yourself and you come
from an actual not many peoplemay know this, but from the
franchisee as an ownerperspective, so you kind of see
it on all sides. So what's yourwhat's your take on it why
(08:35):
franchisingministers to actually so we both
have plenty of experience onboth sides. I don't know that.
That's a separator because aswe've I've quite literally
walked in the shoes of EverybodyI talked with, right? Now my
path. We're so cute. It's Istumbled into this. It is
honestly just my initial story.
(08:56):
I'm actually a commercial pilot,is the life I came from ended up
in franchising to help my familyout who had just entered into
the business as franchisees ofanother kid's brand. grew that
business thought it was very bereally cool to bring my my STEM
background, I'm a bit of ascience and math nerd, figured
that I wanted to bring that tothe kids space. But I did not
(09:18):
see that here in the NorthAtlanta market, created a
business that didn't do as wellas I wanted it to do as a little
bleeding edge. Talk to a trustedadvisor, gentleman right here. I
ended up actually pivoting thatbusiness into a learning center
model that I did for about adecade and then ultimately ended
up wanting to do something alittle bit more. I had a very
(09:40):
challenging client base. Iwanted to do something that
brought smiles to kids faces Iwanted to bring something that
really had more of a valuableimpact on the community. And the
idea of tumbles was just so veryappealing to me. So got out of
the business of being an owneroperator. And again, come came
to the site as table with a lotof background, a lot of
(10:01):
experience and quite a few chipson my shoulders from the lack of
lack of support we got from theother franchise brands has
really tried to do things a lotdifferent than than what I
experiencedthat I did and I learned
something new every single timeI talk to both of you. So and I
know many of you want to speakto the franchisee side of it as
well. But what I will say is Joejust listening to you, you've
(10:23):
been in the candidates, thefranchise candidates shoes, you
bet in the franchisees shoes.
Now you're on the franchisorside that brings a lot to the
table. And the word that came tomind, you know, you have this
commercial pilot background andnothing really even in the
industry. Definitely not infranchising, and that's what I
(10:44):
love about franchising is it'sthis community and like a
melting pot. This is a spacewhere you can have a lot of
different people with diversebackgrounds. You know, whether
it's different race, gender, itdoesn't really religion, it
doesn't matter. It's likefranchising is this very, it has
a really great, it provides alot of great opportunities for a
(11:05):
lot of different people, which Ilove. But mini chat if you have
anything to add to that,you know, so you know, it works
out really well. Right. So Imean, Joe's background as a
commercial pilot, youunderestimate that side of it.
But think about it from theaspect of taking a plane, right?
You want everything it has to goin order the system come into
play, right. And that's exactlythe reason why he's so good at
(11:26):
his job in terms of what we endup doing is we want to make sure
that airplane that you're takingoff, which is a tumbles
franchise, that it stays in theair and it's stable. Exactly
right, and what systems andprocesses do you have in place.
So I started as a single unitowner, then I went to multi
units. And then I was an areadeveloper, then I was a master
developer ran a system for 10years, and then sold a lot of
(11:47):
those businesses shut down a lotof them as well, and then lost
some of them as well. Somultiple different reasons,
opened up locations in 13Different states, almost 6060
different locations, and thenstarted my started my own brand.
So it's a complete and thenstarting their own brand, I came
out of investment banking. Sofrom that side, I actually
(12:07):
acquired a brand and thenrebuilt it from scratch. But I
didn't rebuild it by myself.
It's not me, it's the rest ofthe team. So the team is
absolutely fantastic technologyto the systems that Joe runs.
And then we have an entireCypher curriculum and training
site. All of that is built inhouse. So we did that because
again, let's Joe said we didn'tget a lot of great support from
(12:29):
other brands. So what we wantedto do was we found out what not
to do, right? So when when afranchisee comes into a tumble
side, you can come out and say,you know, what should you look
for? So it doesn't matter ifit's a tumbles, right, any
franchise you go into, take alook at the people who are
running it, how long they'vebeen, how long they've been
there? How long do they plan tobe there? And then that
(12:50):
philosophy, has it changed overtime or not? Is it going to
change for the company? Is itgoing to align with your
mindset, all that comes intoplay? Because in five years, if
it changes, what's going tohappen, that happened to me,
that's the reason I say that. Sowhen the philosophy of the
franchisor changed, and itcompletely changed my business.
So you want to make sure allthose things matter, right? So
(13:11):
we tell all the franchisees soit doesn't matter. It's not just
tumbles any franchise you gointo, you want to make sure you
align with the philosophy of thecompany.
That's actually reallyinteresting as well, because I
think to a lot of times when youhave a franchise candidate who's
going through and maybe lookingat a few different brands, you
think okay, I definitelyvalidate with the franchisee
validate with the ones who arein the business, they've gone
(13:33):
through this, but the other sideof it is validate with the
franchisor. And their missionvalues. And it seems maybe a
little bit like common sense.
Like, obviously, we don't alwaysthink about that, especially if
you're like, Wow, this is soexciting. I love what this brand
is all about. It's the coolfeatures and benefits. And then
you do want to the franchisor isa partner. They're not just
(13:54):
they're not like a big badbrother. They are exactly.
There's a collaboration there.
Right? So validate with yourfranchisor as well. And they're
doing this thing for everycandidate.
Yeah, 100%. It's a symbioticrelationship, and people don't
realize, and we want to makesure that you build that from
the get go. And the idea is thatthe franchisor only does well if
(14:16):
you do well. And you only dowell if the franchisor does
people. So it's not about thefact of just trying to be
against someone. It's the ideaof building something together.
It's a lot more fun when you doit that way.
Exactly. Which is why I think itwas so much fun, because you're
all just building it together,you know, some snags on the way
but overall I love that that'swhat you guys really focus on
(14:39):
90% 10% You don't likethe snags you take almost almost
more information from thosesnags and failures than you do
from the successes.
Very good point as well. Andwe've been touching on this a
little bit here when it comes tomyths around franchising, so I
want to kind of bring it backback to some of these things
(15:01):
that people can think whenthey're going into franchising.
And again, this could actuallybe on a franchisor side, or on
the franchisee side, and youguys have both of those
perspectives. But some of themyths that I commonly hear is, I
don't know anything about blankindustry, or I don't have any
experience in that space in thatenvironment. I can't be creative
(15:24):
in a franchise, corporate hasall the control, I'm giving up
my independence. So have youheard these from current
franchisees? Both are not a yes.
If yes, how do you respond tothat? And before I let you
answer, because you guys know, Ijust love talking so much. No,
before answer, I think both ofyou are great examples of coming
(15:47):
from a different industry, butit's the skills that you can
transfer into being an ownerbeing a franchisor, you know,
Joe, taking the skills and kindof his unique abilities as a
commercial pilot, and you'reusing those now, just in a
different way throughfranchising. So anyways, I'll
(16:09):
let you, Joe, if you want tospeak to that, first. You know,
have you heard these myths fromcurrent franchisees or
candidates? And how do yourespond? If so?
Absolutely. And everyone's acase by case. I mean, it's, I
talk with every candidate fromTDs. First, first off, I want to
(16:30):
I want to make the firstimpression on them. And I need
to know that I can have a greatworking relationship with them,
as well, again, that two waystreet, but the myths are real.
Myths are out there. There's alot of preconceived notions
about what a franchise is, andwhat we're not. Realistically
Yeah, we have to set guardrails,we have to maintain the
integrity of the brand that overIP, that's, that's extremely
(16:52):
important to the brand we have,you know, for a food analogy,
here we have a recipe, we havethe directions to create that
that food product. And it's it'sproven, we know it works. But in
all reality, there's some thingsthat we don't know and we're
going to be the first to admitthat we will work through
problems together and one ofthose is I can't be creative.
(17:14):
You're right. We don'tnecessarily want a franchisee to
be terribly creative, becausethen they're, they're going to
veer away from that recipe awhole lot and change the core
product of who we actually are.
But real life scenario, one ofour more successful programs
within within tumbles is ourninja warrior programs, that was
actually ideated by an employeeof a franchisee that was that
(17:35):
came from the bottom up. Andwhat we had to do was take that
idea, substantiate that idea,flesh it out, create marketing,
create curriculum, create theties with kinesiology and
Exercise Science, make sure thescience was there to back up
what we were doing create aprogressive curriculum, it took
a long time. But that product,which again is one of our bigger
moneymakers, within within thetumbles program came from the
(17:58):
bottom. And that's, that's whereyou have to be flexible. And to
your point, mostly you have toknow to validate the franchisor,
not just with other franchiseesin the system. I had a call with
a TDS client today, just acouple hours ago. And that was
her thing. She said, if you wereto recommend to your own
daughter, you know, to go intothe world of franchising, what
(18:21):
questions would you have herask? And that's precisely what I
outlined for her, you got tounderstand the vision, you got
to understand the longevity,you've got to understand the
mission of the owners of thatgroup if they're accountable to
VCs or investment firms. Youknow, what, what is the lineage
and the progression the path ofthis franchise? So yeah, it's
there's a lot of preconceivednotions out there. MANISH Allah
(18:43):
to tack on to that.
Yeah, so he, this part getsbecomes very interesting, right?
Because when you think about it,and you're like, you're scared,
and you're like, I'm gonna loseall control, right? But the
question that comes up is,first, you have to be honest
with yourself, as going in. It'sdifficult to do. But you have to
say what I do know and what Idon't know. And if you say that,
(19:06):
then you can actually go intothe business and say, okay, as
choosing an industry, like yousaid, Millicent, Hey, am I I
don't know anything about thisindustry? I wouldn't even bother
choosing the industry yet. Iwould actually just go and say,
Alright, what are the skill setsthat I have? What are those
skill sets apply? Then you go inand say, What is my passion?
What do I want to do? And thenyou go in and say which
(19:29):
franchise businesses actuallyfit those molds that I'm looking
for? And then based on that, andI think T us does a great job of
that. Right? You guys have thatnice was it got the disc right?
The profile that you guys do,which is
2.0. Right? That's, that is sucha good screening tool to get
them to understand their skills,because a lot of folks don't
understand their own skill sets,right. So when you're adding
those things, take that as onetool that gives you information.
(19:52):
And the biggest part, thebiggest, biggest part, I tell
for anyone that's coming in,keep an open mind Don't say
don't be closed minded, theminute you're close minded, you
stop learning, because you thinkyou already know everything. So
be open minded. And this isgoing to be absolutely nuts. I
tell franchisees, when they comein, hey, do you have an exit
strategy? And they're like,Wait, we haven't bought a
(20:12):
franchise yet? Why do you askthem about an exit strategy? I
said, think about it this way.
You come into tumbles you'reextremely successful, you get
one location, you get twolocations, three, fantastic,
we'd love for you to stay for 20years have 10 locations. Amazing
enough, no issue at all. Butthings happen in life. You get
another job, wife gets anotherjob, you're doing this,
(20:33):
something happens with thefamily. Anything can happen. You
win a lottery, you never know,right? Now you're gonna go in
and say, Hey, I don't want to dothis anymore. I want to do
something bigger. I want to dosomething different. Anything
happens? What is your exitstrategy? What did you learn
here that you can apply? Becausenow you're able to take on a
bigger challenge. Right? So thisis a small challenge that you're
(20:54):
starting off with where as Joesaid, we have guardrails, you
might want to go into somethingwith less, you know, a little
bit wider gaps, maybe noguardrails, where you create
your own guardrails, right, sothe idea of coming into a
franchise system, and the bestpart about it is you have
leeway. You're going in, you'rerunning, you hire your own
staff, you do your ownmarketing, you're building your
(21:15):
own relationships, you'rerunning your own business, you
have your own lawyers andaccountants and everything else,
you have people who can guideyou in certain areas, so you
have less bumps, you're gonnahit. And that's the goal. So
that way, your success rate ishigher. And then after that,
once you learn those things,then you can go and take on
bigger risks if you want to, orbigger challenges. That's the
way I would look at it from whenyou're going into the business.
(21:35):
Yep. And then like, it's a nice,it's a good building block
almost to get you started, evenin business ownership if it's
something you've never donebefore. And from there. Who
knows, you know? Exactly.
I started with one littlefranchise. And then three area
developer learned it, and thennow the own brand and then
(21:56):
building their own brand. Now wehave a technology side to it.
All the different teams. That'sall over time that we've done.
Yeah.
I and I think to people,especially in us talk to them
all the time, these franchisecandidates, where they're only
thinking we barely starting tothink about just the one unit,
right? So I love to talk aboutexit strategy, because like,
(22:17):
Wait, you guys, you get startedhere, let's let's first get to
that point, then there's justpossibility upon possibility
with what you can do. And youknow, we talk about income,
lifestyle, wealth, equity. Ithink a lot of people start in
that income space. It's allabout how much can I make my
income? I want to match that Iwant to make a certain amount of
money, then you start gettinginto okay, no way, there's more
(22:39):
lifestyle, like how can I startcreating a lifestyle I want, and
then this wealth and equitypiece that we actually don't
talk about a lot. I think itcould be pretty difficult,
difficult for someone to startto look at wealth and equity,
just starting their business bythemselves. Correct. Because
(22:59):
there's so much to work through.
And going back to you, Joe,where you're talking about. You
know, there's systems in place,there's guardrails. But you can
be creative within that. Ifyou're looking at just starting
your own business, no shade, butif you're just looking at
starting your own business, youare starting with like blue sky,
(23:20):
there's you can be as creativeas you want. But are those ideas
gonna go anywhere? Do you havethe capital and the resources to
put those things into place?
Once it gets going, you have nodata, no market research, no
industry knowledge, you're justgoing for it without really
knowing how in a franchise. Youcan. Yes, there's guardrails.
(23:43):
But like you said, you know, youcan be creative within that and
have this resource, theseresources and support to back
you up. So not saying everysingle idea you say is going to
be like, Wow, but you know, I'vedone this I created my own
proprietary company that wasthat stem business that I had?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I had blueskies, I was using your
transferable skills that Ilearned through the first
(24:04):
franchise that I was I was partof. And with that, yeah, I mean,
blue skies, I got to create myown curriculum, I had to find my
own vendors. I had to create myown layouts. I didn't find my
own furniture, either negotiatemy own lease. I mean, it was, it
was a process. It was a process.
But ultimately, I didn't havethat market research site. I was
too early, and it failed. Andthat's why I ended up pivoting
into another franchise brand.
But, you know, it happens. I'vetried that and just collectively
(24:28):
just tumbles. I know, everybodyhas their own stories, but our C
suite, just start C suite alone,we have almost 100 years of
small business experience thatwe are willing to put out there.
And we are accessible and wewant these folks to learn from
our successes and moreimportantly learn from our
failures. One of the bestanalogies administrators out
there all the time is we can putlittle flashy cones and
everything around that pothole.
(24:50):
We can't stop you from fallingin that pocket. We can't you
know, you have to learn fromthat process as well but we can
definitely get you out of thatpothole and figure out how to
work around that issue wayfaster with all the all the
experience that we have. Andthat's one of those true things
with franchising is, yeah, it'sa little cliche, but you have a
team. And, you know, our teamspecifically, we're right there.
(25:11):
And that's one thing that wepride ourselves on, which is why
we are, you know, we're lookingfor more that that slows
sustainable growth. We're not,we're not trying to explode,
because we want to make surethat we are there for everybody,
when they need us to make surethey get off the ground in a
proper, again, sustainable forthem and their unit as well.
100% I was terminated if youwant to add anything to that,
(25:34):
but this is why I love tumbles.
Well, I mean, there's a millionthings we can add, right? The
one thing I always tell all thecoaches AT Ts is right, anyone,
anyone that's interested in, inany business at the end of the
day, if you guys want to sendthem our way, we'll be happy to
chat with them, even if they'renot looking at tuples. Right?
Because at the end of the day,it's about business. And we
(25:54):
have, you know, what we juststarted doing recently, which is
very interesting is training. Wetook the training back not
people go well, how do you dothis? We do. So how do you use
email? How do you? How do youuse our systems that you have in
place what software to use,right? We went back a couple
more steps, we actually go inand say, Here's accounting 101,
here's legal 101. Here isactually what is what it means
(26:15):
to be an entrepreneur from amindset, emotional mindset. So
you know, tumbles always has thecognitive, the physical and
emotional, we put it together.
And we said, Wait, how do we dothat for our franchisees?
Because when we start off, it'sthe emotional side, right? It's
very difficult to because you'resaying, well, it's $300,000 to
start is $200,000 starts thathalf a million to start,
whatever number you're startingwell of any business, that
(26:35):
number starts going down andyou're like, wait, I haven't
made any money yet. Oh, my God,this number is dropping, and it
starts to create an internalpanic, am I going to be
successful? Am I not going to besuccessful? How am I gonna be
successful, your mind tends togo the negative more when you
start off, and you're like, holycheese, I'm not gonna make Oh,
what do I do? Let me startcutting costs, right? Like,
perfect example, first thingthat people end up cutting in
(26:59):
business marketing. Yep. Whichis absolutely the worst thing
you can cut. Because at the endof the day, if you're going to
cut something, you start off andstart calling ancillary costs
that you have, and marketing isa necessary cost, it is a it
should be a fixed cost, itshould not be a variable cost,
right? Because marketing is whatdrives your revenue. And when
(27:21):
people start cutting marketing,they go, Well, we're not doing
as well, we're not doing aswell, let me start cutting costs
everywhere, make sure youactually increase your marketing
budget, not decrease it. Sothat's what we did during COVID.
When everyone decreased theirbudgets everywhere else, we
decrease some of the things ourtravel went away, hey, forced
to, well, good enough, let's putthat money directly into
marketing. And hence now becauseof that, we've done almost five
(27:44):
deals with T s in the last sixmonths, seven months already,
which for our size is doublingthe size of our company. And now
going into international side aswell. So all of those things is
franchise easy to understandthat the mindset emotional side
is the toughest part. And wewant to train them from the get
go On this area, we startretraining the day after they
signjust because you got to get them
(28:06):
into the mindset and start justit's scary, right? If you chip
away slowly, slowly, then it'snot as scary. It's actually fun.
You got to enjoy the journey.
Because if not the end placethat you're going to it's going
to be very anticlimactic.
(28:26):
Yeah. 100%. And it is so easy tojust sink into like, well,
you're on this high because youlove this business. You're like,
Oh, my goodness, we're ready.
We're going to be selfsufficient for my family. And
then you start getting into it.
And it's um, yeah, there's a lotto it. I have not been on the
franchisee side yet. But um,there's a lot to getting
(28:47):
started, you know, you're onlyjust taking those first steps
after signing that franchiseagreement. That's very new, you
haven't even taken any steps,you know, you've made the made
the decision. So also, also whenyou are a franchisee, or sorry,
franchise candidate, starting tolook at which brand you're gonna
go with validating on thesupport? And where's the
(29:10):
training? When is the training?
What does that look like? And Ilove that you guys look at
mindset, it's not just, here'show you, you know, wrap your
vehicle, here's how you, youknow, set whatever up, it's the
one on one. It's the mindset.
It's like, how are we going towalk through these different
pieces and give you the tools soyou can be successful?
So education, and certification.
This is where the mindset comesin where you say you have an
(29:32):
open mind saying, Hey, I knowsome parts of this business. I
know how to hire people. But doyou know how to how I will
hourly employees versus salaryemployees? And then you're
looking at how do you actuallyempower them and to keep them
invested in the business so theykeep going over the long term?
How do you actually build a teamwhere you everybody comes up and
everybody says we'd like tobuild from within? Our team has
(29:52):
a Whoa, almost a completely 100%retention rate from our got from
our from our corporate teamsince we started. And we've
added people, we haven't lostanybody. Right. And that says a
lot in terms of who we have.
That includes our vendors thatwe work with, which is crazy.
(30:14):
So, you know, we build thoserelationships over time. So it's
the same thing. How do you teachfranchisees to do that with
their employees? Right? Thatmakes a huge difference when
it's your money on the line.
Little bit different than whenit's a corporate money on the
line, and you're just saying,I'm just giving a performance
review? Right? It's training,how much does it cost to train
the employees? How do you keepthem? Is it better to fire them?
(30:35):
Or get rid of them? And then geta new employee? Are you going to
start again, with a training?
What is the time value of that,that you have to spend again, in
order to retrain someone new?
Things like that? Yeah. So it's,it's fun, you got to enjoy this
journey stuff, and then we helpthem go through it.
Exactly. Listen, if you can,that the efforts of franchising
(30:56):
and fun is one of them, thenyou're in a good place. So what
I want to just kind of wrapthings up here with is and
because this is all about futurefranchising, I want to get from
each of you, when you look atfranchising, whether it's
specific to your brand, orindustry as a whole, what do you
(31:17):
see kind of happening? What kindof trends do you see happening
over the next whether it's year,next few years? Like what do you
see for franchising? Or AND, andOR for tumbles?
Well give you both. So mybackground is actually
economics. So I go into this.
So, yes, I mean, looking at itfrom this side, right now, I
(31:41):
know a lot of franchisees areworried actually about what's
happening in terms of lendingand all of these areas, interest
rates being so high. Think aboutit from the aspect that today,
yes, they're high. Where arethey going to be in six to nine
months or whatnot? What are theygoing to be like, in a year? You
don't know. So you have toactually take a look at current
economic standards and say,Alright, am I going to be
(32:02):
willing to operate at thehighest level with the cost
being at this level with costsgoing down later on, which I
think always in the case, when arecession comes along, or
anything, get rid of therecession word, and come on and
say any uncertainty that happensin the markets, if you look at
it historically, this hashappened so many times over from
87, to 94, to 2001, to 2008, to2000. Now again, I'll skip the
(32:27):
2014 15 timeframe, and come backto 20 to 23 timeframe. Now, it's
keeps happening all the time.
It's very cyclical. So at theend of the day, one thing that's
always survived, franchising isactually done well. So you want
to take a look at it saying ifyou want to get into business at
that point, look at it thehistorical viewpoint, not just
(32:48):
in just the immediate viewpointonly, that will give you good
insight into what the future isgoing to hold. Yeah, it'd be
nice if I knew what's going tohappen in the next few years.
Moza? Yeah, yeah, I have acrystal ball. And I can come on
and say this is what it's gonnabe. But yeah, you can say you
can say that be prepared fromthe aspect of saying, you know,
plant as they say, you know,plan for the worst and hope for
(33:09):
the best is one thing, no, no,you when you plan for the worst,
at the end of the day, the best,this is gonna be anything above
that it's going to come out tobe absolutely fantastic. And
franchising is a proven model.
So it's not even planning forthe worst. It's calculated and
it's actually proven. So youwant to get into a business,
then go and franchise.
Amen. Amen. From the economicsmajor himself. And, Joe, what,
(33:34):
from your perspective?
Hello, FiVER, a lot's of luckout there. But even even short
sighted, just dealing withclients who are a little short
sighted, because a lot of themare, again, merely fixated on
the collapse of the banks andlooking at that big R word
recession. But what they're notrealizing is again, what we're
looking at from, from a businessperspective, from the time they
(33:56):
start to explore with us, we'reprobably looking at about a year
before they're going to opentheir doors through the
discovery process throughsigning through the real estate
process and opening and buildout for a brick and mortar. It's
a little bit so you really can'tnecessarily only look at what's
happening right now and fearwhat's happening right now.
(34:20):
Right, and you know, and thankyou both for sharing that as
well and that it's not all doomand gloom. And I think, yes, you
hear a lot of that on the news.
But to your point Manish oflooking back at franchising as a
whole, it has been around foryears and years and years, very
successful. And I think it's thebeauty of the franchise as well
is you are really not alone. Youhave full support of your
(34:42):
franchisor you have otherfranchisees and there's just a
lot of really great thingsthere. And I think it all goes
again, back to mindset and wetalked about like, abundance
mindset, you know, if you're ina scarcity mindset, it's
probably not going to go thatWell, no, you're gonna get that.
But when you look at all thepositives that can come from it,
(35:05):
and that you can do, right,there's just so much. So there's
a positive outlook for sure. Oh,wait, and now to end so I stole
this from Steven Hobbs. He's theon podcast host of Diary of a
CEO. And he asks his guests histhe question that his last
(35:25):
podcast guest left for you. Doesthat make sense? Did that make
sense at all? So here's thequestion. If you could have any
one superpower, what would it beand why?
(35:46):
I've actually been asked thatbefore. Yeah. Question from my
twin boys. Actually. Anybodycoming in from anywhere else? So
we want so many Marvel movies?
Right? You know, that's aninteresting, interesting part.
Right? So, you know, what is theone superpower? Is it existing?
I asked, like 20 questions inreturn. So I'll be the worst
(36:08):
person to come out and say, Whatare my actual guardrails as we
talk about in franchising thatallow me to choose what it is?
Or is it anything right?
It's anything for right now.
Yeah, so anything goes Do youwant to go first? I gotta like a
million things on that side.
(36:33):
Have to sit?
Oh, yeah, my my definitely hasto do with mindset to what
you're able to do. It's notmoney or anything else. It's the
idea of actually, it's not, Iguess you call it a superpower
(36:57):
at that point, that coming in,is the idea of understanding
person person's emotions beforethey even happen. That allows
you to counteract and have a lotmore, you know, again, I always
say enjoy the journey. I'm notworried about the end
destination, because there is noend destination at the end of
(37:17):
the day does that it's going toalways keep changing as you say,
we keep changing goalposts. Soif I knew that, and what people
are thinking, you just asked meright now, what's the future
going to look like? How's itgoing to be? So if you can plan
for it now, then if I have ahead start on that every single
time, that's gonna make life aheck of a lot more fun? See if I
(37:38):
can actually just know whatyou're thinking how it's going
to be. And if I can make thatmore fun and easier for you,
then it's probably mypast life or something. So I
would I wouldI love that. All right, well,
I'm glad you don't have thatquite yet. Like you would know
everything I'm thinking. Um, butanyways, thank you so much, you
guys, for joining me on anotherfranchise Friday podcast. I love
(38:00):
our discussions so much. Sowe'll have to do like another
round eventually. But thank youso much for taking time out of
your day and sharing a lot ofwords of wisdom.
Fantastic and all to all theguests. We'll see you next month
again when Melissa hustlesagain,
exactly monthly currency guys.
All right. Have a great day,everyone.
Hey everyone. Welcome to today's episode of franchise
Friday. My name is Melissa Pang.
I'm the member relationshipstrategist here at the
entrepreneur source and it is mygreat pleasure to have these two
gentlemen here with me today wehave Manish vakeel. Did I say
that correctly, Manish? Yes, youdid. Great. He's the CEO over at
tumbles kids fitness gym andsteam. And I have Joe Flanders
(00:38):
here the C O at tumbles kidsfitness, gym and steam. So
welcome to the both of you. Howare you?
Absolutely fantastic. It's 70degrees here today. Well,
great brag. It's 40 Somethinghere it's cold. Yeah, I'm
(00:59):
here in Connecticut. And it's Ithink like 20. So that's not the
so at least man He's just havinga good day. Joe and I were
working on it. But and it wasquick little overview here on on
both of these fine gentleman.
MANISH oversees all the aspectsof the company. So from helping
(01:20):
franchisees build theirprofitable businesses to
expanding the mission of tumblesaround the globe, which is
ensuring that our not ourensuring that the tumbles
programs make every kid whowalks through the doors smile.
And Joe is the go to guru forstreamlining processes,
overseeing franchisee operationssupport, is there anything this
(01:42):
man does not do? He manages theinterior design, build out of
the locations, finds andfacilitates third party
partnerships. For equipmentdesigns, the steam curriculum
maintains the integrity of brandidentity and develop strategies
to grow the program offerings.
So we know who's doing all thework here,
obviously, just just a few hats,that's okay.
(02:05):
But anything else you guys wantto add anything you want to
tell? Tell the people about whatyou do?
Well, we can add a couple ofareas. So franchising is one
side that we have, right? We'reour mission is combating
childhood obesity, right? Sofinding the people you don't
have everyone comes out and saysprofit that you know leads to
purpose, our businesses morepurpose that is leading to
(02:28):
profit. And that's a keydifferentiator, especially when
you're dealing with first time,you know, business owners that
are coming into it. So when youhave a passion when people tell
you well get into business forthe passion, with with tumbles
it that's, that's very easy tofind. Because I don't want
anybody who doesn't like kids.
Or you know, because peoplealways spend money on kids. So
(02:50):
even if you like profit eitherway, you're going to end up in
our realm, you know, and it'sfun, which is the cool part,
right. So as our logo says youcan do a cartwheel upside down,
that's what this is, right? Oryou can go like this and do a,
you know, a muscular build bodybuilder, if you want to do that
as well. So, so that's the funside of it, that a lot of
people, I would love it, youknow, for them to realize what
we are. So that's kind of theunder the underlying mission and
(03:12):
all the different areas that wehave that people don't realize
just by looking at the brand andthe clients
love it the purpose before theprofit, and but at the end of
the day, you get all of it underunder the tumbles umbrella. And
I didn't know you got it all.
Joe, anything from yourperspective as CEO all wearing a
(03:33):
lot of hats, anything from yourperspective to add?
pigment is covered that prettywell. Again, just just following
that mission, trying to do whatwe can to move the needle on
childhood obesity, making surethat kids know that they don't
have to be on a device to havefun, they can have a bead of
sweat rolling down theirforehead is far more beneficial
(03:54):
to them far, far more beneficialto the habits that they will
form and carry into adulthoodand have very, very healthy,
productive lives.
Love it, again, not leading withthe profit side of it. It's
something that really you arespeaking to people on a
different level. I think a lotof people can come into business
ownership and franchising andsay, How much money can I make?
(04:15):
And that's the first question.
And I love that there's not themission. Here. There's something
much much deeper than that. Butand yes,
sorry. But there is profit, andit does come. So we do want to
say that because it is Yeah,agreed, otherwise we wouldn't be
(04:38):
here. But I do think that's animportant distinction and a
differentiator for tumbles aswell. And what I think
entrepreneurs are is we talk alot about franchising as a
vehicle. So our clients arelooking at self sufficiency, and
they're exploring different waysto do that. A lot of them are
coming from a job environment,that classic kind of nine to
five You know, corporateoftentimes job, but we're saying
(05:02):
listen, there's other ways toget to self sufficiency, whether
it's a startup, whether it'sbuying an existing business, you
know, some stocks orinvestments, you could, you
know, make money there as well.
But for you, and I'll start withhuman age, why why franchising
as the vehicle, you know,creating and being the, the CEO
(05:25):
of this franchise brand. Why wasthat something that you looked
into and followed that path?
So, you know, I've gotten thisquestion a lot, but my answer
has actually changed over time.
Be honest on that, right. Andthe reason being is originally,
you know, franchising was like,hey, you know, what, you find a
(05:45):
lot of people to open thebusiness, and then you support
them. And then you make moneythis way, right. And that was
the original idea. I mean, 1012years ago, whenever someone who
originally thought about it, nowtumbles isn't around for seven
years. And what I realized moreand more is, in order for our
mission, which is shaping theminds and bodies of the future,
we need people who have a, apurpose driven mindset. Now, as
(06:06):
I mentioned earlier, the idea ofhaving this purpose allows you
to enjoy what you do, and then aprofits automatically follow
because you enjoy going to work.
And having those types of peoplecoming in and they have a vested
interest, because they havetheir money in the business as
well, at a tumbles facility. Nowthey're going to go into their
(06:27):
community, and actually reachout to the kids over there and
run a program that is actuallygoing to have an impact. For as
Joe mentioned, you know, alifelong impact, you build those
habits, right. Now, in order tofind these people, you have a
vested interest, everyone'sinterests are completely aligned
top to bottom. And there's nobetter way than franchising.
(06:48):
Because when people are comingin, we get you get to train
them. We have the systems inplace, you get to work with
people with like minded, samephilosophy. And that just crazy
enough to say it makes a hell ofa lot of fun. Like, you know,
you guys say Monday is myfavorite day of the week. I
mean, I literally and Joe'sheard me say this a billion
times, right? Because itliterally it I believe it says
(07:09):
it's my favorite deck, right?
And because you're starting off,and Friday comes along, and I'm
like, that's nice. But I'malways looking forward to that.
Because of that reason. So yeah,franchising works well. And I
think it's buildingentrepreneurs at the same time,
and it's a stepping stone. Soall these people who are coming
in as franchisees, new businessowners, we get to work with
them. They're excited, thepassion is there. And that makes
(07:30):
it all worthwhile. even forgetabout the fact of making kids
smile, your franchisees arecoming in, we're actually
smiling and having a blast.
And I feel to like thefranchisees, when you look at
franchising, it's people whohave, like, raised their hand to
say yes, and I'm investing, youknow, it's not, I'm just going
(07:50):
to sign my employment agreementor whatever it is, like, I
believe in this brand, I want tocarry through the mission. I
want to bring this into mycommunity. I can see how much
good this would do so you havethose brand ambassadors that are
saying yes, and I'm willing toinvest time energy resources
money into this as well which isawesome.
(08:12):
Yeah, it's like that idea whenyou come on and say, I'm
literally going to put my moneywhere my mouth is. Yeah, and
that's you're going Yeah,and you have these awesome
invested invested franchisees,Joe for yourself and you come
from an actual not many peoplemay know this, but from the
franchisee as an ownerperspective, so you kind of see
it on all sides. So what's yourwhat's your take on it why
(08:35):
franchisingministers to actually so we both
have plenty of experience onboth sides. I don't know that.
That's a separator because aswe've I've quite literally
walked in the shoes of EverybodyI talked with, right? Now my
path. We're so cute. It's Istumbled into this. It is
honestly just my initial story.
(08:56):
I'm actually a commercial pilot,is the life I came from ended up
in franchising to help my familyout who had just entered into
the business as franchisees ofanother kid's brand. grew that
business thought it was very bereally cool to bring my my STEM
background, I'm a bit of ascience and math nerd, figured
that I wanted to bring that tothe kids space. But I did not
(09:18):
see that here in the NorthAtlanta market, created a
business that didn't do as wellas I wanted it to do as a little
bleeding edge. Talk to a trustedadvisor, gentleman right here. I
ended up actually pivoting thatbusiness into a learning center
model that I did for about adecade and then ultimately ended
up wanting to do something alittle bit more. I had a very
(09:40):
challenging client base. Iwanted to do something that
brought smiles to kids faces Iwanted to bring something that
really had more of a valuableimpact on the community. And the
idea of tumbles was just so veryappealing to me. So got out of
the business of being an owneroperator. And again, come came
to the site as table with a lotof background, a lot of
(10:01):
experience and quite a few chipson my shoulders from the lack of
lack of support we got from theother franchise brands has
really tried to do things a lotdifferent than than what I
experiencedthat I did and I learned
something new every single timeI talk to both of you. So and I
know many of you want to speakto the franchisee side of it as
well. But what I will say is Joejust listening to you, you've
(10:23):
been in the candidates, thefranchise candidates shoes, you
bet in the franchisees shoes.
Now you're on the franchisorside that brings a lot to the
table. And the word that came tomind, you know, you have this
commercial pilot background andnothing really even in the
industry. Definitely not infranchising, and that's what I
(10:44):
love about franchising is it'sthis community and like a
melting pot. This is a spacewhere you can have a lot of
different people with diversebackgrounds. You know, whether
it's different race, gender, itdoesn't really religion, it
doesn't matter. It's likefranchising is this very, it has
a really great, it provides alot of great opportunities for a
(11:05):
lot of different people, which Ilove. But mini chat if you have
anything to add to that,you know, so you know, it works
out really well. Right. So Imean, Joe's background as a
commercial pilot, youunderestimate that side of it.
But think about it from theaspect of taking a plane, right?
You want everything it has to goin order the system come into
play, right. And that's exactlythe reason why he's so good at
(11:26):
his job in terms of what we endup doing is we want to make sure
that airplane that you're takingoff, which is a tumbles
franchise, that it stays in theair and it's stable. Exactly
right, and what systems andprocesses do you have in place.
So I started as a single unitowner, then I went to multi
units. And then I was an areadeveloper, then I was a master
developer ran a system for 10years, and then sold a lot of
(11:47):
those businesses shut down a lotof them as well, and then lost
some of them as well. Somultiple different reasons,
opened up locations in 13Different states, almost 6060
different locations, and thenstarted my started my own brand.
So it's a complete and thenstarting their own brand, I came
out of investment banking. Sofrom that side, I actually
(12:07):
acquired a brand and thenrebuilt it from scratch. But I
didn't rebuild it by myself.
It's not me, it's the rest ofthe team. So the team is
absolutely fantastic technologyto the systems that Joe runs.
And then we have an entireCypher curriculum and training
site. All of that is built inhouse. So we did that because
again, let's Joe said we didn'tget a lot of great support from
(12:29):
other brands. So what we wantedto do was we found out what not
to do, right? So when when afranchisee comes into a tumble
side, you can come out and say,you know, what should you look
for? So it doesn't matter ifit's a tumbles, right, any
franchise you go into, take alook at the people who are
running it, how long they'vebeen, how long they've been
there? How long do they plan tobe there? And then that
(12:50):
philosophy, has it changed overtime or not? Is it going to
change for the company? Is itgoing to align with your
mindset, all that comes intoplay? Because in five years, if
it changes, what's going tohappen, that happened to me,
that's the reason I say that. Sowhen the philosophy of the
franchisor changed, and itcompletely changed my business.
So you want to make sure allthose things matter, right? So
(13:11):
we tell all the franchisees soit doesn't matter. It's not just
tumbles any franchise you gointo, you want to make sure you
align with the philosophy of thecompany.
That's actually reallyinteresting as well, because I
think to a lot of times when youhave a franchise candidate who's
going through and maybe lookingat a few different brands, you
think okay, I definitelyvalidate with the franchisee
validate with the ones who arein the business, they've gone
(13:33):
through this, but the other sideof it is validate with the
franchisor. And their missionvalues. And it seems maybe a
little bit like common sense.
Like, obviously, we don't alwaysthink about that, especially if
you're like, Wow, this is soexciting. I love what this brand
is all about. It's the coolfeatures and benefits. And then
you do want to the franchisor isa partner. They're not just
(13:54):
they're not like a big badbrother. They are exactly.
There's a collaboration there.
Right? So validate with yourfranchisor as well. And they're
doing this thing for everycandidate.
Yeah, 100%. It's a symbioticrelationship, and people don't
realize, and we want to makesure that you build that from
the get go. And the idea is thatthe franchisor only does well if
(14:16):
you do well. And you only dowell if the franchisor does
people. So it's not about thefact of just trying to be
against someone. It's the ideaof building something together.
It's a lot more fun when you doit that way.
Exactly. Which is why I think itwas so much fun, because you're
all just building it together,you know, some snags on the way
but overall I love that that'swhat you guys really focus on
(14:39):
90% 10% You don't likethe snags you take almost almost
more information from thosesnags and failures than you do
from the successes.
Very good point as well. Andwe've been touching on this a
little bit here when it comes tomyths around franchising, so I
want to kind of bring it backback to some of these things
(15:01):
that people can think whenthey're going into franchising.
And again, this could actuallybe on a franchisor side, or on
the franchisee side, and youguys have both of those
perspectives. But some of themyths that I commonly hear is, I
don't know anything about blankindustry, or I don't have any
experience in that space in thatenvironment. I can't be creative
(15:24):
in a franchise, corporate hasall the control, I'm giving up
my independence. So have youheard these from current
franchisees? Both are not a yes.
If yes, how do you respond tothat? And before I let you
answer, because you guys know, Ijust love talking so much. No,
before answer, I think both ofyou are great examples of coming
(15:47):
from a different industry, butit's the skills that you can
transfer into being an ownerbeing a franchisor, you know,
Joe, taking the skills and kindof his unique abilities as a
commercial pilot, and you'reusing those now, just in a
different way throughfranchising. So anyways, I'll
(16:09):
let you, Joe, if you want tospeak to that, first. You know,
have you heard these myths fromcurrent franchisees or
candidates? And how do yourespond? If so?
Absolutely. And everyone's acase by case. I mean, it's, I
talk with every candidate fromTDs. First, first off, I want to
(16:30):
I want to make the firstimpression on them. And I need
to know that I can have a greatworking relationship with them,
as well, again, that two waystreet, but the myths are real.
Myths are out there. There's alot of preconceived notions
about what a franchise is, andwhat we're not. Realistically
Yeah, we have to set guardrails,we have to maintain the
integrity of the brand that overIP, that's, that's extremely
(16:52):
important to the brand we have,you know, for a food analogy,
here we have a recipe, we havethe directions to create that
that food product. And it's it'sproven, we know it works. But in
all reality, there's some thingsthat we don't know and we're
going to be the first to admitthat we will work through
problems together and one ofthose is I can't be creative.
(17:14):
You're right. We don'tnecessarily want a franchisee to
be terribly creative, becausethen they're, they're going to
veer away from that recipe awhole lot and change the core
product of who we actually are.
But real life scenario, one ofour more successful programs
within within tumbles is ourninja warrior programs, that was
actually ideated by an employeeof a franchisee that was that
(17:35):
came from the bottom up. Andwhat we had to do was take that
idea, substantiate that idea,flesh it out, create marketing,
create curriculum, create theties with kinesiology and
Exercise Science, make sure thescience was there to back up
what we were doing create aprogressive curriculum, it took
a long time. But that product,which again is one of our bigger
moneymakers, within within thetumbles program came from the
(17:58):
bottom. And that's, that's whereyou have to be flexible. And to
your point, mostly you have toknow to validate the franchisor,
not just with other franchiseesin the system. I had a call with
a TDS client today, just acouple hours ago. And that was
her thing. She said, if you wereto recommend to your own
daughter, you know, to go intothe world of franchising, what
(18:21):
questions would you have herask? And that's precisely what I
outlined for her, you got tounderstand the vision, you got
to understand the longevity,you've got to understand the
mission of the owners of thatgroup if they're accountable to
VCs or investment firms. Youknow, what, what is the lineage
and the progression the path ofthis franchise? So yeah, it's
there's a lot of preconceivednotions out there. MANISH Allah
(18:43):
to tack on to that.
Yeah, so he, this part getsbecomes very interesting, right?
Because when you think about it,and you're like, you're scared,
and you're like, I'm gonna loseall control, right? But the
question that comes up is,first, you have to be honest
with yourself, as going in. It'sdifficult to do. But you have to
say what I do know and what Idon't know. And if you say that,
(19:06):
then you can actually go intothe business and say, okay, as
choosing an industry, like yousaid, Millicent, Hey, am I I
don't know anything about thisindustry? I wouldn't even bother
choosing the industry yet. Iwould actually just go and say,
Alright, what are the skill setsthat I have? What are those
skill sets apply? Then you go inand say, What is my passion?
What do I want to do? And thenyou go in and say which
(19:29):
franchise businesses actuallyfit those molds that I'm looking
for? And then based on that, andI think T us does a great job of
that. Right? You guys have thatnice was it got the disc right?
The profile that you guys do,which is
2.0. Right? That's, that is sucha good screening tool to get
them to understand their skills,because a lot of folks don't
understand their own skill sets,right. So when you're adding
those things, take that as onetool that gives you information.
(19:52):
And the biggest part, thebiggest, biggest part, I tell
for anyone that's coming in,keep an open mind Don't say
don't be closed minded, theminute you're close minded, you
stop learning, because you thinkyou already know everything. So
be open minded. And this isgoing to be absolutely nuts. I
tell franchisees, when they comein, hey, do you have an exit
strategy? And they're like,Wait, we haven't bought a
(20:12):
franchise yet? Why do you askthem about an exit strategy? I
said, think about it this way.
You come into tumbles you'reextremely successful, you get
one location, you get twolocations, three, fantastic,
we'd love for you to stay for 20years have 10 locations. Amazing
enough, no issue at all. Butthings happen in life. You get
another job, wife gets anotherjob, you're doing this,
(20:33):
something happens with thefamily. Anything can happen. You
win a lottery, you never know,right? Now you're gonna go in
and say, Hey, I don't want to dothis anymore. I want to do
something bigger. I want to dosomething different. Anything
happens? What is your exitstrategy? What did you learn
here that you can apply? Becausenow you're able to take on a
bigger challenge. Right? So thisis a small challenge that you're
(20:54):
starting off with where as Joesaid, we have guardrails, you
might want to go into somethingwith less, you know, a little
bit wider gaps, maybe noguardrails, where you create
your own guardrails, right, sothe idea of coming into a
franchise system, and the bestpart about it is you have
leeway. You're going in, you'rerunning, you hire your own
staff, you do your ownmarketing, you're building your
(21:15):
own relationships, you'rerunning your own business, you
have your own lawyers andaccountants and everything else,
you have people who can guideyou in certain areas, so you
have less bumps, you're gonnahit. And that's the goal. So
that way, your success rate ishigher. And then after that,
once you learn those things,then you can go and take on
bigger risks if you want to, orbigger challenges. That's the
way I would look at it from whenyou're going into the business.
(21:35):
Yep. And then like, it's a nice,it's a good building block
almost to get you started, evenin business ownership if it's
something you've never donebefore. And from there. Who
knows, you know? Exactly.
I started with one littlefranchise. And then three area
developer learned it, and thennow the own brand and then
(21:56):
building their own brand. Now wehave a technology side to it.
All the different teams. That'sall over time that we've done.
Yeah.
I and I think to people,especially in us talk to them
all the time, these franchisecandidates, where they're only
thinking we barely starting tothink about just the one unit,
right? So I love to talk aboutexit strategy, because like,
(22:17):
Wait, you guys, you get startedhere, let's let's first get to
that point, then there's justpossibility upon possibility
with what you can do. And youknow, we talk about income,
lifestyle, wealth, equity. Ithink a lot of people start in
that income space. It's allabout how much can I make my
income? I want to match that Iwant to make a certain amount of
money, then you start gettinginto okay, no way, there's more
(22:39):
lifestyle, like how can I startcreating a lifestyle I want, and
then this wealth and equitypiece that we actually don't
talk about a lot. I think itcould be pretty difficult,
difficult for someone to startto look at wealth and equity,
just starting their business bythemselves. Correct. Because
(22:59):
there's so much to work through.
And going back to you, Joe,where you're talking about. You
know, there's systems in place,there's guardrails. But you can
be creative within that. Ifyou're looking at just starting
your own business, no shade, butif you're just looking at
starting your own business, youare starting with like blue sky,
(23:20):
there's you can be as creativeas you want. But are those ideas
gonna go anywhere? Do you havethe capital and the resources to
put those things into place?
Once it gets going, you have nodata, no market research, no
industry knowledge, you're justgoing for it without really
knowing how in a franchise. Youcan. Yes, there's guardrails.
(23:43):
But like you said, you know, youcan be creative within that and
have this resource, theseresources and support to back
you up. So not saying everysingle idea you say is going to
be like, Wow, but you know, I'vedone this I created my own
proprietary company that wasthat stem business that I had?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I had blueskies, I was using your
transferable skills that Ilearned through the first
(24:04):
franchise that I was I was partof. And with that, yeah, I mean,
blue skies, I got to create myown curriculum, I had to find my
own vendors. I had to create myown layouts. I didn't find my
own furniture, either negotiatemy own lease. I mean, it was, it
was a process. It was a process.
But ultimately, I didn't havethat market research site. I was
too early, and it failed. Andthat's why I ended up pivoting
into another franchise brand.
But, you know, it happens. I'vetried that and just collectively
(24:28):
just tumbles. I know, everybodyhas their own stories, but our C
suite, just start C suite alone,we have almost 100 years of
small business experience thatwe are willing to put out there.
And we are accessible and wewant these folks to learn from
our successes and moreimportantly learn from our
failures. One of the bestanalogies administrators out
there all the time is we can putlittle flashy cones and
everything around that pothole.
(24:50):
We can't stop you from fallingin that pocket. We can't you
know, you have to learn fromthat process as well but we can
definitely get you out of thatpothole and figure out how to
work around that issue wayfaster with all the all the
experience that we have. Andthat's one of those true things
with franchising is, yeah, it'sa little cliche, but you have a
team. And, you know, our teamspecifically, we're right there.
(25:11):
And that's one thing that wepride ourselves on, which is why
we are, you know, we're lookingfor more that that slows
sustainable growth. We're not,we're not trying to explode,
because we want to make surethat we are there for everybody,
when they need us to make surethey get off the ground in a
proper, again, sustainable forthem and their unit as well.
100% I was terminated if youwant to add anything to that,
(25:34):
but this is why I love tumbles.
Well, I mean, there's a millionthings we can add, right? The
one thing I always tell all thecoaches AT Ts is right, anyone,
anyone that's interested in, inany business at the end of the
day, if you guys want to sendthem our way, we'll be happy to
chat with them, even if they'renot looking at tuples. Right?
Because at the end of the day,it's about business. And we
(25:54):
have, you know, what we juststarted doing recently, which is
very interesting is training. Wetook the training back not
people go well, how do you dothis? We do. So how do you use
email? How do you? How do youuse our systems that you have in
place what software to use,right? We went back a couple
more steps, we actually go inand say, Here's accounting 101,
here's legal 101. Here isactually what is what it means
(26:15):
to be an entrepreneur from amindset, emotional mindset. So
you know, tumbles always has thecognitive, the physical and
emotional, we put it together.
And we said, Wait, how do we dothat for our franchisees?
Because when we start off, it'sthe emotional side, right? It's
very difficult to because you'resaying, well, it's $300,000 to
start is $200,000 starts thathalf a million to start,
whatever number you're startingwell of any business, that
(26:35):
number starts going down andyou're like, wait, I haven't
made any money yet. Oh, my God,this number is dropping, and it
starts to create an internalpanic, am I going to be
successful? Am I not going to besuccessful? How am I gonna be
successful, your mind tends togo the negative more when you
start off, and you're like, holycheese, I'm not gonna make Oh,
what do I do? Let me startcutting costs, right? Like,
perfect example, first thingthat people end up cutting in
(26:59):
business marketing. Yep. Whichis absolutely the worst thing
you can cut. Because at the endof the day, if you're going to
cut something, you start off andstart calling ancillary costs
that you have, and marketing isa necessary cost, it is a it
should be a fixed cost, itshould not be a variable cost,
right? Because marketing is whatdrives your revenue. And when
(27:21):
people start cutting marketing,they go, Well, we're not doing
as well, we're not doing aswell, let me start cutting costs
everywhere, make sure youactually increase your marketing
budget, not decrease it. Sothat's what we did during COVID.
When everyone decreased theirbudgets everywhere else, we
decrease some of the things ourtravel went away, hey, forced
to, well, good enough, let's putthat money directly into
marketing. And hence now becauseof that, we've done almost five
(27:44):
deals with T s in the last sixmonths, seven months already,
which for our size is doublingthe size of our company. And now
going into international side aswell. So all of those things is
franchise easy to understandthat the mindset emotional side
is the toughest part. And wewant to train them from the get
go On this area, we startretraining the day after they
signjust because you got to get them
(28:06):
into the mindset and start justit's scary, right? If you chip
away slowly, slowly, then it'snot as scary. It's actually fun.
You got to enjoy the journey.
Because if not the end placethat you're going to it's going
to be very anticlimactic.
(28:26):
Yeah. 100%. And it is so easy tojust sink into like, well,
you're on this high because youlove this business. You're like,
Oh, my goodness, we're ready.
We're going to be selfsufficient for my family. And
then you start getting into it.
And it's um, yeah, there's a lotto it. I have not been on the
franchisee side yet. But um,there's a lot to getting
(28:47):
started, you know, you're onlyjust taking those first steps
after signing that franchiseagreement. That's very new, you
haven't even taken any steps,you know, you've made the made
the decision. So also, also whenyou are a franchisee, or sorry,
franchise candidate, starting tolook at which brand you're gonna
go with validating on thesupport? And where's the
(29:10):
training? When is the training?
What does that look like? And Ilove that you guys look at
mindset, it's not just, here'show you, you know, wrap your
vehicle, here's how you, youknow, set whatever up, it's the
one on one. It's the mindset.
It's like, how are we going towalk through these different
pieces and give you the tools soyou can be successful?
So education, and certification.
This is where the mindset comesin where you say you have an
(29:32):
open mind saying, Hey, I knowsome parts of this business. I
know how to hire people. But doyou know how to how I will
hourly employees versus salaryemployees? And then you're
looking at how do you actuallyempower them and to keep them
invested in the business so theykeep going over the long term?
How do you actually build a teamwhere you everybody comes up and
everybody says we'd like tobuild from within? Our team has
(29:52):
a Whoa, almost a completely 100%retention rate from our got from
our from our corporate teamsince we started. And we've
added people, we haven't lostanybody. Right. And that says a
lot in terms of who we have.
That includes our vendors thatwe work with, which is crazy.
(30:14):
So, you know, we build thoserelationships over time. So it's
the same thing. How do you teachfranchisees to do that with
their employees? Right? Thatmakes a huge difference when
it's your money on the line.
Little bit different than whenit's a corporate money on the
line, and you're just saying,I'm just giving a performance
review? Right? It's training,how much does it cost to train
the employees? How do you keepthem? Is it better to fire them?
(30:35):
Or get rid of them? And then geta new employee? Are you going to
start again, with a training?
What is the time value of that,that you have to spend again, in
order to retrain someone new?
Things like that? Yeah. So it's,it's fun, you got to enjoy this
journey stuff, and then we helpthem go through it.
Exactly. Listen, if you can,that the efforts of franchising
(30:56):
and fun is one of them, thenyou're in a good place. So what
I want to just kind of wrapthings up here with is and
because this is all about futurefranchising, I want to get from
each of you, when you look atfranchising, whether it's
specific to your brand, orindustry as a whole, what do you
(31:17):
see kind of happening? What kindof trends do you see happening
over the next whether it's year,next few years? Like what do you
see for franchising? Or AND, andOR for tumbles?
Well give you both. So mybackground is actually
economics. So I go into this.
So, yes, I mean, looking at itfrom this side, right now, I
(31:41):
know a lot of franchisees areworried actually about what's
happening in terms of lendingand all of these areas, interest
rates being so high. Think aboutit from the aspect that today,
yes, they're high. Where arethey going to be in six to nine
months or whatnot? What are theygoing to be like, in a year? You
don't know. So you have toactually take a look at current
economic standards and say,Alright, am I going to be
(32:02):
willing to operate at thehighest level with the cost
being at this level with costsgoing down later on, which I
think always in the case, when arecession comes along, or
anything, get rid of therecession word, and come on and
say any uncertainty that happensin the markets, if you look at
it historically, this hashappened so many times over from
87, to 94, to 2001, to 2008, to2000. Now again, I'll skip the
(32:27):
2014 15 timeframe, and come backto 20 to 23 timeframe. Now, it's
keeps happening all the time.
It's very cyclical. So at theend of the day, one thing that's
always survived, franchising isactually done well. So you want
to take a look at it saying ifyou want to get into business at
that point, look at it thehistorical viewpoint, not just
(32:48):
in just the immediate viewpointonly, that will give you good
insight into what the future isgoing to hold. Yeah, it'd be
nice if I knew what's going tohappen in the next few years.
Moza? Yeah, yeah, I have acrystal ball. And I can come on
and say this is what it's gonnabe. But yeah, you can say you
can say that be prepared fromthe aspect of saying, you know,
plant as they say, you know,plan for the worst and hope for
(33:09):
the best is one thing, no, no,you when you plan for the worst,
at the end of the day, the best,this is gonna be anything above
that it's going to come out tobe absolutely fantastic. And
franchising is a proven model.
So it's not even planning forthe worst. It's calculated and
it's actually proven. So youwant to get into a business,
then go and franchise.
Amen. Amen. From the economicsmajor himself. And, Joe, what,
(33:34):
from your perspective?
Hello, FiVER, a lot's of luckout there. But even even short
sighted, just dealing withclients who are a little short
sighted, because a lot of themare, again, merely fixated on
the collapse of the banks andlooking at that big R word
recession. But what they're notrealizing is again, what we're
looking at from, from a businessperspective, from the time they
(33:56):
start to explore with us, we'reprobably looking at about a year
before they're going to opentheir doors through the
discovery process throughsigning through the real estate
process and opening and buildout for a brick and mortar. It's
a little bit so you really can'tnecessarily only look at what's
happening right now and fearwhat's happening right now.
(34:20):
Right, and you know, and thankyou both for sharing that as
well and that it's not all doomand gloom. And I think, yes, you
hear a lot of that on the news.
But to your point Manish oflooking back at franchising as a
whole, it has been around foryears and years and years, very
successful. And I think it's thebeauty of the franchise as well
is you are really not alone. Youhave full support of your
(34:42):
franchisor you have otherfranchisees and there's just a
lot of really great thingsthere. And I think it all goes
again, back to mindset and wetalked about like, abundance
mindset, you know, if you're ina scarcity mindset, it's
probably not going to go thatWell, no, you're gonna get that.
But when you look at all thepositives that can come from it,
(35:05):
and that you can do, right,there's just so much. So there's
a positive outlook for sure. Oh,wait, and now to end so I stole
this from Steven Hobbs. He's theon podcast host of Diary of a
CEO. And he asks his guests histhe question that his last
(35:25):
podcast guest left for you. Doesthat make sense? Did that make
sense at all? So here's thequestion. If you could have any
one superpower, what would it beand why?
(35:46):
I've actually been asked thatbefore. Yeah. Question from my
twin boys. Actually. Anybodycoming in from anywhere else? So
we want so many Marvel movies?
Right? You know, that's aninteresting, interesting part.
Right? So, you know, what is theone superpower? Is it existing?
I asked, like 20 questions inreturn. So I'll be the worst
(36:08):
person to come out and say, Whatare my actual guardrails as we
talk about in franchising thatallow me to choose what it is?
Or is it anything right?
It's anything for right now.
Yeah, so anything goes Do youwant to go first? I gotta like a
million things on that side.
(36:33):
Have to sit?
Oh, yeah, my my definitely hasto do with mindset to what
you're able to do. It's notmoney or anything else. It's the
idea of actually, it's not, Iguess you call it a superpower
(36:57):
at that point, that coming in,is the idea of understanding
person person's emotions beforethey even happen. That allows
you to counteract and have a lotmore, you know, again, I always
say enjoy the journey. I'm notworried about the end
destination, because there is noend destination at the end of
(37:17):
the day does that it's going toalways keep changing as you say,
we keep changing goalposts. Soif I knew that, and what people
are thinking, you just asked meright now, what's the future
going to look like? How's itgoing to be? So if you can plan
for it now, then if I have ahead start on that every single
time, that's gonna make life aheck of a lot more fun? See if I
(37:38):
can actually just know whatyou're thinking how it's going
to be. And if I can make thatmore fun and easier for you,
then it's probably mypast life or something. So I
would I wouldI love that. All right, well,
I'm glad you don't have thatquite yet. Like you would know
everything I'm thinking. Um, butanyways, thank you so much, you
guys, for joining me on anotherfranchise Friday podcast. I love
(38:00):
our discussions so much. Sowe'll have to do like another
round eventually. But thank youso much for taking time out of
your day and sharing a lot ofwords of wisdom.
Fantastic and all to all theguests. We'll see you next month
again when Melissa hustlesagain,
exactly monthly currency guys.
All right. Have a great day,everyone.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com