Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (00:08):
Hi
everyone Today, I would like to
introduce you toI'm excited to be here and get
to hang out with you for alittle bit.
Well, atthew can you share alittle bit about what you guys
do at Thrive?
Yeah, so Thrive is a publiclytraded software company.
(00:32):
We're headquartered in Dallas.
We help entrepreneurs, businessowners and franchises in the US
, Canada and Australia and, inthe simplest terms, Thrive helps
small businesses navigate thecustomer experience.
So, as you're interacting withconsumers, you know they have
really high expectationsnowadays.
And managing that wholeexperience from the time they're
(00:54):
a lead to a paying customer tohopefully a repeat customer and
an advocate for your business.
There's a lot of differenttools that you need and a lot of
small businesses are using manydifferent tools to manage that
process, and what's really neatabout Thrive is that it's a
software that allows you tomanage that all on one platform
and it's very easy to use.
Matthew Gourgeot (Thryv) (01:15):
Well,
Matthew, I know you work through
the whole customer experience.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (01:18):
I know you
guys work through the whole
customer experience.
Can you explain how you guys dothings differently from other
companies.
Yeah, so you know, my team and Iwere talking a little bit about
this this morning.
I was on a flight to Scotlandlast week and I was trying to
tell this lady from Marriottwhat I do for a living and you
know, I think of it in terms ofa little bit like an orchestra.
You know, you've got all thesevarious instruments in an
(01:40):
orchestra.
You know playing.
You know one tune or one song.
When you're managing, whenyou're working with consumers,
there's, you know, before theyinteract with you, you know
being online there's.
You know scheduling, there'ssome kind of database or CRM.
You're maybe they saw you onsocial media you're trying to
book appointments, right, you'reissuing estimates, invoices,
(02:00):
payments After they become acustomer.
You're asking for reviews andtrying to create repeat business
and that whole process is thatcustomer journey right?
And when you talk aboutcustomer experience, it's just
how someone feels about yourbrand or your business at every
point in that, in that journey.
And the way that I want to goback to that orchestra thing is
(02:23):
that you know there's all thesetools that you need to manage
that and small businesses andspecifically, you know,
franchisees normally are usingseven or eight, sometimes 10,
different tools to manage thatand that's really tough.
So you know to train, to scaleand thrive as an all in one
platform.
So we have all the tools youneed, but it's on one system,
(02:46):
one log in.
You know, and, and that'sessentially what we're doing for
small business and that's whatwe're.
You know what my team does infranchising.
So, if I understand this right,a few of those things like a
customer experience CRM what allit does.
So can you walk everybodythrough this and explain how it
works, so that they can kind offollow along and understand when
(03:08):
?
Matthew Gourgeot (Thryv) (03:08):
people
move on yeah.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (03:09):
So I think
when you're thinking of the
customer experience or customerjourney right, you would you
would think of it in threecomponents, like before, during
and after the sale.
So if you think of before, youknow let's say, lance, you owned
a franchise location or a smallbusiness I'm probably looking
for you or you know a businesslike what you know, the product
or service that you offer.
(03:30):
I'm going to Google,potentially social media right,
and I'm looking for for yourindustry and I, you know, might
find your Google profile or Imight interact with you right to
call or to try to schedule, andthrive helps business owners
one appear online but thenmanage their Google profiles and
the various different listingsites out there, along with
their social media.
(03:50):
So that's kind of the beforeprocess, right, when I make a
phone call or go to your websiteto try to schedule, we have a
scheduling tool within thethrive platform that can help an
interested lead, you know,interact with you as a small
business owner Once I dointeract with you.
At the core of thrives businesscenter is a CRM.
(04:14):
It's a CRM that, just like withmany other CRMs, you can
segment your customer base inthere, and so, from your online
presence to scheduling to theCRM.
That's kind of that beforepiece of the customer journey.
But then, once you know, maybeI schedule that appointment,
you're coming out to my house,if you know, if you're a
(04:35):
home-based business, you comeout to my house, or maybe I'm
going to your physical location.
If you're a brick and mortarbusiness, inside that platform
we also allow the business ownerto put different staff members
in there.
You can.
There's a calendar to manageyour staff members calendar.
You can issue estimates,invoices and take payments
(04:59):
within our platform.
So it acts as a point of salesystem as well.
And then hopefully you know,once I, you know, do business
with you, lance, and I pay thatinvoice or you set me up on a
kind of a recurring payment orwhatever.
Your business model is right,you want to follow up with that
customer to one, get them tocome back, or two, be an
advocate, right To go out thereand really refer you to other
(05:24):
people in the community.
And so after the paymentportion of Thrive, we have other
tools like automated reviewrequest and we have email and
text nurtures that are in theplatform that will reach back
out to that customer to ask forand solicit and get reviews.
You can also respond to reviewsin the platform and within
(05:46):
Thrive we have email and textcapabilities.
You can set up email campaigns.
You can set up automatedcampaigns to kind of go off at
any time during the customerjourney.
So it's a lot.
But at the same time smallbusiness owners are juggling a
lot, you know, when they'retrying to woo and excite and
really provide a good experiencefor the consumer.
It's really tough to do andnormally they're using seven or
(06:08):
eight different tools to do it.
And our thing is that you couldjust use Thrive, one platform.
Matthew Gourgeot (Thryv) (06:14):
That
sounds a lot easier than
toggling back and forth betweenthe tunnel programs to figure
out what's going on, not havingconnected data to where you can
actually see the numbers ofshare maybe some of the most
memorable experiences, thatconversion journey and customers
have.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (06:31):
Yeah, I
mean we have 50, almost 55,000.
We're getting close to 60,000subscribers that use the
platform.
A lot of those are localindependent businesses.
We have almost four dozenfranchise brands, all ranging
from startup brands to moreestablished brands that are
using the platform as well.
And you know I think that youknow in my role I get to meet
(06:58):
with a lot of differentfranchise oars and so there's a
lot of different situations thatI come across.
We've had.
We've had a brand that wasreally, really unorganized but
had a great business and byinstituting Thrive, if you think
about what that does, that kindof standardizes the customer
experience across all yourlocations.
(07:18):
Right, it really standardizes alot of your reporting and your
finances.
And after a year or so on ourplatform that that that business
was able to be acquired by aplatform company.
So we spent some time workingwith that franchise order to
kind of really get their housein order so that they could sell
it and their lifelong dreamthey've been running the company
(07:39):
for 15 years grew it to 50locations and then they they
were able to sell that and I wasvery happy to help that owner
do that.
You know, when you're thinkingof making a switch in software,
specifically in franchising,there's a lot of turmoil around
moving from one system to thenext, right?
Let's say you have 10 locationsand those franchisees are
(08:02):
accustomed to a certain way ofdoing things.
And then you come in as thefranchisee or and you say, hey,
by the way, we're switching tothis process, right?
There's a lot that goes intothat and I could give you
countless stories about how wehelped various brands transition
from whatever they were doingbefore to thrive in a very
(08:22):
seamless way.
That didn't, you know, thefranchisees didn't really revolt
and we're actually happy withwhat's going on because it made.
The whole point of this is tomake the franchisee's life
easier.
So if you're a new franchise oryou're watching this, or just
if you're a established brand,you understand and the biggest
friction points between thefranchise or the franchisee is
(08:44):
when you go to make changes tothe system.
You know, especially when yougo to make technological changes
, it can really cause somefriction between Zord and Z, and
navigating that process andreally communicating well within
your own brand is critical.
Matthew Gourgeot (Thryv) (09:00):
Well,
I just want to see if we can
take a look at it.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (09:02):
I was just
going to say can we take a look
at it here so everyone can seehow it works and learn about it?
Yeah, so what I thought I'd dofor this is take 60 seconds, run
through a couple of slides andthen fire up actually what
Thrive looks like in theplatform and show you kind of
everything that I've beentalking about.
But we talk about Thrive helpsfranchise, or so if you're
(09:23):
watching this and you're afranchise, or we help you create
thriving franchisees, we feelreally that in order to scale a
brand and make it successful,your franchisees need to be
kicking butt.
But just to check a couple ofboxes, we are publicly traded,
we're headquartered in Dallasand we are members of the IFA.
I sit on the supplier forumboard.
We spent the last few yearsreally really learning and
(09:46):
working with franchises and Ibelieve we have an incredible
franchise team.
But when the you know kind ofthe why behind, why Thrive
exists within franchising isthat the average franchisee uses
seven tools to manage thecustomer experience, like
everything that we've beentalking about.
If you think about from before,during and after the sale and
(10:07):
think of your own franchiseesand what they're using, there's
three major components of thecustomer journey.
There's communication,marketing and payments.
Really, the sale behind Thriveis that if you look across the
board there, it's an all in oneplatform.
So we really help you managethat entire customer experience.
You can standardize it at everylocation within your franchise
(10:30):
brand by using our software andone other tool that I will maybe
have some time to show youduring this recording, but for
our franchisee, or as we providethem, a multi location
reporting platform that actuallysits on top.
So, if you think about it, youhave 25 locations, 75, whatever,
how many locations you have.
(10:52):
Every single location wouldhave a Thrive account and
they're managing the customerexperience in that account.
But the data points and theKPIs and the different things
that you're looking for, theusage at the location level
rolls up to this product we callhub and it can help you track
top line revenue.
It can help you track emailtext, review campaigns, which
(11:15):
clients are using it,appointments, different KPIs
that you might have.
So we have two really productsthere.
So let me actually show youwhat the software looks like.
So I'm going to show you guys adesktop or laptop version.
We also have Thrive as anapplication that you can
download on your smartphone.
So let's get started.
(11:35):
What I'm showing you here isjust the simple log into
business and we call it businesscenter, but Thrive's Business
Center, where your franchiseewould log into this.
There's a simple dashboard thatprovides them an overview of
the payments that are happeningcalendar, social media and
whatnot.
But you have this navigationbar down the left here.
In this navigation bar, there'sa couple of key things I want
(11:57):
to show you.
One is the inbox.
Here, all the communicationthat's coming from leads,
current customers, vip, whateverthe different types of
customers that you might havethat's all pulled into one inbox
.
You can be notified Ifsomeone's following up with you
via email, if they're coming inthrough social media, like
Facebook or your Instagrambusiness page.
(12:18):
That can be pulled into here.
Another key component is thecalendar.
Here this works similarityCalendee or any of the other
tools that you might be aware of, but you would have your staff
accounts down here Then.
This simply works just like anyother calendar where you can
create appointments, you cancreate group events, you can
block off time, you can createrecurring appointments.
(12:41):
You can look at it from anevent list view, but I think the
core common piece of Thrive isthe CRM, which is what I'm in
now.
When you scroll down here,let's just grab.
This is a test account, so giveme a little grace here.
But let's say Alice in Goat.
We wanted to look at Alice inGoat here.
Alice in's account.
(13:01):
When I click on it pulls uphere and it's got everything
that you would need to interactwith this customer all in one
place.
We've got the conversation tabhere where all my interactions
with this lead would be hostedhere.
If you think about it, yourfranchisees might have employees
that are interacting with theirleads and customers and whatnot
on their cell phone.
(13:22):
If that employee finds a betteroption tomorrow and leaves, a
lot of that interaction withthat customer or lead might be
in their cell phone and notstored in the Cloud, which is
really what you want.
When you go to look at resalesand different things that your
franchisees might look at downthe road, you want a lot of the
(13:44):
interaction with leads andcustomers stored in the Cloud so
that the next person that maybetakes over or however that
works would have access to thatdata.
But just simply, here you havethe conversation.
I can interact with Allison avariety of different ways,
including email text, facebookMessenger.
There's a few other channels inhere as well.
(14:04):
I can create notes.
It would say Rick, or it wouldsay Matthew Gorgio or Lance Hood
here the employee that'sleaving that note can be listed
here All her past and upcomingbookings, what those bookings
were, how long they lasted,where they completed.
You can look at the history ofthe client here and then all the
(14:26):
upcoming bookings like maybeyou have recurring appointments
in the future, maybe she has anupcoming booking in two days.
That would be there.
Payments every business modelis a little different, but if
you have payments that you'vereceived over a certain amount
of time, you can scroll back andlook at all the times that
(14:47):
Allison has paid you for thecertain products and services
that you need that you offer.
You also have maybe you'vedelivered some estimates to her
that she may or may not bepondering over right now.
And then, if you have dueinvoices or recurring payments
and somebody has missed apayment or whatnot, you have
overdue and due payments listedhere too.
(15:08):
And then, lastly, documents sothis would be any documents that
you would share with thecustomer.
They would share with you.
You've added internally totheir profile here, maybe for
other employees to see that areworking within the system.
But that's all here in onesimple to use dashboard.
And if you look at Allison overhere, she's got the status of
(15:29):
customer.
You can customize your statusesthat we're gonna thrive to fit
your business model.
So, lead customer, vip, thedifferent statuses that you
might have, that to fit yourworkflow.
You can customize that there.
And then we have a taggingsystem over here to the left,
which just simply means that youcan group the different people
(15:52):
in your CRM so you she may bepart of various groups, she may
fit a certain mold, and so youwould tag her, let's just say
residential, and then anytimeyou went to send any marketing
communication for any kind ofresidential work, that would go
to Allison because she's part ofthat tag.
If you've used other softwares,you're familiar with a little
(16:14):
bit of tagging If you've usedMailChimp or Constant Contact or
some of these others.
But it's just a good way toorganize your CRM.
So any questions?
Lance, I know this is kind of ademo, but before moving to
anything else, did you have anyquestions?
Matthew Gourgeot (Thryv) (16:31):
Well,
I mean so.
Am I able to sit there andtrend like my customers that are
doing the most revenue with us,customers that are the most
unhappy, and look for thosetrends not only in customer
interactions, but also indifferent locations?
This location is killing it.
Try to figure out what's goingon so that we can create those
(16:56):
best and next practices andshare it with the rest of the
people.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (17:00):
No, it's a
great question.
So when I'm interacting, likewhen Thrive's interacting in the
franchise space, we normallystart with the franchise, or so
our customer is the franchise,or but the user of the software
is really the franchisee.
But our hub tool that I wastelling you about earlier, you
know that's the thing is likewhen you're looking at all your
you know locations and so youknow, let's say, your top 10%,
(17:22):
it's like what are the top 10%really doing, you know.
And then that's really whereyou can draw the correlation,
where if you're looking at huband you see that someone, let's
just say, is leading in gettingappointments right, you can dial
in and see okay, well, what isleading to that appointment?
Is it the way that they send outtheir marketing campaigns?
Is it the way that they respondto you know, form fills, like
(17:46):
how quickly they respond to formfills and whatnot.
You can start to really drawthose best practices and KPIs in
the system.
So that answers your questionto a certain extent.
We don't have like NPS scoresor anything like that inside of
Thrive natively, but I thinkwhen you look at top line
(18:07):
revenue you know who'sgenerating the most revenue.
Okay, well then, look just alittle bit deeper, like what's
actually leading to thecustomers that are leading to
that revenue right, themarketing that may be leading to
that.
You can start to draw thoseconclusions inside our platform.
Matthew Gourgeot (Thryv) (18:24):
Right,
I just would love to spend time
just researching the topperforming and bottom performing
franchisees and then the topperforming and bottom performing
customers, because I think youknow there's just when you have
all this data in this situationlike this, it's just a goldmine
for your company.
You know, I just love that,yeah, and I like you also with
(18:46):
the communication.
I love the fact that you haveall the social stuff, but you
also have reputation, so you'rewatching that stuff so that
you're not dropping the ball,you know, on reputation and
stuff.
So I like it.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (18:59):
Any other
quick things that you want to
show everybody real quick beforewe jump back I think, just for
the sake of time, if you'relooking down this navigation bar
here to the left, we do havemarketing.
Marketing includes, likeautomated campaigns and email
campaigns that you can set up to.
You know, on a client'sbirthday, like 48 hours before
their birth date, they get acoupon or an email from you.
(19:21):
Or you know, when they become alead, they get such and such
email.
Like you can set up thoseworkflows for the types of leads
and customers that you want,just like you came with any
other email platform out there.
You can manage your socialmedia, like you were saying in
here, and your reputationsoliciting, also responding to
reviews in the platform as well,and so I think that if you're a
(19:48):
small business and you'reserious about you know driving a
great customer experience, youhave to use tools like this.
It's just whether you want touse seven or eight different
tools with seven or eightdifferent 800 numbers and seven
or eight different logins, or ifdo you want it all corraled on
one platform.
And not to mention, you knowthose seven or eight different
(20:12):
tools need to be connected viaAPI and Zaps and all this other
stuff that to make sure that itdoesn't work or break.
So that's really it.
It's, there's really.
This kind of stuff is notoptional.
For interacting with the modernconsumer, consumers kind of
expect a great experience, youknow, before, during and after
the sale.
It's just really on you as thefranchisor on.
(20:34):
Do you want your franchiseesusing multiple different tools
or do you want to consolidatethe tech stack form so that you
know they don't have to be asuperstar tech person to really
navigate your?
You know, your concept?
Matthew Gourgeot (Thryv) (20:50):
Yeah,
I know it's a hassle, I've done
it myself.
I know that.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (20:53):
I love
technology I've done it myself
the idea of trying to connect itall and keep it working
together is a hassle, yeah, andI mean I would just say you know
, when you're trying to scalethe brand, you know when you're
working with franchise brokersor maybe you're doing franchise
development yourself or in a andneeding someone from MIT or
(21:16):
some Ivy League school is tooperate your brand, it's going
to be really tough to scale.
You know you just need good oldaverage Americans that they're
not looking for a reallycomplicated system and
technology is supposed to helpthem, not.
You know, weigh them down andyou know so that that's that's
really why we exist is to help afranchise or make their system
(21:39):
turn key.
You know, by providing easy touse tech that you know any
entrepreneur can use.
Well then, so let's say,somebody clicks on the link next
to this video.
What is the process?
What are they?
going to see, say somebodyclicks on the link, we have a
process of them getting startedand getting things implemented,
they land on your side.
Yeah, so we, there will be alink, you know.
(22:01):
You click on it, you canschedule a time to meet with our
franchise team or we, you know,we simply do a discovery call
and do a more in depth demo withyou to show you the product and
how it works and if it does fityour business model and if
we're a good fit for for whatyou do.
If you're watching this, weserve, we help service.
You know service orientedfranchise brands.
So we don't work in food, wedon't do QSRs, but it's mainly,
(22:25):
you know, the service space andso, yeah, just click the link at
a demo and learn more about you.
We don't have a really pushysales process.
We, we will bring in ourproduct team along with our
sales team to make sure thatwe're a good fit and then, if it
is something that you want todo, we have done this with
countless brands to help themtransition from what they
currently have to this vision ofthrive that I just laid out.
(22:48):
And you need a really good teamto help you do that, because,
on average, franchisors haveanywhere from, you know, three
to eight employees at thecorporate location.
It's not like it's, you know.
There's hundreds of people tohelp you with that transition
and we're an extension of yourteam and we're really you know,
I think have the proven trackrecord to help you transition
(23:08):
from one platform to the next.
So, matthew, so you mentionedthat you guys have a franchise
template that makes it very easyfor people to sign up basically
and set up their additionalfranchise units, and that's
normally a $1000 a year and youguys want to waive that for
everybody who's listening forfree, correct?
Yeah.
So if you think about you knowlet's I don't know how many
(23:31):
locations you know as afranchise or you're watching
this you would have, but once wework with your team and we
determine how you plan toleverage, thrive within your
brand, we have a product thatare a feature within our product
.
That's a it's just called afranchise template and
essentially what you can do isyou can customize all your
settings, branding, you know,logos, all that stuff on this
(23:54):
template and that way you canclone all your current and
future accounts off thattemplate.
So when you pick up a newfranchisee, instead of having to
go in from scratch and createtheir account, everything just
spins off that template and youcreate a new account within
really minutes.
We in our contracts withfranchisee or that's $1000 a
(24:16):
year and if you're watching thisand you take part with Lance
and his company, we are waivingthat fee.
So that $1000 a year fee willbe completely complimentary for
anyone that watches this andtakes advantage of the offer.
Matthew Gourgeot (Thryv) (24:32):
Thank
you, Matthew.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (24:33):
That is
awesome.
Well, thank you, matthew, Iappreciate it.
Matthew Gourgeot (Thryv (24:36):
Anybody
who wants to save that $1000 a
year.
You can press the button nextto this video and they will take
care of you.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (24:44):
Thanks,
Lance.