Scaling a Million Dollar Pressure Washing Business | Aaron Harper - Rolling Suds

What if you built up your skills in franchise development and leadership, and then were offered the position that capitalized on both, but you turned it down to start your own? Then you would be Aaron Harper, who started Rolling Suds Franchise Systems using a unique pressure washing process and system. Aaron has grown to 145 units in just 14 months and projects to have 300 units in the next 12 months, and WE BELIEVE IT. Shout out to @anniepreece on Instagram whose art is proudly displayed in Aaron's home office. Did you know our amazing voices can go beyond just the microphone? Yes, we have video! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here!

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GOLD NUGGETS:

(00:00) - Franchising and Entrepreneurship Journey

(09:35) - Building a Successful Franchise Business

(12:43) - From Employee to Entrepreneur

(17:46) - Building a Successful Franchise Business

(29:55) - Growing a Successful Franchise System

(41:37) - Favorite Books, Customer Service, DIY Nightmares

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Aaron’s Links:

Website | https://www.rollingsudspowerwashing.com/ 

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-harper-998140125/ 

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Previous guests on The Small Business Safari include Dale Cardwell, Amy Lyle, Ben Alexander, Joseph Sission, Jonathan Ellis, Brad Dell, Chris Hanks, C.T. Emerson, Chad Brown, Tracy Moore, Wayne Sherger, David Raymond, Paul Redman, Gabby Meteor, Ryan Dement, Barbara Heil Sonneck, Bryan John, Tom Defore, Rusty Clifton, Duane Johns, Jason Sleeman, Andy Suggs, Chris Michel, Jon Ostenson, Tommy Breedlove, Rocky Lalvani, Amanda Griffey, Spencer Powell, Joe Perrone, David Lupberger, Duane C. Barney, Dave Moerman, Jim Ryerson, Al Mishkoff, Scott Specker, Mike Claudio and more!

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If You Loved This Episode Try These!

• Growing a Million Dollar Business With Public Relations | Mickie Kennedy

• Turning 23 Years of McDonald's Franchise Ownership to an Entrepreneurial Lifestyle

• Attracting High-Value Clients with Irresistible Marketing Messages | Daniel Den

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Have any questions or comments? Connect with me here!

Transcript

Aaron Harper: 0:00

Where'd you get your confidence? You said no to a ridiculous offer that I thought you were joking at first and it kept going and going I'm going to double your salary, I'm going to give you unlimited budget, all that stuff. You say no to that. You say no to more than half the people that want to franchise. I actually saw I can't remember if it was a Facebook post or something where basically you were pulling a Babe Ruth. Here's what we're going to do. By this time, I'm going to have this many stores. By this time, I'm going to raise this much money, blah, blah blah, I mean you got some huevos.

Chris Lalomia: 0:34

Welcome to the Small Business Safari where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in Adventure Team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountaintop. All right, let's get all washed up. Let's get ready to go. Let's get sudsy. Let's get soaked up, let's get going. What do you think about that one? You're hinting at something. I am. I've been thinking.

Aaron Harper: 1:20

You're so smart. I love it when you have that grin on your face when you did something clever.

Chris Lalomia: 1:25

I know I'm being clever Dad joke city lookout coming. Hey guys, if you haven't gone out there, make sure you tell your friends about us. The small business Safari just had another person hit me up yesterday and said dude, I didn't know you even had a podcast. I'm like, yeah, he goes. You know, it was immediately served up. I just joined Facebook. It immediately got served up to me. I'm like we were meant to be connected. Oh, by the way, we are Nice. Yeah, so he goes. And I'm actually listening. He goes. Hey, you're not bad. I said wow with that guy. I said can you write that review for me? I really like that. You don't suck as much as I thought you would. That. What's the vision of our nonprofit group that we're on the board of? Is that we suck less. Let's do that one, though. Let's get that taken. Uh, it was oh, okay, I think so. Cheers, buddy. Yeah, cheers, alan's been a minute since we've gotten together. It's just been a whole week, I know, uh but we are back.

Chris Lalomia: 2:17

We are doing it. Happy birthday to you. We, alan and I, have now known each other for probably 13, 15 years, almost 15 years. We've been doing the podcast for two and we just realized that our birthdays are literally six days apart oh wow, yeah, so that, oh wow comes to you from aaron harper. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us. Aaron, what's the name of your concept and your franchise?

Alan Wyatt: 2:42

uh, rolling suns oh, that's why I said that.

Chris Lalomia: 2:45

Oh okay, I've connected the dots now, thank you. Thank you, aaron's. Uh, you talked to us about rolling suns today, and what we're going to talk about is, first of all, how you got there. You're doubling down on your dad joke. I am totally don't you like that, but it's all lather up. Hey, everybody, put your bath hats on, get your rubber duckies out, we're going oh my god, you like that.

Aaron Harper: 3:05

Yeah, you just split eights. Okay, all right, here we go. Yeah, how'd that do for me.

Chris Lalomia: 3:11

So, aaron, uh, where are you from originally and were you always going to start this franchise? Was this your idea?

Alan Wyatt: 3:17

no, no, no. So I'm from southern california originally. Uh, did a stint working in hollywood uh, on the business side, where I would work with actors and writers and directors and help them with their contracts and help them get jobs in Hollywood. Did that for about five years, realized that I I didn't want anything that my bosses had, and so I decided to look into other kind of career opportunities.

Alan Wyatt: 3:48

I had a buddy who I went to college with at UC Santa Barbara and he said you should get into franchise development. And I was like what's that? And? And? Because I I like many of the people outside the franchise industry, thought franchises were just McDonald's and Chick-fil-A, and he said, no, there's this whole opportunity where there's service based businesses that you can get in for like half a million or less and build like a considerable sized business. And so he gave me his boss's email address and I emailed him every three weeks for six months until he hired me, and so I went to work at the for six months until he hired me, and so I went to work at the biggest carpet cleaning franchise in the world, and so that was my entry point into franchising.

Chris Lalomia: 4:33

All right, so you got right in with them and that well, can we say the name.

Alan Wyatt: 4:37

Yeah, cam.

Chris Lalomia: 4:38

Jack, okay Well, thank God I didn't want to break any confidentiality rules, but so you got into franchise development. Like you said, a lot of people don't even know that's a career path or a way to actually find your way into entrepreneurship is to actually be in the franchise development space first. And they get going. And that's what I felt interesting about your path is that you got into franchise development and then decided wait a minute, I think I can do this myself franchise development is actually franchise sales, that Correct.

Chris Lalomia: 5:05

Yeah, so let's talk about that for a minute. Yeah, let's so you were. You were humping franchises.

Alan Wyatt: 5:09

Yeah, so exactly. So there's people that like, look online and I want to buy a business, or I want to buy a franchise, and then it pops up here's 10 of the hot franchises that you should look at. And then they'd end up on the phone with someone like me.

Aaron Harper: 5:26

Except for you are a seasoned Hollywood negotiating barracuda, so you must've had a pretty good close rate.

Chris Lalomia: 5:37

I was not bad at my job. Nice Way to set it up. You were a soul sucking barracuda, you might as well. I mean, and Aaron said, I've pretty good at my job, I smile inserted here, nice, all right. So you did that for how many years? So?

Alan Wyatt: 5:52

I was at chem drive for three years. Then it was bought by a private equity-backed restoration company that wanted to get into like franchising and building like a franchise division of service brands. So they bought Chemdrive but put us in charge of their franchise division and said go, we want to deploy capital, go find other brands. And so then they bought a brand in COVID called the Patch Boys, which is a drywall repair franchise. So first to market in the drywall repair space on the franchise side of things.

Alan Wyatt: 6:22

So you get a you know a hole in your wall. Who do you call? And so they bought that from the founder and they bought it during COVID and there were no systems or employees on the brand at all when they bought it. And they asked me to get involved and I effectively had to do. You know I had. We had to build systems, we had to figure out how to like support franchisees and we hired a brand president and him and I went to go get to know all the franchisees and we built systems around everything they needed, so they'd already franchised, but they didn't have any systems to support it.

Aaron Harper: 6:54

How often do you? Hear that story.

Chris Lalomia: 6:56

Correct. How many franchisees did they have? They had 100 locations. Oh my God. With no systems, so did they even have a software that they all use? I?

Aaron Harper: 7:08

mean I guess there's two schools of thought in franchising One you build the systems first and then you go out and you get your franchisees, but that's cash intensive. Or you see if you can sell franchises and if it sticks then you backfill the systems.

Alan Wyatt: 7:22

Right, which is problematic because someone's buying into a 10-year contract thinking they're going to get the support that they do, and if you're backfilling systems, you effectively have franchisees be the guinea pigs, and so part of the reason that I'm doing what I'm doing and we can catch up to that in a little bit, but like is to kind of like. Do the opposite of what a lot of franchisors do is raise enough capital, build the systems at the beginning, create serious infrastructure so that we could handle the scale and the growth you mean.

Aaron Harper: 7:51

do it the right way. Do it the right way. Yeah, do do it with your franchisees best interest at heart.

Chris Lalomia: 7:59

Yeah clearly all right. So so you went over the patchways. You had to. You had to figure out the systems while the 747 is flying. You got to figure out what is an implement.

Alan Wyatt: 8:08

So we had to do basically a turnaround. We didn't sign up any new franchisees until we had done that, and then we put systems in place and the first franchisee that we launched was at the end of 2020. 2020 and he had a full-time skilled labor hired prior to going to training, knew nothing about drywall repair. We turned leads on for him at training. He had eight estimates lined up the day he got back from training, success estimates lined up the following day and he was cash flow positive his first month. Um so fully turned it around nice.

Aaron Harper: 8:39

So at that point, though, that's great for him, because he knows nothing different other than what you taught him. You got 100 franchisees where the horse is already out of the barn. They're probably all running wildly in different directions. How did they react to having this system handed to them?

Alan Wyatt: 8:56

They were thrilled. They were like this is what it's supposed to be. Like you know, I paid for this, is you know? I mean for like this is you know? I mean we had to, we had to turn. I mean we, we brought them to training. Some of them were like I love the concept, but like I'm working a full-time job and was told I could run this business in a different state by hiring a manager, I'm like that's not how business works, um so, uh. So, anyways, we turned it around from October of 2020 to October of 2022. I personally added 223 locations to that brand in two years and they all opened with jobs on the calendar and a full-time labor hired prior to going to training.

Chris Lalomia: 9:35

Solid man.

Aaron Harper: 9:36

And he says he did a good job. Closing.

Chris Lalomia: 9:38

He does a great job. Closing. We'll say it for him. He's doing great, all right. So you built that up. You feel pretty good about yourself. You pat yourself on the back, but that wasn't enough. You felt like you built yourself up. Obviously, if you built your own toolbox up with all your skills, where you said, man, I can go do this myself, so they came to me.

Alan Wyatt: 9:59

Yeah. So they came to me with a really great plan. They were like Aaron, we don't want you to leave, we're going to buy a business at the end of the year. It's not a franchise yet. We want you to franchise it. You won't have to walk back any angry franchisees, you can start from scratch. We'll give you an unlimited budget, we'll double your salary and we'll give you a really fancy title.

Alan Wyatt: 10:18

And I was like wait a minute, I can do this on my own. I can build a team, I could raise capital, I could find a business that I believe in. I could franchise that business. I could make it become the biggest brand in the world, in whichever industry I decide. And so turned the world out and looked at about two dozen different businesses across the country, all ranging from, you know, close to a million in top line to 14 million that were non-franchised that I could franchise. So HVAC, plumbing, solar tree care, insulation, epoxy coatings, line striping.

Alan Wyatt: 10:50

And I met the founders of Rolling Suds in September of 2022. It was the best business I looked at. It was the only one that checked all the boxes for me. I knew I could replicate it hundreds thousands of times, partnered with the founders, who are incredible. Wonderful 30-plus year old family business acquired the franchise rights from them in January, raised capital, started franchising at the end of February of last year. I turn away more people than I bring in. I've turned away 55 people who wanted to become franchisees and weren't right for our system, which is about 10 million in revenue, and I signed up. Now 45 franchisees who've purchased 145 territories in 25 states and we've done that in basically a year because our first franchisee signed up in March of last year. So we're currently one of the fastest growing franchisees in the country.

Chris Lalomia: 11:44

All right. So for our listeners, you picked this business model. What made this thing so attractive to you? And you might want to start with what it is first.

Alan Wyatt: 11:53

Yeah. So Rolling Puds is a residential and commercial power washing company based in the Northeast Philadelphia, new Jersey, founded by the Wendling family, brian Wendling Sr and his son now runs it, brian Wendling Jr. They've grown it to a multi-million dollar local business with proprietary technology and equipment and a proprietary process that cleans buildings faster and more effectively than anyone else. And then I turned it into a franchise with, obviously, their help, and have built a team now of over 20 people that work for me and yeah, we're growing like crazy. What I liked about the concept was a lot. First and foremost, it's the Wenling family. They're incredible people that I believe in and knew I could do business with. But you know, unskilled labor, high margin business, massive, total addressable market. Every structure that you drive by needs to be cleaned. It's a need in every single state, so it's replicable across multiple states and really there's a lack of sophistication in the pressuring industry. There's no standardized national player, or there wasn't until we came along.

Aaron Harper: 13:21

Where'd you get your confidence? You said no to a ridiculous offer that I thought you were joking at first and it kept going and going I'm going to double your salary, I'm going to give you unlimited budget, all that stuff. You say no to that. You say no to more than half the people that want to franchise. I actually saw I can't remember if it was a Facebook post or something where basically you were pulling a Babe Ruth. Here's what we're going to do. By this time, I'm going to have this many stores. By this time, I'm going to raise this much money. Blah, blah, blah. I mean, you got some huevos.

Alan Wyatt: 13:55

Thank you.

Alan Wyatt: 13:56

I had been telling people to start businesses for years and that they could start businesses and to believe in themselves.

Alan Wyatt: 14:03

That was my job, like making sure that the people who came in had the right expectations about how to be successful, and I was telling them you know, you should, you should do this thing. And a lot of those people are 55 or 60 years old, which is totally fine I'm not saying anything bad about that but I was like if I stay in and don't start a business till I'm 55 or 60 years old and I don't take my advice for that long and then finally decide that I want to start my own business, I was just like I'm going to regret it and there's never a good time to start a business. So that means like every time is a good time to start a business. I should have mentioned like I'm married. I live in Nashville, I have a son who turns three on Monday and I have a daughter who's 16 months. So I turned down all that when my daughter was like brand new turned down the role when she wasn't even born yet my wife's seven months pregnant.

Aaron Harper: 14:54

So so yeah, so I'm just was she, was she delirious?

Chris Lalomia: 14:59

Was she delirious?

Aaron Harper: 15:00

Was she delirious or is she just a saint?

Alan Wyatt: 15:03

She is a literal saint. I asked for permission first. He's smart, he's a smart man with balls. I enjoy sleeping in my own bed, so I asked for permission, yeah, so anyways, yeah, I mean I got it because I knew that I could do it. I had done it. People were paying me well to do it. The only risk is okay, now I'm going to pay for it and I'm going to take the risk, but I'm going to reap all of the upside benefits.

Chris Lalomia: 15:37

So, as you did this to raise the capital, did you take on investors? Did you self-fund? How did you do that?

Alan Wyatt: 15:44

Both take on investors. Did you self-fund? How did you do that Both? So I was advised to raise smart money, so people that could provide intellectual capital in addition to actual capital. So I have longtime mentors in the franchise space who are either multi-brand franchisees or multi-brand franchisors or both, who could help me at certain inflection points. I also wanted to get put a cap table together that I'd never have to raise from anyone else other than the cap table that I currently have ever again. Um and so, uh, so, and then I also I'm the biggest investor in the franchise um myself. So, um, kind of did, did both umed capital. Minority investors also invested my own money, and then the founders of Rolling Suds also invested in the franchise entity to grow this thing the right way.

Chris Lalomia: 16:33

Yeah, I think that's probably one of the biggest gold nuggets is you can go out there and do a raise if you feel like you could do that, and that's anything from friends and family to which I highly recommend to or not recommend go to banks.

Chris Lalomia: 16:47

But I think, aaron, you brought up with something that I think is very, very thoughtful, and that is the smart money, the person who can help you, not just today as you start up, but the person who's going to help you, because you scaled very quickly. For a lot of companies especially me, being in for 16 years, to be as big as are, as quick as you are, even in the franchise space, I mean, that's supersonic growth and you've got to be able to hold on. And, like you said, inflection points. So where were your first inflection points and maybe what were some of the worst ones?

Alan Wyatt: 17:16

Yeah, I think for me, one of the hardest things like cause I went for effectively an individual contributor role to now having a staff of over 20 people in a year and a half's time. So I think the thing that was hardest for me to learn is when to let someone go. You know, we've had to. We've had to let a few people go because the either the company outgrew them or they were the wrong people in the wrong seats or whatever variety of different reasons. And for me, I'm a caring person. One of our core values is compassion and I'm holding on to these types of situations because I thought it was the right thing to do. But I watched a video from the CEO of LinkedIn and he basically like eloquently said that the most compassionate thing you could do with someone who's in the wrong seat is take them out of that seat so they could go find one that they fit better in, um and uh, and so that that was. That was a hard and uh hard thing for me to learn, but every single time I've had to do that, I recognize that there's all these pieces that are like either not put together properly on the back end that I have to fix or, you know there was potential damage being done to the business and we're able to kind of fix it and then what ends up happening is then we, we go from like we should, we could take that person out, we put the right people in, and then the business goes like that, and so that's happened a couple times.

Alan Wyatt: 19:57

Um, uh, and you know, we, we I'm fortunate in the sense that, like, I know what systems a franchisor breaks two years in, or three years in, or four years in, because I've been directly or indirectly involved now with 14 brands and helped build the second largest platform organization of franchises, because the company I worked at we groomed to 12 brands, 4,700 locations, 55 countries and 12 different industries, so I can foresee what those issues are a lot of times before they happen.

Alan Wyatt: 20:32

So suppliers is a big piece of a franchise is having the right suppliers and the right vendors in place. I go under the assumption that we'll break every supplier we partner with, um and so, um, because if you had 150 units in 12 months, like, there's only so many vendors and suppliers who can keep up with that growth. So there's been situations where we've had to bring stuff in-house knowing like, hey, we're reaching this company's capacity. We need to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in building the trucks in-house, and part of that goes into capital, part of it goes into foresight, part of it goes into being willing to invest in the business before the business needs it, so that you can not have to break things later down the line. But yeah, I mean it's been wild. It has been absolutely the most thrilling experience I've ever had professionally.

Chris Lalomia: 21:31

Right, that's obvious. It's hair raising, it's fun because it's yours Right and it's up to you to kind of bet on yourself and I love that you've done that as you've grown your to your 20 people you said, your hardest part was letting people go.

Chris Lalomia: 21:44

Isn't that interesting? Yeah, that's that. That's a true testament to character. Uh, it's hard to do and it's hard to do so now. You got the 20 and you're you're growing and you're taking time to talk to us on this podcast, so obviously you're starting to get a little more time back. Is that what we're hearing or is that what's happening?

Alan Wyatt: 21:58

for you. Yeah, I mean, when I first started the business, it was me, the founders and one employee and you know I knew I had the trajectory of who we're going to hire, but I didn't know how, I didn't know when exactly, based on the amount of units that we sold, when those people would need to be hired. And and we really, I mean we, we just started selling unit. I mean six weeks after, five weeks after we launched, we signed up our first franchisee who bought two territories and then called me days later and bought his third, um, bought their third. It was a married couple and, uh, and that was March of last year, we had three, three locations, one franchisee, and now we have 45 franchisees, 145 locations.

Chris Lalomia: 22:43

So I guess you were the franchise developer, not salesperson.

Alan Wyatt: 22:46

I have been the franchise developer this whole time.

Chris Lalomia: 22:50

Oh, have you really? Oh, wow.

Alan Wyatt: 22:52

I have done it myself, so I have hired for every single other role. I have five people that report directly to me on the ops and marketing and franchisee support side of the thing side of things, have an incredible executive team. And then I have focused my entire time on bringing in the right franchisees, setting the right expectations, making sure they have the right amount of capital and knowing exactly who they are and making sure you know I could curate a community of franchisees that I'm proud of you're not taking the first call, are you?

Aaron Harper: 23:24

I am doing everything really because there's a lot of tire kicking. I'm sure that goes on in franchising so I'll.

Alan Wyatt: 23:33

So I'll pause you because most all my candidates that come to me are pre-qualified by franchise consultants. Okay, so they, um, they have the necessary capital and are at least, uh, knowledgeable about the concept. So each call is a scheduled call of someone who has expressed interest um the way that we do franchise development. So I work with some of the best franchise consultants franchise consultants for those listeners who don't know what that is. That's basically like a real estate agent for franchises Um, someone who can show you opportunities that, um, that makes sense for you, your buyer profile, who you are.

Aaron Harper: 24:11

And I'm sure that helps you a lot. But any established franchise system has a full-time if not multiple full-time franchise development people and as fast as you're growing, you're doing that job. And oh, by the way, I'm CEO of the whole thing and I've got all these people reporting to me. And oh, by the way, I got a couple of little kids at home.

Chris Lalomia: 24:30

And when do you sleep?

Alan Wyatt: 24:31

I have a wife, yeah, yeah, oh, by the way, I'm trying to keep my physical health. Yeah, it's been wild. I mean, I just brought on two people. I thought it was important that I hand selected the first hundred locations myself, because I do believe that the only thing that could get in the way of us becoming the biggest power washing company in the world is bringing in the wrong people. But we've brought in, like, multiple C-level executives at this point, multiple guys from a private equity background, high-level salespeople, some incredible women who just have like this incredible amount of grit We've brought in. We just signed up the largest fast signs franchisee, who does $42 million a year. I just signed up someone two days ago who sold a business for $135 million. So, like I've been able to attract some really impressive operators because they think like me. You know what I mean, they're talking to me, we think the same and, um, and I believe that you know, we've curated the best group that any emerging franchisor could could ask for. That's unbelievable.

Chris Lalomia: 25:37

What are some kickout. You know, if, if, if I came to you and we talked and I said, man, I'm really interested you can't run it from vegas or your boat. Oh so is that a kick out? By the way? No kidding, uh, yes I'll answer for aaron.

Alan Wyatt: 25:52

I'm gonna be in the mountains this weekend no, no shit so I'll say this respectfully um, a lot of people who buy a franchise, they end up buying a job and then they work that job themselves for two to four years and then they're burnt out and the franchisor doesn't provide them the process to get out of that and hire people and scale. And then they try to sell the business and it doesn't have any value because they're the business and it takes a lot to be able to delegate and elevate and reinvest in the business and not think about it like oh, my business is bringing in 30 grand a month, I'm going to take out four grand a month and pay myself. To think like that takes a certain higher level of operator. To think like that takes a certain level of a higher, higher level of operator to think through. And so we look for people who want to build massive businesses and have the grit, willingness, capacity, capital wherewithal to achieve that.

Alan Wyatt: 26:53

And a lot of the people that I've turned away I did not feel like no matter what systems we built internally, would be able to get to that point. They might get to two to three trucks. Be good, bring in two to 300 in cash flow or whatever it ends up being, and let the foot off the gas. The franchisees that we brought in. I joke, but you probably heard that move fast and break things. That's the culture amongst our franchisees. Like they're like give me as many marketing companies, I'll throw capital at it. Like we'll hire salespeople, We'll see if it works. Like they're all trying to get to like four or five, six, 10, $20 million businesses, and so we've been fortunate to attract those types of individuals, which continues to kind of reset the bar and raise the bar on who will allow in, who we won't allow in. So we've turned away about one person per week that wanted to write me close to a $200,000 check and have the capital to do it.

Chris Lalomia: 27:48

I mean that's impressive. It's the mindset. He actually is worth the use of the term grit capacity. I think he's a capability, but that determining you just don't buy a job. That's not what franchising is about. If you think I'm sitting in corporate america and I'm sick of my, my stay-at-home job, I have to work from the house and but boy, I can do so much more. If I just bought this franchise, I bought myself a new job. I'm also wrong. Yeah, it's just not the way it's going to go. I don't care if your franchise is mcdonald's, uh, which we've had a mcdon McDonald's franchisee on talking on the podcast before. It's difficult. Even if you have the McDonald's name behind you, you still got to operate and make it grow. So you're finding these people who want to grow and take that opportunity with you. Who's your biggest success story? Who's the guys, the gal, who's up to four or five or 10 trucks by now?

Alan Wyatt: 28:37

Well, so nobody is, because we launched less than a year ago, so we had our first franchisee launch in July of last year, so we don't even have anyone who's been operating a year yet. With that said, multiple franchisees have added their second truck either two or five months into operation, so the model is working. I mean, the pressure washing industry as a whole is lacking a professional power washing company at scale, and so we've been able to capture market share from the guy who power washes himself or does it on nights and weekends, or he's a firefighter full time, or he's a college student that does it on the weekends.

Aaron Harper: 29:17

It's been quite easy to capture market share from those individuals there's got to be just a tremendous amount of excitement in your organization. There's nothing like it's a. It doesn't matter how into the concept you are, you're still nervous when you stroke that check and then when you turn around and you see other high level people doing the same thing I I mean your. Your first conference is going to be raucous.

Alan Wyatt: 29:42

It's going to be unbelievable. It's going to be wild.

Chris Lalomia: 29:45

Yeah, all right, so so where is it?

Aaron Harper: 29:48

Yeah, Chris wants in. He wants to be a speaker.

Alan Wyatt: 29:52

Margaritaville, nice, in Orlando. We're planning it now. It will be in um in Margaritaville in February of next year. We will have over 300 units sold by then and it will be, you know, two and a half-ish, two and a half-ish years in. Wow, so it's going to be wild. Yeah, I mean we're going to have, we're already planning it now. We just had like a little mini one that we invited a few franchisees to for franchise consultants to come out in Nashville. There were 75 people that came out. I mean we're creating there's a lot of momentum around what we're doing. It's really exciting.

Aaron Harper: 30:41

You're going to have to tell Margaritaville you might want to keep a few rooms free, just in case we overshoot our estimate. I love it, man. I got a quick question, but it's not an exciting one. But the original locations, the folks that you partnered with the franchise, did they turn into franchises, or are those corporate owned stores where you can do proof of concept and things like that?

Alan Wyatt: 30:59

Corporate owned stores where we can do proof of concept. So we have, at this point now, two corporate owned locations. One is the original founding location in Pennsylvania, new Jersey. The son of Brian Wendling senior has been running his dad's business essentially since 2016 and has taken it from like an eight to nine hundred thousand dollar business to in our last ftd was 2.2 million in just purely pressure washing. Um he uh. They, by the way, are absolutely thrilled, like the wendling family. They're like this is the greatest thing that we could have ever asked for and I like I take a lot of pride in that.

Aaron Harper: 31:40

You should, and it's a big risk on their part yeah, yeah, I think both yeah all the way around it's kind of a ray crock kind of a thing that just happened, isn't it? Yeah, except yeah I mean except for you know, you know you didn't cheat on your wife. But you know other than that yeah, minus the minus the like.

Alan Wyatt: 31:55

Let's see if we go in there minus the questionable uh yeah, questionable things, but I mean, effectively it's the same thing. It was a you know, locally owned, well-run place yeah, well run, yeah. And then he turned it into a franchise and took it worldwide, I mean, so we're effectively doing the same thing, um, but yeah, I mean they're they thrilled.

Alan Wyatt: 32:17

He called me his son and I have become very, very close. I was at his wedding last year and he said Aaron, I'm having so much fun working on the franchise side of things and working with franchisees that I'd love it if you'd have me come on. If there's a spot for me, come on full time on your leadership team. If there's a spot for me, come on full time on your leadership team. And I was like absolutely 100%, when can you start? So he's, he's my, he's our VP of operations and on my leadership team overseeing the coaches and has like five or six people underneath him now. But yeah, I mean honestly, it couldn't be going better.

Aaron Harper: 32:58

So I got another question With as fast as you're growing and you're not backfilling the infrastructure, you actually built the infrastructure but you're having to add a lot of people. You said 20 people. You've actually hired more than that because you've had to let some go. And I'm just thinking about our listeners who are thinking about scaling their business.

Alan Wyatt: 33:17

And I'm just thinking about our listeners who are thinking about scaling their business when you're that busy talk about how you're projecting human resource needs and what tools you're using to actually find quality people. So a combination of things. I put out a ton of content online so a lot of them come to me. Super active on Twitter and LinkedIn predominantly, I'm active in the SMB kind of Twitter space community. There's like this like smaller corner of Twitter which is like franchise Twitter that I'm part of, so I put a lot of stuff out there. So that's a combination of people reaching out to me. We will use the normal, you know mediums that people Indeed and ZipRecruiter and PostJobs, and then a lot of what we've had is referral based. So you need to work with this person. I've worked with them, those kind of things.

Alan Wyatt: 34:21

We started working with a headhunter that specifically works in franchising and has high-level NDAs with higher executive-type people in the franchise space. So really what? Every business owner who's thinking about scaling up to multiple million dollar businesses, you're going to need a C-suite. It's just a matter of when you're getting there and when you're ready to allocate the capital. Fortunately, I was able to raise the capital so I could bring in the team well before I need the team. So we just hired our first C-suite individual who starts on Tuesday. It's a chief development officer so that I can, in the next month or two, step out of the franchise development process and he's going to build a team of different franchise developers because, like you said, I've been essentially standing up an entire franchise development arm by myself for 13 or 12 months and was that your most difficult hire was hiring for you.

Chris Lalomia: 35:13

Yes, on that one you're like no, you're not good enough, no, you're not good. Listen, I know you're not going to do as good as me.

Alan Wyatt: 35:19

It is the thing that I have had the hardest time letting go of, a, because of my experience in doing it, and also B. A lot of franchise salespeople aren't honest and truthful people. They're just selling a dream that doesn't exist and they're overselling and they're overpromising and they're bringing whomever in that'll sign the contract and, like we're doing the opposite, we're turning away more than we're bringing in and our standards of who comes into our system are, like, outrageously high. So, um, I uh I actually partnered with an individual um and he he came in and uh, I've known him for years. Um, he uh helped. He helped build budget blinds from 80 locations to over 1600. And he's a wonderful person that I believe in. I talk a lot about responsible franchising just because I've seen a lot of irresponsible franchising out there Amen.

Alan Wyatt: 36:15

It's kind of a word that has picked up some groundwork in the industry. I actually spoke about it at the International Franchise Association's Conference for Emerging Franchisors. I was the keynote at that event at the end of last year and the CEO of the IFA was like the response to your speech was so positive. Can you send me the transcript? Would love to quote. You Quoted me in an article, basically said this is what response for franchising is. And then, the most recently, the editor in chief from Entrepreneur Magazine reached out and asked if he could pair me up with a writer to write a 3000 word piece on it. So it's really, and so that'll be coming out in the May issue of the magazine.

Alan Wyatt: 37:10

So it's really picked up a lot of steam and so, anyways, like you have to put the right people in the right place in order to support the franchisees, and you have to know where you're going to be two years from now. And okay, well, this works now, and then six months later it breaks. And this works now, six months later it breaks, and so we're going to build a pretty impressive C-suite and we'll have over 300. I mean, we're doing about three territories per franchisee that signs up right now, because we're only looking for multi-unit owners. So we'll have probably in the next few years, 300 plus franchisees, which will be a pretty big you know pretty big system.

Chris Lalomia: 37:42

Right, have you? Have you made any mistakes? Have there been any bad franchise picks early that you've had to flip out already?

Alan Wyatt: 37:51

Yes, yeah.

Chris Lalomia: 37:52

So to talk about that, just lessons learned, things you picked up from that. You know like man cause again, you're really good.

Alan Wyatt: 38:03

You been growing you pick great people and then, yeah, this one was a, this one was a dud. Yeah, I mean, no matter, no matter how selective you are, you don't really know until someone gets into it, because starting a business is not forever and um, and also, starting a franchise and running a franchise system is not forever. And so we had an individual that, um, he questioned, he signed and he was so excited he's like tell me what to do. And then, like, every single thing he questioned it's like this I don't think we should do this. I think we should. We should actually run the equipment this way. And it's like all of this has been perfected after decades, like there's no reason to change it. You buy into a franchise system for the system. So if you go against the system, it's like buying furniture from Ikea, throwing out the directions and then trying to build it yourself. It's like why even buy the furniture? It doesn't make sense.

Chris Lalomia: 38:53

There's a lot of extra parts, it's just extra parts.

Alan Wyatt: 38:59

They're just going to go in the trash. Yeah, so you know we had to, we had to part ways with that individual. He effectively didn't open because he just didn't, just wouldn't kind of do the things that were necessary.

Aaron Harper: 39:11

There was another individual who left a career of you know a really long time, decades, at the same company and really excited, had more than enough capital and, you know, was right culturally and everything, and left that job and didn't have a structured schedule every single day and it was really hard, it's really tough and it's I think it's one of the key things in franchising, because people have the money and the experience to be able to buy a franchise, aren't used to being told what to do, and so you actually have to find people who want to play in the box in the system and who are coachable, yet have the money and the experience to do this.

Alan Wyatt: 39:53

Yeah, it's. It's a very specific type of person. Um, you know, not everyone is right for a franchise system, not everyone's right for business, and um, and so finding that and then striking that balance of, like making sure you have the right people who are willing to follow the system, and also, like, have the capital and will take big swings and have the risk tolerance, I mean it's it's effective. I mean it's effectively rocket science to build a franchise system the right way. I mean it's open heart surgery, like it's not an easy thing to do, which is why so many people don't succeed at it. Um, but what's cool is we have the experience in power washing of decades. We have my experience in franchising and we know each other's roles and we're partners, and so we're able to accelerate the growth in a way that I think is really special and unique and doesn't happen very often.

Chris Lalomia: 40:44

Yeah, man, this has been incredible. So, man, I'd love to keep you on. I'm just I'm soaking this all in getting into it. I am getting it. So all right, come on, just try it again, All right. So, Aaron, how can everybody find you? I know you said you put yourself out there on social. Let's hit up all those deets and then we'll hit you with our final four questions. Sure.

Alan Wyatt: 41:05

Twitter. I'm probably Twitter and LinkedIn I'm most active on. So you can just search Aaron Harper Rowling says LinkedIn and you can find me on Twitter. It's Aaron Harper. Ceo is my handle. A-r-o-n-h-a-r-p-e-r-c-e-o, and then on on Instagram I put out at least one video per day on franchising and franchising stuff, cause he's got all that time on his hands and and oh, by the way, and oh by the way and, oh, by the way, and oh, by the way.

Alan Wyatt: 41:34

I'm building another brand, um, so yeah, so it's. It's, there's some, there's some stuff happening and it's a lot of fun. And um so uh, in in Instagram it's Aaron T Harper. Um, where you can find me. And then also, if you're interested in rolling suds and becoming a franchisee, you just want to go to rolling suds franchisecom and hit learn more or whatever the you know. Fill out the form and you'll get to either me or someone on my team and we can kind of walk you through and see if it's a good fit.

Chris Lalomia: 42:07

I'll tell you what man you got me sold on it. I'm like sitting there going, yeah, I mean this is one you want to investigate. If you're thinking franchising is for you again, we've had steve miller on has been a franchising coach. Alan has been in the franchising industry himself on both sides, as a franchisee and a franchisor, and I you know, when you look at this and evaluate, it sounds really interesting oh, it's amazing and it's like the, it's like the special forces of franchising.

Aaron Harper: 42:32

That's right, you better be a badass, Otherwise you're not going to get awarded a franchise.

Chris Lalomia: 42:35

Yeah, and we're not going to let you in our club.

Aaron Harper: 42:36

That's right.

Chris Lalomia: 42:37

Take that you want to be like me, don't you? No, you can't. Okay, I love it. Special forces I just did it all petty. Yeah, that's how I do it might. This is good stuff, but we can't let you go without asking a few questions. What is a favorite book you'd refer to all of our listeners?

Alan Wyatt: 42:58

Um, so I like the hard thing about hard things. Um, by Ben Horowitz. This was something I read before, um, before I launched. It's really helpful to me. Um, and then you know, for anyone who's just a business owner and wants to figure out how to generate more revenue $100 million leads by Alex Ramosi Ramosi yeah, he's got them at his fingertips.

Aaron Harper: 43:25

Did you see that Right?

Alan Wyatt: 43:27

I've listened to that book like four times I have. My entire executive team is required to listen to it. No, nice, that's a good one, so love it. You know it's just. It's how do I get leads and how do I find the people to buy my stuff? And, um, that's what everyone wants in business is someone to come buy their stuff I hear you somebody want to buy a trusted toolbox franchise.

Chris Lalomia: 43:50

Oh wait, I don't know. I didn't franchise. Um, all right, what's the favorite feature of your house? Did you say that out loud?

Alan Wyatt: 43:55

I did you're looking at it. This is my. This is my uh. This is where I hang out all day long.

Chris Lalomia: 44:04

This is my study all right in your study. For those who watching us on youtube, you can always hit us up small business safari channel. If you haven't, you got to go out there check it out. You got to check out the background that aaron harper has, because I want to know what the hell those two paintings are get some fine art.

Aaron Harper: 44:21

He's got the tufted leather badass sofa, big library, so what?

Alan Wyatt: 44:26

are these? What are these pictures? Yeah, so I get this question all the time and candidates will get on the phone with me and they're like I've watched 17 podcasts you've been on before. We talk about rolling sides, tell me about that octopus painting.

Alan Wyatt: 44:37

Um, so, uh, I, my grandfather, is a fine art collector, um, so, uh, you're, he was a fine art collector, um, he passed a couple of years ago, um, so back in the seventies, he just bought a bunch of like art from the modern masters era, um, and we've been fortunate, my wife and I to inherit a lot of that, um, and so I felt, okay, well, I have all this, this art that you know I shouldn't have. Um, why don't I go and invest in my own art? Um, that I like from different street artists or different artists that I'm interested in? And so there's a woman her name is Annie Preece, uh, and she is a street artist in Los Angeles and she does murals and really cool stuff, and I've known her since like 2011.

Alan Wyatt: 45:26

And um, so I had commissioned some pieces of hers, um, and so this is a commission piece that she did, um, and then I've got a couple other ones, like two or three other ones in our house and then that one right there, um is a chagall mark, chagall poster, um, uh, that, uh, that was hang hung in the metropolitan art museum, um and uh. So, yeah, we've got, we've got, it's a, it's a, it's a cool cool house over here.

Chris Lalomia: 45:55

I want to be aaron when I grow up, right? Hey, man, I want an octopus picture. It's a painting, son, it was commissioned and no, it's only one of a kind what? No, come on, let me have it all right. All right, man, you, you've been in service. You're helping people get into service. You're doing all that stuff. What are the customer service pet peeve of yours? Because we are customer service freaks. Hello, when you're out there, you're the customer. What's a customer service pet peeve of yours being put on hold?

Aaron Harper: 46:22

hold please. I'm assuming that you have more people just hire more people yeah man ai is coming. He's probably got a system in process for that. I don't I think.

Chris Lalomia: 46:33

I think if you call, you're not going to be put on hold.

Aaron Harper: 46:35

No, I love that All right.

Chris Lalomia: 46:38

One of the other things I love because Alan likes to have me do work around his house. No, Alan's pretty DIY friendly himself and does a lot of stuff. We do a lot of work here and I love DIY nightmare stories. Do you have a great DIY nightmare story?

Alan Wyatt: 46:51

Oh, this is hilarious. Okay, so before I got involved with Rolling Suds, I was the perfect Rolling Suds customer and I didn't even know it. So my wife is like she's so clean and so organized, like it's, it's, she keeps this house in tip top shape. And she was like Aaron, we need, we need to power wash our house. And I was like, uh, she goes, was like aaron, we need, we need to power wash our house. And I was like, uh, she goes. No, no, aaron, we need to power wash our house.

Alan Wyatt: 47:17

We need to get, you need to get someone out here, you need to do it on your own like there's algae growing on the side of the house and I was like all right, so I start calling people around. They don't call me back, or they do call me back four hours later and then they give me a quote over the phone. I'm like I'm not paying 450. That's crazy. I can go buy a machine for 300 and I'm like the least handy person you'll ever be like the least handy person and so I go to home depot.

Alan Wyatt: 47:43

I buy the 300 machine. I buy, uh, the like oil that you have to put into the gas tank and I'm like, and I don't know exactly how much to put in that like whatever, and I do it.

Aaron Harper: 47:55

What could go wrong and?

Alan Wyatt: 47:56

I full on burn a Sunday that I'll never get back, like I'll never get this Sunday back. I'm sitting there in power washing, I'm there for four, five, six hours and it looks good when I'm done. But I'm like you know this, far away from the siding, going like that, and it takes me forever. And uh, and six months later it comes back and uh, and my wife's like it's time to do it again and I was like, oh, so I'm like I don't, I didn't do it, I didn't do it again.

Alan Wyatt: 48:26

I paid someone to do it because I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to lose the Sunday that I had before. Want to do that. I didn't want to lose the Sunday that I had before. And um, and and. So what I learned is, during that experience is a there's a need for this and there's need for a professionalized service provider for this and be the value of time. I'd rather pay someone 400, 500, $600. So I could spend an entire Sunday with my family rather than up on a ladder trying to pretend that I know how to power wash.

Chris Lalomia: 48:55

I love it. That is so funny. My best pressure washing nightmare story was I went out to look and wear handyman and they said, can you fix my siding? And I'm like, yeah, sure what happened? Well, I hired this guy from the neighborhood and he came out and pressure washed my house. So let's go take a look. And I go around the side of the house and it looks like he literally he was trying to write his name in her siding.

Chris Lalomia: 49:15

And it's like literally streaks up and down. And the worst part was it was all vinyl siding. He hit every single piece of that vinyl siding. There wasn't one left with just one mark, I mean just one. Oh, that's hilarious. She goes what do you think? Do you think you can save it? I said I think I can replace it. She goes, oh, I don't have that kind of money. I'm like, how much you pay this guy? Oh, I just paid him a couple hundred dollars. I'm like, oh, that's an expensive little lesson. She didn't like that answer either.

Aaron Harper: 49:42

So, yeah, man, pressure washing by a professional believer, I think aaron needs to put that pressure washer in the rolling suds museum.

Chris Lalomia: 49:49

Yes, the 300 smoking pressure washer. That's right, aaron. This has been awesome. Everybody, we learned a ton. We learned a lot, we got what go ahead? One more, one more day we were awash in an instant understanding of what's going on. We love pressure washing. We gotta go. We're out here. Go make something happen. Get up that mountaintop. We'll see you next time we're out of here. Cheers everybody see ya.