Navigating Franchise Growth: Marketing Tips from Austin Meek

In this episode, our host Doug Bencsko talks to Austin Meek, and they dive into the world of franchising a garage door repair business. The key elements discussed are effective communication, building a positive company culture, and setting clear goals. Austin, a former franchise development lead for Precision Garage Door and current owner of the Portland Maine franchise, shares valuable insights from his journey. 

Tune in to hear about Austin’s experience with Precision’s refined systems, the importance of effective marketing, and his ambitious plans for expanding his franchise territory. 

Whether you’re considering franchising or looking to enhance your current operations, this episode offers practical advice and inspiration. If you're interested in franchising opportunities or advice on the topic, feel free to reach out to Austin at  Austin.Meek@nbly.com.

Transcript

Doug 00:00

Hi, I'm Doug Bencsko, I'll be your host today. I'm also the founder of a2o Digital and business franchise owner for Precision Garage Door of the New York metropolitan area. On today's podcast, I'd like to welcome Austin Meek, who has an extensive background working with business franchises, and is now a proud owner of one himself. Austin, welcome, welcome today. We're excited to hear a little bit more about your journey. And you just purchased a franchise, the Precision Garage Door franchise in fact. 

Austin Meek 00:33

Thank you, Doug.

Doug 00:34

Yeah, so can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your background, please?

Austin Meek 00:39

Sure. Well, so I'll start from now and go back a little bit. So currently, I'm in Portland, Maine, where my partner and I have purchased a territory for Precision Garage Door service, which is the company that you own a franchise of. And Precision is part of this Neighborly family of brands. Neighborly is the world's largest home service company. Last year, Neighborly brands did a little more than $4 billion worth of sales. So, really impressive organization that I have worked for Neighborly for the last five years. And one of my roles at Neighborly was doing franchise development for Precision. So, anybody across the country who was looking at considering a Precision franchise opportunity, I was the person who would walk them through that process, introduce them to franchise owners, show them how to fund the business, and ultimately, if we approve them, they would get awarded the franchise. But now that I'm an owner of Precision, I now do that same job, but I do franchise development for Mr. Electric, which is our electrical company at Neighborly. We have about 250 locations in the US and Canada, and Mr. Electric is a full-service electrical company. So, anything that you would need, electrical issues at the home, Mr. Electric can do it. And the thesis Doug, behind Mr. Electric, and one of the reasons why Neighborly acquired Precision in 2020 is the consistent theme within the portfolio of having premium home service brands. Really, what Neighborly's idea has been is that, hey, everybody eventually is going to need a painter, a plumber, an electrician, or garage door repair person to come over and fix their issues. We know 65% of US homes outsourced at least one home service last year. So, we know things are breaking. We know there's fewer and fewer people who know how to fix these things, and we know there's more people who would rather pay for convenience. So that's really what we do at Mr. Electric and at Precision as well as that it's always, almost always going to be more expensive for Mr. Electric to come over rather than Eddie's Electrical Service. But you are going to get a level of sophistication and communication that you're not going to get with Eddie's. So that's, that's what I've been doing for the last five years is working in premium home service franchising, and prior to that Doug, I really had a diverse background. I worked in radio, I worked in film, I was a sports media guy for a while, I started a cookie and ice cream business where my wife and I had a couple of food trucks that would ride around Waco, Texas, which is where we were living at the time. And I've honestly never been very career minded. I've always tried to take more of a multidisciplinary and liberal arts approach and just understand, hey, like, if I'm good at communicating, if I'm good at being a team player, if I'm good at understanding synergies that might exist that others don't, because they've been only focused on their single industry, I'm going to have a place at the table. And that's always been my perspective, is that I really like, I'm not the hard numbers guy. That's not the person who I play in the business. I'm more of the communication culture, building goals setting, kind of guy who helps cast the vision, and then helps us refine the process until we get there.

Doug 04:08

So, you just actually opened your Precision location this week, right?

Austin Meek 04:13

 Yes. 

Doug 04:14

So, how's it going so far?

Austin Meek 04:16

It's, it's been shocking to tell you the truth. We've had people I would say, for about the last six weeks, we've had people on payroll, and that's been tough. I'm just seeing money coming out and money's not coming in. But this week, it was on Tuesday of last week, in fact, so this is our first full week that we have been up on Google, and we are getting leads from various sources. And I'm really grateful that we did take the time over the last six weeks to train our people so well. We sent them to the corporate location; we sent them to different satellite locations of other franchise owners. And that's been the thing that's been so remarkable is the willingness of these other franchise owners to share information. Because the guy who's in Atlantic City, he doesn't give a damn sharing his secrets with me. Nobody in Portland is going to affect his customers in Atlantic City. So that's the really beautiful thing about franchising is that you have access to a network of knowledge that otherwise you would be starting out all on your own. And I would make decisions this week as a new Precision owner that are mistakes, and they're the same mistakes that a Precision owner made back in 2001, or 2004.

Doug 05:33

So, is this kind of what motivated you to, to get involved in the franchise thing because you felt like you had support? 

Austin Meek 05:39

That was one of the things that made me want to do it. So, I'm a big believer in designing your life, like figure out what is the type of lifestyle that you want, and then set manageable goals to benchmark yourself to get there eventually. So, when I was introduced to the Precision brand at the end of 2020, which is when Neighborly bought Precision, 2020 or 2021, it, just from the number’s perspective, looking at the franchise disclosure document, it looked like it was in a different stratosphere than a lot of the other businesses that I'd been exposed to at that point. So, I was really interested in just getting to understand the Precision business because it was part of the Neighborly family. At that same time Doug, I had done some personality testing. And what that personality testing showed is that my style as a business owner is to have a single location of a single brand and that be a franchise business. So, I had spent the last five years running a cookie and ice cream business, being a true entrepreneur, doing it all myself and it was really hard for me. I didn't understand why at the time. And the reason was because I hadn't set up systems and processes that are one of the reasons why someone might prefer to go a franchise route, is that these are systems that have been refined over the last, in Precision's case, 30 years almost. So, I got really impressed with the systems and processes that I saw in the Precision system. I was very impressed with the numbers that those systems and processes produced. And then, as I was doing my normal job of bringing in new franchise owners, a huge part of that Doug, is introducing a prospective franchise owner to existing franchise owners. That's what we call validation. So, hey, prospective owner, I promise everything I've told you about the business is right and true, but at the end of the day, my knowledge is theoretical. I want you to be able to talk to people who practically live this business every single day. So, through that process, I got to know a lot of the franchise owners. And there's just a real high caliber of person among the owners that I found within Precision. So those three things, like the strength of the system, the strength of the leadership behind it, and the strength of the network, those were the things that made me feel really confident going into Precision. And right now, I mean, we still spent, you know, $300,000 or so and don't have enough money coming in yet. But I feel really confident in the plan that we have, that we are going to be able to break even and have a pretty fabulous business serving the people of Southern Maine.

Doug 08:15

Yeah, so that's, that's some of the factors on why you did the franchising. What do you have to do to like, prepare yourself to launch date today? Obviously, you had to train your people, you had that time, and obviously that is expensive because you had no cash flow coming in. But what else did you have to do, like getting prepared for it? 

Austin Meek 08:35

Yeah, so there's, there's the practical manual training. They need to know how to go fix garage doors. The thing that had been a mystery to me mostly was marketing, how do we get the phone to ring? And what I've learned is that there are really sophisticated tools like what A Second Opinion uses, that can be using positive and negative keywords in order to make sure that when people are clicking on your website, or clicking on your ad, those are actually the people you want clicking the ad. There is a great example I heard from someone on your team, maybe you, that if someone is Googling "garage door repair," that person might be Googling to find someone to come and repair the garage. They also might be Googling to find a YouTube video that shows them how to do it. I don't want to have to pay for the person looking for the YouTube video, I'd rather spend my ad dollars on the person who needs somebody to come out. So, there's an entire world of marketing out there, and I would say the thing that I've learned the most is that you really need to be comfortable handing off things to experts. Like, I am not the marketing expert. I am not able to build a website myself. If I didn't have my team who was supporting us in that, then my website wouldn't be built today, and I wouldn't have anybody clicking on it. So that's, that's something that I'm really comfortable with now more than I was six months ago is just understanding that you're not supposed to be an expert at everything. You are supposed to be an expert in filtering information, and knowing what's relevant to you, and having a good metric to understand, hey, this person really is about what they say they are, or hey, this person's a charlatan, and they're trying to take my money. So I've gotten pretty, I would say that I've improved a lot in my understanding of what we need in order to get the business up.

Doug 10:26

Yeah so, so I'm going to interject here a little bit, Austin. You wound up coming and spending a couple of days at A Second Opinion. And for those of you that don't know, our company is called A Second Opinion and we go by A2O Digital because we started all the way back in the yellow pages, and we were given A Second Opinion on yellow page advertising, and we've kind of morphed into A2O Digital. But you coming out and spending multiple days also helps to set expectations for, for you. So, you know what we're going to do, how we're going to go about doing it and that yes, it's like we're trying to take that responsibility off you. You've got to go and run calls, you've got to go and be able to fix garage doors and, and all type stuff. But from the marketing side, that's our baby. We have to make that phone ring and it's exciting to hear that you flip the switch and turn it on and you actually started getting calls the first day,

Austin Meek 11:31

It was immediate. It was, honestly, I was shocked at how quickly it has been. Like today, my, I have one lead technician, and I have two people who are training underneath him. And today's a Tuesday, he's got four jobs today. Yesterday was a Monday, he had four jobs yesterday. So, this is really creating a much more fertile training ground for my new people who are coming on because they have live jobs. They're not just sitting at the office breaking down our training door and rebuilding it for the 100th time.

Doug 12:02

Yeah, and for those of you who don't know much about it, like, I've been in the business, Precision now, for 24 years. I was the first franchise for Precision, and started in 2000, and we got multiple locations all throughout the New York Metropolitan area and, do hundreds of jobs a day rather than a few jobs. And, and you've got to figure out how to keep growing the number of leads that you're getting and, and that's kind of like I said, that's our job, at Second Opinion to try to make sure that happens for you.

Austin Meek 12:40

You all do an incredible job at it. From the franchise owners that I really respect, and I've gotten some advice from, what they've all told me is that the only thing that I should really be focused on right now is getting five-star reviews and keeping my people trained. Like, we are keeping that axe sharpened, we are following the system, and if we do a good dessert related. If we do a good job following the system, it's more likely that customers is going to give us a higher review, and then it's more likely that we have more business coming in, which allows us to hire more people, which allows us to teach more people the steps, which allows us to get more reviews. So, it's a really virtuous cycle but it all comes down to treating the customers right and treating your employees right. We're having a situation right now, where one of our employees, we haven't started offering insurance yet, although we plan to and one of our insured, one of our employees, his family is having a health issue right now. My business partner, Jared and I are paying for that out of our own pocket because we don't have insurance setup, we do want him to know how important he is to us and it's not his fault that we just opened the business and this family issue happened, right? So, that's just an example of where we're trying to focus on creating not just raving fans, but raving employees. If we can do a good job of becoming the employer of choice, where anybody who's reasonably mechanical, who's great with customer service, they want to come and learn how to fix garage doors, we will have done our job and a lot of the other parts of the business will take care of themselves.

Doug 14:19

Yeah that, I'm going to tell you if you get one thing out of coming in and spending time with us, it is that customer satisfaction. Get that five-star review, let them tell their friends about you, keep growing your business on your reputation. And I'm really excited to hear that you've got that because sometimes it just takes a while. Sometimes people just don't understand. Like, you got three things. You got to get the customer to win first. They got to feel like this was a great experience, right? They got to feel wow, I'm glad I called them. And then, and then the next thing is that employees have got to win. And you, what you just said to me about, about the health insurance tells me you understand that that employee's important. And they've got to feel like they're winning because they're working for you. Right? And, and yes, we create that for them, and I'm thrilled to hear what you just said about, about that health insurance issue. And then...

Austin Meek 15:20

Can I hop in for a sec? Because when you just mentioned keeping customers at the top and helping them feel like they win, that's so valuable. And one of the most important things I've learned at Neighborly, this is a thesis across the country that applies, that across the company that applies to every brand, is that the simple thesis: if you give more in quality and in service than you charge in price, customers will beat down your door. So, if people are complaining, hey, this is too expensive for Molly Maid to come clean my house, it's because you didn't do a good enough job helping them understand the value of Molly Maid coming clean their house and the quality that that provides. So I think about it all the time. I've got an iPhone here. So that iPhone probably cost me $1,500-$2,000 or so, but I get a new one every couple years, because I know I can go to the Genius Bar if I'm having a service issue and I know that the quality is excellent. I can go get a free Samsung phone but I'm not getting that same level of quality or service. So the price of what it cost me to get this iPhone, it's really irrelevant, because I know that the quality and the service is superior. So that's what I think about with Precision and with all these Neighborly brands. If we are delivering to the customer, a feeling of wow, I just got great value for having this electrician come over, or having someone come paint my nursery, we have done our job and they're not going to blink at the price.

Doug 16:51

Yeah, so we look at it like this. How do you exceed expectations? What is, you know, if you really think about it, when you have someone come to your house and let's say you have a broken garage door spring. And your expectation might be well, I want to get that spring fixed in a reasonable time fashion, and you go out there and you do that. You fix that spring, and you get them up and running again. That might meet their expectation, right? If you show up late for that appointment, or if you don't make it that same day you said you were going to make it, or you, something goes, like now you've, you did not even meet their expectation and you're going to have an angry customer. But so how do you actually exceed the expectation? Like, what do you need to do? And, and like one of the things we talk about all the time is, maybe we're fixing that spring, but what else do you need, or can you do to exceed expectations? Sometimes just, something just can be simple, like replacing a light bulb on a motor that is, the light bulb burned out a year ago and they can't get to it because they don't have a ladder. And you know, just like, or lubricate the other door for him while you're there. Like it can be something simple but exceed customer's expectations in some way and you're going to have happy customers.

Austin Meek 18:19

I think that's so true, and I also think that's one reason why home services right now are so popular, because the level of expectations that most homeowners have of their home service professionals is very low. Like, we've all had to deal with the Chuck-in-a-Truck type. We've all had to deal with AT&T saying, hey, we're going to come give you new internet service today. I'll be there between 8am and 8pm. The fact that it can be 2am, somebody hears a pop in their garage, and they go out and see the garage is off the hinges. They can call a phone number, and they're going to speak to somebody in America who answers their phone immediately at 2am. We are signaling to them from the very first Google of "garage door repair near me" that Precision is a different experience, and we are not that Chuck-in-a-Truck. You're able to reach us 24/7. The morning that you're going to have your appointment, we're going to call you and say hey, that four-hour window that the call center told you, we're actually going to be there within two hours. Thirty minutes before we arrive, I'm going to call you again, check in, make sure it's still okay, ask where you'd like me to park. Hey, I'm popping into the gas station. Can I go ahead and get you a Gatorade? You know, Pete's Plumbing Company is not doing that. And so, this raising of expectations, I feel like the Neighborly brands Doug, are really on the vanguard of raising everyone's expectations for what we should expect for having a professional come into our home and perform work. 

Doug 19:52

Yeah, yeah. So, did you set any goals for yourself? Do you have any future plans, like to expand? I'm just curious.

Austin Meek 20:00

So, our goal for this year for the business is to do $1.4 million in gross sales. That would have us be the fastest Neighborly, if we can do that within a year that will have us be the fastest Precision franchise that's done that. So yeah, we have like, personal goals for the business, which are that we want to be the fastest location to break $100,000 in monthly sales. We want to be the location that does $1.4 million, and we want to win this award that's called the Rookie of the Year award. That's, that's our goal. It's given after your first year of being in business fully, so it wouldn't be this fall. But the hope would be that in 2025 we could get a little bit of hardware, just a validation of the hard work that we and our team have been putting in. In terms of, in terms of the long-term growth path for the business, one of the reasons why we decided to be in Portland, Maine, is that both my partner Jared and I live in Texas full time, and the summers in Texas have gotten more oppressive than they were even when I was growing up. And I have a six-year-old daughter now. She's not able to enjoy summer the way that I used to because it's 110 degrees almost every day. So, part of the reason that we wanted to come up to Maine was that we were looking for a place that we could kind of cohabitate throughout the year and allow my daughter to get to have more of a traditional vacation land experience. So, with that being said, we don't have any intention to sell this Portland market. We really want to keep this market and grow it, and the Neighborly brands actually have a really fabulous foothold up here, even though I think there's only five or six brands that are here. But there's a company that's called Portland Glass that is here in New England, mostly in Massachusetts, and New Hampshire and Maine. But they're also a Neighborly company. So, the folks in Portland they're used to the level of service that we provide because they've been getting it from Portland Glass for the last 40 years. So, kind of two different plans would be one, if the space allows to be able to pick up more Precision territory, either undeveloped markets or markets that come for sale. But the second thing would be stacking other Neighborly brands here in Portland and leveraging this network of customers that we have acquired. So, Mr. Electric is a great example of a brand that I think would do really well here in Portland and the surrounding areas. So that's a concept that we're looking at. There's another concept in the Neighborly portfolio that I like a lot. It's called Dryer Vent Wizard. Dryer Vent Wizard is a concept that repairs and replaces the vents on people's dryers. There's a dryer fire every 36 minutes in the US, and the leading cause of house fires is the buildup of dryer lint. So, it's still, this idea of servicing your dryer every two years is still an emerging concept but it's something that we're starting to see insurance companies pick up on. They'll give you a reduction on your premium if you can show that you've had your dryer vent serviced. And it’s another thing that has immense, it has immense commercial uses as well. Like, every single gym has a dryer. Every single daycare center has a dryer. That's one of those things kind of like garage doors where you don't notice them until you're in the industry. It's like oh, wow, that's a really big industrial dryer off the back of that. So, there's, there's a couple of different ways that we could continue to grow. But we definitely plan to continue having a foothold in Portland, and we'll see whether we're able to expand with Precision or whether it's through other Neighborly brands here.

Doug 23:50

I heard mosquitoes are bad in Maine. Is that true?

Austin Meek 23:54

I haven't run into it yet, it might not be the right time of year, but we do have Mosquito Joe. Doug, that's another brand that I love. It is squirt, squirt, and go. What Mosquito Joe does, they'll basically send you a concentrated version of the pesticide you're going to use. There's an entomologist on staff for Mr. or I'm sorry, for Mosquito Joe, who rejiggers that formula based on where you are in the country. So if you're in Texas, it's going to be for a lot of mosquitoes. If you're in California, it's going to be some mosquitoes, also a lot of ticks and a lot of scorpions. So, depending upon what's up here, the idea is that if it flies, it dies. Unless it's a bee, and you don't want to hurt the pollinators or the plants. But so that's really, take your concentrate, and then get a big hose, put a bunch of water in it, and then you go spray that. Like, talk about a high margin business. Mr, sorry, Mosquito Joe, that's a really intrigued model. So that's another thing that we will be looking at. 

Doug 24:54

So, what's been your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it? Have you, have you run into anything like that, like really, like knocked you on your heels yet?

Austin Meek 25:05

So, I thankfully haven't, because I knew what my biggest challenge would be, which was going to be time management. And that's why I brought in a partner. So, I have my partner, Jared, who is really the other side of the coin in our business. Jarrod's disciplines are finance and real estate, and he is excellent at setting up systems as the operations guy. I'm, I'm more of the culture building, whoo-whoo, let's come in and tinker and refine things and make it better. So, I was telling Jared a couple days ago, he was up here for the last few months setting up the office getting everything ready. I would have, Doug, felt so much anxiety with, you know, the racking people are coming in, and they're asking me which wall do you want these racks on? I would have had to make like a spreadsheet, and talk to ten different owners, figure out which wall is best. Jared has such a clarity of vision, hey, let's put it on that wall. Worst case scenario, we move it, right? So, he, that's what my biggest shortcomings I would say are, is just a lack of confidence in myself. I think it comes from being 35 years old. I don't know that much, right? And because I did take such an interdisciplinary winding path to get here, like, my degree from Texas A&M is in creative writing. I was not a finance major, I was not a real estate guy, so I have a little bit of a inferiority complex. And so having someone like my partner, Jared, who is further down the road than me. He's in his 40s, and has done a lot of, a lot of business in the real estate space. That's been really helpful for me. So, I would, I would say, like, my advice for people would be, be honest with what your skills are, and recognize that no one is expecting you to be the expert in everything. Like, there's a reason why we use vendors to help us build our website, and it's because I want my website to look a certain way and I'm not able to achieve that personally. So, not seeing my limitations as, I think the way I would put it is not seeing my shortcomings as limitations but seeing my shortcomings as opportunities to loop in somebody else to help the greater vision build. That would, that would be the thing I say that I've, it's been the hardest for me to do, but that I've grown the most in.

Doug 27:44

So, what would you say as somebody that may be interested in getting involved in a franchise system, what kind of advice would you give them? Obviously, you know, you sell, Neighborly sells...we have thirty-some-odd brands? I'm trying to remember what it is. 

Austin Meek 28:02

Yeah, we got more than thirty brands now in the portfolio, nineteen of those are in the US and Canada. So primarily, that's the franchising that we're responsible for. Our other holdings are in Western Europe primarily. So, the things that I would want to know if I were thinking about a franchise, or really thinking about any business, first off, is to consider franchising. I think that the stat is that 80% of independent businesses fail within the first five years. And it is the inverse with franchising, like 20% of franchises fail within the first five years, 80% of them are still open. So, I think a lot in terms of what can we be doing to de-risk this investment that we have? And one of the ways that the investment is de-risked is by seeing that oh, hey, there's 130 other Precision locations out there, okay? What they go through is probably analogous with what I'm going through as well. That's the reason why I wouldn’t, my partner Jared before he and I connected and did Precision, he had been looking at another franchise system getting into their HVAC concept, and he was also looking at their plumbing concept. And their story to him was, hey, you can have all of Chicago. You can have all of Houston, we're a new franchise, we've got 10 or 12 locations, etc. I think about this Mark Cuban quote all the time, would you rather have a slice of watermelon, or a whole grape? I'd rather take the watermelon every time, right? If you're with that emerging franchise, or you got the whole grape, you've got the entire Atlanta market. But I'd rather have a slice of that and know that there's other people around me who are working to grow the business too. If I'm one of five franchisees and I get all of Atlanta, that's great, but I am so responsible for growing this brand, and I can't really rely on four other people to do that. With Precision, I can rely on 129 other locations and know that some are going to under-perform, some of them will over-perform us and we're going to be right there, in that normal range of outcomes. So I think that, yeah, like looking at the strength of the system and the owners, that's really important for you if you do like the franchise. If you want to go start your own business, that's fine. But just know like, you're not better than me just because you started your own business. Like, I'm starting my own business, too, I'm just doing it with support. And in exchange for that support, I'm going to give them a percentage of my sales. That's a thoroughly American way of doing business. I own 100% of my business. Neighborly doesn't own any of it, Precision doesn't own any of it. But it's just like, I got a rental home, and I have a management company that takes care of it. It's the exact same thing with this. I think about my royalty as a as a management fee in exchange for having a franchise business coach, and a local marketing specialist, and a team of people that's negotiating for me. All of that makes a lot of sense. So, reviewing the strength of the network, what can they actually bring, making sure that your capital is stacked in the right way. There's a number of third-party lenders with whom we work often and will refer franchise candidates to. And those lenders will, they have a fiduciary duty to you to review all of your assets and give you a recommendation. "Hey, we think you'd be great for the SBA loan", or "we think he might be an excellent candidate for the ROBs program" (rollover for business startup), so you can take money out of your retirement accounts without having those early exit penalties if you're putting that money into a qualified business. Mr. Electric is a qualified business. So, making sure your money is right, making sure that the network is strong, and the support from leadership is there. And then finally, talk to other franchise owners. And if you're not doing a franchise, you're looking to start your own appliance repair business, talk to other appliance repair companies. They're not going to be as forthcoming with you as you might hope, because you are their competition. With franchising, these franchise owners are going to be totally wide open and available with their information because you're not touching their territory. They're legally protected. So, I think that's the biggest differentiator between franchising and starting a truly independent business. Franchising is the way to go.

Doug 32:22

Yeah, I would ditto what you just said. Like, that has been the key thing for, in my 24 years of, you know, running the Precision franchise. The ownership, the other owners that, you know, throughout the country, willing to give of their time and their knowledge and share with you, and we have kind of like, worked together to be able to grow a system and figure out what works, what doesn't work. That is absolutely key. And they do not feel like you're a competitor. You got a protected territory; they can't come in and start selling a garage door in your territory. They, you know, they know that, and so they're willing to share openly and everybody wins from it. 

Austin Meek 33:15

For Precision this last year in 2023, it would cost 40 cents per single family household to purchase a territory. Typically, we want to put people in territories that have about 150,000 single family households at least, so it cost about $60,000 last year for you to purchase a territory. Well, this year on the FDD, the Franchise Disclosure Document, it gets updated every year. Well, this year, it costs 45 cents per single family household. So maybe that territory cost you $70,000 today that if you had purchased it last year only cost $60,000. That's the reason why franchise owners are so willing to share information is because they know one, it's not hurting me to tell this guy in California how I'm doing it in Jersey. But secondly, if that guy in California does open his business and has success, that's going to increase the entire value of the franchise system and the equity that I have in my territory that I bought. That's going to continue to increase. Like, my investment with Precision here in Portland, Maine is already de-risked by the fact that I bought this market last year, and now the market is more valuable today because they raised the cost of the franchise.

Doug 34:32

Okay, so I'll let you kind of finish up with what we're going to talk about. Is there anything else you'd like to add maybe about, you know, either buying a franchise from Neighborly, or your experience. I'll let you kind of like summarize and we'll bring this to an engineer.

Austin Meek 34:52

So, to summarize my experience, what I want everybody listening this to feel is that if this schmuck can do it, you can do it. I promise, there, there is no superpower here. I'm very much an everyman. But I work my ass off and I communicate well. Those are really the only two things that I can guarantee that you're going to get from me, is that you're going to get my attention, and that it's going to be really clear where I'm coming from. So please don't let that impostor syndrome takeover, where you feel like, oh, I could never, I could never have the independence of being a business owner. I could never do it myself. I promise you can. If you are having those fears, you might be better suited for franchising than for starting your own concept. I was. And I had started my own concept, I had my cookie and ice cream business for five years. What had happened was that because I'm a reasonably smart, hardworking person, I built a reasonably good business. But that business ended up failing because it was reaching my personal capacity as an individual. The business was not structured to reach the capacity of the systems and the processes that I could have had, because I didn't have any. The business was built on my personality, and I got into that rut where a lot of small business owners are, where they're working 60 hours a week to make 60 grand a year, and they can't figure out how to puncture that next level. That's where I was. Being part of a franchise system, where I'm not responsible for making every single decision, has been life changing for me. So, I really want to encourage everybody, if they are thinking about doing a business, know that you can do it, for sure there is path for you. But that path might be doing it independently, it might be doing a business with a franchise. If you do want to look at a franchise, even if it's not home services, feel free to reach out to me, Austin.Meek@nbly.com. I'd be happy to set up time to talk with you. It's an amazing fraternity to get to be a part of to be one of the Americans who has a franchise. Something crazy Doug, something like, like 60% of US jobs are created by franchises. It's a wild number when you recognize how much franchising has created the backbone of our country. And it's not just McDonald's and Burger King. It's the local tax accountant, and it's the laundromat. So many of these are franchise concepts. So, if you do want to look into franchising, feel free, I'd be happy to give you more information about Neighborly specifically, but even just generally, I would look at once again, the strength of the franchise owners who were there. And I'd look at the strength of the network itself, like the systems and processes that they have. And then I'd look at the strength of the leadership team. And if you think that they have good systems, and they have a good leadership team, and there's a strong collaborative group of franchise owners, I would be jumping at that opportunity to get into a franchise. 

Doug  37:50

So, Austin, are you up on Stree2Fleet with us right now?

Austin Meek  37:55

Yes, sir. We are.

Doug  37:56

Did you book anything yet? 

Austin Meek  37:58

Yes, we have.

Doug  37:59

On Street2Fleet?

Austin Meek  38:01

 Yep, yeah, we booked two jobs yesterday, actually using Street2Fleet. It's right on our website, giving us all the information. It's so cool.

Doug  38:09

Yeah, so that's a new product for us. And I'm right now I'm doing, about 30% of my total website leads come from our books on Street2Fleet, which is, which is our online scheduler and we're continuing to develop it. We have some really exciting things that we're going to be adding to it for you in the future, which I'm not going to dive into today. But if you come back to our podcasts, you'll be able to find out more about that in the future and, because that's kind of the way the world's going. People want to book things online and you can see all available times and, book your appointment right online and a lot of times at a reduced cost, depending on how the owners want it set up. So thank you so much for you know, joining us this day. And if you guys enjoyed today's episode, please like and subscribe to our podcast. Austin Meek, awesome, thank you so much. Appreciate your time. And we'll be talking again soon.

Austin Meek  39:21

Thank you, Doug. I really appreciate you and everything you're doing for this.

Doug  39:25

Alright, thank you. Bye