Episode 42: Doody Calls Franchise. Chad Harrison shares why they are Number 1 in the Number 2 business.

Pam Currie (00:01)
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Franchise Sisters Business Radio Show, a platform to bring business professionals together to connect and educate, to serve aspiring entrepreneurs looking to invest and buy a franchise. I’m your co-host, Pam Curry.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (00:17)
And I’m your other co-host, Sherry Curry Skoldager. And on today’s show, we have Chad Harrison with Authority Brands. He’s the franchise developer for Duty Calls, the nation’s leading pet waste management service for homeowners and their communities. The company scoops over 10 million doggy deposits annually. Pretty cool. Welcome to the show, Chad.

Chad Harrison (00:43)
Thank you, Sherry. Thank you, Pam. Pleasure

Chad Harrison (00:45)
to be here. Yeah, who the world of Pooh, right? Yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (00:48)
World of two. I love it.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (00:50)
There’s a business in anything, isn’t there?

Chad Harrison (00:52)
Yeah, yeah.

Pam Currie (00:53)
Mm-hmm.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (00:54)
Hey

Shari Currie Skjoldager (00:55)
Chad, kind of let’s kick this off with you telling our listeners a little bit about you and your passion.

Chad Harrison (01:02)
Yeah, I would say it it’s probably a similar passion of the two of you as well. It’s just it’s exciting to get somebody you know, who’s interested in business ownership, right? They’re an entrepreneur looking to maybe move away from whether it’s a corporate world or whatever that might move might be, get more control of their of their own lives and schedules. And it’s it’s exciting to see them finally land that business.

Chad Harrison (01:25)
And then start to scale and and and hear them afterwards, right? It’s wow, what a game changer and best decision I made. So that’s that’s really the passion for me, too. It’s exciting.

Pam Currie (01:35)
Okay. I heard you have a passion for beer too.

Chad Harrison (01:37)
Yes.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (01:38)
I know we

Shari Currie Skjoldager (01:39)
threw that out there.

Chad Harrison (01:40)
Crack open on the podcast too. Yeah, yeah.

Pam Currie (01:42)
Right? Well, it’s wonder

Chad Harrison (01:48)
Yeah. That was the first time I

Pam Currie (01:48)
Exactly.

Chad Harrison (01:49)
met Pam too that we we got that that side note.

Pam Currie (01:52)
That’s right. We are laughing because

Pam Currie (01:54)
it was the first time that we were on the phone together and I cracked open a Diet Coke can. And I realized,

Chad Harrison (02:00)
Yeah. Yeah.

Pam Currie (02:02)
I said, no, I just want to let you know that is not a beer. That is Diet Coke. It was funny.

Chad Harrison (02:06)
It was perfect timing. Yeah.

Pam Currie (02:11)
So Chad, it’s great to have you on the show. obviously you represent Duty Calls. Tell us the story behind this fun brand name.

Chad Harrison (02:22)
Yeah, we the creator, East Coast, you know, came up with it same as what we were just talking about in terms of our passion, you know, had wanted to get away from his W two and he had a pretty good W two, but just ready to move along and and came up with the idea with duty calls, pet waste management. There were a few others out there too as well. And he started around two thousand and then started franchising around two thousand four. And yeah, we just celebrated twenty five years last year.

Chad Harrison (02:50)
So it’s wild

Pam Currie (02:50)
Crafts.

Chad Harrison (02:51)
to think pet waste management, right, twenty five years in business. Yeah.

Pam Currie (02:54)
Right. Congratulations.

Pam Currie (02:57)
Well, could you walk us through how your franchisees make money picking up waste

Chad Harrison (03:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Pam Currie (03:03)
deposits?

Chad Harrison (03:05)
Yeah. And it’s interesting too, because you know, sometimes you can think of it two ways. Either like the owner operator model where they’re walking around and they’re scooping and they start that way and then they get technicians, or the semi absentee, where we’ve got like an ex example of a gentleman down in Florida. He’s got a couple of the businesses he owns and he’s not gonna do the scooping side. So he’s gonna get the team in place. So semi absentee model is what we often call it, right?

Chad Harrison (03:29)
So those are the two types of models and operation side. It’s really just getting that scooping side and then the sales side to execute.

Pam Currie (03:36)
So who who is your end customer? Is this more of a business to residential, business

Chad Harrison (03:41)
Mm-hmm.

Pam Currie (03:42)
to commercial?

Chad Harrison (03:44)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great mix. It’s a B2B and B2C. So the the B2C is your residential homes. Residential homes, it takes about eight to ten minutes in the backyard and out. And the neat thing about this, and something you don’t think of, but home services, if you have to arrange that time to meet inside the house, now you’re working on all those schedules. For us, we just go in the backyard, so we’ve got control of our schedules that way. helps in a lot of different facets. But that’s your B2C.

Chad Harrison (04:12)
residential and then B to B is commercial. So as a matter of fact, tourism we’ve got the the area where you are that we we follow the the horses down there and the and the tourism there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Pam Currie (04:23)
I’ve seen it. yes. I I’ve seen your duty call vans and taking care of the carriage and the horses and yes.

Chad Harrison (04:32)
And commercial is interesting though. It’s HOAs, apartment complexes, condos, gated communities. Even like a neighborhood now we know neighborhoods can be HOAs too.

Chad Harrison (04:41)
But you just see this neighborhood, it’s an HOA, so it ends up being commercial business, but then also residential too, because they may want you to come in the backyard. But that commercial side is where we put the pet stations. And the pet stations have the trash can at the bottom and the bags up top. So

Pam Currie (04:54)
Okay.

Chad Harrison (04:55)
yeah, we we we we do a little better in terms of revenue on commercial side, but residential is kind of that backbone, really middle class, busy families, right? And they’ve got the income level. Nobody ever says they like to pick this up too, so

Pam Currie (05:11)
And then so I mean with that being so so primarily do you have an idea of what percentage is residential and what percentage is commercial for an average?

Chad Harrison (05:20)
Yeah, you can see like

Chad Harrison (05:21)
seventy, thirty residential over commercial in terms of customer numbers, but then like revenue, it’ll flip commercial over residential eventually as you gain it.

Pam Currie (05:30)
That makes sense. And on the commercial side, it’s just not doggy waste. You get into other types of waste.

Chad Harrison (05:34)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. and

Chad Harrison (05:38)
there’s multiple revenue streams too, which is interesting. And so for us, our opportunity for this model is just the average ticket price, you know, adding some more services to help out our customers. We’ve had deodorizer, we sell the bags in those pet stations on the commercial side. and something to key in too is for residential and commercial, we’re occurring revenue. So we have that predictability in our cash flow as you get 100, 200 customers.

Chad Harrison (06:04)
They decide the the owner decides when they pay weekly by weekly, whatever that might be. So that that predicts been that cash flow is a big win for us.

Pam Currie (06:12)
That makes sense. And what about who does who does the waste pickup is a f are you hi you mentioned technicians, I heard that word.

Chad Harrison (06:20)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Harrison (06:21)
Yeah, yeah. So and that’s some will often be You call what do you call them? And I’m like, well, we just call them a technician. You can only imagine the the fun you could have that. But but so technicians, it’s interesting and even in, you know, northeast, southeast, you know, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen an hour in that range. W twos is mostly what we have over duty calls. And

Pam Currie (06:43)
Okay.

Chad Harrison (06:44)
it’s a big labor pool because anybody can do it at the end of the day. And that’s what we see, college students to retired military police.

Chad Harrison (06:51)
we even had a pastor that was in there as a as a technician. So it’s a wide labor pool, an advantage there for sure. And then pretty good retention because I’ve talked to franchisees and like Anthony Ventry up in northern Jersey, been in business five years, he has the first technician he started with. And I think that’s just due to the fact you know they’re in the truck, they’re outside working with dogs.

Pam Currie (07:11)
Yeah.

Chad Harrison (07:12)
It’s not stressful in that way, you know, a lot of autonomy, so

Pam Currie (07:15)
Makes sense.

Chad Harrison (07:16)
to speak.

Pam Currie (07:17)
Mm-hmm. And maybe a little bit of flexibility with the schedule, like you mentioned, which that is nice as well.

Chad Harrison (07:21)
Exactly. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

Pam Currie (07:25)
I’m assuming there are no licensing requirements. or

Chad Harrison (07:28)
Yeah.

Pam Currie (07:29)
I don’t know, are there for commercial, maybe?

Chad Harrison (07:31)
Yeah, you just basically just your your entity as any other business, LLC, whatever that would be, and standard insurance for commercial, but no licensing. So when we get into if you’ve got listeners in California, New York, where the states get little tougher on licensing and more expensive, we don’t have

Pam Currie (07:47)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Harrison (07:48)
any of those challenges. So we’re up and running in thirty days, any of these states, and not considered an environmental hazard. So again, kind of some advantages, yeah.

Pam Currie (07:58)
Yeah, so obviously you’re able to, like you said, get up and running. So quick to launch, hopefully quick

Chad Harrison (08:03)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Pam Currie (08:04)
to cash flow. How how do your franchisees go about finding their customers?

Chad Harrison (08:10)
Yeah, it’s gonna be, you know, your standard marketing efforts, but there’s definitely that grassroots which I guess it it really kind of works with in every industry and business too as well. for us though, it’s like who are those customers? And so it’s definitely gonna be those dog owners and those households. And so we get into the demographics and we’ll be able to see that. So in a particular city, we want it we like to see averages for that formula, that territory that we use. But you’ll have you’ll have

Chad Harrison (08:40)
at least maybe sixty thousand potential customers with dogs in those territories. And so it’s a big market. and then gaining them, it’s just through Facebook. what what we run on our side, Google AdWords, pay to click, our website, truck, the rap is always a big part of marketing too, with that logo.

Pam Currie (08:59)
Yeah.

Chad Harrison (09:00)
You know, we’ve got Doodle is our little logo there and it’s cute. And so yeah. And then they get a lot

Shari Currie Skjoldager (09:04)
Okay.

Chad Harrison (09:05)
one of the franchisees, Brian out in Nevada was telling me stop the red light.

Chad Harrison (09:10)
And you’d always have someone like, hey, roll down your window. You know, what what is that? ‘Cause it’s a funny name and just yeah, and it’s a lime green truck, so it stands out.

Pam Currie (09:19)
Yes, it does. I was seeing it. What about, and this is just me brainstorming, would a franchisee ever want to create referral partners with grooming, people who do grooming or

Chad Harrison (09:32)
Mm. Yeah.

Pam Currie (09:33)
PetSmart, you know, retail stores, that type of thing.

Chad Harrison (09:38)
Yeah, that’s a good point. And I think that’s where, you know, for differentiators, right? Because again, there are some other pet waste management companies out there, franchises. Differentiators is going to be what you’re referring to as that commercial side. So relationships, like you would think national accounts. what we’ve done is we’re really, and we’ve always been at the top of the of the of the of the pack, so to speak. And so we’ll use those opportunities to drive that commercial side.

Chad Harrison (10:06)
relationships building. And then we’ve got, as you know, with authority brands, thirteen other home services, one of them being Woofies. And so the synergies are there, home services in general. So yeah, it’s it’s it’s I mean, there’s so much opportunity. You just start to think, okay, what other franchisees are in the area with the synergies like Wolfies and Duty Calls and so so many opportunities. What we kind of like refer to as the grassroots too marketing. Yeah.

Pam Currie (10:31)
Makes

Pam Currie (10:31)
sense. Any any other kind of unique differentiators? you mentioned territories. I also wanted to get into that. How do you define your territories for your franchisees?

Chad Harrison (10:43)
There’ll be a hundred

Chad Harrison (10:44)
and fifty thousand households. And then

Pam Currie (10:46)
Okay.

Chad Harrison (10:46)
within that number, we’ve got some great demographics we did into again, which is the dog count and then the income levels. So we see those numbers consistently from state to state, sometimes a little higher. And as far as the the territory, that’s how we’ll build it out. So it ends up being a good sized territory. I mean, again, too, there’s so much market share with what competition is out there. So

Chad Harrison (11:11)
Yeah,

Chad Harrison (11:11)
big market with relatively low competition.

Pam Currie (11:15)
Yeah. Well, and I like to say if if there is some competition that just validates that the business model works. And

Chad Harrison (11:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Pam Currie (11:22)
and secondly, you’re not gonna get a hundred percent of the customers no matter what, but if you can get the percentage you need to be six you know, to to create

Chad Harrison (11:26)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Pam Currie (11:31)
some significant revenue for yourself, that’s the goal. So makes that makes sense.

Chad Harrison (11:33)
Right, right. Mm-hmm.

Pam Currie (11:36)
any kind of any kind of key bus business differentiators, you mentioned the the trucks.

Chad Harrison (11:42)
Mm-hmm.

Pam Currie (11:42)
or any other key business features to share around the model?

Chad Harrison (11:45)
Yeah,

Chad Harrison (11:46)
it’s say so we have a call center. as we’ll

Pam Currie (11:48)
Mm.

Chad Harrison (11:49)
see a lot of franchises, some don’t, some do. I think it’s really for the for the whole market, I think it’s kind of heading that way. especially with AI now. And so for our call center is a big differentiator. You have our weight averages are quick because we have a team that’s in place and we’re we’re t we cover the weekdays, weeknights, weekends, and then we’ve got AI covering the odd hours. So we always joke around, we’re pretty sophisticated for a poop cleaning up business.

Chad Harrison (12:15)
But the AI

Shari Currie Skjoldager (12:16)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Harrison (12:16)
is actually Sarah and that’s our duty bot recaller. And so twenty-four-seven, three sixty-five holidays. So the so then to that owner, they don’t have to worry about the weekends. That’s how they get their life back too, right? As opposed to

Pam Currie (12:29)
Well

Chad Harrison (12:29)
working 70 hours, 80 hours a week. but that call center is a big, big win for us.

Pam Currie (12:35)
That makes sense.

Chad Harrison (12:36)
and then software.

Chad Harrison (12:38)
service minders are software, so route optimization software to make sure we’re running efficiently. And that’s probably

Pam Currie (12:43)
Okay.

Chad Harrison (12:44)
that’s something I’ve been mentioning lately. Is because you’re always thinking, okay, what’s the best way to describe this to someone as they come in new? But you you look at this business model, you’re taking something as simple as scooping is, making it very efficient for us to make then make our money. And that’s what we do essentially. So

Pam Currie (13:01)
That makes sense. Even even as simple as the service may be, there’s nuances around the operations of it. Okay.

Chad Harrison (13:05)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a nice

Shari Currie Skjoldager (13:08)
Yeah, it’s happening. Yeah.

Chad Harrison (13:09)
perk too is like the worst thing that can happen is we miss something, you know, we miss a scoop. So it’s nice to them not be in a business, you know, where it’s critical, right? So

Pam Currie (13:18)
Yes.

Pam Currie (13:20)
Now you mentioned you’ve been around for twenty five years, founded in two thousand, started franchising in two thousand and four.

Chad Harrison (13:25)
Mm-hmm.

Pam Currie (13:26)
so tell us a little bit about your growth as a franchise system. How many units?

Chad Harrison (13:30)
Yeah. Yeah. And the last well

Chad Harrison (13:32)
so far this year today, we’re around twenty new franchisees. And we were, you know, for us as a company, we we like to see that growth, of course, and bring in the right the right entrepreneurs, but we were looking around twenty-four, so we’re almost to that number. And then great opportunity for more this year. And then prior year is about the same number. So we’ve grown, I would say let’s see

Chad Harrison (13:58)
50-60, you know, it’s up to s upwards of seventy in two and a half years. So it’s grown really fast. And the service is needed for sure. And they see the opportunity, relatively low investment, you know, you’re around forty-three thousand all in to get up and running. And then you’ve got and then you’ve got some working capital on top of that. But yeah, it’s it’s growing fast.

Pam Currie (14:20)
Do you have many franchisees that are multi territory owners?

Chad Harrison (14:24)
Yeah, yeah, we do. I would say so when you look in into our franchise disclosure document, you’ll see five four groups broken up and by their performance. And that top performance has 16 franchisees that are you know above that the higher numbers are top 25 percent is what we call them. There’s about 17. So each of them probably have about maybe three to four territories on average. Yeah, so

Pam Currie (14:50)
Wow. Okay.

Chad Harrison (14:51)
it’s a good number, and then you get into some smaller groups.

Chad Harrison (14:54)
that came in maybe with two territories. So on average maybe three in the network wide. So

Pam Currie (15:02)
Thank you. That’s good insight on what’s happening on with the franchise or side. I’ll let Sherry learned a little bit about what it means to be a franchisee.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (15:10)
yeah. Yeah. We want to get on on the franchisee side too. So may maybe we can start out with this. What what kind of qualities? I mean, this is such a simple business. Are there specific qualities or characteristics you’re looking for in in an ideal franchisee?

Chad Harrison (15:24)
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was talking to a gentleman just a little while ago and he’s up in Chicago and he’s like, I don’t any pets. you know and they’re probably getting to the point where they’re getting married. I think, yeah, he’s in his third year, but they’re getting ready to go children and that whole route. But I’ve talked to plenty that don’t have any pets, no kids. You know, it’s not what you would think in terms of that big busy family with with pets as well. So we’ve had a mix.

Chad Harrison (15:46)
business owners, sometimes the first time business. one gentleman is a was a great story. him and his wife, again, no pets. they both and I’ve seen this often, it’s kind of strange, but nuclear submarines. They’re both in the Navy. I was like, okay, and I guess that makes sense, right? Nuclear submarines and pet waste management. But anyway, he’s they built a company. They started out with about five thousand dollars in their bank account and they build a commercial business to ten million dollars grossing a year. And they came in at added duty calls and

Chad Harrison (16:16)
loved what they saw in the business, but it’s interesting. So blue collar, white collar, C suite, it really is a mix. And it’s a great mix too. But yeah, following

Shari Currie Skjoldager (16:23)
That’s wonder Yeah.

Chad Harrison (16:25)
the system, following the system and staying engaged is key to success too. That’s what we hear.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (16:32)
That makes sense. That makes sense. It’s simple, it’s reasonable cost of entry, so there’s a lot of opportunity for a variety of people. so if I’m considering it, can you give me an idea of what the day in the life would look like for a franchisee in your system?

Chad Harrison (16:47)
Yeah, if they’re if they’re doing if they’re coming in and they’re like, okay, I’m ready just to get outside and and it happens too. I’m ready to get outside and then just be amongst you know the dogs and and do my business, scooping side, you know, you’ve got that scooping side, and then you’ve got the engagement side, communication, executing marketing strategies. as you start to get some technicians, then of course you’ve got that side of it. And the franchise model is there to support them on who do we hire, how do we, you know, even setting standards even for our business.

Chad Harrison (17:17)
And so that’s the owner operator life. And then when you think of a semi-absentee, someone that’s not doing the scooping, they’re just essentially it’s everything else but the scooping side. And so at the end of the day, you know, communication with the team, ops team, because the call center takes care of the customers. And then all the automation. So it’s really just a lot of communication at the end the day and some executing strategies. Yeah. So

Chad Harrison (17:43)
And it can be day one, that semi absentee model, which sometimes as we know can be tricky in businesses, is when are you able to? So

Shari Currie Skjoldager (17:51)
That’s nice that you have that. You know, so you’ve got a simple business, low cost of entry, and you guys seem to be very sl flexible with the type of operators. So you clearly allow semi-involvement or fully full involvement operators. Do do you have an idea of how many people are actually semi-involved? is it

Chad Harrison (18:12)
Yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (18:12)
there higher percentage of full fully involved or semi-involved?

Chad Harrison (18:16)
Yeah, it’s it’s definitely moving more and more that direction just because of of all the automation is come and then the call center of what’s changing nowadays too, the technology. I would say you’re almost for the for the franchisees that aren’t scooping, you could be around fifty percent, if not a little bit of higher, because as they come if they come in as an ouroper, eventually they you know, our game plan is that they eventually are working on the business, not in it. And so a long term plan.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (18:41)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Harrison (18:42)
And so yeah, I would say it’s probably higher than your owner operator.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (18:46)
That’s great. Everybody’s looking for semi-pop. so that’s a nice

Chad Harrison (18:46)
Yeah, mm hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (18:50)
option. what about what about training? I mean this is pretty simple. How what is your onboarding training?

Chad Harrison (18:57)
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question too, because that’s one of our advantages in the process. Everything’s virtual. So training is virtual. It’s a week. Again, you know, it takes a 30 days with that week of training to get up and running, to get the truck. all that’s virtual. The only thing that’s in person are yearly young conferences in February. Otherwise, there’s just so much ease to it. And then

Chad Harrison (19:21)
Yeah, it’s interesting though, even though you again you think, okay, pet cleaning business, but we’ve got a grid when we clean, you know, the all sorts of steps and processes, but you’re right, it’s kind of got that hit that easy button as you go training. But I think when you get into the marketing and then some of the more technical, you know, there’s a little more focus, but yeah, yeah, we still sh we still

Shari Currie Skjoldager (19:41)
That makes

Chad Harrison (19:42)
keep it pretty simple. Yeah, yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (19:44)
Keep it simple. We all like that. And so I mean,

Shari Currie Skjoldager (19:47)
can I assume the ongoing support is pretty simple too? It sounds like you’re gonna start focusing more on how to scale the business with the marketing and things like that for your ongoing support.

Chad Harrison (19:59)
Right, right. And then you know, and and everything’s always changing around us, you know, how we use our marketing, what what’s being reflected as a review and you know, it’s interesting. So we’re always on top of that sort of the franchisee, and most of the time it may be news to them. So we’re keeping them abreast of all these changes. And there’s some changes in our maybe what we’re using or the vehicles as vehicles become more and more efficient, hybrids, electrical.

Chad Harrison (20:28)
so that definitely a continuous change and and updating. but yeah, it’s it’s again, it’s probably the maybe when the technology changes in the marketing side where it’s kind of that refocus, but the scooping always fortunately for us, just as long as you don’t step in it, it stays the same, you know. So

Pam Currie (20:45)
Ha

Pam Currie (20:45)
ha

Shari Currie Skjoldager (20:47)
Yeah, that and of course I love that. The training is simple, but it’s needed. And you guys are there. I know Authority Brands has great has great coaching programs and guidance throughout the

Chad Harrison (20:55)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (20:56)
life of the franchisees’ ownership. So

Chad Harrison (20:58)
Yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (20:59)
that’s fabulous. and you’ve also already touched on this, but I just want to punctuate it, which is the investment range being so reasonable. so

Shari Currie Skjoldager (21:09)
the initial investment range, I I think you said around forty three thousand, but we also have vehicle things to think about. So

Chad Harrison (21:16)
Mm-hmm.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (21:17)
what’s the average estimated investment range if I want to start a single territory with duty calls?

Chad Harrison (21:22)
Yeah, you can say under a hundred thousand, whichever state you’re in. You know, if we’re down, you know, Southeast, some some of the southwest states, you know, you’re around seventy-six thousand. and again, there’s some working capital in there. So your forty-three is your investment and you’re f usually typically financing the truck. what’s interest as we know with franchises, some sometimes there can be

Chad Harrison (21:46)
a lot of restraints on what you can and can’t do and can buy and not buy. And so for us though, we’ve got a lot of flexibility in the type of truck they want to get, how much they want to pay their technician, who they wanna hire. So a lot of flexibility within this model. But within that day, forty three, everything to get up and running, financing a truck, and then typically, you know, six months of cash. So

Shari Currie Skjoldager (22:11)
Good. I like that you put in six months. Sometimes people only do

Chad Harrison (22:14)
Yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (22:14)
three months, but six months gives you a nice solid time to ramp up.

Chad Harrison (22:17)
Yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (22:19)
item 19, financial performance representation. Do you all have it? And if so, can you share?

Chad Harrison (22:24)
Yeah, yeah. Highest grossing franchisee last year was three point two zero zero zero zero zero. It’s three point two million last year. But we’re

Chad Harrison (22:35)
we’re we had in the zeros too. But yeah, it was the highest grossing franchisee. One of the one territory in the FDD as well, you’ll see it was nine hundred and eleven thousand zero zero zero, I have to say that. nine

Shari Currie Skjoldager (22:48)
Wow.

Chad Harrison (22:48)
hundred and eleven thousand for the first territory, the highest grossing. So big market in the territories itself and

Chad Harrison (22:54)
And the potential. Yeah. Yeah, it’s nice strong.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (22:56)
Yeah, would never have

Shari Currie Skjoldager (23:00)
that’s great. I would have never guessed. But duty calls, right?

Chad Harrison (23:02)
Yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (23:02)
And it calls every single day. So there’s work to be done. There’s work to be done. And you guys are here to do the work. bottom

Chad Harrison (23:05)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Pam Currie (23:10)
Hi.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (23:11)
line is showing it. That’s that’s great. investment under a hundred thousand. What kind of common funding strategies are you seeing when people come in to fund business?

Chad Harrison (23:23)
comment what kind of strategies?

Shari Currie Skjoldager (23:25)
Funding.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (23:26)
What it w how are what’s

Chad Harrison (23:27)
Our funding.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (23:27)
the most common way people are funding divided territory?

Chad Harrison (23:30)
Yeah, yeah.

Chad Harrison (23:32)
I would say you you see SBA, you know, small business association, definitely. we’ve seen a few Robs, the four one K. there’s been a few, you know, when they come in with cash, it’s interesting. I had one gentleman a group in Orlando, they came in with cash and they’re actually saying later on, you know what, I should have just done something in terms of the lending side and kept my cash. so it’s interesting. It’s usually better again, as we know to kind of keep a liquid that way. But I would say those are probably the two top

Chad Harrison (23:59)
Lending groups, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (24:03)
Pretty common.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (24:03)
So that means you’re on the SBA registry and they can get an SBA loan if everybody is aligned with being eligible. You’ve got the

Chad Harrison (24:06)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, great point.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (24:12)
ROBs, which is not uncommon as well, but then you also see some self-funding, but people are trying to keep their cash for obvious reasons. And so that’s nice that you have some options there.

Chad Harrison (24:19)
Yeah.

Chad Harrison (24:21)
Yeah. Yeah, we definitely do. Authority brands is all of them are listed in the SBA lender too. Yeah, it’s a big it’s a big help to our to our franchisees.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (24:29)
Yeah, a well established group, authority brands is and respect it and they know that they’ve got successful successful franchisees, which gives the SBA team v a lot of comfort in allowing somebody to get alone with them ’cause they know that there’s a a lower risk of failure. Good.

Chad Harrison (24:45)
Yeah. That’s a great point

Chad Harrison (24:47)
too, Sherry, because I and I’ve seen that on my end. It’s never something I ever kind of pinned or looked into or thought about, but they’ll know the lenders will know immediately who we are, authority brands, duty calls, because they’ve done so many SPA lendings. So it’s another advantage of these brands. Yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (25:03)
That’s awesome. And we help them with that

Shari Currie Skjoldager (25:04)
payment. I can’t. But so the chat, this has been good. This is such an interesting little niche business that, you

Chad Harrison (25:13)
Yeah, yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (25:14)
know, semi-involvement, simple, low cost of entry,

Chad Harrison (25:18)
Yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (25:19)
low employee count, especially if you decide

Chad Harrison (25:21)
Yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (25:21)
to do the work. So it’s just a nice opportunity for people to take into consideration. Did we miss anything that you would like to share that we didn’t ask?

Chad Harrison (25:30)
I would say we’re number one in the number two business. That’s what I like to share there. That’s that’s

Shari Currie Skjoldager (25:33)
Yeah.

Chad Harrison (25:34)
there’s all sorts of puns for sure.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (25:37)
Yeah.

Chad Harrison (25:38)
but you know what you know when I came across and I love I think it was Da Vinci the quo, and it’s simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. And it just I love it. And again, keeping the model simple and the processes, even though again with technology and marketing, but yeah, I just and I I love to talk about it too. And then it’s got I was I’ve started mentioning, you know, the difference between, you know, talking about

Chad Harrison (26:01)
like healthcare, you know, as opposed to your pets. It’s much easier to talk about your pets and talk about that from a business standpoint or a sales standpoint. So we’ve

Pam Currie (26:10)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Harrison (26:10)
got that going for us too.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (26:12)
Mm-hmm.

Pam Currie (26:14)
Well, we do have one more question for you, Chad. And this isn’t specific to duty calls. This is actually specific to anyone that is looking to become a business owner. And the final question is this. In closing, what tips would you give to budding entrepreneurs?

Chad Harrison (26:37)
Yeah, I love it. That’s a great question. ’cause we see it right as the as all the entrepreneurs go through this system. And I would say just be open, any o opportunities, you know, coming in. You may have some, you know, thoughts of where you might want to start, but be open to all the options out there. and then thoroughly go through the process for each one to make sure, okay, the ops team, you know, meeting the brand president, understanding the marketing technology, because you definitely want to make sure you give it that full run each brand and

Chad Harrison (27:07)
Yeah, and follow the system.

Pam Currie (27:09)
Follow the system. Yeah, I like that also be open because I I think we gravitate towards what we know as a consumer. And

Chad Harrison (27:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Pam Currie (27:18)
sometimes it’s less about the product or the service that’s being offered. It’s more about how does the business model integrate and align with you. And so that that can

Chad Harrison (27:27)
Right, right. Yep. Yep.

Pam Currie (27:29)
make a difference. So getting in there and understanding it more, like you said, is is a differentiator. Good stuff.

Chad Harrison (27:35)
Yeah.

Pam Currie (27:35)
Well, thank you. It’s been great having you on the show.

Chad Harrison (27:38)
Yeah, it’s been a pleasure.

Pam Currie (27:40)
Absolutely. And to our listeners, if you’re considering franchise ownership, reach out and request a free franchise sisters discovery call. In addition to that, we would like to give you our ebook, Top Ten Questions to Consider Before Investing in a Franchise.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (27:59)
That’s right. Our mission is to help you navigate the franchise selection and buying process through our client-centric align-wise methodology and to put you in a position to make an informed decision with the help of our investigate before you invest toolkit.

Pam Currie (28:14)
That’s right. Thanks for tuning in. Fist bump.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (28:17)
Fist bump. Thanks, Chad.

Chad Harrison (28:17)
Yeah.

Pam Currie (28:19)
Yeah.