Episode 15: John Prothro – How Foot Solutions Built a 25-Year Franchise in Foot Health & Wellness

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Sherry Curry Skull dagger yeah

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operate a franchise that’s right Pam

on today’s show we have John Prothro

welcome John thank you for having me ladies

it’s great to have you so

we’re gonna just jump right into these interview

questions uh

John you came into franchising new to the industry

as my understanding so

what is your background

that prepared you to be a franchisee or

I can tell you my background

I’m not sure it prepared me to be a franchise owner

fair enough

I’ve always done things that

I felt like I could learn from

that were new I like to jump into the fire so to speak

my primary history in terms of my career was in MMA

so did a lot of buy and sell side transactions

kind of in the lower middle market space

and then ran a company that was in industrial

distribution for a while

so kind of covered the gamut

understand business on a macro level

and have enjoyed getting to know franchising

on a macro level

yeah I can imagine

well I bet this was a pretty big change um

how does the culture and of foot

solutions differ from your other experiences

in the non franchise world

um you know

there’s there’s a couple of

we’re sort of in two industries or three industries

I guess if you count um footwear

so the footwear industry uh

the foot health industry and in franchising

uh in

in mergers and acquisitions

and a lot of bankers and investment bankers

there’s a lot of uh

I don’t know insincerity might be the word for it

it may not be there’s

there’s some good folks and some bad folks

but there’s a lot of folks

kind of trying to pretend

like they’re always crushing it

you know um

and I think in in the footwear industry in general um

and in foot health

you get a lot more sort of blue collar

down to earth I

I really feel at home when I’m in a conference with

you know footwear

specialty retail specialty footwear owners

um and in franchising sort of the same thing

at least with Foot Solutions

the culture of the Foot Solutions franchise world is um

just genuine

down to earth people who are trying to help folks

entrepreneurs who are just out to serve their community

there’s not a lot of um

I I don’t

I don’t know how to describe it

but it you just feel comfortable

you know

hanging out with these people just sort of right away

we have our annual meeting coming up uh

and in about a week and I can’t wait to see everybody

and I can’t say that every business I’ve been in

has been that way well

that makes perfect sense to me

I always uh

like to say that the franchise business community

it’s a it’s its own business community

and I think there’s a lot of truth to what you said

there John

and the reason is is because uh

it’s a it’s a bunch of small business owners and uh

when you’re a business owner

there’s sort of this balance of humility

is what I would say along with you need to be right

along with drive and passion and rewarding

and everyone’s working together to help one another

be successful because they recognize the rewards

but also the hard work well

franchising too

we consider our franchisees our business partners

they they really are because you live and die with them

if they’re successful you’re successful and

and vice versa yeah

I would agree with you so why do we do this

would you tell us obviously

you stepped into Foot Solutions

you’re not the founder of Foot Solutions

give us the history and the story behind the brand

it’ll be uh

25 years old in August um

five years ago

so it’s founded by a fellow named Ray Margiano

25 years ago in Atlanta and um

he had a very smart vision

I thought I think he was a very smart visionary

entrepreneur kind of person who said

you know we

there’s a space between um

the purely medical market and uh

the footwear industry so if you want to go buy shoes

you can go to a discount shoe store or you can go to a

a running store you go to what we call brown shoe store

comfort shoe store

and what you’ll get there

a lot of times is a lot of boxes on the floor

and you just kind of say hey

give me all your size nines

you know

or give me all the different colors you have in this

or you can go to the podiatrist and gets

like pure medical care on your feet

and Foot Solutions is a nice blend of those two things

we do have footwear and we do carry footwear

but we staff the stores with experts in foot health

um and so we do a lot of training with people

we even have we even have podiatrists

who are franchisees of foot solutions um

because our

the biggest thing we have is that we’re a caring

expert service um

and so we spend a lot of time making sure that

if you go into a foot solutions

you’re talking to someone who knows

what they’re talking about

so we always start out with

you know do you have any foot knee

hip lower back pain or balance issues

um and so when customer comes in

they may be shopping for shoes

but we’re helping them even select the right shoes

for what’s going on with them

and then on top of that we’re

we’re pairing it with real customer orthotics

and that are more and more being 3d printed

which is quite exciting for us

no I

I so I understand what you’re saying

it’s kind of a crossover between

I guess let’s let’s call it retail

but there’s a medical component to it

yeah so when we met

so I met the owner five years ago

he has since passed sadly

but when I met him uh

I felt like this is just a

a really really smart idea

I visited several stores um

it was just a little bit before its time

I think quite frankly um

you see at least in terms of Google searches

you see in terms of the market growth

that the insol industry is growing

a little bit over 7% a year Kager

so um

there’s some really dramatic growth happening

I think it’s because the market people are

uh the bad side is people are getting fatter uh

and sicker heavier

I shouldn’t say fatter don’t say fatter

talking about myself getting sicker and heavier

um and there’s more and more diabetes

which causes foot problems

um and then there’s also the

the dramatic opposite of that

which is

people are focusing more and more on their health

there are a lot of people who are

healthy and really taking care of themselves

and people are starting to realize that their health

really starts from the ground up

and if you don’t get your alignment right

if you’re not wearing the right thing

underneath your feet and surrounding your feet

you can be causing more problems than you’re solving

so we bought the business

um we bought the business five years ago

I have uh

hired a lot of good folks

uh to support franchisees

and we started selling franchises again uh

in in 2023 after we went through Covid and um

got the systems and processes and people right

we started selling franchises again

so with that being said

could you kind of walk us through

if you’re a franchisee

what does the business model look like

what are the revenue patterns

I know it’s a storefront

what solutions is the storefront

a very small footprint

so it’s kind of a low cost to own business

you have a couple when you start out

you’ll have two full time employees

sometimes even just one and a/2

and you’re in somewhere around called 13

14 square feet so not real big retail spaces

and you also don’t have to go into the Class a

a luxury sort of space because it is somewhat of a

it is a destination business in some cases purely

but in other cases we like to be in

in some areas where you get do

do get some retail so I’d say it

I would give I’ll give you the good and the bad

the good is that it’s low cost to own

low cost to operate we charge us a flat 5% royalty

we don’t nickel and dime franchisees to death

which not coming from franchising

I think that’s a benefit um

cause we you know we

really are trying to make this

a very simple thing to get involved with

in a very attractive franchise

so it’s 5% straight flat royalty um

you’ve got a very very loyal customer base

you can imagine if um

either of you have any foot issues or ankle issues

lower back pain knee issues

lower back pain all day long yeah

yeah yeah

have you ever been to a foot solution Sherry

I haven’t but I wouldn’t mind going

I do think it has

you know when it gets too bad I go get new shoes

yeah yeah yeah

your footwear has a lot to do with that

what you wear underneath your feet

I would suspect that if you got custom orthotics

you probably would have feel a lot of relief from that

and if you did

I would

I would assume that both of you would come back if we

relieve some issue that

that you were having and that’s

that’s we build a very loyal customer base

average

store is just south of about half a million dollars

gross margin is typically over 60%

and then your expenses

your major expenses are your rent

which is

it just depends on where you are really

but we have rents anywhere from two to kind of $7,000

somewhere in the in that range um

and then the 5% royalty in marketing

and marketing is not too big an expense

once you’ve sort of established your store

uh huh um so that’s the

the positives the low cost to own low cost to operate

the negative is I’m not selling cookies to a customer

so Sherry as much as you love us

for solving your lower back pain

which we’re going to do in predict yes

I will um you

you might not come back for another six

nine maybe 12 months

um now we

females tend to come back more

because we do have a lot of

a wider selection of shoes

you know we

we would we sell a lot in a lot of cases

what you call euro comfort brands

do you guys familiar with that term

so there’s a German company

will sell a lot of their sandals

company called Finn Comfort

people who buy fin comfort love fin comfort

they come back buy it you know all the time from us

so we might see a female three or four times a year

and a male you may not see

you know until the following year

so really in that first year almost two years

most of the customers you see

you earned either through word of mouth or

or advertising or whatever

so it takes

it takes a while to build up a customer base that is

that’s gonna pay off but once you have it

you have a really nice annuity investment

so if you have patient capital

if you’re not trying to replace a

you know 150,000 dollar salary in your first year

you know with your franchise

then it can work very well

um but we do caution people that hey

this is gonna be a slow roll

especially if you go into a new market

that’s never heard of a foot solutions

I respect that and I get what you’re saying

just kind of recap some of the things John

you’re just sharing

obviously you’re very franchisee friendly

it’s a pretty affordable cost of entry

for a retail concept smaller footprint

did you say it’s under 15 square feet it sounds like

you know it’s uh pretty reasonable royalty of 5% uh

not a lot of employee count

so low employee count uh

and then I also heard a sort of a slow roll

and just being very transparent around that uh

because it’s not a built in recurring uh

revenue stream just because the nature of you know

the treatments or I don’t know if I’m saying

using the right word there

well

we wouldn’t say treatments cause we’re not doctors okay

uh you just don’t need

you don’t need

another pair of shoes for a little while

you don’t

need another pair of customs for a little while

unless we do

have a lot of people come back

and buy a second and third pair

because they’re tired of

taking them out of their shoes

and put them in a different shoes

that makes sense you know

after we’ve sold you that first sale

and we’ve solved your problem

you’re gonna come back next year and get it solved

again but we may not see you again until next year

so it seems like this is a business model

that would lend itself

very much to educating your customer base

um so what

what are your recommendations there

for your franchisees education of the customers

along with best approach for customer acquisition

um very much appreciate the question so

um we do encourage franchisees

to work as much on the business as they can

in the you know

and avoid working in the business if they can

so getting out in the local community

um we get a lot of referrals from the medical community

uh even pediatricians too um

sometimes we consider as competitors

most times consider as allies um

so we get a lot of referrals from pediatricians

chiropractors physical therapist

orthopedists um

so so getting to those offices and saying hey

here’s what we do here’s what we do

where are you sending people

when they walk in with back pain

and they’re wearing

a really cheap pair of shoes

that they got off the internet

that doesn’t provide them any support

uh where are you sending people

when you can tell they’re misaligned

and they’re they’re supinating or overpronating and

and where are you sending people for custom orthotics

um and also um

what kind of people do you see and

and what what’s your specialty

so we always start with that

because we get a lot of people who are breaking down

in the stores who are experiencing pain

so oh you’ve got back pain

I’ll get you some custom orthotics and footwear

to help alleviate that

but here’s a chiropractor who we know and

and like so we’re able to do a nice little referral

cross referral relationship on the local level um

on the national level

we have our own marketing team that will

that buys all the ads for you

so you spend the money

but there’s no markup or anything

from what we’re doing we have the team to do it

so you say hey

I’d like to spend your recommended amount on the budget

um here’s the money and

and would you guys go and put it out in the market

and that’s all the sort of normal things

that you would expect

Google Adwords and Facebook and social and um

sometimes Billboard sometimes print that

that kind of thing

um so

but

customer acquisition is very much about local stuff

and I’d say this too um

we can do all the things right

on the local level and on the national level

but really

that customer experience is what we’re focused on

so um

the person that you have in the store

if they provide a good experience

if they go through the process

do it well um educate the customer uh huh

empower the customer

these are all part of our our company values um

then that customer’s gonna go away and talk to her mom

you know or or her sister

our her brother

because everybody that I know just about

either has some issue that we can alleviate

or knows somebody you know

who has an issue that we can alleviate

so there’s the word of mouth

especially if you give them a good experience

and treat them really well

which we do um

it can be an enormous customer acquisition benefit

sounds like customer experience is a key

key differentiator for you

it is and it it really starts with um

hiring the right people so we hire for attitude

and then we train for confidence

we’re not the only people to do that

that’s not a mystery but um

we train them so well that I think you get an

an experience in there that you wouldn’t get

if you go to a running store

and you say hey

I’m I really like to run but my my heel is hurting me

the person who

is going to greet you probably works in the store

and no no offense to running stores

they probably work at the store

because they like to run

you know

and they needed a retail job or wanted a retail job uh

if you go to a Foot Solutions and say um

I really like to run

but my my my heel is really hurting me um

someone would our folks would say OK

let’s take off your shoes

let’s take a look at your feet they touch your feet

they would they would bend your toes

let’s see how your flexibility is

I’m gonna watch you walk back and forth

I’m gonna put you on a digital scanner

I’m gonna scan your feet

I’m gonna see where the pressure uh

is being distributed across your feet

I’m gonna I’m gonna measure arches

I’m gonna see if your arches are the same height

on both both feet

which most time they’re not uh

which is why you don’t necessarily get

get away with buying over the counter insoles

they don’t necessarily work one of the reasons um

and then they’re gonna say well it looks like um

I can tell here by the way you’re walking

that you got flat feet um

it looks like you’re really

stretching your plantar fascia

and probably

that heel pain is being caused by plantar fasciitis

even though it’s heel pain

it’s probably being caused on the bottom of your foot

um and so what I’m gonna do is

I’m gonna build a custom orthotic

that’s gonna fill that fill that arch up

it’s gonna provide some support

I’ve even got socks

that are related to plantar fasciitis

I’m gonna put you in sock socks that

that that have graduated compression that’ll

that’ll hold up that arch

and then I’m gonna put you in

in these more supportive shoes

so that you’re not sort of

wobbling around while you’re walking

and if you’re up for it here is a pair of of sandals

supportive sandals

that you can wear at the end of the day

because if you do everything right during the day

and then you go home and you start walking on a hard

flat surface

you’re just gonna be stretching that thing out

and causing that heel pain

even more problems and so

the difference between what you get at a Foot Solutions

and what you get it at a running store

or just a normal shoe store

is so astronomically different

that people feel it and see it right away

that was a long answer no

that’s a good answer though

it it kind of leads into I

I think the first thought is is

you know you’re hiring for attitude

but then

there must be a lot of training and support to give

your employees the ability to actually do that

and it sounds like technology is really wrapped around

this too so

can you share a little bit more about the training

and support

and maybe even the technology that helps with that

piece of things so

we have a combination of in person and online training

there’s about 65 hours of online case studies and and

classes on biomechanics that you have to take

and you have to take the

and you have to answer questions and quizzes

or you can’t keep going

so you have to learn the sort of the book knowledge

and then

we pair new employees with a very experienced people

we have what’s called Certified Pedorthist

in most of our stores

we’re one of the largest employers of Certified

Pedorthist

and most of them we put through the training

pedorthist is somebody who’s certified to do footwear

selection

and custom orthotic design

it’s an independent certification

believe it or not there’s something called a um

what’s it called a a shoe fitter

it’s called a uh a shoe fitter certification

so that’s an independent certification as well um

it allows a lot of our stores to work with Medicare

so a lot of our stores are able to do Medicare with a

with a cert with a

what’s called a CPED a certified pedorthist

and so we take new folks

and we run them through the online training

where they have the book knowledge

then we put them in store

underneath a mentor to make sure they’re learning from

different experiences and then

they always have somebody they can call if they have a

a case that they can’t quite figure out

um add to that we put them on the best technology

everybody says they have the best technology but we do

we we have

we went to Europe that’s one of the things we changed

when we bought the business

we went to Europe and found the best thing

but the foot care

most of the best things come out of Germany

so it’s a German Spanish

Dutch company that we license their technology from

it’s foot scanning CAD Cam design

a custom orthotics

and what we can do on it is super cool

you can go and look at our videos online

or ads or whatever

but what we can do on the system is super cool

we can once the feet have been scanned

we can rotate the feet

we can do all sorts of measurements

we can show you where your arches are

we can we can show you where the pressure points are

we can show you where where the pressure is distributed

and that kind of thing um

so it’s a very cool system

that feeds into a CAD Cam design

and all staff are trained to uh

do an intake form so you do the foot and gait analysis

you watch him walk you see what’s going on with him

we’ve trained you heavily to know what to do in that

in those cases depending on what

what they’re presenting and then that goes into a

an intake form into the system

so the scan along with your observations

along with the associate

or the store manager’s observations

go into an intake form

that’s fed into a CAD Cam system

uh and then the designer design team makes

designs a custom uh

and then 3D prints it and sends it to the store

so it’s very turnkey um

and the people who are doing the design take the notes

and they can they can really

they can really put something together nice

and that is by the way

I’m just had enough too much coffee

that is by the way

why um

it’s very much different than what you see

a lot of these mail in have you ever seen those mail in

they call them stomp boxes

so you step into it you step into it and you mail it

and they make you a custom orthotic

well it’s very hard for a

stomp box to know what’s going on with you

or your lifestyle where you’re presenting

where you have blistering

you know where where you have callusing

there’s there’s all sorts of things that

Stomp Box can’t tell you but they definitely can’t

replace an in person experience with a

with a foot health expert

do do you feel like it’s funny

I just thought of this I have three boys

they’re in sports

my youngest always complained about his feet

and then my oldest did a little bit too

because he did a lot of sports

do you find yeah

it’s more of a

what age group do you usually service

it’s a great question um

one of the reasons we bought the business is um

when I was 21 years old I was a baseball player

I had terrible terrible shin splints

uh in my junior year of college

I finally went to the trainer and told him about it

I said look

I’m taking 6 Advil a day that’s true

I was taking before practice

6 Advil and before games

because I could hardly run without it

just shooting pain up through my

up through my body it’s painful

yeah um

and he said let me take a look at your feet

and he said you need custom orthotics

I said I don’t even know what that is

um he

back then and still a lot of people do

they made a cast of my feet

um which is the very old school way to do it

very time consuming

and also a lot of human error involved in that

which is why we do digital scans now

you made a cast of my feet

sent it off to a lab and a couple of weeks later

maybe three weeks later

I got a pair of custom orthotics

and I swear I never had that problem again

never had shin splints again

it just sort of started turning into a dull pain

and then the pain went away entirely

um so if your son’s having uh

we said his foot pain

yeah if your son’s having foot pain

he can go to a Foot Solutions and I

I would almost give you 100% guarantee that some

he’ll feel a lot better where is he having the pain

oh goodness

that’s a good question I would have to ask him

I I’ve

I’ve kind of blown it off for a year or so

so I wouldn’t even talk to him about it

but this might be your motivator Sherry

what we end up doing John

is we end up just getting those standard inserts

I think

we went to a running store or something like that

yeah and give us

those things are better than nothing

over the counter insoles are better than nothing

typically um

but you know they’re made for a mass audience

it’s you know

you can’t really do a whole lot with someone’s feet

if you’re trying to fit everybody’s foot

yeah no

I love that I love that you have that technology

out of curiosity um

there are some certifications that you’re looking for

it sounds like for oversight

so do you provide that certification

or do you help them find

people who have that certification

so they’ve got somebody in there for oversight

um normally what the

normally what you do is

you hire somebody who doesn’t have the certification

and we help train them through that certification

part of the certification is having hours

underneath a qualified professional

it’s an independent certification

it’s not hours

um which it’s a board certification so it’s very legit

but we are the ones who help you get those hours

by putting our people in front of your

and training your your folks um

and then we don’t actually do the classes

but we know what classes you have to take we

we just help folks through the process really

and and then what about the the owner

the franchisee what are you looking for in a franchisee

to be able to run this type of business successfully

um

energy and professionalism are the two things

I look for the most um

someone who uh under

has a general understand of how businesses operate

is an important piece of it um

I think in the past

there was a lot of attrition in food solutions

with franchising and quite frankly

it was if you had a heartbeat and a franchise fee

you could you could join

which I I you know

I know a lot of franchises that operate that way

and that’s fine if if you’re baking cookies

um but you really

have to have a professional understanding of business

uh and have a lot of energy because you can’t just you

you got to learn quite a bit when you get started um

it’s real easy for a franchisee to say well

we’re turnkey we are not turnkey um

the the advantage of that and and Sherry’s like

oh no they’re not Turkey

the advantage of that is

there’s a very high barrier to entry

so um

if you buy a dog washing franchise

that’s great and you may be the first person

into your market to have the dog washing franchise

but the minute it starts working

it’s very easy for somebody else to start

washing dogs in the area

it’s a very easy thing to get started doing um

you don’t we are on a national level uh

there’s nobody who really does what we do um

the Good Feet store is probably the closest to us

except for they don’t they don’t do digital scans

you walk

you get a footprint they don’t make custom orthotics

you get an over the counter

or a set of three over the counter

um they’re much more expensive

even

they’re over the counter and they’re more expensive

there’s not really anybody

on a national level that does what Foot

Solutions does

that’s because it’s hard to be but solutions

you have to have I mean

we’re 25 years old and we’ve had to learn on

over and over and over again how to do it right um

you don’t just open a store and start building Medicare

you know so so when it comes to the owner

the franchisee we’re looking for professionalism

high energy is does part of that have to do with it

appears based on what I’ve heard you say

this is kind of a b to B play as well as a B to C play

so it is

in terms of referral building

it very much is yeah yeah

so I what

what’s the day in the life look like for the owner

are they going out and making those connections

with the referral partners

um it depends

we have a lot of mom and pops who became

you know went through all the training

and they run their own store

and it’s their income and they have a nice income

and they enjoy it because it is

you are helping people every day and they do that

we have a lot of mom and pops that do that

we do have some multi unit franchisees

uh who bought

you know multiple territories

they’ve got a manager

they work in the store some so they get a feel for it

um but most of the time they’re out

um talking to the different referral partners

they’re going to the um old folks homes

I don’t know how do you what do you call them now

assisted living or senior

yes

I’m from Alabama we can call them old folks homes

I’ll be haha

they’re going to assisted living areas and they’re

they’re they’re giving foot health

uh expos foot

you know they’re talking about foot health

and how to take care of your feet

they’re going to the health fairs

the senior health fairs in their local communities

talking about what Food Solutions does

the main reason is we don’t have

we really don’t have a demand problem

I’ll go to my grave saying that um

there are plenty of people who could use it

I mean

Sherry just said my son could use the service right

everybody knows someone who could use the service but

um we have a we have an education problem um

and an opportunity so

I think there’s a lot of folks that are in foot health

are selling insoles

or selling socks or different shoes or whatever

and they all

consider themselves playing in the same sandbox

in footwear they sort of are

but in foot health

there’s enough customers to go around

I I don’t really worry that much about what

competitors are doing

because if the world knows what we do

and they know what competitors do

they’re gonna come to Foot Solutions

I I think you’re right and I

I’ve had more than one other parent tell me

that their child is having foot issues

so this is not an age specific situation

it’s all ages

and I can see sports being very hot for this um

so can what about the operator for the owner

the franchisee does it allow them to be semi involved

or is this more full involvement

to really get your business scaled and running

as long as you’re well capitalized

you can be as little involved

as you want to okay you just got to be able to

to weather those first couple years

paying for your manager and for your staff

so basically

if you want to step away and be more semi involved

then you need to put a GM in place yeah

who’s who’s gonna do those day to day operations

that maybe you’re you’re trying to step away from

we prefer that we

we want them to know the ins and outs of the business

and and be able to

you know look over the shoulders of their managers

and know if they’re doing it properly

but we we want you out there on the street

absolutely yeah

we always say in the ideal world

you’re in there fully so you know your business well

then you know how to hire

to be able to step away down the road

but a lot of times

people are looking for the inverse of that

that’s a good way to look at it yeah yeah

do you guys have any I mean you’ve got great technology

you really have a clear niche that you’re looking for

and what you’re offering your service is a clear niche

uh do you have a

any vision for the future

of how things might continue to grow

and even get better uh

well

the in the insole industry itself is supposed to grow

continue to grow over 7% for the next 10 years

so if we can’t keep up with 7% growth we’re failing

I think we um we probably have

we have about 50 locations in the US room

there’s room for at least 200 more quite honestly

we’re open about one franchise a month right now

and we have never used an FSO

we we get a lot of our

our franchise leads from

one consultant who knows us pretty well

and then we get some from the website

we don’t advertise franchises

it was very purposeful to go much slower

in the beginning um

because we

we don’t want to grow any faster than we can

hire superstars or

or get franchisee superstars

and we also wanted to make sure we had the support

right

um and that’s why Pam and I met actually

because now I’m saying okay

we’re uh we feel comfortable

pressing the gas on franchise sales and openings um

we’ve we’ve gone through it of course

we’ll still make mistakes

but we’ve gone through it enough to know like okay

we’ve got a nice little process here um

and and the team is in place and ready to go

and we know what we’re doing

you know

as much as anybody can know what they’re doing um

so that’s that’s

I think we’ve got room for a couple hundred more

I’d love to see it

I don’t need to open 100 locations in a year I

I hate when I see franchise

franchises sell 200 locations and they’ve opened three

you know that that that that’s almost fraudulent

you know

and so I would love to um

get to a point where opening at least two a month

um in the foreseeable future

and just kind of

continue to do that kind of steady growth but

but ramp it up as we get more and more capabilities

more and more talent

that’s some very nice methodical growth

no doubt mm hmm

I hope so it it sounds more methodical than it is

that’s good though so real quick

let’s just kind of touch upon a couple of the uh

you know the investment numbers

uh what’s your item 7 look like

the initial investment to become a franchise operator

um I think it’s somewhere don’t quote me

it’s somewhere in the hundred and seventy range

in the low end to um

a little over two hundred

okay so very affordable

yeah it’s very affordable and most of that’s retail

so most of that’s cash on the shelf

okay makes sense

are you offering up

you mentioned earlier in the podcast

some of the revenue patterns

and I’m certain you were speaking to your item 19

could you just kind of share those real quick

quickly again

yes

footwear margin is somewhere around 50%

um one 5 right

no five zero

oh thank you

I want to make sure I heard that correctly

50% your average shoe store will do

I think it’s the last I saw was like 46% gross margin

we’re closer to 60 we’re over 60 on average uh

because uh

the customer orthotics uh

the margin is in the knowledge

it’s not in the product

so we’re selling a service more than anything

and that that service gets a pretty high

you know sort of close to 80% uh

gross margin

now depending on the

the mix your sales mix

you know you can be the

I’ve never seen anybody go well no

that’s not true last year

I think I had one person over 70% gross margin

but but the best stores are kind of in the mid 60s

in terms of gross margin um

I’m trying to remember now what’s in the FTD

and what I know ha ha ha ha ha ha yeah right

I’ll probably stop there ha ha

fair enough fair enough yeah

good idea ha ha

that’s definitely enticing

and I always and I’ll just go ahead

and I’ll put this disclaimer in for you

and obviously what you want to pay attention to

if you are considering this franchise

or any franchise is um

you know understanding the actual numbers

that are in the franchise disclosure document

the item 19

and then of course

validating that with other business owners

that’s a big important step

for anyone that’s doing their due diligence

and trying to identify

this is a business that aligns with them

yes uh

please hear that attorneys

yeah exactly

everybody heard that right

so those are not uh

exact numbers you gotta get in there

build your performance

understand it and what’s in the FDD

as well as validate it with franchisees

and any additional thoughts you would like to share

John um

I will say um

for the most part I’m the one who takes the

the franchise leads um

those calls

OK you can get past Pam and Cherry as the

the gatekeepers

I’m the one who takes the calls

cause we take it very seriously

I mentioned that our franchisees are business partners

and we want to make sure we know you

and we’re comfortable with you

and vice versa

um

you know it’s kind of a crazy thing to say

but um

you know we

we bought I don’t think I told you this

but we bought this we closed

one week before the first covid death in the US

and you can imagine

we’re serving kind of boomers plus warm

our customer base

so we had a a wild kind of first year and a half

two years where we worked on the brand

we didn’t worry about making any money

but we really tried to get this thing set up

so you know

having I think we uh

we sold we

we open franchising up in 2023

and we started selling sort of back half of 2023

and so now we’re you know

we’re opening about one per month

one new store per month

and there’s a lot of decent momentum starting

to build with the franchise if you it’s crazy to say

but a 25 year old brand feels to me like a startup

like an early early brand

you know

there I think I have someone about to buy Charlotte

but this is just an example

Charlotte’s one of the hottest market in franchising

and I don’t have anybody yet that has it

you know um

so there’s an opportunity to get in with Foot Solutions

I think it’s a little

because it feels very sort of early stage and there’s

the momentum’s kind of building

now it’s going to be a bit you know

you’re not buying a chick fil a

or I can wish you can buy a chick fil a

but you’re not buying a Starbucks where you know

okay I’ll put a million and a half into this thing

I know it’s gonna be producing the X amount of money

you’re you

it is probably more of a risk than other franchises

but this is actually something that I feel like

could really explode

especially as we open more

and people learn more about the brand

and understand the brand a little bit better

because I can tell you in Atlanta

we have in the Atlanta area

we have several stores um

I mean several six depending on how you count Atlanta

um but I can I

even though we’ve been here for several years

and the company was founded here um

I bet you less

than 5% of the population even knows what we do

no doubt

I can completely see that this

every all the issues with your knees

with your lower back with your feet

I mean you guys are

it’s just all about getting that education out there

so people really understand what you do

so really

getting that franchisee

that knows how to get out there

and inform the community that they live in

I think that would be that’s right

I’ll I’ll sign you up

Sherry about it sign me up

let’s go

I like it I have a couple of people in my household

who could use it um

alright John

it has been great having you

thank you for all the information you’ve provided

for educating us on foot solutions

and the opportunity uh

great opportunity that’s out there

a lot of territory that’s available

uh before we wrap it up

Pam and I always like to end um

our podcast with this final question to uh

you know our guests

uh and that question is

what tips would you give to budding entrepreneurs

what would you say to that

how much time do you have

ha ha as much as you need

ha ha there’s a lot to tell

isn’t there uh

the first thing I’d say is um

work on yourself first so I think a lot of folks make a

and I did this I made this mistake so I can speak to it

um when I got out of college

I felt like I didn’t know anything

but I wanted to be a big shot

um so I read uh

all the Harvard Business Review journals

that I could get my hands on

I still have them I read a lot of uh

management books you know

whatever I could find like okay

well I’m gonna be a business person and

you know everybody talks about

you know emotional intelligence

you know just making

I’m not coming with anything important there

but they say

let’s read a book about emotional intelligence

well I

I feel like we gotta take a step back a minute

and just become emotionally intelligent

you know you don’t read a book about

how to win friends and influence people

I think you just become someone

who people want to be friends with uh

and and don’t mind being influenced by

um so a part of being an entrepreneur I think is

is being someone that uh

folks trust being someone who uh

folks wanna work with folks believe in

and I’m not saying I am that person

but in order to be that person

you gotta you

you’ve gotta be good internally

in my opinion

I think a lot of folks are charlatans and maybe they

they can kind of

fool people for a certain period of time um

but I’ve always thought you know

maybe put down the the non fiction books and put

you know read the fiction books

start looking thinking about human nature

uh work on your spiritual life as much as you can um

so that you know

you’re there for people as someone who they want

you know they want to find a leader

and they want to find somebody that they trust

and believe in and that’s

to me

that’s the way you can get there as an entrepreneur

second thing and I heard

this is not me I heard this

I thought it was great advice

if you’re an entrepreneur

and you’re working on something that you think is new

you keep grinding and every time you grind

and things don’t work out for you

you still think to

you gotta go back to your fundamental question

do I believe my um

my initial assumptions were right about this business

if not

have they changed enough to make me not want to do it

um and do I think that

that I’m onto something here

do I still believe I’m onto something here

and if the answer to those things is no

like have the fundamentals

have they changed

if I’m looking at this honestly

am I really onto something

if the answer is that to is no

then you need to go to something else

but if the answer is yes you just keep grinding

you keep grinding

and we had to do that in foot solutions

especially during the covid period

and subsequent to that we lost

you know after everybody ran out of their PPP money

they still weren’t selling any shoes for events

they still people weren’t going out to

you know work work

it was a big disaster for the foot solutions in general

but we had to keep asking ourselves

do we still believe in this business

do we still think we’re onto something

uh and the answer was always yes

and so we just keep keep grinding and keep grinding

because eventually it catches up

you know eventually it catches up and it works

anyway I could talk forever

I thought that was good thank you

needless to say we really appreciate the

the inside

it’s kind of fun to have that question in place because

uh

it it

we get we get some answers that have been consistent

and then we get new answers to that question

all of them

all of them are such great value

and that’s my dog and he has an opinion too

that’s what I’m hearing hahaha

but John thank you so much

thanks again

for being a guest on the Franchise Business Radio show

um Sharon

I like to close out and just say to our listeners

you know

if franchise ownership is something you are considering

contact us for a free franchise consultation call

and we would welcome giving you a free ebook

top 10 questions to consider

before investing in a franchise

we like to say investigate before you invest

that’s right the goal is

to put you in a position to make a wise

franchise decision dodge costly mistakes

and achieve financial independence

thanks for tuning in

this is the franchise sisters signing off fist bump