Episode 5: How Belfor Became a 15 Brand Franchise Giant – With Doug Smith

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Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Franchise Business Radio Show powered by the franchise sisters. This is your co host Pam curry, and your other co host, Sherry curry. Skuldaker, yeah, on today’s episode of Franchise Business Radio, we have a franchise expert with us to just to discuss what it has been like to watch a parent company grow and build out a portfolio of multiple franchise brand opportunities. That’s right, we are talking about Belfor Franchise Group. So Belfort stands at the forefront of the residential and commercial services franchising sphere, and is the parent company of 14 robust service based franchise opportunities their portfolio of brands include one 800 water damage, Kim dry ducks, helpful heroes, put enhance blue kangaroo, pack outs, the patch boys, one 800 board up, red box plus dumpsters, Z plumbers, Winmar, clear, pest pros, cool, bends and Junko. Plus, that’s a mouthful of brands there. Hey, Doug, welcome to the show. Sherry. Would you repeat that? Please? I’m sorry,

one time’s enough. Thanks. Yeah,

there’s days when people ask me to list those, and I might miss one or two. It’s getting to be that point where keep track of them also. I’m not going to lie, I read it off a list. There’s no way I was going to remember that. But Doug, thanks so much for joining the podcast before we get to starting into learning a little bit more about a few of these brands that Belfort Franchise Group offers. Can you share with our listeners a little bit of your history and your position within bell for Franchise Group?

Sure? You know, I think people always ask, right? I think you guys get asked, I get asked you, how’d you get into franchising? It’s always a weird story that takes a lot of turns. It’s never point A to point B type of story, right? And way back when I went to school for hospitality management, you know. So I’ve gone to be, you know, in the restaurant business, and I came out, and I spent 13 years in the restaurant business, but I worked for franchisees. So various, you know, different franchisees

worked for a large company in upstate New York that owned about 60 different or 60 restaurants, about four or five different concepts. So I got my taste of franchising from the franchisee side of things in the food business for years and years

after I get out of the restaurant business, because it’s a fun, exciting, high energy business, but it’s also very taxing, a lot of hours, not always conducive to raising a family, etc. So still, still love it and miss it in certain days. But you know, it comes with its downsides as well as its upside. So got into sales on a couple of different channels

over over several years, and that ultimately led me to franchise sales with a company called Harris research back about 1011, years ago, which was the parent company, the time for chem, dry and enhance, which you just mentioned Sherry in your in your long laundry list, there brands that we own. I spent about four years with them, and we were acquired by Belfort Franchise Group at that point in time. So Belfort Franchise Group had three brands at the time, they had one 800 water damage. They had hoods and they had ducks. So they had those three,

which is our commercial cleaning, commercial kitchen exhaust cleaning franchise, as well as our with hoods and then ducks, with our vent cleaning and exhaust cleaning, HVAC maintenance franchise. So

those, and then ducks was our first one way back in the early 2000s followed by hood shortly thereafter. And then they acquired one 800 water damage back around 2015 so those, those three made up Belfer Franchise Group. They acquired Harris research, which brought chem dry and enhanced into the fold. So we had a five brand

franchising organization back in 2019,

Now, fast forward today, as you mentioned earlier, five, five and a half years later, we now have 14 working on 15 brands. So through a series of both acquisitions and startups.

Us, we’ve grown, you know, the family of brands here, and that means we have brands that are brand spanking new, literally, with no franchises just starting up. And we’ve got a brand like chem dry, who started way back in 1977

you know, and has, you know,

couple 1000 franchises, right? So we’re kind of and everywhere in between. So we’re a little bit over the map. We’ve got nearly 300 employees of Belfer Franchise Group to help support our franchisees. So, you know, it’s, we’ve got a brand new, I think you guys have seen it now. You know, we got a brand new sales center and custom showroom where we, you know, where we should literally show off our brands to our candidates. And that’s that. We just opened that in October. So we’ve got a world class training facility right next door there, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So pretty excited. You know, we’re not going to stop. I think we’re going to probably get the 2025, brands here in the next five years. So, wow, we’ll just keep on keeping on. Well, gosh, y’all Miss stealing all the questions that were coming, because that’s that. That’s incredible. And you’re right. We have been to your corporate location that’s a very, very impressive facility in more ways than one. Wow. What a journey, right? To see how things progressed over all of those years and making that come together. I’m kind of curious. Would you have to know it’s it appears that Belfort Franchise Group has a focus on particular type of franchise model. Obviously, you’re not doing food.

Yeah, we’re not going to be getting into the cookie business or the hamburger business, yeah, like that. Lord knows, I frequent those establishments more than I should, but we’re not going

to get to selling those. Do you think you will branch out of, let’s just call it the residential, commercial service oriented models? Do you think you’re going to just Senior Care, Pet Services? I mean, there’s so many different industries. Never, say never. But we have an affinity to brands that have a lot of synergies within I’ll call it the restoration space. It’s not all that, but, but right, everything kind of ties together. So when we look for brands, we do literally look for brands where your sister brands could help refer business back and forth to you when our parent company? So, right? We’re owned by Belfer property restoration. It’s the world’s largest restoration company. It’s nearly a $3 billion company in, you know, between 30 and 40 countries around the world,

you know. So that’s our that’s our parent company, right? That’s and so a lot of our brands are looked at as you know, could they also be a referral source for our franchisees, and could our franchisees help support them when they’re stretched beyond their own means? Right? So think about a catastrophe, a hurricane down in Florida, in North Carolina, we had, you know, a few months ago. Belfor responds, and they’re working with, you know, communities, hospitals, municipalities, universities, some residences, but, you know, they start with, kind of the biggest of the big right jobs. And depending on how much damage there is, they may need help getting to, like the residences, the homes, the communities that that are just, you know, smaller individual jobs. When those hurricanes hit, we had over 50% of our one 800 water damage network respond and go over to North Carolina and Florida to help with the, you know, the restoration jobs on both of those locations. So not only it’s a win, win, right, Belfort is getting the help they need to service those communities, but then the franchises are picking up all this incremental business that they might not otherwise get. So we kind of look at everything when we acquired red box, plus dumpsters, right? One of the thoughts we had when we acquired those, my God, look at look at Belfor and how much they spend on an annual basis, just in the US alone, on renting dumpsters, right on their on their jobs.

Think about if we could just keep some of that within the family of brands, right? If we had a brand where we’re actually just pushing that business to some of our franchisees, that just keeps that, that just kind of keeps it in that same environment, right? So, so we do look at things that that do have those kind of commonalities and synergies with each other.

So I don’t know if we’ll change that or not, but right now, I think that’s still the kind of focus. How do we? How do we it’s a nice, clean puzzle. How do we just find another piece that fits nicely in with all the other now, that makes perfect sense, and you’re bringing up a really great point, which is the synergy and kind of the you’re almost creating your own ecosystem, right within the exactly right, the family of brands right there, which I see value.

Well, obviously we do not have the ability to go into detail across all 14 brands, unless we want to hang out on this podcast for the

next I may be late for dinner if we do

on Vegas, right? I one of those.

So what I was thinking we might be able to do is this, let’s focus on you’ve already mentioned a couple of the brands, right? And definitely get that. But let’s focus on two brands so we can get into more details around the actual business model, the actual franchise opportunity, just to allow someone make it more tangible. And I thought we could start off with one of your more emerging,

fun brands that I think is a bit of a disruptor, called Cool bins. Absolutely, we’re so stoked about cool bins.

So it is, it is a disruptor in the industry. So it’s in the portable storage industry. However, it is climate controlled portable storage, and there’s very little of that out there today at any scale at all. So you know that that the president of the brand is still the founder of the brand. And you know that story goes back to he and his wife lived down in southern Florida, and they were impacted by Hurricane Ian years ago. And you know, what do you do when you have to have your house gutted and your floors removed and all that kind of stuff, right? You gotta take every all your belongings and your contents and put it into storage, right? So that’s what they did to a non climate control, just your everyday, you know, I won’t mention any names, but another, you know, another bin of sorts. You know, they went back two or three weeks later to get some things that they needed out of the bins. And most of their things were ruined, the mold and the mildew, yellowing of, you know, plastics, artwork, getting all mold and just, just most, everything they had in their bins was completely ruined. So they thought to themselves, there’s got to be a better answer to this, right? So Ernie, our president, who fancies himself a bit of a research and development guy from his history, started that process and going out and designing these bins, not only are they climate control, but they’re they’re thick, all stainless steel insulated, marine grade floors, solid stainless steel roofs insulated.

So not and then they’re climate controlled. So you it helps with both your temperature and your humidity, which is what is going to ruin your your goods, right? So,

and they are both, they all will both heat and cool. So they’re actually appropriate for other markets where, you know, up in the north, when maybe in the wintertime it gets down to zero degrees, they can hold temp, you know, on the heating side of things as well, so it protects your belongings. You know, I’ve been asked like, well, you know, what’s the big deal? You know, if it’s not climate controlled, you know, so what? And I often say, okay, so think about everything in your home, and think about what that’s worth to you. And when you think about that, you know, would you rather pull up a red box dumpster and sit it outside your home and or cool bins? You want to put your stuff in a pool bins and protect it, or do you want to just throw it all away? Because that’s what you’re essentially going to do, if it’s not in a climate controlled storage container, right? So, so I think it is a bit of a disruptor, and, you know, we’re excited it’s emerging. We just, we have two corporate locations, and we just sold our second franchise, oh, about four or five days ago. So we’re very excited. We have locations in Michigan, Florida,

Athens, Georgia and now Charlotte. We just signed on this past week. So really excited about the franchisees. They’re, obviously, it’s very new, and they’re, they’re very new. So they’re just kind of getting things kicked off. But,

you know, it’s, it’s, it’s just really exciting. They’re, they’re really cool bins. There’s a lot of different uses for them. We’re using them for concession stands, and besides the storage concession stands. And, you know, breweries usually not to house, you know, their extra kegs. And florists use them to to house their flowers, and we’ve got people growing mushrooms in it. I mean, it’s all over the map, you know. So we do have both, not just climate control, but we have refrigeration and freezer bins as well.

Yeah, like you said it, the differentiator is not, is clearly, it’s, it’s it’s climate controlled. But I love the fact that you guys are not limiting yourself to just restoration needs. There is plenty of there’s, aren’t you guys getting into events, second, kitchens, offices. I mean, people are just really looking at this as as a lot of different ways you can use it, which is great. Yeah, there’s no really limited. You can pick it up. We can, we can help you with it, right? So mobile office is one of our options. We have non climate controlled bins, if you really don’t, you know, for just storing tools on a job site or something, right? That doesn’t need to we have that option as well. But, yeah, golf tournaments, you know, one of the big jobs. We have our corporate store down in April.

Holes. You know, there was a large hotel that hosts a PGA golf tournament, and they were renting those big rider trucks, refrigerated rider trucks, but if you think about they sit, you know, probably four or five feet off the ground, and they have a little elevator lift on them. But when you’re going in and out of a refrigerated truck, there’s a lot of condensation, and those get very slippery, and people were falling off the trucks, and they saw our bins at could be at ground level, and they thought, Okay, this is what we need. We need these. You just walk in and out, right? There’s no step up. It’s a lot safer for our employees. They’re not as noisy. All of our bins plug in to a 110 outlet, your regular home or office outlet. You don’t need a big 220 line, or, you know, extra generators, things like that. They just plug right in. They can be run off of generators. They can be run off of solar. So, but we have a we’ve got them being used for workout,

home gyms and things like that. I mean, to your point, Sherry, sky’s the limit. You can really use

there’s music studio somebody’s doing in that. And there’s probably something you use for things I should mention as well.

So so there’s plenty of creativity room for the franchisee who wants to step in and use some of the standard verticals that you guys kind of start out with. But we know that there’s so much opportunity, it’s basically an extra room, and everybody has different ways on what how they want to use that extra room,

out of curiosity, like

just curious about the storage piece of the cool bins as a franchisee owner, and just what’s the investment range to be able to get into something like this to get started, sure it’s going to be a higher right asset investment, because you’re, you’re actually buying these bins that I mentioned, right? So typically, our investment range, range is between 800,000 and about 1,000,002 so it’s going to be higher investment range if you’re looking for, you know, a lot of people look for Section 179, and like depreciation, you know, assets that can be depreciated. So that’s a really great fit for somebody who’s looking for that type of business, right,

you know, and that the nice thing about that is also it’s low labor. It’s low labor

because I don’t know if that Phone’s ringing on my end or your end, but,

but you only need a driver, probably a person and a half to start. Because you’re really talking about a driver to start, an office manager slash salesperson, right? Because these bins, unlike our dumpster rental business, where the whole key is turns, you want to be that dumpster should be turning, you know, 234, times a month you’re picking up from job sites, emptying it, you know, taking it back. This is kind of a drop, and leave in place, right? You can take it to the drop it, they’re going to pack it. It could be left at the home for the period of time they need. Or we are also able to, you know, bring it back to our place and store it. I don’t know if their HOA doesn’t let them, you know, keep a bin on site, something like that. So there’s, there’s two options, but the average rental period is about eight months on our bins. Wow. The average rental period in the portable storage space in general is typically like 30 to 45 days. So ours is, people don’t want to give them back. They love

that extra room. You’ve officially moved in, and it’s not going away. We’ve got bins that have not, you know, they went out early on in the business, and just never came back, right? They just keep paying their monthly fees on so that’s, that’s, that’s more the model that we set them and then put them in place, and people use them for what they’re going to use it for, but suddenly leave them and keep getting that monthly paycheck for,

I’ll say rental, but I don’t know if that’s the proper word. No rentals, fine. Yeah, absolutely. So it’s really kind of, I know it’s a large investment, but if you can get several out there and that recurring revenue, that’s that’s a great long term play for people to take into consideration.

All right, so great differentiators from from your standard storage bins, I guess you might say you guys already talked kind of tapped into this about your training facility. Pam, and I have been there. It’s It’s beautiful, but I have not been there since you created the additional kind of sales area as well. Do you want to share a little bit more about what does the training look like when it comes to cool bins and they can come up and see your beautiful facility? Sure, well, and full bins. Part of the training, obviously, is specifically the brand, but a lot of the training you get, you know, is training you’re going to get with any of our brands, right, when it comes to just the the learning about the business end of things, right? And being an entrepreneur, and what you need to watch out for, right? And and sales and marketing and, you know, operations, things like that, right? That’s going to be largely, you know, common amongst all of our brands. But you know, when it comes to cool bins, most of our brands train in our Ann Arbor facilities, so they come up anywhere from usually one to two weeks, depending on that, the type of brand it is,

you’ve seen it, we’ve got a full fledged training facility up there. And.

And we train most of the brands. They’re built out. A lot of them are restoration based. So what you might see, and part of the training you’ll get with not just cool bins, but our blue kangaroo pack outs, for example, we have a one of the few of about a dozen certified flood houses in the country. So when I say flood house, right, that’s what you trained for restoration. It’s literally a little three bedroom house that we flood, right? We put six, eight inches of water into it, and that’s how you train our one 800 water damage franchisees.

That’s cool, initially, that’s all we used it for. Now we, you know, we punch holes in the walls, and we have our patch boys franchise training, preparing walls. We pack out. It’s a fully functional house, right? So the TVs work, the furniture is in there, the dishes are in there, you know, the desks in the office and the computers are in there. So both our blue kangaroo pack outs franchise, our contents restoration franchise, as well as our cool bins franchise, can use that house to actually train to go in and and what you would do to pack out a, you know, a pack out a house for pack outs, or pack out and fill a bin for cool bins. So it we’re able to use kind of this cross functional training facilities for a lot of different brands. So it’s, it’s exciting, you know, you’ve got to learn how to navigate the tool that we use to lift and carry the bins and load them on the trucks. Yeah, it’s kind of like work in a video game, to be honest with you, so you get trained, you know, on how to how to drive those little suckers around

strong thumbs, exactly. It really is. It really is if you’re a video gamer, it comes in really handy out when you, when you own a cool bins franchise. So, but go ahead, I was going to say it. It seems like this particular brand with, within all of your brands, it’s pretty simple, right? Yeah, outside of maybe learning how to move it and maneuver it. So who’s your ideal franchisee, just somebody with a lot of money, or who you guys looking for to really scale a business like, I mean, money, I won’t talk about because, you know, throughout the investment range, you do have to have have some means if you’re going to buy something that’s, you know, a million dollars, right? So. But most of our, most of our candidates, are going through, you know, a lender of some sort, largely SBA loans, and most cases, so.

But the

typical owner, what we see so far is, be honest with you, is, more of a white collar kind of corporate background. So

I’ll give you an example, you know, one of our franchisees comes from, like one of the Big Four accounting and consulting firms, you know. And then our other one

came from it as well. Our the next one will be closing. He came from a large, large retailer in corporate purchasing and so forth. So these are, you know, most of our candidates so far are, you know, been in the corporate world for, you know, 20 years, 25 years, looking to take some of what they’ve earned over that time and work for themselves, and take all the skills that they’ve learned in those jobs and apply it towards a cool bin. So that seems to be where we’ve kind of navigated. Not that it’s not right for other people, but that just seems to be kind of the candidate that’s coming in right now. That’s great. That’s a great profile that a lot of other brands are not necessarily looking for. So I love that. That’s a great opportunity for those. You know, there’s accountants, those it guys, these guys who know numbers and operations and can appreciate a good spreadsheet when they see the potential of the numbers of a cool bins, I imagine, can you give us? I mean, they’re not going to be the guys, I’m assuming, that are driving the band to and from and dropping it off.

What’s the day in life look like for someone who’s going to own a cool Yeah, most of our Frenchies are not driving the truck and delivering the bench, right? That’s their driver. They hire that person and a half a wheel. Initially, a large part of it is going to be in the promotion of the business. Call it sales and marketing, right? I mean, you’ve got to get your name out there, not just because you’re a new business, but it’s also a new brand, and it’s a bit of a twist on an old concept, right? So it’s education is a big part of that right now, for that brand specifically. But you know, it’s not unlike all the other brands, right? You’re starting a business, you need to get it out there, right? You need to start networking with networking with your community. We’re going to obviously train you on the marketing and the sales. You’re going to get the support, you’re going to get all the branding, or you’re going to get all that through through Belfair Franchise Group. But like, I’m always talking about entrepreneurs and opportunities and franchises in general, you

know, it’s still your business, right? You’re an entrepreneur. This is your business. You own this business. You need to get out of the bed every Monday morning, two feet on the ground, out the door, and start networking, especially, you know, those first year or two, right? You’ve got to educate people on your brand. You’ve got to start networking. You’re going to join your chamber meetings, you’re going to get your BNI groups, and whatever else is, you know, specific to your community.

So you’re going to get out there, you’re going to sponsor the sports teams, whatever it is you’re going to do to try to, you know, increase your brand awareness. And then you’re going to start meeting with, you know, people that you’re, you know, contractors. Is a great one, right? Because you can use all types of bins that we have. So to your point, if you’ve got a large venues that do events, sporting events, you know, whatever that is, outdoor concerts during the summertime, what have you

you know, you’re going to talk to airports. We are ones in Florida. Some of the bins have been rented ever since we started. Are rented to airports, smaller regional airports that don’t have the storage space for all their concessions, all their, you know, bottles of water and candies and stuff that have to be protected in the Florida heat. You know, you don’t want to go get your hair bow gummy bears, and it’s one big sticky mess in the bag, right there. You got to be storing those somewhere, you know, climate controlled. So again, it’s because the bins can be used for so much you just got to start thinking out of the box and who you want to network with and who you want to talk to. So that’s more your day in the life. To start, you mentioned, you want to know your numbers. You want to know you know you’re setting your rates and you’re you know you’re hiring your your person or two, you know that you’re going to be working with. But initially, day in life is about networking, brand awareness and just just getting out in the community and talking to your coach. I’m assuming you guys give them a coach to give them some, you know, KPIs to pay attention to and how to kind of scale that business. As with all of our brands, we have kind of a quick, what we call a jump start program, right? So you come in and all of our franchisees and all of our brands, once you sign on with us, right? You go into our jumpstart program, which is typically six to eight weeks before you ever come to training, right? So that’s a lot of the you’re getting your your entities and your corporations set up, and you’re getting a lot of online training, and you’re doing all the paperwork type of things,

homework assignments, things of that nature, right? That all lead up to coming to that in person training. And then once you have done all that, and you leave that in person training, right, you are assigned a business coach that’s there with you day in, day out. Typically when you start, that’s a pretty frequent conversation, right? You’re probably talking to them every week when you start out, and typically that’ll that’ll wean down right as you get more comfortable in your business and you get busier, that might go to every other week, once a month, once every six months, that coach will be with you forever, just the amount of frequency you know that you meet with regular that’s really up to you. If it’s if you’re somebody that wants to have somebody just bounce things off of and you want to talk every week, they’re happy to do that. We’re happy to do that. If you’re like, I got this, I’ll check in. I’ll call you if I need you, and you’re more that the self starter. And you know, we’re fine with that too. But even when that happens, we’re still watching the numbers in the background, right? We want to make sure that you’re staying on track as well. You may be like, I got it, I got it, I got it. Well, sometimes it becomes evidence to us that maybe you don’t got

it. We’ll reach out to you, right? And make sure just go over your numbers, go over your best practices, go over your employees. You know what? You know, just make sure that things are clicking the way they should be. Should be clicking. You know what? After hearing you kind of talk about this little that jump start and things like that, operator for cool bins. Any chance you guys allow somebody to keep their w2 and own a cool bands, or is it a full time?

Well, they can. They absolutely think they can actually now, I’ll say, with most of our brands, we do encourage people to be owner operators, at least to start. Yeah, it’s really hard right to

to really get a business off the ground if you’re not devoting the time and energy into it. And I know you can hire general managers and so forth. And we will let that happen under certain circumstances. For example, we’re going to want to meet that person, right? And we’re going to want to vet them, just like we’re vetting our owners, and we’re going to require that they come to training and meet the coaches and and so on, right? We’re going to treat them a lot like an owner, if that’s the route you take. And we’re also upfront about, listen, if you’re going to do that, your return on your investment is going to take a little bit longer, right? I mean, if you’re going to pay somebody right out of the gate to be a general manager, you’re gonna have to pay them pretty well to run your business, right? So that’s gonna, you know, delay your, your your ramp up a little bit right from an economical standpoint. So we’re pretty upfront about that, because there are people that aren’t necessarily in a hurry, and they know somebody good and they want to, you know, operate that way. So, so I’m not going to say never, say never. We do encourage people to be owner operators and get into the business. You know, they’ll be doing a lot of training themselves as the months and years go on. They do need to understand the business. They do have to come and train and they do have to understand how the business works. And they’re going to have to train somebody on how to move those bins and how to drive the truck, things of that nature. Right at some point while they’re free to send them back to us for training. You know, that’s not always practical, because you’re hiring, firing, you know, and turning over staff, you know, all the time in the service field. So you need to be able to educate your employees on how to do things day to day. So the best way to do that.

Is for you to be immersed in the business and get the experience yourself. Yeah, yeah. I agree. It makes more sense. No one’s going to run your business at the most efficient top levels you because you’re going to care the most. So if you can get in there and make that happen and understand it at a deep level, it makes it a lot easier to step away and hire appropriately, not not to mention only hire appropriately, but oversee appropriately, because you’ve already done all that same work. So that makes sense. Anything else you want to share about cool pins before we move on to the next brand? Oh, I think it’s, no, it’s just really exciting. It’s for those who want to be, you know, an early adopter, a first in and I’ll be honest, that’s not for everybody, right? That’s not, I get that. I totally understand that we’ve got brands, like I said, that are close to 50 years old and then everywhere in between, right? But, you know, the next cool bins that’s kind of in our pipeline right now, I was, I was going over his his application, and one of the things he answered when he was looking what he was looking for in a business, he said, I want a new, emerging business, a ground floor opportunity to work with somebody to build and that was literally, right, that’s a when we’re talking

about, that’s great, that’s great, and that’s that’s

always easy to find. But he wants to, you know, he wants to share. He wants to have a lot of input, right? He wants to give feedback. He wants to learn. Wants to learn, and he wants to grow with somebody that’s something that really got him juiced up and excited. So we’re like, great, bring that on all day long, right? All day long. That makes perfect sense. Well, you’ve already provided a lot of great insider tips, I think, of what it means to be a business owner with just everything that you’ve already shared, and

the life cycle, right? Of when you guys are doing a red belt for, you know, all the catastrophic comes in the water, mold, fire, and then you’ve gotta bring in one of your one 800 water damage that we’re going to talk about, alright, cuz that’s your restoration brand. And then, of course, you got your other brands that are in there doing their content restoration

before we dump into one 800 water damage. You’ve already talked about COVID Share, just a little bit about one 800 pack outs. Because I think, I don’t think a lot of people are aware that there are content restoration franchises that are out there. Yeah, well, as much as I want to talk about about one 800 pack outs, that’s our competitor, so I’ll talk about blue kangaroo pack out.

My bad, my bad,

Gary. What’s that list again

they get, they get a free shout out today. We’ll try to blur up that one out.

I know those guys, and they’re great guys over there, so,

you know, it’s a niche business, for sure. Pam, right, so I don’t think a lot of people are aware of that, but yeah, we have blue kangaroo pack outs and people like, I don’t know what that is, I don’t know what that means. It’s contents restoration. And then when I say that, people next are like, I don’t know what that means. So the way I usually talk about it is, you know, everybody, picture your house, right? If you were able to pick it up, tip it upside down, and shake it, everything that falls out of that, that’s your contents, right? It’s all your belongings, and that’s furniture and personal belongings and clothing and appliances. It’s everything that kind of falls out of that house. Yes, when you have any type of event, whether that’s water, fire, smoke, mold, wind, hurricane, tornado, what have you, typically before a one 800 water damage or a Belfer property before somebody can come in and start the remediation right? Work itself. You know, whether that’s, you know, ripping out walls, replacing floors, total, gut jobs, whatever that is,

before that has to happen. They can’t work with your belongings in the way, right? So they have to be removed from the home, so our warning Hunter water damage gets on site, and their next call is probably to our blue kangaroo pack outs in the area, and you get come get all this stuff so, and that’s part of it, right? They will pack it out. They will bring it back to their facility, but then they’ll also restore your belongings. Because if this one of these events has happened, think about a fire the smoke, right? All your belongings are soot covered and smell like smoke, and maybe they got water in them from fire hose, whatever that is, right? That stuff has to be restored. So they take it back. Once they pack it out, they restore all your belongings, and then they put them in fresh, clean crates, and those get, you know, put on the shelves, and that ends up being just storage until such a time your home, your business, is put back together, and then they’ll pack it back, you know, they’ll bring it back, and they’ll put it back in the home, just the same way they brought it out. Typically, they’ll take pictures on the way out, so that they know how to put it back on the way in. So, so

that’s kind of what contents restoration is. It is.

Niche. It is largely much like the restoration and the water damage business. It’s paid for by insurance. So again, the homeowner is usually not having to come out of pocket a whole lot, because that’s part of your insurance claim when one of these types of catastrophes happens.

Thank you for that, because I do think that that’s a piece of the life cycle that we’ve been talking about that a lot of people are not aware of. They’re not there’s only, like you mentioned, a couple of of national players out there. We are the largest in the space right now and and there’s only a couple out there. So there’s, there’s a lot of room for growth in that business. The other nice thing about that is, if you’re passionate about restoration and you’re passionate about helping people, but you don’t like the kind of 24/7

vibe of a one 800 water damage or a belt for I mean, those things come whenever, right? If at two o’clock on a Saturday morning the phone rings, there’s been a fire, you got to get out there. There’s been a water pipe breaking. You got to get out there. The contents restoration is a little bit more nine to five ish, because that’s something that can call and schedule a point you come out Monday. We’re going to pack it out. What have it out. What have you. So for those who like the space but don’t like the hours,

a blue kangaroo pack outs or a contents restoration company is is really, really something you should think about that makes sense. Well, let’s talk about more of the emergency side that you’ve already alluded to, with one 800 water damage. I You’re right. This is a need to have business recession resistant. Tell

us a little bit about that business model. Like you said, it’s emergency based. So go ahead and share a little bit lots of players out there, obviously in this space, both on a national level and a local level.

But it is emergency based largely, right? So it’s your point, very recession resistance, so, and it’s not, you know, a lot of times people think, Well, what that’s like hurricanes, right? Well, it is absolutely, but the majority of our business no money, had more damage, isn’t you’re not waiting for a big catastrophic event. I mean, those happen. Tornadoes happen. Hurricanes happen. Wildfires happen, right? Those, those happen,

but we try not to build our businesses and our franchisees businesses based on waiting for those things. It’s the everyday type of things. Well, think about your home. You have pipes burst, either just because of age or because there’s a freeze type of event.

I can’t tell you how many calls are, because the water line the back of your refrigerator going to your ice maker has come loose, and it’s been leaking water all down and hurting your, you know, ruining your wood floors, things like that. Your three year old filling up the bathtub and plugs it up and runs away and goes and plays, you have no idea. And the bath has been overflowing for the last, you know, two hours. The toilet, you name it, right? Washing machine, any number of events, small fires, right? Not just cat, but, you know, just small kitchen fires, what have you There’s any number of things that happen every single day across the 1000s of 1000s of events every single day, right? That happened that are more everyday occurrences. So it really is

emergency based. It’s absolutely needed. It’s usually insurance coverage that pays for the events, so,

you know. And if you people always ask, Well, what do you look for in a candidate that wants to be a franchise? And one of the things we look for is empathy, right?

You anybody can, you know, go buy a business, right? Of any type of business, but when you’re in these spaces, you really need to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. I always say, you know, you did. You need to be at your best when your customers at their worst, right? That that’s my next door neighbor’s house burned down right next door. I watched this real time. I watched the emotion. I watched the they had three daughters, you know, and all their belongings and their school projects and, you know, family photo albums, and, you know, just watching everything those people are distraught when things like that happen, right? So you’ve got to become able to come in and do your job, but you also be able to have to sit across from that person and empathize with them and be very caring. And I don’t mean it from an in genuine standpoint. I mean, you’ve got to really care about people and wanting to help people, and that’s a large part of what we look for when we’re trying to bring somebody into any of the kind of restoration, type of type of brands that makes perfect sense. Now, one 800 water damage, obviously, it’s a little bit more of a proven track record in his in history.

I know we just put out the new FTD rival renewal season Franchise Disclosure Document. Are you able to share some of your financial performance representation for one 800 water, absolutely, absolutely, you know. So we’ve got about 177

franchises out there today. So the the average across all those, be it new, you know, newer franchisees, older franchisees, is about $725,000

across the network. But our top, our top 25% of the system is doing, on average, just shy of $2 million so.

And then I think our largest franchisee is doing between six and $7 million and annualized revenue. So

yeah, so it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a business that, not only, you know, you get to help people, but you can make a really nice listing living at it as well, right? So absolutely, as I said, it’s covered by insurance, right? So you’re not always, you’re you’re not having to extract that from the homeowner, right? You’re working with insurance companies, which, you know can have its trying months to be fair as well, but, but at least you know you’re going to get paid, and at least you’re with the organization and understands how to navigate that protocol. One of the things we do, right? Belfort, being the world’s largest property restoration company, is we’re known by everybody. We have relationships like, when I’m talking about insurance companies, third party administrators, all the people that are kind of in the in the flow of a process of any of these events, right? We have relationships with all of them, and that’s something we leverage right for our franchisees, so they can get into those networks and they can get calls not just Bell form. I love it. I love it. We’re going to go ahead and kind of wrap up our podcast here. You’ve been a wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much. So we’re going to try to tap into a little bit

more anytime, Ma, I love hanging out with you guys. Sherry, should we ask our favorite closing question? Absolutely. Doug, I want to also say thank you for joining us. It’s been great having you on our podcast.

Pam and I like to wrap up the podcast with our guests, and always ask this one final question. So the question is, what tips or words of wisdom would you give to budding entrepreneurs?

So I would say, and I think Pam, you may even alluded this earlier, couple things that we always stress for any new, well, new or old entrepreneur is,

everyone needs to be in sales and marketing. I don’t mean you need to have experience like as a sales rep or a marketing person. In some case, that may just mean being the ability to talk to people, to go into someone’s home. We have home service businesses. You’re going to be in people’s homes and businesses, and you’ve got to have the ability to have a conversation make somebody feel comfortable. So when I say sales and marketing, you can’t be afraid to put yourself out there. That’s what I mean or about that. So know that going in. Know that about yourself, right?

Yeah, and you mentioned, Pam, know your numbers, know your numbers. And I go, we’ve got, you know, literally 1000s of franchisees in our systems. And if I had to boil all the you have said, let me take all your successful franchises, your most successful ones that give me successful ones, and give me two things that set them apart, or what that everybody does that makes them successful. Those are the two things, being the ability to have some type of sales and marketing skills and knowing your numbers.

So those would be the two areas I would focus on,

you know.

And I tell everybody that, I guess, as a bonus play, I’d say, be careful of getting sucked into the trap of passive income and passive opportunities.

Anybody who spends any time on one of these and spends any time looking at business or entrepreneurial videos, boy, we like to talk about passive income, right? Mailbox money,

not saying it doesn’t exist, but it almost doesn’t exist. So, you know, if you’re coming into a franchise or another business in general, know that there is going to be work involved, and it’s probably going to be some of the hardest work you’ve ever done, at least to start, you know, to get things started. So I do, you know, I get a little scared sometimes. How many people talk about I just, you know, I’m looking for passive opportunity, like I don’t really have, the way you’re thinking about it. I don’t really have a passive opportunity

Field of Dreams, right? You don’t just hang the shingle and people come right? It doesn’t. It would be nice if that’s the way it worked. But it very simple, yeah, we all would love that, looking for that unicorn. Everyone wants a unicorn. Everybody wants to

thank you. Great advice. Great having you on the show. Don Great to see you, even though it’s via zoom.

Well, hopefully, hopefully sometime soon we’ll see you guys in person again. I sure hope so. I sure hope so. We’ll go ahead. We’ll wrap up. And just want to, want to say to our listeners, you know, if Franchise Business Ownership is something that you’re considering, please contact the franchise Sisters of franchise intellect, we would welcome having a free franchise consultation call with you. Also would welcome giving you an e book that we written top 10 Questions to consider before investing in a franchise. As our listeners know, we always say, investigate before you invest in a franchise. Yep, 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 Absolutely.

Absolutely thanks for tuning in to the Franchise Business Radio Show. This is the franchise sisters and Doug. Signing off you.