Episode 33: Home Services Franchise — How Joshua Tree Experts Scaled to 26 Locations

Pam Currie (00:05.788)
for tuning into another episode of the Franchise Sisters Franchise Business Radio Show. I’m Pam Curry, your host for today’s show, and also we have guests, two guests actually, from a franchise brand, Joshua Tree Experts. First I’d like to welcome Joshua Malek, the founder of Joshua Tree Experts. Welcome Joshua.

Joshua Malik (00:28.93)
Pam, thank you so much for having me on the show. feel honored. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Pam Currie (00:31.978)
Yeah. Oh, good. Well, I’m looking forward to our interview today. Dylan, obviously I’ve had the chance to work with you, your director of operations for Joshua Tree Experts. Happy to have you on the show as well. I was going to say, that’s my, he always likes, he wants to be part of the show too. And he always kicks in when I’m doing this.

Dylan DeGroat (00:47.053)
Thank you, Pam. I appreciate it. It sounds like somebody else is excited for me to be on the show as well.

Yeah, he’s excited for me. Just as excited as I am.

Joshua Malik (00:57.89)
He was giving you an applause.

Pam Currie (01:00.264)
We all love our fur babies, right? Well, what I’d like to do, like, again, it’s great to have you both on the show. What I’d like to do is kind of kick us off with your background. Joshua, would you please just share with us? know that you started in the tree industry right out of high school. Tell us a little bit about you and your journey to launching Joshua Tree Experts.

Joshua Malik (01:01.964)
Yes, we do.

Joshua Malik (01:25.068)
Yeah, it’s a cool journey. thinking back on it, this is my 34th year in the tree industry and I kind of feel like I’m getting really close to mastering something if I haven’t yet. And it’s the only career I’ve ever been in. Right out of high school, I had an opportunity to start as a very entry level position as a ground person at a local tree care company. And I always liked working with my hands. did, liked.

the labor, I like the physical part, I’m always a fitness person and I like being outdoors. I really enjoyed that a lot. got in on honestly, I didn’t think it was going to be a career that I was going to stay in forever. And the more I got to understand the industry, I really liked working with the equipment that was being developed. love getting into trees. was an adrenaline junkie. So climbing trees was just more fun than it was work style. And

I was in the industry for maybe five years and I was with a lot of smaller mom and pop shops who were doing a lot of tree removal. And when I really grasped that I was going to continue within the industry, I really wanted to go learn more about preservation. You know, why are trees dying that we’re removing? And, went to work with a really good company at the time that offered a lot of development training in regards to certification knowledge within the industry, spent three years there, got a lot of certification development.

had an opportunity to go from a crew leader as I worked my way up and I had a company approach me that was a small company looking to grow their business and they really needed to get someone that understood the industry preservation, launching a plant healthcare division. And I went and did some sales and management there for five years prior to launching Joshua Tree Experts in 2005. At the time, I remember my goals was very easy and didn’t think we were gonna get to them so quick. I wanted to become a seven person company.

where I had a tree crew, a plant healthcare technician, a back man, office admin, and I could go out and sell the work. And when I launched in July of 2005, and by January the following year, we were still holding on to an enormous amount of backlog work. We had to take on another crew and it just continued to expand from there. I got into a commercial space two years later and really started growing the team, growing the business and looking for other.

Joshua Malik (03:45.582)
Ways of generating revenue. We launched our lawn care division in 2017. We followed that up by a pest control department division in 2020 and began franchising in 2022. you know, it’s funny, everyone says, Hey, what’s your vision? What’s your long-term vision? And as a business owner, vision changes, you know, I never thought I was going to franchise, you know, that came into my mind in 2019. I put a lot of time and effort into researching the opportunity, um, how that was going to,

Pam Currie (04:05.257)
Hmm.

Joshua Malik (04:14.785)
be a better approach for me than just grow organically or as a company. And I love taking on partners. I love getting the same mindset of people and watching Joshua Tree grow throughout the country. It’s been really awesome. is. There’s no other word to say than it’s just been a dynamic, awesome journey so far.

Pam Currie (04:35.306)
Well, it sounds like the vision is growth because you just keep growing.

Joshua Malik (04:38.945)
Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. That’s it. Just like a tree. Never stop growing. Let’s keep going.

Pam Currie (04:41.148)
Right? Like a tree. I love it. I love it. And Dylan, obviously you are no newbie to this business. As the Director of Operations for Joshua Tree Experts, tell us about your journey and what got you in your role today.

Dylan DeGroat (05:03.053)
Yeah, so unlike Josh, this was not the only industry that I’ve ever worked in. I started working with Josh nine years ago now. You know, I came from a totally different industry. I was in public service. So was a cop before this out in Muncie, Indiana. I worked in child services, helping, you know, kids stay safe and home. So worked in the mill. I was in the military for 10 years. So I’ve had a lot of different industries that I’ve worked in and

started working for Josh and just like him, I did not anticipate staying long. I always thought, hey, I’m gonna go straight to the police force. I’m gonna do my thing there. And then I saw what Josh was building here. I started out really just as a groundsman, someone who worked in the lawn care department after he launched that is when I came on board. And I saw the opportunity though. I saw the culture that he was building. I saw how the team members interacted together. And I wanted to be a part of that.

I had never worked for a true entrepreneur previously, and that was just really unique to me. know, Josh has always been someone that I’ve looked up to and looked at as a role model and a mentor. So when he asked me, he said, hey, we went on a ride one day and he said, hey, I want to turn this into a nationwide company. And I don’t know how we’re going to do that just yet, but I want you to come along the ride with me. And from there on out, I knew that I was going to be Joshua Tree experts through and through.

So started out my journey, like I said, boots on the ground, literally out there doing the work. I started running the lawn department after about a year in operations there. And then I moved into more of a human resource role. So I did all the recruiting for Joshua Tree Experts for about two and a half, three years. And then when we got into the franchise system, I was actually…

the one who was the developer at first. So I did all of the, I brought on all the new partners, Pam, I got the opportunity to work with you with a placement down in Austin, Texas. And so, you know, that was a really great experience and introduction into the franchise system allowed me to really understand how we could be supportive as a franchise location and what candidates are ultimately looking for. So that was just a great experience. And then we obviously graduated.

Pam Currie (07:03.464)
huh.

Dylan DeGroat (07:24.437)
into franchise Fastlane and then I became the director of operations at that time. So now I’ve got a whole team under me that directly supports our franchisees and my main goal is just to help them create successful businesses every single day. So that’s what my team does. We have field operations, our contact center here. We do all the recruitment, all the onboarding, everything like that flows under me. So it’s just been a pleasure. It’s been a real, it’s been a ride so far and I just can’t look for.

Pam Currie (07:52.201)
No.

Dylan DeGroat (07:53.005)
I’m looking forward to the next nine years at this point, so.

Pam Currie (07:57.428)
So Joshua, did you know that you’re a mentor? Did he share this with you ever?

Joshua Malik (08:02.923)
Well, there’s a lot of things that people don’t know about Dylan and mine relationship is that Dylan’s my nephew. So, watching him grow up and being a part of his life and, you know, both of us just knowing each other real well. you know, we have a great relationship. like a big brother, brother relationship. We have a great friendship. Heck, we’re going golfing Saturday. We hang outside of work. just…

Pam Currie (08:10.644)
I love it!

Dylan DeGroat (08:30.188)
We sure are.

Joshua Malik (08:32.235)
We jive in so many ways, we click in so many different ways. And as much as he says, he’s a mentor to me, I look at him with so much respect for what he’s done for himself. He’s grown a family. He just turned me into a great uncle by having his first child. So we just have a great dynamic and really the whole business, his cousin, my daughter works, she’s our marketing manager. My fiance is the director of franchise support.

So we’re really a family-based business. And one of the things that Dylan said is our culture is, my corporate location is fairly large. It’s got 65 people working out of it in about a three territory system. And when our franchisees come through for confirmation day and they start working with us, they see that culture is what Dylan was relating to is that we…

Pam Currie (09:04.628)
Yes.

Joshua Malik (09:28.321)
hold a high level of accountability. We have a lot of respect for each other. We know how to communicate properly. we, you one of our core values, work hard, play hard is probably the hardest thing because the best thing because we work hard, but man, do we have a lot of fun playing hard too. We just do.

Pam Currie (09:44.491)
I that. I like the balance of those two for sure. And since growth seems to be sort of the kickoff theme here, am I accurate in that as of today, you have 26 locations operating in 81 territories? Is that where we sit now? That’s fabulous. Congratulations. And Dylan, you were instrumental in bringing in the first 18 owners.

Joshua Malik (10:03.437)
That is, yep, that’s correct.

Pam Currie (10:12.67)
consisting of 50 territories.

Dylan DeGroat (10:15.341)
That’s correct. Yes. Yeah. So that was my pleasure to be able to do that. And just like I said, just a great learning experience to understand what was important to the candidates to be able to bring that to the operational side.

Pam Currie (10:28.306)
And I was one of those 18 that was placed. And we’ll talk about that later as well. But first, before we dive into that, who would like to give an overview of the business model? What is it that Joshua Tree experts, what do you do?

Joshua Malik (10:46.581)
I’ll get doing good.

Dylan DeGroat (10:48.783)
Yeah. So I think, you know, to sum it up at its core, it’s a service-based business model that focuses on recurring revenue. So, you know, when we cut out all of the additional like expertise and all the individual items, that’s really at our core what we do. Our goal is very simple. Our mission is to make home environments safe, healthy, and beautiful. And the way that we do that,

is by offering three service lines that would be general tree care, lawn care, and pest control. So at its core, we are here to deliver services to clients to help them create safe, healthy, and beautiful home environments. Now, as a franchise system, it’s a unique franchise opportunity in the fact that it’s not just one business model that kind of franchisees get pitted into. I often see

You know, there are other tree care businesses out there. There’s other tree care franchises, lawn care and pest control, but we are really the only franchise in the nation that has brought all three of those services together. And I like to think of it like this. We want to get into a home and the homeowner only needs one phone number in order to make their home environment safe, healthy and beautiful. And that is our phone number. And that’s what I think at the core, that is our business model. I’m sure Josh can expand a little bit on that.

Joshua Malik (12:17.343)
No, I think you did great. mean, think, you know, growing the business and I, and we talked about, what my background was. It was always, how do we get more penetration per client? How can we get more transactions? How can we get more technicians on the property, get more yard signs, more vehicles there where we are, the neighbors are seeing us and you know, being the multi-service brand like that allows us to do that.

It’s pretty wonderful when we have clients where we’re visiting their properties, you know, five, six, eight, 15 times a year. Uh, we call that the Joshua tree three when they’re doing each the tree care, lawn care and pest control. And it’s our most highly valued clients. And you know, when we launch a system, Pam, we don’t, we have the option of, you know, owners coming in that are high investor owners that can launch all service lines at once. We’re not going to hold them back from doing that.

the majority of our owners, start with the tree care first. And it’s let that become the base, get that client base under there, learn this business first. But then the beauty about all these different service lines is that when someone’s coming in for tree care, we perform their tree care, then we start targeting for their lawn care. We get their lawn care, we start targeting them for the pest control. And we do that in every line because our marketing, when we’re going out to the market and to the public, don’t…

Pam Currie (13:23.487)
moment.

Joshua Malik (13:38.7)
We don’t give the whole overview that we do all these service lines because we don’t look like a professional in one. kind of like clouds the, you know, we do exactly this perfect. So our lawn care ads are just about lawn care. So people call in, they don’t even know we do tree work. They don’t know we do pest control. Well, let’s get them in. Let’s do a couple of applications. Let’s get, let’s gain their trust and then let’s start pivoting them where we can get our arborist out there and start inspecting their property and start developing a strategic plan for their trees and shrubs. And then we can go back to them and start the pest control.

So that’s been our goal. It helps keep our marketing costs down. It grows our average client value. And if we can hold onto that client for three, five, 10, 21 years, which I still have, it’s just, a great, it becomes a very good healthy profit center.

Pam Currie (14:23.892)
Yeah, and I do want to talk about the revenue patterns. And yeah, it’s like you have three franchises underneath one brand name. So thank you for explaining sort of I guess what I would consider to be the stacking of those services that you’re offering. Let’s talk about revenue patterns. Are all three of those services that you mentioned

Are they all reoccurring or is there any transactional project based work that happens as well?

Dylan DeGroat (15:01.293)
Yeah, I can take this one for sure. Yeah. So, you know, in the, when franchisees initially start their business, their only real transactional business is going to be tree care removals, right? And the way that we try to differentiate ourselves from our competitors is that we don’t strictly focus on removing trees. We actually want to focus on a preservational factor. Hey, how can we help your trees be

Joshua Malik (15:02.165)
Yeah. Yep.

Pam Currie (15:16.689)
mm-hmm.

Dylan DeGroat (15:30.938)
healthy, how can we improve their lifespan, how can we make them look more beautiful throughout that lifespan. If you got something that’s sick, how do we revive it? And that’s what brings in more of the recurring opportunity through what we call like pruning, right? So pruning is a major service line that we market towards and we try to get our clients to see the value that the trees on their property are truly providing, whether that’s

through heat reduction, wind resistance in the property, but also just the fact that they look nice, right? So there is like an actual aesthetic factor to having trees on your property. It does increase your property value. So we do that through two avenues and that again would be pruning, but the best avenue is what’s called plant healthcare. So tree care is made up of the general tree care side where we actually go out and crew based system, do those services on the property.

Joshua Malik (16:21.237)
you

Dylan DeGroat (16:26.841)
but we also launch right off the bat, we do a service called Plant Healthcare. So Plant Healthcare is more education for the client, but I like to think of us as like tree doctors, essentially. We go out there, we’re diagnosing what is the issue with this tree? What does this tree need in order to be healthy? And then we’re prescribing it a specific set of injections or topical sprays to actually improve the health of that tree. That is the first

real recurring item that’s inside of the business. Now again, pruning, we are pruning on average, Joshua, would you say three to four years, we’re going out and doing more additional pruning to clients, but the preservational factor of plant healthcare is, it’s all we really try to push. That is really where we want our owners especially to come in. They always see the high ticket items for the tree care removals, but-

Pam Currie (17:21.354)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan DeGroat (17:23.459)
We try to push them to really see the value that plant healthcare is really going to bring to their business, not just year one, but as it builds and as those clients, you you sell, let’s say you have $200,000 worth of, you know, clients in plant healthcare in your first year. Well, you’re starting your second year with $200,000 in plant healthcare clients. So it just continues to build and build on itself. And that’s where we really try to get owners to focus their time and energy and marketing dollars.

to help boost that recurring opportunity inside of what it would traditionally be a transactional business of tree care.

Pam Currie (18:00.885)
Hmm. Understood. Thank you for sharing that. By the way, I wasn’t connecting the dots there, so that helped me connect some dots as well. I guess another line of thinking that comes to mind is the fact that when you’re having that reoccurring, kind like you alluded to, Joshua, you’re really cultivating a relationship with the end customer.

and that continues to grow in many different ways. Could you talk to us a little bit about the new franchisee and how do they go about that customer acquisition initially?

Joshua Malik (18:45.035)
Well, you got to have a good marketing plan. You know, and they work with our marketing team where, you know, we’re launching digital direct mail. We’re doing a lot through SMS texting now, a lot of new platforms that are becoming available for us. But, you know, what’s good about what we talk about with the recurring revenue and trying to get that technician back on that site is in the client building relationship is that we want a BAMFAM and that’s book a meeting from a meeting. So when we’re going out to.

Pam Currie (19:13.482)
You

Joshua Malik (19:14.657)
to clients properties and we’re meeting them for the first time and we’re prescribing some type of preservation work. And then we are also upselling them on a tree and shrub insect disease management program. Maybe it’s a fertilizing program. We book a meeting to get back on that site six, eight months later where we can see the effects of what we prescribed. Where it’s just like you’d go back to a doctor’s appointment and it gives our salespeople the opportunity to go.

Not one only make sure that the products and prescription we did is working properly, but also identify other issues or upsell opportunities when they’re out there. And sometimes it’s, it doesn’t happen and they don’t need anything. And we’re upfront about that, but it’s the relationship building and being front of mind where the client always knows about Joshua Tree. I think one, a lot of companies poorly market where they market to get that first lead and get their foot in the door. And then they, never hear back from that client.

or you never hear back from that company. And that’s something that doesn’t happen at Joshua Tree because you can be a client for three or four years that we haven’t done a transaction with, but you’re still getting marketing pieces from us. You’re still gonna be internally, it might be a telemarketing call, it might be a direct mail piece, it might be an email. It’s gonna be something that’s gonna keep us in front of mind because at some point they’re gonna need that service. So we really take a big approach on that and we rely a lot on our contact center.

that there’s ups and downs in this industry. You gotta think we’re in a seasonality just like any home service space. And we really focus on creating a good amount of what we call backlog in general tree care, meaning that we have X amount of weeks of work on the books to do. So if we stop getting phone calls today, we know how far we can run it out. But when we get into those slow times, we actively go back through rejected proposals, current proposals, clients that may have been with us a year or two and we…

identify the type of tree pruning that we did to contact them to get them back onto the property.

Pam Currie (21:12.102)
So and I’m going to parlay over into the training and the support and trying to understand how do your franchisees get the knowledge they need to do these types of prescriptions like you said. Who wants to take that one?

Dylan DeGroat (21:31.288)
Yeah, I can definitely take this. This is mostly my team. Yeah. And I appreciate this question. I think it’s what we have structured Joshua Tree Experts franchising to do very well is be an extension of these franchise partners businesses. And we want to support them very robustly. And I’ll kind of go through how we do that in a little bit here. you know,

Pam Currie (21:33.862)
Yeah.

Dylan DeGroat (21:58.552)
It all starts out once they actually sign with us, they immediately go into onboarding. So our onboarding coordinator, our director of onboarding support, sorry, her name is Christine. She walks them step by step. use a project management board, make sure, know, task item one through 150, everything gets knocked off. So that way they have a successful launch to the business. Now we also do…

They come out for a one week training here in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. This would be the initial training that they hold. Really, it depends on how the owner is going to be involved in the business, whether they’re going to focus on an owner track or are they going to focus on a sales track? So a lot of our owners recently, which is awesome, have seen the success that we’ve had bringing in somebody who has that experience as their account manager. So this is somebody who we are

actually recruiting for them. So we do all of the active recruitment for our franchisees. We have a recruitment team in-house that works for Joshua Tree Experts. And they are the ones who are pairing our franchise partners with these talented, educated, certified individuals who have the experience in tree care and understand the value behind preservation. So, you know, I always like to think of it like this. Our franchise partners do not need to be

Pam Currie (22:58.186)
Wow, that’s nice.

Dylan DeGroat (23:23.151)
pre-experts themselves. We need them to be coachable, understand how to mentor and how to understand how to run a business, right? So when they come in for training, depending on how they’re going to be involved in their actual business, we’ll either send them on an owner track that again, really helps them structure their business. What does their day look like? What are the things that they need to be looking at? How do they manage that account manager to make sure that they’re effective out there with the clients?

Pam Currie (23:25.449)
Okay.

Dylan DeGroat (23:52.592)
Or they decide, hey, I want to do this sales myself. So then we actually promote and primarily focus on sales training with those individuals. So, you know, that part, just depends on how they’re going to be involved. But I love that a lot of our new owners coming in, see the opportunity of stepping out of that role and actually letting go of the vine. You know, a lot of them want to hold on to it. They’re like, this is my business. I want to do the sales. But what we’ve seen

location after location, launch after launch is when you bring in somebody, you train them how we do effective sales, how we present as a more professional brand and how we do that in our space. That is a great opportunity for them to instantly start off like a rocket ship. So, you know, once they’re actually onboarded and they launch their business, we do a six weeks, post launch meeting every single week to look at all of their KPIs.

Pam Currie (24:37.748)
Okay.

Dylan DeGroat (24:49.753)
to help them understand where the pitfalls are, where do we have constraints, where are we excelling at so that we can lean into those items more, what are the training opportunities? And then we take it another step further. And when they actually launch the business, we go out to them and we’re there for nearly a week to actually supply them with one of our field operations experts who actually walk them through the launch of the business with the crew. And then they get a detailed report

from our team to actually state, these are the training opportunities. Here’s what your team is really great at. Here’s where they need work. And then we do, you know, we host, man, every single month we’re hosting some type of webinar training, whether it be business focus, maybe it’s tree care focus, maybe it’s lawn care focus. So that way it’s not just us talking to our owners either. It’s also we’re bringing in those vendors who are experts in their space to actually discuss

Hey, how can we implement this into your business to help you be more profitable or more, you know, more customer focused, more client focused. So training, it starts with onboarding, but there’s really no end to it. Right. And there’s a lot for these folks to learn. But I think one of my favorite stories is I have a, we have an owner that’s out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and his good friend of mine actually that came on board with us and.

I remember when he was going through the development process, he was super nervous. He’s like, I don’t know anything about trees. don’t know. can’t tell a tree from one from another. And we were on a call and he started talking about products that he’s using. He’s throwing out like Latin versions of the names. And it’s only been like three, four months that he’s been in the business. And just to see how much they actually learn, it comes very quickly. You know, some of our owners say it’s like drinking from a fire hose. It really is. But you just

You just have to have the want to be coachable and learn that information and it will come. But, you know, just depending on how they’re going to be involved in the business, kind of the different tracks that we focus on.

Pam Currie (26:54.474)
So that kind of takes me to what are you looking for in a franchisee?

Dylan DeGroat (27:01.357)
Yeah, Josh, you want to take this one?

Joshua Malik (27:03.693)
Yeah, I’d love to take this one. You know, it’s funny, we get this question a lot. Like, you want, you know, an IT background? Do you want engineering? Do you want project management? We want the right mindset. I don’t care what industry they came from. We want the right, I need people that are quick learners that can take really good direction. Can learn a new industry very quickly that they’re willing to put the time in to learn it. Tree care is not rocket science. And I mean that it’s not.

There’s obviously a learning curve to understand the industry and I’m in it for 34 years. I’m still learning. There’s always new products coming out. There’s new diseases and insects, but you can get to a level of understanding proper tree care and development pretty quickly. You really can. And those owners, when they come in, they have the right mindset. They got to be sales focused. Even if you’ve never been in a sales role.

Pam Currie (27:50.282)
you

Joshua Malik (28:01.355)
You know, lot of home service industries like sales cures all the issues. So if you can network well and you can get out of your comfort shell and you know, you go to an appointment, knock on the doors around you, introduce yourself, you know, put door hangers out, go through, follow a process that we’ve put into play that says this works. And when you can follow that process and they have the right mindset, it works really well.

It just does. It just, works really, really good. And you know, we’re doing a lot more celebrating than we are, you know, fixing issues at that time. And they understand high goals. We want people that are going to grow and we do need individuals that are going to reinvest into the business and they’re not going to stay with, know, you get a certain equipment package at launch. That’s going to be very good for a full service tree care business. But as you’re growing,

Pam Currie (28:45.342)
Yeah.

Joshua Malik (28:56.139)
and you’re creating backlog and you’re creating more client count through plant healthcare, you do, you’re going to have to invest in another truck. You’re to have to invest in another technician. want owners to be in a commercial property in year three, where they have a warehouse, they have employee park and they got an office there. got storage facilities. They need that to be able to grow properly. So when they come to confirmation day and we take them through, you know, what our op center looks like going out to job sites, they get to see a lot of different equipment.

that’s well above than what they’re going to invest in because this is a business where we have bucket trucks, have spider lists, we have track loaders, we have rubber tire loaders, we got different size chippers. We’re not a cookie cutter model. We’re really not. When we launch in different areas, we look at size of trees, we look at demographics, we look at size of properties, and we start really bringing in what our model is to say, okay, maybe you don’t need this big of a truck because your trees are, your max tree is

know, Texas, they’re 50, 60 foot trees. You know, we’re in Pennsylvania, we have 130 foot trees. It’s just a difference of what you need in equipment. So we get to modify that, you know, what’s going to be best for them and best help them penetrate their market.

Pam Currie (30:01.802)
Well…

Pam Currie (30:12.01)
So Joshua or Dylan, what is your philosophy on semi-involved franchisees?

Joshua Malik (30:20.525)
I like semi-involved. I do. I like semi-involved that are going to structure the business properly. And when I say that is they, we need to arm them with a really good arborist. You know, one thing when we talk about preservation, when we’re doing the talent acquisition on the backend, being, think being in the industry for 34 years and the business has always ran as a very professional company. We have a good

Pam Currie (30:22.341)
Good, okay.

Pam Currie (30:29.62)
Okay.

Joshua Malik (30:48.235)
name within the industry. We’re involved in a lot of organizations. I’ve done a lot of volunteer work throughout the country in tree work. And I’ve met a lot of really good people from different companies and we need to arm them with a really good certified arborist that can go out there and again, educating the client. It’s one of our, you know, one of our three E’s we call education, ease and experience. And when we can educate a client and have them understand, this is why we’re taking this approach.

Pam Currie (31:08.106)
you

Joshua Malik (31:17.773)
These are the expectations you can have. It’s a, it’s a really good recipe. And if they’re, you know, fully semi-absentee where they’re like, Hey, I can only spend dedicate, you know, eight, 10 hours a week. need a general manager to not only do you need a salesperson, but to grow this business, you’re going to need a general manager. And you know, the way that we have our item 19 structured is we have all of our arborists that are out selling in there. And we also have, you know, the cost of our general manager in there to show this is what it takes. If you’re going to run as a semi-absentee.

This is what it takes to do that. Here’s what you can make at the end of day. And if you don’t wanna run as a semi-obscene team, you’re gonna be the salesperson or the GM. These are the numbers you can remove to actually get even more accurate numbers.

Pam Currie (32:00.363)
Well before we get into some money because I do want to talk about that item 19 But I have to do a shout out. have to do a shout out to Katie Dylan. I mean right I How’s she doing she’s in Austin, how’s she doing?

Dylan DeGroat (32:17.199)
I’ll tell you this, Katie is extremely passionate and I love that. I actually was just, I speak to Katie almost every other day in some capacity and work with her. So I’m on her, you know, monthly operations calls, obviously, but you know, what’s, what’s interesting is Katie, the, where she started and where she’s at today, she just won an award. were kind of talking briefly before we got started here. She just got an award at our conference. She’s very dedicated as an owner and

You know, I think what I really enjoy about Katie and the success that she’s bringing down in Austin, Texas is she understands that, that client relationship and how much that actually means. And she pushes us, even though, you know, I, I always like to say, if you’re not learning, then you’re going to fail. Right. So need to learn something new every day. And she has such a great background from where she was at in the executive level position. And.

to have her come in and just give me some guidance as well. I look to the franchisees to say, hey, we’ve done this one time, right? So you’ve been in all kinds of different businesses and corporate structures. And what do you think that we could actually do to improve in that client relationship? So I’m super excited about how passionate she has been in this business. And like I said, she’s just doing so great. And she really stepped in and just

kind of took it in 100%. She never slowed down for a moment and she just dove right in. And that’s what I love about her and something I really value that relationship with her.

Pam Currie (33:58.1)
So not surprised. Obviously, I’m happy to hear that.

Joshua Malik (34:01.613)
I think you should follow up with Katie. Yeah, give her a call. She’d be super happy to hear from you. And I would echo everything Dylan said. I was down in Austin at her location three or four weeks ago, spent a few days there. And I think when we look at our support system of what we do, I know a lot of franchisors and from what I’ve heard from a lot of horror stories, you buy, get an operations manual.

Pam Currie (34:04.851)
I’m going to. I’m going to.

Joshua Malik (34:31.149)
you don’t get support. And in 2019, when I was researching franchising, the common denominator was support and training. You need to have a very robust support and training. And I feel confident all my partners would say, we do an exceptional job about that. In the tree care industry alone, a lot of the reason tree care companies are not good is because they do not answer the phone. That one little thing. They get calls, they get too busy, they…

They don’t have the capacity to grow. They don’t have the capital to grow. They can’t bring in admin people. You got the owner trying to do too many things and they just drop calls. Well, you know, one of the things we’ve always done was answer the phone since we launched in 2005. And when we launched the franchise system, we’re going to answer phones. We’re going to get answers questions or questions answered immediately to our franchise partners. We’re going to be out at their site. We’re going to assist them. We’re going to look at their crew. We’re going to look at their operations. We’re going to give them

you know, constructive feedback. We have to be able to do that. You know, we’re going to hit the good points about it. We’re going to say, Hey, here are the improvements on it. And my visit with case with Katie was, it was extraordinary. We got to ride along. did sales together. got to spend time with her, her team out in the field. you know, we did group meetings at night and dinner. was like, she, she’s so welcoming and she’s such a, she’s a believer in the brand. She is, she’s a believer in the brand. And she will say that, you know, this was, you know, the right.

Pam Currie (35:48.458)
Hmm.

Pam Currie (35:55.732)
Mm.

Joshua Malik (36:00.206)
decision for me to do and I’m super proud of that.

Pam Currie (36:03.219)
Wow, that’s great. And I really do, you hit on something really important there, Joshua, and that is the importance of the training and the support. And Sherry and I like to always encourage our candidates to investigate before you invest. And that’s what you’re buying into is you’re buying into the system, the training, the support, the playbook, but have to have that infrastructure in place to be able to roll it out to the franchisees. So.

And do it do I have to just comment on this too? I think some of the best ideas come from your franchisees and to me that is one of the greatest values of a franchise system is You have all these owners out there and that pure exchange and What do they say, you know, Duncan doughnuts. There’s little munchkin sized doughnut holes and you buy Well, not you guys are too healthy. I never go there either by the way

Dylan DeGroat (36:59.897)
Yeah

Pam Currie (37:02.772)
But that idea came from a franchisee, right? So that’s pretty cool.

Dylan DeGroat (37:05.945)
Absolutely.

Joshua Malik (37:08.557)
I think as a franchisor, you have to be receptive to the same constructive feedback. I think within our culture at Joshua Tree, it’s like, we can give negative feedback, constructive feedback, improvement feedback, however you want, but we need to do it in a respectful manner. And we treat our partners like that in the same instance. And I expect them to treat me and my team.

Pam Currie (37:17.096)
Hmm.

Pam Currie (37:30.41)
Mmm, yes.

Joshua Malik (37:37.974)
like that as well, where it’s like, Hey, we w there’s always improvement in every way. Let’s, and we’re very solution-based. We’re very solution-based. Like if there’s an issue, let’s come together, let’s, let’s create a solution for it. Let’s move forward with it. And we’ve taken on the right partners that have that same mindset. And that was, it’s, it’s, it’s very valuable. It really is. And, and we’ve implemented many ideas that franchise partners had to say, Hey, you know, by looking at it this way or from this angle, I think we can do this.

And we group up as a team and it’s like, Hey, that’s, that’s a good idea. You know, how can we make our system better? So we’re receptive to it.

Pam Currie (38:09.567)
Mmm.

Pam Currie (38:16.106)
I like how you’re referring to your franchisees as partners. and having that kind of mindset obviously is what you’re looking for in a franchisee as well. Makes sense. Let’s talk about money because money matters, right? You mentioned an equipment package. What is the, what’s your item seven look like? Your estimated initial investment for a new franchisee.

Joshua Malik (38:19.66)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dylan DeGroat (38:42.671)
Yeah, so our initial investment for a franchise location is about $470,000 to about $600,000. That does include the initial franchise fee of $59,500 for the one territory. But really when I look at that number, $324,000 of that at a minimum is going to be your equipment. So that is equipment that is Section 179 deductible. It’s great for your ability to write off

on your taxes. And ultimately, that is where majority of the investment is coming from. And like Josh said, it’s not a cookie cutter system. what Connecticut might purchase as an equipment package might be different than what somebody in Florida is going to purchase. So we really focus on when they’re in the onboarding, we’re sitting down with them to really deep dive and understand what does their business need. Maybe they need a bucket truck. Maybe they

just need a simple chip truck with some ladders and some climbing ropes, right? So there’s different structures to that, but primarily most of the investment is gonna be around that equipment. The rest of it is just the everyday business essentials that you have to have, marketing, computer systems, uniforms, all that good stuff. But the primary bulk of the investment comes through the equipment and the machinery.

Pam Currie (39:59.402)
Mm-hmm.

Pam Currie (40:04.587)
That makes sense. And thanks for bringing up the 179.org as a tax advantage because that is that’s a great one. What are some common funding strategies that you’re seeing for Joshua Tree Experts franchisees?

Dylan DeGroat (40:22.049)
I would say the primary investment strategy is SBA. That is going to be like the primary driving factor that most of the owners are choosing to go through. We also have owners who do rollovers. So a 401k rollover, a Rob’s plan, exceptional opportunity. If you don’t know more about that, I’m sure Pam can help you learn more about a Rob’s program. I think ultimately Pam,

It’s so important that during that development process, when a candidate is going through this process, that is the one of the first things that they should figure out. What is it that they’re going to be able to get from the SBA in terms of finances? What is it that they can put in in their own capital to be able to make this business work in the initial investment? And at the end of the day,

Pam Currie (41:03.048)
Yes.

Dylan DeGroat (41:13.335)
That is something like, I’m sure you have great partners that you work with specifically for funding options and all of our partners, no matter how they’re deciding on funding this, it’s ultimately gonna come down to, you have to trust the person who’s helping you go through that process. And I strongly recommend doing that as early as possible. Don’t wait until you’re going out to confirmation day or you’re going to a meet the team day to decide, hey, I think I’m gonna fund it this way.

No, have all of that stuff planned out. Let Pam give you all of that great insight and get that done early because you don’t want to get tied up at the end waiting for the finish line to be able to sign that document, but now you got to wait three weeks for something to come in. So I strongly recommend doing that as early as possible in the development process.

Pam Currie (41:59.935)
Yeah, exactly. And we actually have an e-book that we put together on common approaches to funding franchise. And I think we like to say it’s very, important to have a wise funding strategy. That’s part of the alignment to make it work, for sure. Well, should we dive into the most?

talked about topic in the franchise disclosure document, is the item 19 and that stands for financial performance representation. What would you like to share there?

Dylan DeGroat (42:35.407)
Phew, ours is pretty.

Joshua Malik (42:36.117)
I’d like to share that our renewal is going to look really good.

Dylan DeGroat (42:39.663)
Yeah. If we were having this conversation like one week later, would be, know, legally, we can only say one thing right now, just because of that financial disclosure document. What I can say is currently as of today, you know, we are showing a 21.6 % bottom line, right? So very healthy for a franchise system that is in the home service space. What I’m really excited about is our average sales.

Pam Currie (42:39.946)
yes!

Pam Currie (42:48.724)
Right?

Dylan DeGroat (43:09.063)
that we’ve been able to accumulate over the past years. know, something that’s really unique about our disclosure document and our item 19 specifically is we don’t just give you like one table to kind of look at. We have, let’s see here, we have got 11 tables of data points, everything from average sale to like what your technicians are going to cost to, you know, we have a full P &L, which is our first table.

Pam Currie (43:22.122)
Mm-hmm.

Joshua Malik (43:23.949)
11 I think 10 or 11.

Dylan DeGroat (43:38.52)
line, line by line, every single, direct expense, indirect expense, there’s nothing that’s left out of it. And we have an accumulation of not just one year, like, so we’re looking at the past year, we talking about multiple years at the same time to see that growth year over year. you know, I think our item 19 is, is rather unique in that sense. And I’m really excited that like Josh said, if we were talking like one week later,

We are rolling out with our new disclosure in probably about a week or so. And we finally have the franchise locations that are going to be listed on that now, which is really, really exciting. So we’re going to be able to show our partners numbers as well as our locations numbers. So we’re really stoked about that. And it’s just something that we’ve been looking forward to all year and we’re really excited the way it’s shaping up. So if you haven’t checked out a Ride of 19, I strongly recommend doing it.

Pam Currie (44:19.006)
you

Pam Currie (44:35.748)
Well, we can postpone the publishing this podcast and let you go live.

Joshua Malik (44:38.397)
Yeah. I do think this too. I do think this, know a lot of franchisors don’t disclose an item 19 and it just leaves candidates guessing on what they can do and talking to other franchisees of that brand. think when you can illustrate from the headquarters level of this is what we produced

In sales, this is what it costs to have direct labor. This is what we spend on marketing, insurance, operational vehicle maintenance costs, and really see, at the bottom line, after you would pay your royalties, your tech fees, your brand fund fees, whatever it is, and you can look at the bottom and you can say, hey, this is what I would make. In our corporate location, 65 people, 21 were like 1.6 million.

in the net bottom line, it’s like, we’re happy with that. We’re proud of that. And it gives people an idea of what they can do and how they can even do it better. Because I’m hoping that people are even gonna crush that. My goal is that, hey, this is what we’ve done here, but depending on your market, can you do better? Go out and do even better than this. This is just the benchmark.

Pam Currie (45:46.26)
Mmm.

Pam Currie (45:55.444)
Mmm. Mmm.

Pam Currie (46:00.009)
Yeah, and I like the transparency in the numbers. I think that’s wonderful. Any additional thoughts that either of you would like to share before I go into our final closing question?

Joshua Malik (46:04.183)
Yeah.

Joshua Malik (46:19.425)
No, you’re doing a damn good job. You are.

Pam Currie (46:21.972)
covering all the bases? Good. Well, then let’s have fun with this closing question because I want to hear from each of you on this. We like to ask this question at the end of our podcast and that is, what would you give to budding entrepreneurs? What tips would you give to budding entrepreneurs?

Dylan DeGroat (46:49.379)
Josh, you want to go first or you want me to? Because you can, you might steal mine, but go ahead.

Joshua Malik (46:52.085)
I don’t know, I might take too much time. I think as an entrepreneur.

Pam Currie (46:52.746)
Thank

Pam Currie (46:56.832)
Haha, no!

Joshua Malik (47:04.939)
You have to be direct with your thoughts. You can’t be back and forth. You have to be a quick decision maker. You you get, you’re making so many decisions throughout your day that you have to be a good decision maker. And even if it’s not the right decision, at least you made it, you know, let’s go back to it. But I see a lot of poor entrepreneurs that just push stuff down and then the decision gets made on its own and they don’t get making it. I think you have to be structured and disciplined.

Pam Currie (47:30.068)
Yes.

Pam Currie (47:34.396)
Mmm.

Joshua Malik (47:34.574)
in what you do in your daily routine. think you have to stop focusing on busy work. If it doesn’t move the needle, don’t even worry about it. You have to be productive. And a lot of people are not productive. see too much entrepreneurs being busy. Honestly, I see too many people comparing themselves to other businesses. It’s like, just focus on what you can do best. Do what you can do best. Do what you can do best for your people and your system. That’s what’s going to make it better. And support yourself.

Pam Currie (47:57.162)
Mm.

Joshua Malik (48:04.173)
You have to have good people around you. I’ve always been very fortunate that, you know, as being the founder, um, lot of people look up at me, but I look up to my people. I really do. I have really, really good people here. have long, I believe in retention, very, very heavy in employee retention. have my first two employees are still with me. Dylan, you know, nine years, have 18, 19, 15 year veterans. can’t tell you how many people have been here five years plus.

Pam Currie (48:25.79)
Thanks.

Joshua Malik (48:33.401)
and we focus on that culture part of it. And culture takes money. You have to spend money in order to build culture. And a lot of people don’t understand that. When the business owner says, well, we don’t believe in a culture, it’s like, well, you have a culture, it’s just not a good one. So you might want to start believing in culture because it’s in every business, whether it’s good or bad. And I know it’s a buzzword out there, but I think it’s one of the best things that you can implement into your business.

Pam Currie (48:40.99)
Yes.

Pam Currie (48:52.915)
Yes.

Joshua Malik (49:01.431)
where you think about it consistently and you drive great people to join your brand and that’s what’s gonna, that’s ultimately what’s gonna help you grow. I sure couldn’t do it by myself. I need a great team of really high level, dedicated, buy-in people and I’m fortunate to have it.

Pam Currie (49:18.068)
Joshua, you said that you thought you were gonna take too long, but every single one of those points that you made are of great value. And I was just jotting them down, by the way. I refer to it as progressive decision-making. Totally agree with you there. Structure, right? Get out of the busy work. Allow yourself to focus. Focus on what you do well and surround yourself

Joshua Malik (49:39.671)
Yeah.

Pam Currie (49:47.39)
with a good team and good people. And Dylan obviously is planning to stay for another nine years. So you’re doing a good job there.

Dylan DeGroat (49:55.279)
at

Joshua Malik (49:56.866)
You don’t know it, I got a chain to his ankle on that desk in that office.

Pam Currie (50:01.247)
Whatever works. So Dylan, you’re not off the hook here. Hopefully you’ll be able to add to this, but in closing, what tips would you give to budding entrepreneurs?

Dylan DeGroat (50:01.417)
I can’t.

Dylan DeGroat (50:07.075)
Okay.

Dylan DeGroat (50:15.769)
Yeah. So I think my tip is, it’s kind of in line with what you were already talking about. You two are already talking about, but I’m to put my development hat on for just a second. because I really want to talk to the, give the, the buddy and entrepreneurs, the people who are still in that development process. want to give them, you know, my recommendation and my tip on that. And really it’s simple. don’t wait to feel a hundred percent ready. Cause you’re never going to, if you’re waiting for.

Pam Currie (50:25.962)
Right? Mm-hmm.

Dylan DeGroat (50:45.847)
a light bulb to go off, for the heavens to open up, for someone to come walk by you on the street and say, by the way, the franchise you’re looking at right now, that’s the right one. You’re never going to get that. You’re never going to be 100%. I think you have to focus on a couple things that matter and are going to move the needle for you and helping you make that decision. And this is kind of the points that you guys touched on already, but it’s finding the right system. So what’s important to you in the business that you’re wanting to go into?

Pam Currie (50:50.762)
you

Dylan DeGroat (51:15.651)
So find the right system and then surround yourself with the right people, right? Because you guys already hit on it. It’s whether you develop the culture or the culture develops itself, it’s going to develop. And ultimately, I think you have to be willing to learn. If you’re gonna go into a franchise system and think that you know everything already and you have all the answers to all the questions that you think are out there,

You need to be willing to learn and be adaptive to that. know, execution and consistency, I think that they matter a lot more than just trying to have everything figured out on day one. So my tip is don’t wait to feel 100 % because you never will.

Pam Currie (51:59.691)
point. Good point. It’s a journey. And yeah, I like to say to build upon that, I like to say when I’m working with my clients, if we landed on a business model that aligns for you, we have a client centric align methodology. We believe that it’s about alignment to your point. However, if you are at if it aligns with you at 70 to 80%, then we’ve landed on a solid opportunity for you. And totally agree with that.

Joshua Malik (52:01.774)
That’s a great point.

Pam Currie (52:28.08)
It has been wonderful having you both on the show. Thank you so much for sharing about Joshua Tree Experts and all the wonderful tips for buddy entrepreneurs as well.

Dylan DeGroat (52:41.091)
Absolutely.

Joshua Malik (52:41.453)
thank you. Thank you so much for the time. I said it earlier, it’s been an honor to perform this with you and you know, having us as guests is just wonderful. Thank you so much.

Pam Currie (52:51.54)
Thank you. And I’m just going to say something to our listeners. If you are considering franchise business ownership, please don’t do it by yourself. Reach out to the franchise sisters. We welcome having a complimentary franchise discovery call with you. As I mentioned, we do have a client-centric aligned methodology that we’d be happy to walk you through. Be happy to give you a couple of e-books, Common Approaches to Funding a Business. We have another e-book.

top 10 questions to consider before investing in a franchise. We are firm believers that we want to put you in a position to make an informed decision and we provide you with due diligence tools because we like to say investigate before you invest. Very important. With that being said, thanks to everyone for tuning in and Joshua and Dylan, fist bump. Thank you.

Joshua Malik (53:44.033)
Boom.

Dylan DeGroat (53:45.017)
Cute!

Pam Currie (53:52.299)
think I just hit the stop button. Okay, good. You guys, that was great!