Episode 39: Scott Breimhorst on Jet Black: A 40-Year-Old “Hidden Gem” Pavement Maintenance Franchise

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

Shari Currie Skjoldager (00:17)
And I’m your other co-host, Sherry Curry Skoltaker. And on today’s show, we have Scott Brinhorst bringing a unique perspective to the franchise world. After spending 27 years in leadership and advancement within Catholic education, Scott got started in the franchise space four and a half years ago with a phenomenal brand called Discover Strength. During his time with Discover Strength, he played a key role in their rapid expansion from six to 41 open territories.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (00:46)
Currently, Scott balances his passion for education and growth by directing the business school at Holy Family Catholic High School while simultaneously spearheading franchising development for Jet Black International Franchising. Welcome to the show, Scott.

Scott Breimhorst (01:04)
Thank you, Sherry. Thank you, Pam. I appreciate the intro.

Pam Currie (01:07)
Absolutely.

Pam Currie (01:08)
Excited to have you on the show. And I will share with you, you do have a diverse background. And for the purpose of our podcast today, though, we we really want to discuss the Jet Black Opportunity, which is a lucrative pavement maintenance franchise. And it sits in an industry value dot over $200 billion. So, Scott, tell us the story behind Jet Black.

Pam Currie (01:33)
Black and explain the pavement maintenance services that you offer.

Scott Breimhorst (01:38)
Okay. Well, the joke around our office is that we’re a 40-year-old emerging brand. So we’ve been around forever. Jet Black was started by two brothers literally 40 years ago here in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Began franchising a few years after they started, so they didn’t immediately start franchising and they moved into the franchise space. And over the next about 35 years, we’ve grown almost completely organically.

Scott Breimhorst (02:04)
Just word of mouth, very little like advertising, a lot of just people opening up new territories, or they saw Jet Black over here, and now I’m gonna check this out and go over here. and then our owner, Nick Kelso, was a franchisee 17 years ago in Shakapee, Minnesota. And I knew him way back when, so I’ve known Nick for a long time. Nick opened a franchise territory here in the Twin Cities. over time, kind of amassed a plan to to buy the

Scott Breimhorst (02:31)
Company about 10 years ago bought most of it and then entirely bought the entire company two years ago. So this is the story of the kid who used to deliver pizzas and now he owns Pizza Hut, right? I mean, we’re not Pizza Hut, but not quite that big, but that’s the story. Nick is phenomenal and taking the company in a great direction. We’re we’re looking to move growth forward a little faster than had been done in the past. And

Scott Breimhorst (02:55)
Working with some great consultants to to help bring us great candidates and and really to a bright future with a lot of open territory and just a lot of opportunity for people to open an unbelievable business.

Pam Currie (03:06)
Now that that’s quite the evolution, right? Of where things are and where it’s going today. And I I can just see the trajectory that you are actually on. would you do me a favor and please explain when we say you know, pavement maintenance services, what are we talking about there?

Scott Breimhorst (03:21)
Yeah. So our core services are asphalt sealing and crack filling. Those two things are the core services. So in for a lot of folks, they don’t even know what asphalt is, barely they they don’t have they have concrete driveways or they have dirt roads. asphalt is is that you know the black substance that is in most parking lots, commercial parking lots, and in in most areas in residential driveways. So an owner of a jet black would be sealing.

Scott Breimhorst (03:49)
First crack filling any cracks and then sealing that that driveway in a commercial property, working with large parking lots. They could also be doing line striping, anything that you’re gonna see on the on the ground, basically, wheel stops, speed bumps, signage, all of those are opportunities for our owners who are working in more of the commercial space. But at its heart, this started with guys hauling five gallon buckets of ceiling out and and fixing people’s driveways. And here we are.

Scott Breimhorst (04:18)
A hundred and fifty plus territories in operation.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (04:21)
So you started out on the residential side, it sounds like, with pavement maintenance, and then it just naturally grew into the commercial side as well.

Scott Breimhorst (04:30)
Again, internally, we’ve got these things we say sometimes. It it all started one driveway in one neighborhood at a time. what jet black has brought to the asphalt maintenance industry is a level of professionalism and quality that unfortunately we’re we’re in a fragmented, untrusted industry, just based on kind of local who knows what is coming to do your driveway, with what kind of sealant. And we’ve we’ve kind of conquered that by saying we have standards.

Scott Breimhorst (04:56)
We have all kinds of kind of controls in place to make sure that the work that we’re doing is really awesome and kind of that’s the the space we live in.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (05:03)
That’s great. I didn’t realize there are I guess it’s like I’m not sure if this is a good analogy. It’s like paint. There are certain qualities, probably a sealants that you could use to make sure they last longer and they maybe look more professional. Is that fair to say? Okay.

Scott Breimhorst (05:17)
Hundred percent. Yep. That’s exactly

Scott Breimhorst (05:19)
like I mean the application is exactly like painting, but but you’re correct. Yep.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (05:24)
Okay, and they’ve kind of identified those. I is there like a vendor partnership with those types of brands to make sure that there’s a little bit of maybe a purchase powering discount?

Scott Breimhorst (05:34)
Okay, you’re asking

Scott Breimhorst (05:34)
me behind the scenes one of my favorite things about Jet Black on the owner

Shari Currie Skjoldager (05:37)
Okay.

Scott Breimhorst (05:38)
side. Like, and it sounds so like like in the weeds here, but so two things. We we have a proprietary crack filler that we sell just over cost to our franchise owners. So we know the crack filler is and we ship it to them on pallets. when you become a franchisee, our owner, Luke himself Nick himself and our operations director will contact the sealant manufacturers or distributors in the area of

Scott Breimhorst (06:02)
the the new franchisee. We build the relationship there. We tell them the way it needs to look, how it needs to go in the truck. I mean the the mixes it all needs to be. It’s a little bit different by geography and where you’re at. so that the owner can just come and get their trailer, go back and fill up and get to work.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (06:18)
Okay, so just to kind of put a little bit more context around the business model, you’re starting out with a truck or a trailer and then and then you’re identifying everything they need to have and then they’re ready to go and do business.

Scott Breimhorst (06:32)
That’s correct. So the typical starting owner will have one truck with one trailer. take take a look at our websites. We found a way to make like asphalt maintenance sexy. Our our trailers are super cool.

Pam Currie (06:42)
Ha ha ha.

Scott Breimhorst (06:43)
we build them for our franchisees and and then there’s typically a crew of two taking care of the truck. most owners will be off the truck as quickly as humanly possible, just handling bids and kind of follow-ups with with different leads and on the commercial side.

Scott Breimhorst (06:57)
We’ll get into this I’m sure later, networking and getting the bigger jobs.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (07:01)
Yeah, actually that is the next question. I was curious to know, customer acquisition. What’s the process?

Scott Breimhorst (07:07)
Okay, love this too. I love when franchise ours want their franchisees to make money. And Nick just keeps doing things to tweak that. Make sure you ask me about the royalty scale later to help with them. So on the residential side, we handle all of the marketing for our franchisees. They just pay in credits and we take care of everything on the Google ads, the pay-to-click SEO, negative SEO words. We’ve just built it out.

Scott Breimhorst (07:32)
really, really well for them. So they’re gonna get leads right away. We’ve negotiated contracts for basically mailbox things. So the postcard you might get in the mail telling you there’s you know jet black in your area, here’s the discount or whatever the the offer is. And we’ve negotiated a 40% discount with Valpack. So Valpac is that blue envelope you get in the mail with all those coupons. So

Pam Currie (07:54)
Yeah.

Scott Breimhorst (07:54)
owners who put money into that kind of marketing see results for sure. On the commercial side it’s a little bit different.

Scott Breimhorst (08:00)
the digital marketing can definitely be a part of it. And we have all of the collateral for them. But that is a different kind of owner who’s going to focus on commercial. They need to be in the B and I networks. They need to be meeting property managers. they need to be knocking on doors. I have a deal on the table in Charlotte, North Carolina, with who I think is gonna be a phenomenal owner. He just texted me last night that he drove, I can’t remember how far and counted all the churches.

Pam Currie (08:26)
How smart.

Scott Breimhorst (08:27)
And he and he once he signs,

Scott Breimhorst (08:28)
he’s just gonna start going. So, like, I mean, yeah, it’s two different kind of ways to go about the question, but on the residential side we’re we’re handling it. They have to follow up with the leads. And on the commercial side, it’s really about networking.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (08:41)
That’s great. And that’s kind of that’s classic, right? So that that you guys can actually, you know, use digital marketing to get those residentials. Do you find that typically they start out residential and then they kind of grow into the commercial side? ‘Cause that’s a little bit of a longer

Shari Currie Skjoldager (08:54)
Customer acquisition process, yeah.

Scott Breimhorst (08:55)
It’s

Scott Breimhorst (08:56)
a little bit territory dependent. So our highest revenue franchise owner and and number two are both in states where there’s just not a lot of asphalt driveways. They’re focused entirely on commercial. in Minnesota, there’s a great mix all over the place. The key here is really, you know, us educating our franchisee on the fact that you can make a lot of money on commercial properties.

Scott Breimhorst (09:20)
And do the residential at the same time. If you get too focused over here, because I’m not saying one is easier or not, one is just a longer play. you should focus on on doing both. and most especially in seasonal areas where you can only do this for a certain number of months in the year, you’ve got a whole offseason to be out there knocking on doors and making relationships and really talking about what makes jet black unique for these larger kind of commercial properties.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (09:44)
Okay, so there is a little bit of a downtime because it’s seasonal, but you have a strategy of how to use that downtime effectively, it sounds like. If you’re in the

Scott Breimhorst (09:52)
Definitely teaching our franchisees

Scott Breimhorst (09:53)
that, yep, yep, now do they all follow that plan? Not always. We’ve been around 40 years. We’ve got some long

Shari Currie Skjoldager (09:58)
yeah, you can only give them the playbook.

Scott Breimhorst (10:00)
time. Yep. Some of the franchisees have been around a long time just kind of have their plan and they’re working it. But you know, I I always make sure I’m very clear with with new franchisees. Like this is a big opportunity for you to really get a foothold because it’s recurring revenue. I mean, truly, you have to do

Scott Breimhorst (10:18)
asphalt maintenance or it falls apart pretty quickly. and were the answer. So if you kinda can get in with these properties you can see that return year over year.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (10:27)
That makes sense. So the revenue stream, do you have, do you consider yourself to have multiple revenue streams, one revenue stream? How is it recurring versus project-based?

Scott Breimhorst (10:38)
Great question. So technically it’s project based for sure, but driveways need to be done. We’ll just use driveways as the example. One every every one to three years. For sure, somewhere in that range, you really need to do it. and so we’ve built some things into our back up back end marketing that help kind of make that recurring revenue happen. There’s an automatic postcard that goes out to every home that you do two years from the date you did it, saying happy anniversary to your driveway.

Scott Breimhorst (11:05)
And yeah, it’s time to like get your get your seal coating back on. our our customers return to us at a very, very high, high rate for sure. So I mean, it becomes over time after you kind of get those initial seasons done, you know, you’re you’re definitely doing your old customers once again. I just ran into our owner in the city where I live. He was doing a driveway like three doors down. And he walked up and he remembered when he did my driveways in the past. I mean, it was kind of cool.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (11:33)
speaking of so who’s doing this? Who’s doing the work? I i i how hard is it to get the talent to do this work?

Scott Breimhorst (11:40)
So seal coding and dri seal coding itself is very, very, very simple. So it’s one of the hallmarks of what I’d like you to take away from this is the simplicity of of the business itself overall, but specifically SEAL coding. so it’s very easy to learn. And when we talk about training, I’ll kind of go into that a little bit. and it’s very easy to train people. So our owners are hiring laborers, you know, through multiple means, but posts and things like that.

Scott Breimhorst (12:05)
people they know sometimes and and training them on how to do it. the owner them the owner him or herself generally we’re wanting them to work very quickly to not be on that truck. Their time is very best spent on in our system, working on the CRM, out there managing the leads, getting new jobs, right? So the simplicity of of all of this is is really just kind of awesome. And getting the workers, I mean there’s people who really want to do this.

Scott Breimhorst (12:31)
and like the hours and like seasonality. and they can do whatever they want in the winter in Minnesota. A lot of them snowplow or something like that.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (12:40)
Makes sense. And so can I assume there’s not a certification requirement to do this? It’s unskilled labor.

Scott Breimhorst (12:46)
In a few states, the owner or somebody on the crew has to have a contractor’s license and it’s super nuanced. It’s very few states. it’s sort of weird. If you saw a driveway being done, you’d be like, Why do you need a contractor’s license to seal coat a driveway? That doesn’t

Pam Currie (12:59)
Okay.

Scott Breimhorst (13:00)
make any sense. and typically it’s based on the size of the job that’s being done. So but in most states, no, no certification, just training from us.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (13:08)
Keeping it simple all the way around. We like that a lot. you mentioned a really a key what I consider to be a key differentiator that you all offer, and that’s your proprietary ceiling coating. is there any in addition to that, is there anything else? Not that that doesn’t stand on its own.

Scott Breimhorst (13:23)
All right, I keep picking out my favorite things about this company. So you guys know I haven’t been here for a super long time. And when I made the decision

Pam Currie (13:29)
Well.

Scott Breimhorst (13:29)
to come, I really dug in on some things that I think are important. And then one was shown to me that I just I couldn’t believe. So you know how in most franchise systems you probably have five to seven different tech stack items that you’re paying for, your CRM, soundtrack your brand in your studio, your profit keeper or your

Scott Breimhorst (13:48)
financial reporting, all of it. Well, over forty

Pam Currie (13:51)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (13:51)
years, this company has built a proprietary back office system that literally does everything. it’s your CRM, your job management, your point of sale, your receivables, your payroll. It’s got a connection to the satellite kind of thing that can measure larger lots and help you with that. it’s unbelievable. And it’s under a thousand bucks a year.

Scott Breimhorst (14:15)
This entire system. So we’re really not charging them much at all. And that’s completely proprietary to us. So our strategy sessions once in a while are like, Hey, what else can we add here that will enhance the, you know, ability of our franchisees to to do X, Y, and Z? And we just had a meeting the other day with our programmers to to talk about an idea that Nick has that I think is gonna be a good one. So

Pam Currie (14:38)
Scott, I gotta give you guys a lot of credit because it sounds like you are really, really trying to build what I call a franchisee friendly system. And truth be told, not all franchisors do that. but it’s it sounds like you really are trying to build that franchisee friendly system. and that that’s a good thing.

Pam Currie (14:58)
So when people ask why should I pay the that royalty fee, you go, This is why. And this is everything that you’re getting.

Scott Breimhorst (15:03)
Yeah. I will give you

Scott Breimhorst (15:05)
a a really interesting example on that. So

Pam Currie (15:08)
Yes.

Scott Breimhorst (15:08)
well, you mentioned my background in Catholic education. I’m not going to go into that, but I do think it should tell the listeners you can probably trust me. and so I really did my diligence before I decided to come on board because I wanted to make sure that I was coming on board with a company that I could stand behind for sure. A lot of the things that we’ve already talked about go into that.

Scott Breimhorst (15:27)
Where it’s got sealed for me. I was having lunch with the vice president, and it was a pretty important lunch because I’m making a pretty big call here on whether I’m gonna make make a you know somewhat life-changing career move. And

Pam Currie (15:39)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (15:39)
his phone rang and it was a franchisee. He didn’t even say goodbye. He got up and walked out the door and took the call. Like, okay, this wasn’t, hey, I’ll call you later. I’m meeting I have a really important meeting. It was like, nope, you are the priority. I’m talking to you right now. You went out and solved this issue.

Pam Currie (15:53)
Mm-hmm.

Pam Currie (15:55)
I I don’t I hear you and I and I like that. you are the priority. So let’s talk about the franchise system a little bit. You mentioned that it was founded in 1987 under a different founder, and now it’s under new leadership, Nick, right? when when did you officially start franchising?

Scott Breimhorst (16:14)
I was just five years after that, I think, just in the early nineties. Yep.

Pam Currie (16:17)
Okay. Okay.

Pam Currie (16:18)
Gotcha. Gotcha. And like you said, it had sort of that organic growth and and that type of thing. tell us about where you currently are sitting, like how many franchisees do you currently have? How many

Scott Breimhorst (16:28)
We

Pam Currie (16:29)
of them are multi unit owners? That sort of thing.

Scott Breimhorst (16:31)
Yeah, so our owners own an average of 2.5 territories each.

Pam Currie (16:36)
Okay.

Scott Breimhorst (16:37)
so we have 52 owners and 15 two territories that are in operation with a couple more coming online here, just getting their training done. So it’s been it’s been

Pam Currie (16:46)
And would you be up

Scott Breimhorst (16:46)
kind of a cool, like slow growth. Like I said, we’re emerging after 40 years.

Pam Currie (16:50)
Yeah, that’s great. And what about what about your territories? How do you go about defining franchisees territory?

Scott Breimhorst (16:59)
Okay. So you know technically in the FTD there’s some numbers around this. twenty thousand households minimum that have a hundred thousand median income. However, we generally do a lot larger territory than that. if you look in our FTD at our item nineteen, there’s a full PL in there. and the PL is based on a very old territory that is our corporate territory, so we know all the numbers are correct and true, but it’s very small.

Scott Breimhorst (17:24)
And it’s doing really, really well. Currently,

Pam Currie (17:26)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (17:26)
we’re offering but about three to four times the size of that. So anybody listening who’s like doing their homework and starting to look at that can expect that their territory would be much larger. Then the other nuance is if it’s largely commercial, meaning there’s just a lot less like driveway neighborhoods to do, then we’re gonna give a really big territory. it’s like very sizable. We just want them to have, you know.

Scott Breimhorst (17:51)
enough space to just get to their goals and and really make it work.

Pam Currie (17:56)
So right now it’s based on households. and then and then

Scott Breimhorst (17:58)
The minimum is there. Yeah.

Pam Currie (17:59)
of course any businesses or commercial, that is just really gravy in the territory. Okay. Okay.

Scott Breimhorst (18:04)
Totally. I’ll I’ll walk you through a real time example. It just literally happened

Scott Breimhorst (18:07)
this week. I mean, we were working in in Charlotte and we’re trying to decide how many territories we actually want to do in Charlotte because it’s an open map for us and we’ve got a great owner that we think is going to be awesome. I’m gonna knock on wood here because it’s not signed yet, but later I’ll I’ll let you know.

Pam Currie (18:21)
Well.

Scott Breimhorst (18:21)
we started with the question, where do where do you want to go? And we’ll give you some data. And he threw out his his kind of perfect world and we’re like, Yeah, I think we can go a little bigger than that.

Scott Breimhorst (18:31)
and so we reached that decision together without saying, You are stuck with this. we want to make this a negotiation and and just make it especially in a place where we don’t have any other territories, we want that first one to be super successful.

Pam Currie (18:44)
Hear you. So really that’s kind of cool because you’re building out the territory with the prospective franchisee, based

Scott Breimhorst (18:51)
Correct.

Pam Currie (18:51)
upon where they live and and and what their vision is. Okay. That’s great.

Scott Breimhorst (18:54)
Yeah, we kinda don’t

Scott Breimhorst (18:55)
want to have to drive too far. If we can

Pam Currie (18:57)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (18:58)
help it, you know, they can get to more driveways or they can get to more people or they literally know more people, which is very helpful.

Pam Currie (19:04)
I that makes and what about for Jet Black Corporate? I mean, what’s your vision there? Do you have a goal of getting to so many franchisees? what’s the growth vision?

Scott Breimhorst (19:13)
Internally, we have some revenue goals. It it isn’t so much the number of territories, it’s the the sort of resulting success of the franchisees driving the system’s growth. We do want to grow

Pam Currie (19:24)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (19:25)
a little faster with the number of awards that we’re doing each year, but we try not to talk about it because I think you can fall into a trap of awarding the wrong franchisees just to hit kind of numbers. When a

Pam Currie (19:36)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (19:36)
lot of the work that we’re doing is working with our franchisees to explain to them it

Scott Breimhorst (19:40)
Here’s how we can coach you on maximizing your territory. Because right now you’re you’re leaving a ton of meat on the bone. And if you added the truck and added another crew or X, Y, and Z, we can grow the revenue like that. So I’m not gonna I won’t pin a number down here, but we we definitely want to be maximized in markets where we exist. And then we want to focus on growth in some great markets that are out there now.

Pam Currie (20:06)
Yeah. So I I want to kind of understand what you’re looking for in a franchisee. it sounds like you’re excited about this prospective one in North Carolina. But what c what qualities and characteristics are you looking for in a franchise

Scott Breimhorst (20:20)
Yeah.

Pam Currie (20:21)
owner?

Scott Breimhorst (20:21)
Some of these things won’t be any different than the people you’re looking for in your world. You know, business ownership, acumen, can they actually do the business part of it? you don’t have to be a skilled laborer or or any kind of a laborer. our quad cities owner is an active police officer right now. I don’t think he ever jet blacked or or steel coated a driveway before he became an owner.

Scott Breimhorst (20:41)
You’ll you’ll want to get your your hands do get dirty, obviously, and there’s some value to the whole dirty, dirty work concept. there’s just less people who want to do it, which means less competition is is truly out there. somebody devoted to growing the business. And we talk about, and I used simple earlier, the the second word that your listeners and you should know is this is very scalable. I mean, very scalable quickly. So when we’re screening owners.

Scott Breimhorst (21:07)
I’m I’m asking questions that will get me the answer. Is this person buying a job? Or is this person buying a business that they want to maximize, especially in key territories for us, like the Chicago area? That’s going to go to a great owner that shows all the skills. leadership and management, I think, is important. You know, you you want to retain your crew and you want to make sure that they’re, you know, doing a great job for you, and maybe you want to come back season after season in a season seasonal area. all of those things, plus

Scott Breimhorst (21:33)
Good humans who make a great fit for our franchise community.

Pam Currie (21:37)
So are there any expectations around the owner to be doing the work or are the expectations more around the owner being more of overseeing the business and hiring those to do the work?

Scott Breimhorst (21:53)
Yeah, it goes in stages for most owners. When they start, they’re generally going to be at least on some jobs and for sure all commercial jobs. They’re going be there to see that. and we actually send our our operations person down for their very first commercial lot to like literally be there with them so they can do that, do that right. But the goal, and I can’t give you a timeline, the goal is to not have that be their day.

Scott Breimhorst (22:18)
The goal is to wake up in the morning, get the crews going, get into the spots where they need them to be, get into the stars back office system that we’ve got, work the leads, call the leads. I’m not kidding. I talked to the same homeowner where I just done the the block, and it’s the first time he’d used Jet Black, and he used it because he saw one in a different neighborhood. he’d called six different companies and he only got one call back, and it was our guy for a quote, right?

Pam Currie (22:41)
Wow.

Scott Breimhorst (22:41)
That’s what we want the owners doing. Follow up and follow

Pam Currie (22:43)
Yep.

Scott Breimhorst (22:44)
through.

Pam Currie (22:45)
Yep. I I hear you. So what is your philosophy as a franchise or on a franchise owner who wants to be semi-involved? Do you permit that? what’s your philosophy on that?

Scott Breimhorst (22:58)
Well, I know your backgrounds because I’ve snooped your LinkedIns and you’ve been around this a long time. You guys know that that term means something so different to everybody.

Scott Breimhorst (23:08)
it it can’t really have a part-time job focus on it. You have to be able to have the capacity to be all in. Asterisk.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (23:17)
Correct.

Scott Breimhorst (23:17)
Back to the guy in Quad Cities, Iowa, who is an active police officer and he’s running the business. So it really comes down to the the person that I’m talking to.

Scott Breimhorst (23:27)
If their mindset coming in, I just want to do this part-time at five o’clock at night, you’re probably not gonna fit. It’s just it just isn’t gonna work. You do probably have to be ready to go fill in for a crew member who can’t make it for a day or something like that. so investment types, it’d be a it’d be a challenge, at least under a current model, to do that. But people who really want to dig in and get it moving, and that’s why I’m loving this new owner in Charlotte that I’m once again gonna knock on wood. it

Scott Breimhorst (23:52)
His plans are like, let’s go and I’m ready to remove. I hope that answered the question.

Pam Currie (23:56)
makes sense.

Pam Currie (23:57)
It did. It did. It is. And you’re absolutely correct, Scott. Everyone defines semi-involved differently. you know, some franchiser will say, okay, well, we’re okay with that. but how much time can you dedicate to it? When can you dedicate that time? Are we putting a general manager in place? So it it really can get defined in a lot of different ways. And

Scott Breimhorst (24:15)
Yeah.

Pam Currie (24:16)
it sounds like you’re open. It’s just a matter of having the dialogue around what does that look like?

Scott Breimhorst (24:22)
Correct.

Scott Breimhorst (24:23)
We kind of coach our franchisees to not think I’m gonna have a general manager watching over my crew, unless they’re just a part

Pam Currie (24:29)
Uh-huh.

Scott Breimhorst (24:29)
of the crew. and not like outsource estimate estimating or or bidding, because that’s a huge expense that you should really take on at least until you’re a certain like point in your growth.

Pam Currie (24:41)
Yeah. Would you consider because one of the terms that I’ve been trying to really get out into the franchise business community is something that I call creating a transition strategy.

Scott Breimhorst (24:51)
No.

Pam Currie (24:52)
Because for Sherry and I, very often we get interest in business ownership, but someone has they’re working, they have a W-2, they have the golden handcuffs, but their goal is to get out of that W 2 and they want to create more of a transition strategy to make that happen.

Scott Breimhorst (25:09)
Mm.

Pam Currie (25:10)
So it it might start off a little bit semi involved with the vision of transitioning out. Would something like that be acceptable?

Scott Breimhorst (25:20)
I think definitely, but it all comes back to the capacity question we asked earlier. And then I’m glad you

Pam Currie (25:24)
Yep. Okay.

Scott Breimhorst (25:25)
asked it the way you did, because what our our FDD offers is a great opportunity to really model those things out with everything we’ve we’ve put in there. You’ve seen

Pam Currie (25:37)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (25:37)
you’ve seen thin item 19s, I’m sure, or non-existent item 19s. Ours is literally the opposite. So if somebody had that strategy, they could actually put pen to paper and build.

Scott Breimhorst (25:48)
you know, what the model has to look like overall to to kind of meet where they’re at with their golden handcuffs.

Pam Currie (25:54)
Gotcha. And it it’s would you classify as this as a pretty quick to launch and pretty quick to cash flow since it is a fairly simple model? Okay. Gotcha.

Scott Breimhorst (26:03)
Yes. That is safe to

Scott Breimhorst (26:05)
say. the guy in Iowa, I keep bringing up my favorite franchisees, but his name is Dakota. He’s phenomenal. He had studied home services before he called us. And he had already said, I I really want to get into SEAL coding. We’re a total hidden gem in the home services industry right now. that’s just a fact. So he called us and said, Hey, I want to open a jet black. And

Scott Breimhorst (26:27)
They qualified him like in a couple of days because it he had done all his homework. This is a dream, by the way, for a friend Evguy. three and a half weeks later, he did his first paid job. So the the trailer was ready for him. He already had the truck. He came up, did the one week of training. That’s all it really took. He knew what he wanted. He got back home. He just won a commercial account actually recently. and so it can happen very fast. And and because of the cost of the investment and all of that.

Scott Breimhorst (26:53)
And the cash flow does typically come pretty quickly.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (26:56)
That’s good. You kind of tap touched on on a few points that I wanted to get a little bit deeper on. One was training and support. What does the ongoing or like the onboarding training look like for a new franchisee?

Scott Breimhorst (27:07)
Yeah, so you come up to

Scott Breimhorst (27:08)
Minnesota, you do five days at our home office in Savage, Minnesota, so just south of Minneapolis, not too far. three-ish days are out with jobs, you know, learning the business itself. It’s maybe not in this order, but there’s about three days of just learning the how we do SEAL coding at at Jet Black. and then the other two days would be all of the other office, kind of back office, meeting the team. I mean, everything that they need to know about that, that

Scott Breimhorst (27:35)
back off of CRM stars system I mentioned earlier, all of those things would happen there. Then typically they hook onto their trailer and they’re they’re back home. Concurrently we’re turning on their marketing, or maybe prior to that. And so they’re starting to get leads and then they can start to follow up and get jobs.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (27:51)
Very nice. And then after that point, the ongoing support, what does that look like?

Scott Breimhorst (27:55)
Yeah. back to the simple word. It starts with the fact that we answer our phones here. You guys have sure have heard horror stories where a franchisee signed on with a company and then the the question is what happened to my franchise? Or I they don’t talk to me anymore. we answer our phone. The people there are are are very knowledgeable and all of them have been around a long time and know everything about the system. They know everything about sealant.

Scott Breimhorst (28:18)
So when they call with questions on like a job that didn’t go well and what was wrong with the mix or all of those things, we do regular calls with our entire system. And they would typically be 60 or 75 minutes, sometimes longer, topical. A lot of times it is on ways that they can improve their business and and make more money. Because normally the the profit leaks at at jet jet black are they bought too nice of a pickup to pull their trailer and it just cost too much.

Scott Breimhorst (28:48)
or there’s they’re booking out a single crew for a month and they don’t have any room for new work. So the profit is leaking ’cause you’re not scaling. So we’re just kind of always coaching on those kinds of things.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (29:00)
Very nice.

Pam Currie (29:00)
Makes sense.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (29:02)
And then also we tapped into money too. I want to jump into item seven, which is the estimated investment before we get into item nineteen, but can you give an idea of how much it’s gonna cost to to get a franchise with you all?

Scott Breimhorst (29:14)
Yep. It’s gonna cost a hundred, brought about a hundred and ten thousand, estimated overall to to get in. And then that’s with a single truck and a single trailer. It includes everything you need to get going. I mean, literally the the tools for doing the work, your initial investment for the sealant you’ll need to get, the the trailer that we fabricate, and by the way, we sell that to the franchisee at cost, so there’s no additional cost to that.

Pam Currie (29:39)
Yeah.

Scott Breimhorst (29:39)
they would pay

Scott Breimhorst (29:40)
a hundred and two thousand of it to us and the other eight thousand is an estimate of what the down payment on their pickup truck is probably gonna be in there. And we keep that separate because we don’t sell the truck and they might might already have one. So basically that’s everything they need to get going, including the marketing, opening spend, grand opening, kind of planning credits and all of those things.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (30:00)
That’s very reasonable, 110. That’s that’s very reasonable. And then I don’t

Scott Breimhorst (30:02)
Mm-hmm.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (30:04)
want to forget, I know you mentioned something about the royalty. So something special, share.

Scott Breimhorst (30:10)
I remember

Scott Breimhorst (30:11)
texting a picture of it to another person who’s in your your consultant network and he’s he called me and just said, what? So the the royalties are scaled by the size of the job. So like get this the driveway that I’m sitting at would have an eight percent royalty, but if you got the school parking lot where I just drove out of a little while ago, it might be one and a half or two percent royalty, which

Scott Breimhorst (30:33)
I know. And it gives the owners the opportunity to really do two things. Number one, they can make more money if they’re being aggressive with what we want them to be aggressive with. obviously getting some commercial work is great. And number two, they they get to bid far more effectively against any other seal coating company that is out there because they can allot for less

Pam Currie (30:50)
Mm mm

Shari Currie Skjoldager (30:52)
Your space.

Scott Breimhorst (30:53)
royalty.

Pam Currie (30:54)
I follow you.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (30:54)
That is

Shari Currie Skjoldager (30:55)
very unique. That’s very nice. I also, I mean, that’s a g a nice setup, one to two percent. we always say it’s anywhere from five to ten percent. So you’re way lower than that with those commercial deals. And usually it’s based on your overall revenue versus these individual projects. So that’s nice as well.

Scott Breimhorst (31:11)
Yeah. Nick Nick very specifically

Scott Breimhorst (31:13)
made it on individual job revenue. I mean it it’s really cool.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (31:17)
Very unique.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (31:18)
Very unique. And very generous, I would say, towards the franchisee. I think you all come across very generous, even in your in your fees, your overall fees. You have a pretty simple fee structure. So it is generous for all people involved. Do you want to share a little bit about that?

Scott Breimhorst (31:34)
Yeah, I mean, it’s just back to the theme for for jet black. We’re not gonna charge people for anything they don’t need. And even if it’s some shiny new object we saw at a conference and we we or w you know, some tech salesperson really talked us into something that maybe is not gonna make them more money. If it’s not gonna make them more money, it’s not in the fee structure. So most

Pam Currie (31:54)
Yeah.

Scott Breimhorst (31:54)
of the fees that are listed in the F D D are just not incurred or they’re incurred when they have to be incurred. really the back office star system.

Scott Breimhorst (32:02)
And their marketing spend that they need to do and the royalties and there really isn’t much more than that. Yeah, they might need to buy some

Shari Currie Skjoldager (32:08)
Yeah, you guys keep it personal.

Scott Breimhorst (32:10)
more T shirts for the guys in the crew. I mean

Shari Currie Skjoldager (32:12)
That’s great. And then also you talked about your very detailed item nineteen, which is financial performance representation of of your franchisees and the system. Can you share a little bit about that?

Scott Breimhorst (32:25)
Yeah, the the first the first word I I thought of when I looked at it was healthy. That this is a growing healthy system. You see graphs in there of our growth over all the years of the business, from where it was to where it is now. And I always tell folks when they’re looking at that, that’s not for us to show off. This is just to know who you’re hitching your wagon to and like is this company going up or down or what what’s happening?

Pam Currie (32:46)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (32:48)
there’s obviously the kind of normal ranges of what people are making.

Scott Breimhorst (32:51)
The item nineteen includes a full PL, which I think is great because it makes it easier to model everything out. where it’s transparent. Sorry, I’m gushing about our item nineteen, but it’s true. Like the average, the average franchisee is in the 700,000s, but the median is lower. And it’s easy to explain. Those folks are just not doing much commercial work. They’re really happy and focused on residential work. And so it tells

Pam Currie (33:15)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (33:16)
a great story that if that’s how you want to.

Scott Breimhorst (33:18)
To do this, it’s that’s the opportunity. But look on the other side because there’s some more opportunity over there. So I think

Pam Currie (33:25)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (33:26)
it’s a healthy item 19, it’s transparent. if Nick was sitting right here, he’d say, Don’t forget to tell him that I wouldn’t put the PL in there if I didn’t think it was typical. just a really kind of stand-up guy for sure. He’s he’s definitely not the kind of guy who’s gonna do shady stuff with the with the item 19.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (33:41)
That’s wonderful. And I love that it’s a business model that has a potential to be an empire builder model if you want it, but also the more simple business owner can keep it a little bit more simple if they want that as well. So it’s nice that you have those options.

Scott Breimhorst (33:55)
Yep.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (33:56)
All right, are you seeing any common funding strategies that your new franchisees are using? Are they self-funding or what are they doing? Yeah.

Scott Breimhorst (34:04)
It it is a mix, honestly. I

Scott Breimhorst (34:06)
mean, we have some that are self funding for sure. we just cleared SBA in one territory. I’ve got another one that’s just a family working together on it. We’re okay with kind of we’re on the SBA registry, so we always make sure we

Pam Currie (34:17)
Okay.

Scott Breimhorst (34:18)
tell folks that’s an opportunity for you. but traditional bank loans have happened and we do see people just funding with cash.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (34:26)
This has been

Pam Currie (34:26)
Sure.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (34:26)
great information, Scott. I I I’m excited about Jet Black. Really great opportunity with a very a franchise or who cares, it sounds like, and and who who wants to share

Scott Breimhorst (34:36)
I mean that is the true.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (34:38)
in the success. That’s that’s all you can ask for. we’re about ready to wrap this up. Or did we miss anything? Is there anything else you’d like to share before we move on?

Scott Breimhorst (34:46)
Well, first, thanks for having me on. I love talking about talking about jet black. I love, you know, getting to FaceTime with with folks like you and and really getting to drill in on some of your great questions. I appreciate that for sure. I I do think this is a a huge opportunity in a, like we said, hidden gem market because it’s so not hidden. I’m not kidding. If I took my computer and took you on a walk through my neighborhood, every other driveway has a giant yellow jet black.

Scott Breimhorst (35:12)
Like s I’m not even joking, stake in front of their driveway. And by the way, they didn’t all happen on the same day, which means the jealous neighbor effect happened and somebody drove by and saw it and then went to the next one. So

Pam Currie (35:22)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Breimhorst (35:23)
it’s just really cool. And and I think I think for the right owner too, you know, this is an opportunity for you to to be a part of your community and and provide a service that people really need and and kind of educate them on it. And you know, maybe that angle is is important for some folks as well, but I know it is for a lot of our owners.

Pam Currie (35:41)
Yeah. Yeah, it does sell itself, right? Because it’s such a visual business. I can see how I can see how that would be the case. all right, Scott, I think we shared with you. We do like to close our podcast with a very important question. And this has become one of my favorite questions on the podcast. and it’s this in closing, what tips would you give to budding entrepreneurs?

Scott Breimhorst (36:06)
Okay. I’m gonna focus a little bit on the franchise space if that’s okay.

Pam Currie (36:10)
Okay. Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Breimhorst (36:13)
Look at all the numbers. If you can, don’t look at item 19 until after you’ve looked at how many locations of a business have closed, how many have been reacquired by a franchise or. look at all of the fees, all of that, because the item 19 can really be glossy and it looks kind of cool, but there’s there’s a story to be told with some of those things.

Scott Breimhorst (36:33)
On the entrepreneurial business side, so by the way, what I run the school of business at the school that I’m at, and one of the things that I’m talking with students about is hey, you can start a brand new business and come up with something new that that’s an a lane. So for people who want to go on that, great, have a plan. Most businesses like that don’t make it, just so you know. So keep in mind that those dreams are great. Franchising gives you that opportunity.

Scott Breimhorst (36:58)
to lean in on systems and processes that have been honed over hopefully many years by a franchise or. So I love that idea of being in business for yourself, but not by yourself. I didn’t have to think of it and hang a shingle out and then compete with a whole bunch of other companies and not really have a support of a home office and things like that.

Scott Breimhorst (37:16)
That’s a big one that that I’ll be talking about. In fact, that there’s a unit we’re putting in on franchising that didn’t exist before this year. So I’m excited for for students to learn, learn about that as well. and then I guess overall it’s like just go for it. I mean, if I look back on my okay, I’m 53. I know you’re shocked and I I look like I’m not 53, but I am. And I would have done something like this a long time ago. You know,

Pam Currie (37:40)
Yeah.

Scott Breimhorst (37:40)
I love everything about my career and it’s been awesome.

Scott Breimhorst (37:43)
But I also think there is something in small business ownership and entrepreneurship that that is itched that I I never really kind of allowed myself to scratch. So like just go for it. Like give it a shot.

Pam Currie (37:55)
Uh-huh.

Scott Breimhorst (37:56)
and then lastly, last one, for folks who are working with consultants specifically, I’m noticing some of them kind of get off the consulting train and start to just kind of go on their own. You guys are here for a

Pam Currie (38:08)
Uh-huh.

Scott Breimhorst (38:08)
reason. Like

Scott Breimhorst (38:10)
You you know, call, lean in on your your experience and what you’re learning,

Pam Currie (38:12)
Absolutely.

Scott Breimhorst (38:13)
right? I mean, that’s that’s really, really it should be important and you’re a great resource for for your clients. that it’s true. Just lately it seems like folks have had less and less actual contact. And I’m like, that shouldn’t be. You should be taking these questions back to them and verifying that I’m being accurate.

Pam Currie (38:31)
Yeah. Thank you for that, Scott. Thank you for that unsolicited plug. We appreciate

Scott Breimhorst (38:34)
Yeah.

Pam Currie (38:35)
it. And and just to share, I mean, Sherry and I, just like all franchise owners are not created equal, not all franchisees are created equal. I would say not all franchise brokers are created equal. And Sherry and I do take a lot of pride in the fact that we do provide a lot of not only business coaching, but due diligence tools. We have a we have a password protected site.

Pam Currie (38:59)
that provides them with the ability to receive a lot a lot of resources, due diligence tools, guide on how to manage to that discovery process and hopefully be further effective in their due diligence. You know, that’s ultimately what we like to

Scott Breimhorst (39:14)
That’s awesome. That is awesome.

Pam Currie (39:16)
do. So thank you for thank you for bringing that up.

Scott Breimhorst (39:20)
You bet.

Pam Currie (39:21)
great having you as a guest. We’re gonna go ahead and wrap this up.

Pam Currie (39:25)
Let me just go ahead and say to our listeners, if you are considering franchise ownership, reach out and request a free franchise sisters discovery call. In addition to that, we would like to give you an ebook, top 10 questions to consider before investing in a franchise.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (39:42)
Yep. Our mission is to help you navigate the franchise selection and buying process through our client-centric align-wise methodology and to put you in a position to make an informed decision with the help of our investigate before you invest toolkit.

Pam Currie (39:57)
That’s right. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks, Scott. Fist

Shari Currie Skjoldager (39:59)
This problem.

Pam Currie (40:00)
bump.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (40:00)
Thanks, Scott.

Scott Breimhorst (40:01)
please.