Rick Werner of Unishippers Discusses Dadpreneurs with Franchise Interviews

Blog Talk Radio Hi everyone and welcome to a very special edition of Franchise Interviews where for over six years now we've been asking the Franchiprenor's one-on-one. I'm your host Marty McDermott, I'm the president of Franchise Interviews We have a great show today. Over the next couple of weeks, we're going to be talking about dadpreneurs. And today we're meeting with Rick Werner of Unishippers.

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Hi, everyone, and welcome back to a very special edition of Franchise Interviews, where for over six years now, we've been asking the franchipreneurs a long one. I'm your host, Marty McDermott. I'm the president of Franchise Interviews. And as we were saying earlier, we have a great show today.

Over the next couple of weeks, we're going to be talking about dadpreneurs. And today, we're meeting with Rick Werner of Unishippers. And Rick Werner owns a Unishippers franchise, which is a third-party shipping advisor for small to mid-sized businesses. And why don't we go right into our interview with Brent.

I'm calling you today, Rick. Where are you guys actually located? I'm located in Auburn, Alabama. Okay, fantastic.

And for our listeners who don't know, maybe you could tell us a little bit about Unishippers and explain what Unishippers does and what services it provides. Absolutely. Marty, Unishippers, in a nutshell, and obviously I'm going to go through some of the details and some of the high-level stuff. In a nutshell, we are a shipping logistics company geared towards small to medium-sized businesses.

And what I mean by small to medium size is we really target those mom-and-pop shops or those attorney's firms or manufacturing companies that spend less than $100,000 a year annually on their shipping. Now, it's not to say that we can't handle larger accounts and larger clients, but our wheelhouse is really under $100,000. Some of our largest customers spend over $1 million annually with us. Okay.

The reason we target that $100,000 and under niche is because statistically, if you look at some of the big players in the game and what we do, FedEx, UPS, the National Procurement, the 18-wheelers you see on the side of the road with their name on the side of the company, they really target those larger, and they're able to provide them with services and whatnot that they can afford because they're spending more money with them. Right. So Unishippers has set up a model. We've streamlined our process that actually allows us to target those folks in the smaller segment.

And so what we're ultimately doing is we're bringing services and rates, usually reserved for Fortune 500 companies, we're bringing them to the mom-and-pop shops to the small business market. And how we do that is we have looked nationally, as well as regionally and locally, and we have contracted with the best carriers. And carriers, I mean Estes, SIA, R&L, Old Dominion, YRC, all those 18-year-olders you've seen on the road. We've partnered with them, and probably our most famous and our most really recognizable is UPS.

Right. Now, we are one of two authorized resellers of UPS services. And the reason why we have been chosen by UPS is because of our reputation, because of our background. We've been around since 1987.

We've been doing it a long time. We have more than 50,000 customers that currently work with unishippers. Last year we handled more than 6 million shipments. So UPS partnered with us, and we are really their small business thing arm and service arm because they don't have an account manager.

Well, technically they do have an account manager for that size company. So if you call UPS and you only ship 10, 20 packages a year with them, you're still going to get a customer service rep assigned to you. But that customer service rep may have 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 clients in that segment that they have to deal with on an annual basis. Whereas a typical franchise owner like myself, I'm starting from the ground up.

So currently I have seven customers on the books. but I may get to 100 or 200 or 300 customers, and that's all by myself that I can really service effectively in a year. And so one person handling 3,000 or 4,000 or one person handling 300. So we are laser folk on that segment, and we bring services like fantastic pricing incentives and savings.

We have, like I had mentioned, a dedicated account management team, which is myself, starts with myself, and then I have a customer service team behind me that if I'm not available, they can go right to my customer service team and they're getting taken care of. Wow. You know, I don't know the last time you called a major retail company or you had a complaint about something, you call their 800 number, you get into a press 1 to go here, 2 to go here, get your account number. You're right.

You know, it may take you 20 minutes to get to a live person. Exactly. If you're dealing with me, you're calling my office. If you don't get my, if I'm not available in my office, if I'm not on the road, My line is automatically set up to push right to my customer service team, and they pick it up within three rings.

You have two options, UPS, which we call Express, or Freight Desk. So you're either doing less than truckload, truckload, shipments, that would be considered a Freight Desk question, or you're working with UPS on an Express package. So you hit one or three, and that's it, and then you get a live person. Fantastic.

Right. I mean, that's our business model, and that's from day one when I've looked into this. That has piqued my interest because I know customer service nowadays, that's where it's at in the business world. There's a dog-eat-dog world out there.

Right. And anyone can have great rates, and anyone can have a great dog and pony show up front, but in the end, customer service keeps your clients happy and keeps them shipping with you. So that being said, it's kind of us in a nutshell. Typically, we're saving folks anywhere from 20% to 30% on their shipping.

It depends on who they're with and where they're shipping in the country, how they're shipping, and then the volume that they do. But typically, we see around 20%. All of our software, I should take that back. We have no software.

It's all web-based. Web-based, okay. Once you sign up to work with me, we give you a login and a password, and you go right on to our website, and you do what you need to do. You start shipping right from there.

So, again, it's set up for the small business owner to move their products from point A to point B and efficient enter and cost savings-wise. Wow. It must be interesting for you, too, Rick, to work with the small business owner, the medium-sized business owners. I mean, you're really providing an important service.

I mean, again, every dollar counts for them, doesn't it, particularly in today's economy. So it must be very interesting for you. It must be kind of like a feel-good type of business that you're providing this service. I was curious, how did you get into this?

I mean, did you have a background in this industry before, or what were you doing maybe in your past life? You know, I get asked this question quite often, obviously. I'm new into the shipping world. I'm new to the shipping industry.

But I have definitely been able to draw on my background, and it's giving me a lot of insight and a lot of experience coming into what I'm doing. In my previous life, I was an insurance broker, an insurance broker with medical benefits, dental, vision, health, life insurance, disability. And what I did there is the same concept. we partnered with all the leaders in the insurance world and so I was able to sell all of their products So I would go out and find a small business owner and say hey what are your needs Right.

Do an assessment of what they need, kind of what that price point is, how many employees they had and whatnot, and then go out and look at these carriers and find the best product from each one of these carriers and bring it to the table for the small business owner. And that's a very similar situation which I'm doing right here with Unishippers. We have the contracts in place. Unit Shippers as a corporate has all the contracts in place.

And so I'm going out, I'm in the small business center and saying, hey, I understand you ship. Everybody has to ship. It's a line item for them at the end of the year. We spend X amount of money on shipping.

And I tell them, would it be nice to have 20% of that back in your pocket? Exactly. And when you're talking money to somebody, they're always, oh, yes. So we go through and we do an analysis, look at their needs, and I say, hey, here's a different carry than who you're currently using.

The process is going to be the same way. You go online, you input your information, and a quote pops up. And if you want to go with that quote that looks good, you hit the button. It prints off what we call a bill of lading, and they slap it on the package and go.

So it's the same process they're currently doing. They're just going through Unishippers to get it done, and we're bringing the bulk buying power of our 50,000 customers to those carriers to give those carriers great price breaks for my client. So it's a win-win situation. It's very similar to what I did in the insurance world as an insurance broker.

And that's why I say we are a shipping broker in the sense that we're bringing bulk buying power to the doors of these carriers, and for that we're giving great service and great rates. Your story is great, Rick, because, I mean, again, you know, you really didn't have any specific, you know, industry background. You know, I mean, you applied what you did in the past to what you're doing now. But, I mean, it's really the benefit of franchising, isn't it, you know, is you're able to get into, you know, industries or things that, you know, you may have not really had a specific background.

And I was curious what attracted you to Unishippers because there's so many franchise opportunities out there. There must have been, I guess, a point of your life you said, okay, you know, I want to go into my own business. and it sounds like you started researching franchises. And I was curious, you kind of hinted upon some of the reasons why.

I'm ready to hold on the whole Unishippers concept. But what was it about maybe the industry, and then how did you narrow it down to Unishippers? Let me give you a quick little background about kind of how I grew up in the business world since college, and that will kind of lead me to the point where that brought me to Unishippers. Okay, that will be good.

Graduated college. I ran a restaurant as a general manager of a restaurant, and I worked at the restaurant, you know, for two, three years during school, but after school. And so it was a natural progression for me to be the general manager. Okay, I did that for about 18 months, and I'm like, I didn't go to school to work seven days a week, 365, every holiday, you know, 15 hours a day.

The light bulb went on, and so I said, I'm going to do something else. So I moved from Montgomery, where I went to school, at Huntington College in Montgomery, Alabama. Okay. And I moved to St.

Louis, which is where I'm from. I'm born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. So I moved back there, and I landed in the insurance world.

I was an account manager for a national health insurance provider. So I cut my teeth there, learned the industry, learned how they got the rates, the benefits, the whole nine yards, and then was recruited by a local broker agency to come over and produce business for them. So I moved from the carrier side over to the broker side and went down that route. So I spent about 10 years in the industry and was really comfortable there.

Loved it. Well, at the time I loved it, and I thought I would retire from the injury world. Meantime, and I'll give you a little side story, I have a fraternity brother a little younger, two years younger than me, that obviously I met in school and we clicked with right away. We were roommates.

And so when I graduated, went off and did my thing, he graduated, went off and did his thing, we have kept in contact. And I'm like, hey, I've got a great career. You know, look at what I'm doing. He said, well, I've got a great career.

Look at what I'm doing. So he was in the shipping world. Right. So long story short, my wife lands her dream job at Auburn University.

She has two masters and a Ph.D., so she used to be a university professor. That's great.

She's from Alabama, right outside of Auburn, and so she's the little town girl that scored the dream job at the local university. That's great. So I walked away from the insurance world, moved to Auburn. Her family is close by.

and we knew we wanted to start a family, so it was important for us to be close to either her family or mine. We landed in Auburn, had a kid, and from the time we moved here to the time we had a kid, I tried to look around. Okay, how do I leverage my experience in the insurance world here in Alabama? Well, lo and behold, Alabama is one of two states that doesn't have a need for insurance brokers.

So I couldn't do what I was doing in Missouri, in Alabama. There's only one network, truly only one network in Alabama. So if you want health insurance, you're going to one in the major carrier, that one major carrier, not 10 or 12, one. So I would bring nothing to the table.

So I knocked around, had a couple little jobs here and there. I went to another agency, tried to learn the commercial side of insurance. It's a whole different animal, lots of different moving parts, and I did not play well in that sandbox. It just, my brain was set up for benefits, not the commercial side, so it just was not a good fit.

At that point, we had had our little girl, and I'm like, well, we're paying somebody else to watch our kid. Why can't I do it? And that was early in 2012. And early in 2012, I had a conversation with my fraternity brother, and he's like, hey, I know you're looking to do something from home.

There's this company called, well, and actually he didn't tell me back at the time. And he said, hey, I know of a company. There's going to be an opportunity that's going to come up by the end of the year. Are you ready to move when I say go?

I said, okay, great. I let it go until about August 2012. He made a call. He said, are you ready?

Sure. Okay, let's go. So we had huge conversations, lots of phone time. He's based out of Houston, Texas, just for a side note.

Right. And from August 2012 to today, I researched, interviewed, funded, inked the deal, and have made sales for Unishippers. So he brought me to the table, brought me to the company, and said, if I were to do this on my own, if I were to leave the corporate world, this is what I would do, and this is the company I would deal with. So I looked into Unishippers, looked at their franchise model, their business model, their support, their reputation, and everything is just top-notch for them.

So it made sense when I compared it to other franchises out there, cost of initial investment, time commitment, flexibility. And then I looked at the industry. Look at the shipping industry. Everybody ships.

They have to move products from point A to point Z. Even attorney's firms, you know, they're overniving legal documents. Dentist office, printing companies, anybody is moving product from here to there. and so I thought to myself well the shipping world is not going away.

True. So that was a huge selling point for me. It's not going away. It's not and looking back on my lifestyle with the insurance broker, every conversation I had there was always negative.

I'm talking to the business owner, right? What's he saying? My current rates are going up. My employees are sick.

I'm not getting any benefits out of this and I have to pay for it whether they utilize it or not. So very negative conversation with the business owner. Then you talk to the employees, and what are they saying? Oh, my rates are going up, my benefits are going down, and I'm paying a lot of my pocket every time I go to the doctor.

True. All right. But that's a negative conversation. So it's just a negative environment.

In the shipping world, you call somebody, and you're like, hey, I can save you 20%. Exactly. It's a hot button. Exactly.

They smile. They say, great, I'm already doing it anyways. I have paid to move my goods from here to there, and I can save 20% by working with you, partnering with you, and that's what they do. And it's so...

It's a great story. It really is. It's a classic franchise story. And, you know, it's one of the reasons we started the show six years ago.

You know, our tagline is asking the French-apreneur who owns one. You being a French-apreneur. Also, I guess you're getting the label, too, Rick, is dadpreneurs. It's been going around a lot, too.

You know, it sounds like that Unishippers was a means to an end. You know, it really accommodated a certain lifestyle that you were looking for. and it really sounds like it was a perfect match for your situation, wasn't it? Absolutely.

Absolutely. Marty, they've been great. Everything has - you know, and obviously I went into this with my eyes open. I had somebody in the industry pointing me in that direction.

I was able to do my research. And so to look at anything else out there, you know, if you look at kind of franchising a restaurant, that's tough. That's a big commitment. Now, granted, there's a great return in restaurants, but there's a big commitment there.

I would love to be a partner. I couldn't run a restaurant again. You knew right away that that was one industry you were just not going back into. Now, if I could partner with someone and they would run it, oh, absolutely.

You'd be more interested, right? There's a great model there, and everybody eats and everybody drinks. And, you know, so there's a huge opportunity there. But it wasn't for me.

For my situation with watching my little girl being the primary caregiver and wanting to work from home and enjoying sales, enjoying customer service, this was right up my alley. And a stable industry. You know, the shipping industry is very stable. Now, obviously the one dark horse in all this is fuel price.

Right. But it doesn't matter if you're shipping with me or you're shipping with someone else. That's true. It's a level playing field in that sense that everyone has that.

And so it's a moot point when you're talking to someone. It really comes down to rates and service. It's amazing how many times we hear, Rick, in doing this show for such a long time, that people want to get into franchising because kind of like your situation, they want to spend more time with their family. But we find that sometimes they get into the wrong industry.

They say, okay, I'm going to own a food franchise, not realizing that it has all those hours that come with it. And, you know, the first couple of years is going to be very frustrating, you know. So it's really - I love this particular story. You mentioned a little bit about the technology involved in Unishippers, you know, that it's web-based.

Maybe you could expand a little bit more on that, like how technology has played a role in your particular business. Sure. Once we partner with a small business owner, we give them a login and a password to our website. Okay.

And once you get on that website there ship with UPS or book a freight shipment You click on it and there three more screens you fill out very user Where it coming from Where it going to What it weigh What the dimensions Do you want any kind of insurance? Get a quote, and then this is the beautiful part of kind of the web-based system. we go out and we get quotes from our contracted carriers and within say 30 seconds you have 10 or 12 quotes or 25 quotes really from all of our carriers interested in moving that shipment for you and it gives the price that they're going to charge you and the time frame and if you like one of them you know you you like this particular carrier over another carrier you can click their service and you click on it book this shipment yes book it and go and so those rates are guaranteed a truck's going to show up it's going to be delivered in one two three days and you're going to be charged this price for it click it go you print it slap it on your shipment somebody's going to show up if it doesn't need a time pick it up and move it for you um it does not let you go from one screen to the next without having the information filled in now you can fill in incorrect information and that's right any website or any but if you're putting in the right information filling out the - checking the box, if you will, before you move to the next screen.

It's very user-friendly, and it's that way on the UPS side as well as the freight side of it. And if I can learn it in five minutes and be comfortable with it in five minutes, anyone can. We also - we have your invoices there. We have your shipping history there.

We're also - and this is something else that sets us apart. We call it our platinum services. It's one of our top eight services that we offer. but we can customize your invoice.

So on those screens, there's a box for you to put in a reference number. So say an attorney's firm, you know, they have hundreds of clients, and any time they ship documents out to that client, that shipping cost has to get billed back to the customer. And the way it works for most companies is they get an invoice from whoever they're shipping with, and there's 100 shipments on there. They have to go through and match up the way bill, the address, the amount to that client, and it takes someone valuable time to sit down and do that, whereas on our system, you punch in the reference number, the case number, the name of the case, and when you get your invoice, it'll say Billy Bob's case, and it goes right to that.

So you don't spend the time breaking it out. We do that for you and help you manage it. And that's just one of the parts of the web-based software, if you will, that we bring to the table for our small business owners. It's in time.

It's efficient. And, you know, it doesn't cost them anything to ship with us, to partner with us. Right. If they use it, they pay for it.

If they don't use it, they don't pay for it. And that's just it. It sounds great. I mean, you know, having that user friendliness, you know, because, and, you know, Rick, I know that, you know, there's some software programs out there, you try using them, and they're just so un-user friendly, you know what I mean?

And the small business owner just doesn't have time to go figuring it out, you know. So it sounds like it's a very simple process. Like you said, you can probably learn it in a couple minutes. It's that simple.

And that's the beauty of franchising, too. And it kind of reminds me or segues into another question. I guess that's what sold you on franchising at the same time, too. Because I guess, of course, there's always someone out there that could say, you know what, I'm going to start my own, call it like Ricks shipping, you know what I mean, instead of Unishippers.

And to do this on your own would almost seem, I guess, impossible. You know, particularly a strong branding, too, of Unishippers, you know. And to start out and you're moving one shipment at a time and you have to partner with one carrier and then you build it and you have 100 customers shipping and then you get some special rates from that one carrier that you have 100 customers with. And that's really what Unishippers did when they started in 1987.

They started from the ground up and they have built it to what it is today. And as a franchisee, I'm buying into that. I don't have to create the wheel. They've done it.

And they've spent 25 years perfecting it. And it may not be perfect because we're not a right fit for everyone, and I have to say that. We're not a right fit for everyone. But for those that we are, they love us and they stick with us because we've dialed it in.

And I say we as in Unishippers has dialed in through easy online applications, through customer service, high-level customer service, and then our platinum services, which kind of encompasses everything that I've been talking about. and we're bringing it to the table for someone who does not typically see that. What was the training like for you, Rick? I mean, when it came time for training, you know, and you decided, you said, okay, I'm going forward with this, what was that experience like for you?

Marty, I have to say it was intense. It was, okay. Three weeks. And the first week was all being a new franchise owner.

They call it a new owner. And so they bring you in. They sit you down for five days in Salt Lake. We were based out of Salt Lake.

And they sit you down and 10-hour days. Here's what you're going to see. Here's the problems. Here's the hiccups, the bumps in the road that you're going to see.

And we're going to teach you how to get over those, get around those, and run your business from A to Z. And so that's a week long, 10-hour days and real-life examples. And they show you all, they introduce you to all the online applications, all the behind-the-scenes stuff, all of our database. And so we learn all that in a week.

Then I came home for a week, and then I flew back out for two weeks straight, and that was the sales training part of it. Right. And you're sitting in a class with 12 other sales reps and a couple other franchise owners, and you learn how to sell it. You learn the products.

You learn UPS. You learn about all the carriers. We actually toured a facility of Old Dominion to see when the product comes in off of one truck, how it moves from that truck to the next truck, which would be the destination truck to take it to the final destination. So that was fantastic.

We actually got to see the behind the scenes, and that was part of our training. You had to know what it looks like to be able to sell it. And so there was a week of intense sales training, again, about 10-hour days, and a lot of role-playing, sit down and role-playing with the sales manager. Then the second week was actually performing my job from Salt Lake over the phone.

Because I own a national franchise, which I haven't touched on that yet, and I will, a national franchise, I'm able to call anywhere in the country. I have no boundaries. Wow. So I can walk into a business here in Auburn face-to-face, have a conversation with them and partner with them, or I can call someone on the East Coast or the West Coast and do everything I need to do over the phone.

Now, if it's the right size customer, I'm going to fly out and see them face-to-face if the opportunity presents itself. Otherwise, I can do everything I need to do over the phone and over the Internet. So I actually had a whole week of training of doing that. And at lunch, we would have a working lunch.

They would sit down. They would review my calls from the morning, tell me what was going on, and, okay, you need to tweak this. You do this better. Oh, that was really good.

And then I would do it in the afternoon. So I had five days of doing my job at corporate with empathy, and it was fantastic. So you really kind of learn everything you need to learn before I came home. And so in January, I hit the ground running and was able to do what I need to do here at the house.

That's great. What's a typical day like for you? I mean, from, I guess, the moment you wake up, Rick, to, you know, ending your work day with Unishippers. Obviously, I try to get up around 5.

It doesn't always happen. It just depends on how the night went with my little girl. She sleeps through the night, then I get sleep. Up at 5, and I try to do paperwork and whatnot during non-business hours.

then I work with her in the morning, breakfast and whatnot. Then I squeeze in my sales calls throughout the day, any kind of appointments that I have set. I try to attend those on the phone. And then, you know, I have dinner with her and put her down.

And then when she goes down in the evening, you know, I'm doing my accounting work. I'm doing any kind of behind-the-scenes kind of work. And that's the beauty of owning your own business. I'm not punching a time clock for someone else.

I'm not going into the office. My office is a portion of my house. So if I want to work at 5 in the morning or midnight, I can do that. True.

You know, I work on the weekends. I open mail on the weekends and pay bills on the weekend because I can focus on it during that time, and I'm not worried about missing sales calls, which, again, with me owning a national franchise, no boundaries, I can call on the East Coast first thing in the morning, and I can call on the West Coast in the evening. So that extends my business day and my sales calls opportunities to 10, 12 hours a day, as compared to if I just had to call in my own territory here in Auburn.

I can only do it eight to five during business hours. That's fantastic. Last month we had over 18,000 people listen to our show, Rick. What would you say to all of those?

We call them aspiring franchipreneurs. They have it in their mind that they want to buy a franchise. We suspect that many of them don't know where to begin because it just seems a little overwhelming at times with, you know, there's 2,500 different opportunities out there. What would you say to them?

First off, try to leverage your experience and your life experience, where you are now and where you want to go. Then find something that's going to fit your lifestyle. You know, if you're a workaholic, restaurant industry, it works for you. You're able to work as much as you want, as often as you want.

But if that's not for you, look and try to find something that's going to fit, A, your experience, B, your lifestyle, and where you want to go in 5, 10, 20 years. And there's an opportunity out there. Don't be quick to jump into something. Do your research with the Internet nowadays.

I mean, you can find a ton of information out there, good and bad, about any franchise opportunity. And then something that I did, and Unishippers really touts this, is that you should do your due diligence. I talked to a lot of franchise owners that are already in the system and asked them the good and the bad, you know, the good, bad, and the ugly. Right, right.

They were candid, and they told me, hey, I don't like this part of it. I love this part of it. And so I made my educated decision after I did my due diligence and ended up here with no industry background. But I found a home, and I'm going to build this and retire, if I ever have to retire from this industry.

And it's out there. There's something out there for everyone. You just have to do diligence. That's great advice, yeah.

I like how you say leverage your experience, too, because you can see that in talking to you. That's what you did. It wasn't direct experience in the industry, but you took everything that you learned in the past and you applied it to really what you're doing now very effectively. So it's great advice.

We have a great quote in franchising podcast. We're going to put that in there, Rick, as far as advice to our listeners, because I think it's fantastic. It's very powerful. How do our listeners get more information on becoming a franchisee?

Is there like one particular website that they should go to Rick Do they just go to like unishippers or what the website address Sure Marty if I could I going to take a second I going to take the opportunity to plug my LinkedIn Yeah, absolutely. I'd be happy to talk to anyone about a franchise. Obviously, I'm new into the franchise world. I'm new to Unishippers.

I'm new into the industry. So I'm going to bring to the table kind of a non-biased, fresh opinion based on franchises and my quick experience here. And it's going to be Rick Warner in Auburn, Alabama. Okay.

Look on my LinkedIn. I'll also give my office number if someone wants to call me directly. Absolutely. It's 334-521-7779, and that's my direct line here at the office.

And I'd love to talk to anybody about it, especially a franchise. If you're looking at a Unishivers franchise, I'd love to talk to you about it. If you want to just get some information over the Internet, go to Unishivers.com.

franchise opportunities, click on it, and a lot of the information is there. You call the number there, you're going to get someone at corporate, and they'd be happy to talk to you about that. Let them know that you heard it from me. That way, the intershippers know that I'm out there taking care of them.

Absolutely. Yeah, and that's true. You know, it was interesting, too. You know, one other thing I just wanted to piggyback on is I like how you mentioned that, you know, you could handle accounts really all over the United States, you know.

You know, we're so used to having franchises just, particularly when we have the franchisee on the show is they just have that particular geographical area, and that's it, you know. And in this case, we have listeners all over the United States, so that's fantastic. Well, bringing up that point and just kind of continue with it, I'm from St. Louis.

I have a huge network in St. Louis, business contacts in St. Louis, but I live in Auburn. And so that was important and key for me to be able to do what I need to do anywhere in the country.

And so I really have two focal points here locally in Auburn. I can walk in and talk to someone on the phone, or I can leverage my contacts, my business contacts from St. Louis for my time served there, and I can do all that over the phone. Then when I go home for holidays or I take a month in the summer because my wife has a very flexible schedule, I can go home and I can conduct business.

I go, say, go home, go to St. Louis, Missouri, and conduct business for a month while I'm there and not lose any downtime. You know, I can take my laptop anywhere and log in, and as long as I have a phone and my computer, I can conduct business anywhere. And it's fantastic that way for me.

And, you know, I'm smiling right now just thinking about it because I'm very happy with where I landed in my career at this point. That's fantastic. I want to thank you for coming on the show, Rick. This is a great story.

Your kind of stories are one of the reasons we started this show. I think it's fantastic. I'd like to already invite you back next year as you continue to grow. I'm curious.

I want to follow your success, and I'm going to partner with you on LinkedIn. Fantastic. It's great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Marty, I appreciate the opportunity. My pleasure. Thanks, Rick. We'll be right back with more Franchise Interviews.

Transcription by CastingWords our podcast, Great Quotes in Franchising. For more information, go to FranchiseInterviews.com or call us at 610-905-2919. That's 610-905-2919.

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You know, Don and I have been hosting franchise interviews now almost six years, and during that time, we've had some incredible quotes on the show. Today, you're going to get to hear from Sean Folk, who is a military veteran who's done very well in franchising. And Sean is going to give some great advice to perhaps some other military veterans who are looking to go into their own franchise. So here we go.

So it sounds kind of obvious, but why did GFC Management start this program then, Sean? You want to talk a little bit about that? Well, again, I think they saw the opportunity out there to find someone who is going to come in and execute that system. Like you were saying a minute ago about there's some people out there who franchising ends up not being right for them.

They think they can either do it better or what corporate says doesn't work for them. So we have those franchisees as well, some of them who just kind of fuck the system along the way. And sometimes, you know, they have great ideas, but other times it almost seems like they make it harder for themselves. If they would just execute the system, they would be so much better off.

So, you know, me talking to our franchisor and they saw my success, and I do preach talking about the system. I say the system's there. Execute it. Just follow along.

And I'm not saying that you just have to be a sheep and just do whatever they tell you. I definitely question them at times. I challenge them at times. I say that I don't think that's going to work, and we work together to try to make changes.

So I'm not saying that you have to come in and just be blind and walk along the way, but I am saying that that person, like a veteran, who comes in and understands that it's collaborative work, working together to make things better, I think that is the person that they're really looking for. So they saw an opportunity in offering it to veterans. and with the programs that are out there with the IFA and the VetFran system that's out there, knowing that there's tens of thousands coming back every year right now, we saw an opportunity to take advantage of people who are going to be successful.

Wow. So what should veterans consider when contemplating franchising men's lawn? What would you say to them? Well, I think they should consider, like what we were talking about earlier, They're kind of what they're interested in in the first place.

Definitely do a lot of due diligence. Make sure that you understand what you're getting into. Ask a lot of questions. I would encourage them to ask if in the system that they're interested in, like Great American Cookies, ask if they have veterans in their system already and try to talk to them because I think a veteran talking to a veteran gives a whole different perspective on things and an understanding of what it really takes to be successful in that system.

And so ask that question. And you've got to know your finances, and you've got to know what the qualifications are, and that's part of the due diligence of knowing what you're getting into. That's a good point. Just speaking to franchisees in general, too.

Just try to speak to as many as you can. Do plenty of due diligence. Yeah. Well, I think that there's a lot of effort from the development team of a franchisor to say, hey, here's a list of franchisees that you may want to call and find out about our system.

Well, I think if a veteran's coming in, they ought to say, well, are any of these veterans? And if not, can I talk to a veteran? And I think they have a whole different language that they communicate on, and I think that they can get a different picture and a more accurate picture that relates to them a little bit more. It's also good to see so many franchise systems part of the VetFran program.

thanks everyone for listening and we'll see you again soon with another edition of Great Quotes in Franchising from Franchise Interviews take care everyone Thank you. We'll be right back. Disclaimer. There is no disclaimer because there's no fine print.

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