The Transparent Podcast
The Transparent Podcast
Bennett Maxwell - From Cold Knocks to Cookie Dough: How a Franchise Giant is Born
Bennett Maxwell's entrepreneurial journey reads like a playbook for hustle and strategic growth. From selling candy bars door-to-door as a child in Utah to building a cookie franchise empire, his path showcases how combining sales expertise with smart systems can create extraordinary results.
The real magic happened when Maxwell purchased Dirty Dough, which was then a single cookie store location. He recognized the challenges in the gourmet cookie space and developed a hybrid model that solved a critical industry problem.
Maxwell's insights on scaling are particularly valuable for anyone growing a business. He candidly shares how assembling a board of advisors transformed his company, offering equity to high-caliber entrepreneurs who provided guidance through rapid expansion.
Connect with Bennett at www.bennettmaxwell.com to learn more about his current ventures with Craveworthy Brands and and Franchise KI.
Hi, my name is Nick Ford and I'm the host of the Transparent Podcast, where we believe in bringing transparency to the world of small business. This week, I'm joined by Bennett Maxwell Bennett, I'll let you introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Nick, thanks for having me on. Yes, so, going from the beginning, I grew up in Utah, seven of nine kids with a single mom, seven boys. So it was me and my brothers always, you know, figuring out life together. And it was really good because in elementary, you know, we started selling candy bars and junior high, I mean, we did candy bars, lemonade and shaved ice, um, junior high we moved on to snow shovels door to door lawn aeration as well, um, but it kind of just gave you that hustle mentality. Same thing with any sports. I had to go cold knock businesses to see if they would pay for a banner to be sponsored so I didn't have to pay for a football camp because otherwise I wouldn't go. That led into Cutco, which was great sales training, and then a Mormon mission, which is two years in Tijuana, mexico, not only learning cells but learning the language. And then you come back in Utah and it's the door-to-door capital of the world because of the Mormon culture. Like, everybody knows how to knock doors. So then I did a handful of years doing summer cells.
Speaker 2:Every year I'd switch industries, wanting to learn as much as I could. You know, like if I stick with the same company, the same leaders in the same industry. Or if I sold pest control one year, then went to another company different set of leaders and sales training the next year and sold AT&T and then the next year sold smart home systems. The next year sold solar. Solar led me up into starting a solar company out of San Diego. Teamed up with my brother to do that.
Speaker 2:I bought Dirty Dough when it was a single location Doing both of those at the same time was too hard Sold the solar company to focus on Dirty Dough and it grew pretty quick. We franchised, hired a really good team, opened up about a hundred locations in just over two years. Locations in just over two years Um, another 20 brick I mean 20 like food trucks, food trailers um, closed two dozen stores down which sucked, and then I sold. Then I sold crave worthy I'm sorry, I sold dirty note to crave worthy brands, uh, end of last year of 2024. And since then I've been doing franchise sales which again, given my background, that's what I like doing for not only Craveworthy and the handful of brands that they own, but also a few on the side Glow Tanning, cookie Cutters and a few other ones.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, you've had a pretty exciting entrepreneurial journey so far. I'm sure that being in door-to-door sales helped you a lot, and going into entrepreneurship you got to be able to sell, and that's a good way to learn. Door-to-door sales helped you a lot, and going into entrepreneurship you got to be able to sell, and that's a good way to learn. Door-to-door is, I think, one of the harder sales that you could do. So well, that's awesome. I'm super excited to talk to you today.
Speaker 1:My name is Nick Ford, obviously, and I started Transparent Staffing about four years ago, wanted to get into entrepreneurship since I was in high school, kind of inspired by my grandfather who was an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1:He owned about a 300-employee life insurance business and so I always saw him and thought I wanted to start my own company and finally did it at the idea of bringing transparency to this entrepreneurship world so that people can hear from entrepreneurs and hopefully be inspired to get off the fence and jump into it. So you know one of the things that you know a lot of people who are interested in entrepreneurship. I watch Shark Tank and you'll see people go on there and pitch their you know their product or their service, and a lot of times those sharks will tell them you can't be one toe in the water, you got to jump all in. They want them to be all in the business. Do you think that, whether it's a franchise or starting a company, is it doing as a side business? Is it going to stay a side business if you do it that way, or do you think that's a good way to start a company?
Speaker 2:How do you think that's a good way to start a company? How do you think that that uh should best be played by entrepreneurs? Yeah, I mean, depending on the goal. If the goal's rapid growth and a thousand percent, you have to be in it full time, my idea. So I bought dirty dough, um, and then I'm like, okay, I need to go find partners because I'm only part-time, I'm running a solar company. I need to go find partners because I'm only part-time, I'm running a solar company. I need to go find other part-time partners and I find enough of them, anyway. So I went and rounded up five guys that bought in but all had full-time jobs. So now we're six part-time people.
Speaker 2:I sell the solar company and I fly out to Utah to take a startup course and in the startup course I'm learning about a board of advisors and how to set up a board of advisors and structure it with equity and the expectations and investing. Well, I'm like I need to get this guy, this guy that's teaching this course. He taught at the BYU Entrepreneurship Program for a decade. They were the number one entrepreneurship program out of any college in the nation Before. Before that, he he took his business public info space $30 billion. So I'm like, okay, this is a different level. How do I get this guy? So I'm pitching him on the vision. You know, dirty dough at the time, just one store. We're not even a franchise, it's just an idea.
Speaker 2:And one of his requisites, I guess, for him to be my advisor was I had to leave everything. I had to just focus on dirty dump. So when I sold my solar company, they gave me 300 something, whatever shares of stock, each worth a few bucks, and I had a salary. I was supposed to be on a meeting a week. So I'm like, john, no, this is a good salary and I don't do anything. And he's like no, what you're not calculating, it's not the time, it's the trend. That man what do you call it? The transition time? Like to switch from one thing to another, like you just lose a lot, of, a lot of efficiencies on it. So he's like don't, like, you have to go all in and all your partners do too. He said I won't be an advisor if anybody owns 5% or more. They have to be full-time, unless they're like your private equity or investor right, but they have to be full-time. So we set up vesting with my other partners and I ended up buying them all back out, and it was good and easy to do because we had the contracts in place. So, anyways, the yes go full-time.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to tell you one more quick story on it, because I had some properties that I was building, and this is during 2021, 2022. Every month, your house was going up by $5,000, $10,000 in value, at least here in Utah. So I secured a few properties that were being built and by the time they were built, they'd gone up 50, 70, $80,000 in value. I had two properties, um, and I'm like crap, do I? But now, now they're built, now I have to put down the down payment.
Speaker 2:So I go to John, I'm like man, I really don't want to lose out on these properties because I already, you know there's over a hundred K in equity Um, but I also need to invest in the dirty dough. And he was like look, in real estate you can make good returns. You can make a 10%, 20%, 50% return. In business, you make a hundred X returns, you make a thousand X returns. Focus on your business. And again, I did. And then, looking back, like what I bought dirty dough for, compared to what I sold it, it was a hundred X. It was a hundred X in a handful of years because I went all in on his advice and like I'm just going to focus on that years because I went all in on his advice and like I'm just going to focus on that, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think for me, I think getting started, if you're trying to get something started, I think you can start it as a side hustle, like I started transparent staffing as a side hustle and I was kind of in a unique role where they were okay with me doing that. I had been working as a employee benefits advisor, basically a sales role selling employee benefits to midsize companies, and so I had one of those companies I was targeting asked me to do recruiting for them because I had a background in recruiting that offered to just help them to try to build a connection with the company. And I asked my boss with my employee benefits group you know I was working full time for them if he minded if I did you know kind of a side thing, helping with recruiting, doing some headhunting and he was like no, just do that and use that as a way to build a connection with them and hopefully you'll end up talking to them about benefits. And so they didn't mind. From the beginning I was open, transparent with them about what I was doing and they saw it as kind of a value add where I could get in with recruiting, kind of help them, help them and then, you know, build a relationship, become a trusted advisor to the company, and so you know, I think you can start as a side business, but I think eventually it does need to be full time, it's it. If you're not fully locked into it, then it's going to be hard for it to grow and become anything more than just a side thing.
Speaker 1:Now, like real estate, like I've done real estate investing too, we owned an Airbnb up in the North Georgia mountains. That's a great side business. Where you don't like. For me, I didn't need to put full-time effort into managing an Airbnb property. There's some tools and I could hire someone. You know property management company. That was a digital company that helped me market it and do a lot of the communication with people. So that was a great side business. That could stay a side business, but most businesses are going to need your full-time attention.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and that's why at the beginning it's like do you need to go full-time? No, it just depends on your goal. Like, if you want to grow rapidly, it just depends on your goal. If you want to grow rapidly, absolutely. But I wouldn't recommend. If somebody has a 9 to 5 right now and has an idea.
Speaker 2:Going back to the startup course that I took, startup Ignition it's all about how do you validate your idea before you take the leap. So I am 1,000% for that, keep your 9 to 5. Go, validate the idea. Go sell a few things, because it's hard to be an entrepreneur when you can't pay your bills, right. So like yeah, don't just jump all in and like, oh, I'm going to figure it out. It's like, no, you could ease in.
Speaker 2:But once you make the, if you want it to grow big, right, absolutely, you have to jump all in sooner rather than later. But before you quit your job, see if you have a business first. Go sell a few, not just like the idea that granny loves your business and says that it's a good idea and your mom have them, write you a check. Like, hey, we'll pre-order something you know, are you going to? Are you going to pre-order? And then the, and then the real objections are going to come out when you ask for the check. You can do all of that as a side hustle and really, I guess, prepare that ramp up to go in full time.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and that's what I was able to do is test the market, make sure that the idea was going to work. And yeah, I agree with you, especially depending on your financial situation Like right now I have a family, we have bills I couldn't just drop everything and go full-time into it unless I had it kind of already going or had a big nest egg set aside to kind of cover the in-between. Even then it would be better to test it out first, make sure it's going to work. But tell us a little bit about Dirty Dough, because I'm not as familiar with Dirty Dough. So for people who don't know what is Dirty Dough, how did you get into that? And I know you bought one location before it was a franchise.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's a cookie company competing like the large gourmet, multi-flavored cookie space. So think Crumble. They're really the ones that popularize the space. We've had cookie companies around forever Mrs Fields and Great american cookie company. Both have 300 plus locations open after almost 50 years each.
Speaker 2:So it's like they. They figured out something right. They know how to get through the dot-com crash in the 2008 and whatever happened in the 90s and the 80s. They've survived all of that. How will they centralize their production? So you get, you know, economies of scale.
Speaker 2:When you're ordering everything, then you machine portion it so it's more accurate, ship it out to the stores, then the stores. You could get these small little 500 square feet boxes with just an oven and that's what they've been doing for 50 years and it works. And then Crumble comes and they're like no, our sales are three times more because we make cookies bigger and more extravagant. However, you say that word yeah, but you look at the model like go walk into a crumble. Today if they're making cookies, you'll see six people there, eight people there, ten people there. Because you have a lot of people in the back, you have to mix everything from scratch. That means you also have to have storage space for all of that. Now your retail spots larger, you're paying higher rent. Um, obviously your labor is higher. Then you also don't have quality control, because imagine, crumble has a thousand stores.
Speaker 2:Who's making their cookies? 20 year olds, you know, across a thousand stores. Yeah, they mess up and then they have to weigh it by hand and you're just like hoping and praying that they weigh it correctly so you can count your cost of goods and then you portion it by hand. So dirty dough is a way I mean it's emergent a way to merge the two concepts.
Speaker 2:On the back end we're producing, essentially producing all of our cookies in Utah. Then we ship them out to all of the stores, but on the consumer facing like it's a third of a pound cookie. They're stuffed, they're three layer cookies. You know, a brownie dough on the outside with a peanut butter dough in the middle, with the hot fudge injection. That's already made for you pre-portion. We ship it to you, just put it in the oven. So again, kind of marrying the two models. Um, it allowed us to take place in that hype of the the cookie world that's going on, but with the security and the processes and the quality control of what Mrs Fields and Great American Cookie have proven works over the last 50 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very cool. Yeah, no, that's exciting. I'll have to try. I want to try some. I looked up the stuffed cookies that they have at those locations. They look awesome so definitely have to try it sometime. So definitely have to try it sometime. So you know, when you're thinking about and when I think about, you know, entrepreneurship and people trying to get into it, I've looked into buying a franchise. I've looked at coffee shops and you know other places that are, you know, franchise model. And then I also, you know, started transparent staffing from scratch. You know, didn't have any outside investment, just did it all myself. Two very different models. You know, with a franchise, obviously you have a business plan already. You can kind of scale quicker, I would think, versus starting something up from the beginning. But what is your opinion about that? If you're, you know, talking to someone who wants to get into it, would recommend them. Just, you know, buy into a franchise or acquire another business, or do you think starting something from scratch is a better way to go about it?
Speaker 2:I mean me personally. I feel more comfortable buying something that's already working, whether it's existing or the concept. So franchise. But that doesn't mean if you go buy a franchise it's going to work, like franchises fail all the time. So then it's buying the franchise. But the idea is, what are you good at? Like, I'm good at talking, I'm good at sales. I don't love the operations so much, you know. So can I go pick a franchise that fulfills that? Like it's a marketing agency that requires a lot of face-to-face sales, but they're doing all of the operations. So, like I just need to go make. Or it's a magazine franchise, I just need to go make the sale. They produce the magazine.
Speaker 2:So you could, as long as you're fitting in with the right franchise, I would say go do that or go buy a business. I would have never started Dirty Dough. I would buy it though, because I could see something and I could fix it a lot easier than I could think of it, I guess. So I think it lowers the risk, but not saying go get a franchise or business, because the no, go get the if you get the right franchise and the right business. Getting the right business is just, you know if you could find something that's already profitable, that you could find a little, a few tweaks that you could make to make it more profitable, and all of those systems are in place, great. And then a franchise go talk, look into a franchise, go talk to 10 franchisees and see how they're doing. And that's the good thing about franchises is you can go talk to all of the franchisees. All of that is disclosed to you through the process.
Speaker 2:But I mean you went through it, Nick, right, it's like wait, what about payroll? Wait, what do I have to do at the end of the year for taxes? And wait sales taxes too, and I have to have what account for that? And wait, when am I signing on personal guarantees versus not? And do I want to use my business credit or my personal credit? And how do you set up an ad account on Facebook? You know like I need to do all of that Now. I just hired somebody else. How do I? Where's my employee handbook? Where are my rules? Where's my NDA, like all of those things you don't think about when it's your first time. So I'm all for doing your own thing, but if you've never done it, go find a system that's really good at supporting first-time business owners. Grow in it, you're going to love it, you're going to hate it and then go do your own thing after that, after you've identified what you like and you don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you're going to start from scratch, like you said, there's so many little things that I've had to learn the hard way as far as like, how to do things, how to set things up. You know, I'm not a I'm not a CFO. So how to handle finances, like you were saying, like a business line of credit, or do I back it with my own money, or is it better to use debt or to try to fund everything myself? Those kind of things are constantly evolving in what software to use and how to advertise and scale, and I think that that's just something that you have to be ready to versus, by franchise, to kind of have that all modeled out for you, built out for you, and you can just go. You kind of, in my mind, you're buying the playbook and now it's just go run the playbook, versus you got to build the playbook.
Speaker 1:If you're going to start it from scratch, yes, exactly. So, yeah, cool. Yeah, I mean, right now I'm in the process of trying to scale. I brought on a business partner to help scale our staffing business. How do you look at scale now? You said you have over 100 locations now with Dirty Dough. How does that look as far as when you're looking at all the franchisees and the other franchises that you're selling, the franchisees and the other franchises that you're selling what does scale look like? How do y'all handle, how do you handle onboarding franchisees in a in a scalable way where it's not going too quickly to be able to support them, and that kind of thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean one. I think we have one of the most simple food concepts, so like to build out a dirty dough compared to any other store. We don't even need hoods, so you need a little electrical, a wall on a counter, you know. So that makes it a lot easier and then it's okay. Well, I've never opened up a store and I had one of my business partners at the time as the first franchisee that opened up the store. He also has no, you know no experience in food or franchising, and if the goal was again us not being in food or franchising, we need to make it simple enough for us. So we developed I think it was like a got to like 109 steps, like once you're onboarded, then you need to contact who, you need to pay, how to get on Google Maps, how to do your grand opening, because we were opening up, you know three stores a week, sometimes four stores a week, when we're only a year into it, two years into it. It's crazy Having a simplified model, making sure it's all written down without any assumptions, and when you get people in the industry, you know some of the they.
Speaker 2:They carry those assumptions Like oh, people know this. When you get a dummy. There is no assumptions you know, so it's like no, we're going to assume that they don't know anything, just like I didn't know anything, and then having the leadership that has been there done that again, my CEO did grow her franchise to zero to 650 franchises, and then another brand zero to 90. So, um, uh, yeah, I would say a good combination of all three of those helped us scale pretty quick. But we scaled really quick because we sold a lot and we had to.
Speaker 2:That's really the truth. Dirty Dough had the success because the sales side and the franchise sales and the PR and the cookie wars all of that helped us. And then we were able to keep up on the ops, not that there wasn't a thousand roadblocks and bumps in the way. But I'm going to change my answer. The answer number one is I'm a salesperson. That's what I focused on bringing in revenue and franchise sales and being in front of people. And then how did we actually deliver on it? I think we delivered on it because it was simplified, like the model was, because it was all broken down into easy steps.
Speaker 1:And because we had a team that's already been there done that. Yeah, so, keeping it simple for the franchisees, like you said that you had a simple playbook for them to follow and walk through to get their franchise up and going and profitable. So, yeah, that's great. Um, as far as you know with your goals now, like, where are you wanting to take the, the franchises now? Like, how are you wanting to take the, the franchises now? Like, how are you wanting to grow it and do you have a target for how many are going to open this year? Or what are you kind of looking at?
Speaker 2:yeah. So now I work for crave worthy brands and they have a bunch of other concepts. Gang is grill, we get on, uh, the newest one is big chicken chiquillo nils company. So I think there's the. There will be seven that are franchised here in the next few months. So the goal is 275 to sell through Craveworthy and then, okay, so I'm also becoming a franchisee which is fun of a tanning health wellness spa called Glow Tanning. I'm also selling those franchises and we'll probably do 200 of those this year, two of them being me here in Utah. It's like massage beds and red light therapy, things like that. But I'd say, yeah, those are the two big focuses. Right now is really launching. Again, I've been in food and Dirty Dough is a new concept, and then one of our franchisees owns Glow Tanning and he kind of told me about his business.
Speaker 2:I came ready to start pushing franchise sales. 15 years in business, 100 locations, they'd never closed the store. I'm like, dude, you're sitting on a gold mine here and I like that. I like finding businesses that the system's already there and they just need the sales. Because if I try to do the systems and the sales, I usually outsell the systems Because we ran into that with solar as well.
Speaker 2:You have all these installers. If you sell too many, they get backed up. Then your sales reps are mad because now their jobs are getting installed months after and they don't get paid until they get installed and it's commissioned only. So, again, trying to stay in my lane. What is my lane? My lane is more of the sales, pr, social media side. Stay in that and then find other people, whether you're hiring them or, in this case, I'm partnering with other businesses that seem to already have it figured out Not flying the plane while you're landing, or, sorry, not building the plane while you're landing, you know. Or building the runway. I don't know how that saying is, but that's what I felt the whole time with Dirty Dough, you know, when you're expanding that quick, it's just, it's just hell.
Speaker 1:It's fun, but it's I can't imagine it's super exciting but it's got to be so much to keep up with and so many different moving parts that are that are going on.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, when I so I used to sell uh payroll software and so I worked with a lot of restaurant groups and like there's a one, there's one here locally that's called uhburger Bobby's, and I worked with them to try to set up their payroll and they would talk to me about they had I think they had like six corporate locations and they had eight franchise locations. And they were talking to me about one of their franchise locations and the owner was like, don't go, Don't, don't judge us off that location that's near you. And I was like, oh really, Like why not? He's like, well, that's a franchise and they're not doing the best job with that franchise location. We may end up buying it back or closing it or whatever. So I guess when you look at uh franchisees, what kind of separates the people who succeed with the franchise versus the ones who you know you said a lot of them closed down? What do you think separates the people who do well with them versus fizzle out?
Speaker 2:I think, whatever it is, it's not unique with franchising. You know, it's like that same person that failed in franchising would have failed at their own business, and the person who succeeded in franchising probably would have succeeded in their own business, maybe to different extents each time, but it's involvement. Like me, you know, we closed 20 something stores. A lot of those are corporate stores, and okay. So why do we close the corporate stores, especially the ones that, like in my backyard, could I have gone out and really promoted it? Yes, but that wasn't. You know that saving a few corporate stores to raise the sales up a little bit wasn't as important to me, but this is what I would have done and this is what I would say that the people who are working, they're getting involved with the community, they care about the business, you know. So, like one of the interview questions that Jill, our CEO, would ask is are you willing to do whatever it takes to make this business succeed? And if it's, and everybody says yes, right, because it's an interview, right. But then it comes down to I'm like have you visited the schools? You know, because it's cookies. You could go to any business and any business if you show up with a warm box of cookies. They will give you 10 minutes of their time, like anywhere. You know it's cookies. You could show up to any school and the secretaries and the PTA president will let you in and they'll talk to you and you could do cookies for kindness and have dirty dough all over the school and all you're doing is giving out cookies when kids do kind acts and you could be selling at the football games.
Speaker 2:There's like with food, particularly cookies. When it's a cheaper product, you could cut them in force and just sample and everybody who tastes them loves them. You cheaper product, you could cut them in force and just sample and everybody who tastes them loves them. You'll get business if you try and you, but not everything will work. You know, if you just put more money to Facebook and more money to Facebook or DoorDash, maybe that doesn't work, but your boots on the ground, involved in the community and really trying to do whatever it takes, just okay, that didn't work. Next thing, that didn't work Next thing.
Speaker 2:That's the key to life right, not franchising, but life Like. It's not that you're going. Nobody's an overnight success, you just keep going. All of these big businesses almost failed a million times, which I love to learn about, the history of FedEx almost failing and Walmart and Nike and every other podcast that I've listed to them Like okay, cool, everybody gets hit in the teeth. Everybody misses payroll or almost misses payroll. Everybody has to take out five different mortgages, like you just keep going and it eventually should pay off, and so far it has.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean I think I would have guessed the problem that they were having with that franchise group was the involvement. Like you mentioned involvement. Their franchisees just wanted to buy a business and thought that they could just be completely hands off and not ever go to the store. They weren't involved at all, they just thought they'd buy it and it would run itself, kind of thing. And it didn't really work that way. But you know that's I guess it just depends on how involved you want to be and what kind of a franchise it is, if you're looking at that or what kind of business it is. But I think it's this like go ahead.
Speaker 2:I was going to say so, like when I was selling Dirty Dough's. This was my experience. I bought a cookie company. I was running a solar company full time in San Diego. Never been in food. Bought a cookie company out of Arizona and I ran it just fine. So, of Arizona and I ran it just fine. So that was my experience. Because it was like this is the most easy franchise concept. So, like, that was my experience.
Speaker 2:And what people heard, though, was I can buy a franchise and hire a 22 year old that has a you know a month's worth of experience at McDonald's. They're going to run the store and they're going to set foot in it. I'm like, no, no, it's still a business, but again, I'm I was already a business owner, so I'm like I know how to run a business remotely. I meet with my manager three times a week, 30 minutes. We're reviewing all of the metrics and then, at the end, what were the sales? And then we're extrapolating, like what is our budget now for next week? As far as labor goes? Because when? As far as labor goes, because we need to stay in a certain labor, right, it doesn't require a lot of time, but it does require organization and a lot of people understood that it doesn't require anything. So now, as I sell franchises now, the advice is always the same Even if it's a dirty dough, be in it full time until you know what you're doing, until you know how the store runs, and then you can work on your business rather than in your business. But if your employees are calling you and telling you the cookies look terrible because the butter was chopped versus cut, then this is an example from before. You know when we centralized the production, I had to go out there and like do science experiments is to see you know when they were bullshitting me and when they weren't. But you have to like get into it full time and then you could step out and you can hire somebody, because eventually nobody's after a job, right? Anytime you buy a franchise, you should look at it as you're buying yourself a job. But you could work yourself out of that job and expand and go to two and three. And that's where I think franchising really exceeds is can you go from one, two, three or four, five locations in the same model? That's a lot easier than you know.
Speaker 2:Continuing to start new businesses and I've seen like in glow tanning a dude was in tanning for 20 years. Six, six salons is what he got up to like under his own umbrella. Then he found out about glow tanning, sold them, moved to Colorado, which is a brand new market, went from zero. He's at nine locations open in three years and he has three more under contract that he's converting. So he'll be at 12 stores in like three and a half years and he tried it for 20 years and he couldn't do it, trying to do everything. But he's like, if I could, just focusing on opening and getting customers and the corporate company is focusing on everything else. He's been able to expand a lot quicker. So that's definitely a pro in franchising. Once you do one unit, then two to three to four, it's a lot easier to replicate, especially if you're in the same demographic area and you're using your leadership that you've developed in one store to help you open up the next store and then you're swapping employees and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really smart. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know I love listening to podcasts about you know, success and like motivation, and I listened to. There's one called just do it. It's a guy named Art Williams who he started a massive insurance company and grew it to be one of the largest life insurance companies in the world, and he talks about you know what it takes to succeed in business and the people who fail.
Speaker 1:But when I look at it, I think that it comes down to work ethic. How invested are you really in whatever you're doing? Because most people who are working at something they're not fully bought in or they're just trying to do the minimum to get by, they're not. They don't, maybe they don't have goals. I think that you know the people who end up succeeding. I think one of the biggest things for me is consistently making sure I have goals for what I want to do, both personally and then professionally, and keep those goals in mind. But what do you think that separates the people who succeed specifically in business from those who end up failing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean definitely the perseverance. So, in going a little bit deeper, business wars podcast you can learn about. You know, carnival cruise almost going bankrupt every single week, you know, and it's it's like what carnival cruise and same with Norwegian and they, you know, and it's like what Carnival Cruise and same with Norwegian, and they broke off from Norwegian. They both almost went under because they were suing each other. It's like I didn't know that and the FedEx CEO gambled his last $6,000 at Vegas to be able to make payroll, otherwise he was going to go out of business. You know, and then you learn the like the Amazon. If you've seen that picture of Jeff Bezos in the corner with, you know, amazon written on. You know some piece of paper and you just don't. You see these other, you see these companies and you're like, oh man, why am I barely? Why does it seem like I run out of money every two weeks? You know like I'm barely making payroll every single time. And then you go look at these other rapid growth companies and they do too. So it's just keep going. And then it's well, what is for me? What is Crumble doing that we can't do? You know what I mean. What is Mrs Fields doing that we can't do. What is anybody in the whole world doing that? I can't figure out, you know.
Speaker 2:So, having the mindset of like you're going to run into problems, but every problem is pretty much solvable, you know. It's just either finding the right person or finding somebody else to start solving that problem, which, in business, how easy is that? You know there's a million business owners in the United States, and if you can be good at networking, I'm like hey, here's my problem. How did you solve it? That's going to be a lot easier if you're really surrounding yourself. So I would say perseverance, networking, though. So you're in the right direction. Because if you're just trying and trying and you're trying in the wrong direction, I don't think that's going to help you. But if you can get a good set of advisors and maybe get employees, but if you let me explain the advisors, because this was a new concept to me a few years ago Board of advisors, sorry, do you have like a chairman of a board that actually is like governing a C-corp? That's what I had heard of. I'd never heard of a board of advisors that don't actually do anything other than give you advice, but they're very common in startups. So right when you're starting out, you can go find people and what I learned and it seems to be industry standard, you're giving people a half a percent, maybe a percent and a half, of equity over a two-year vesting period to have somebody on your advisory board.
Speaker 2:So the first guy that I got, john Richards. He'd sold his. Well, he took his company, infospace Public $31 billion. You know, like that's another level. Oh yeah, like $31 billion. You know, like that's another level. Um, oh yeah, invested another company and was their first money in and their advisor, omniture. They sold to Adobe for $2.2 billion. Um, so it's like, okay, well, let's get the right people on the team.
Speaker 2:So he was my senior advisor, gave him a percent and a half equity and over a two year vesting period. So the vesting means if he leaves or stops responding to me or I just find a new advisor, I don't have to give him all of that equity. So for simple math I'm going to say it's 1%. So every six months, if he is my advisor for six months, then he secured 25% of his equity, so a quarter percent. If he serves as an advisor for two full years, then he gets his full percent or percent and a half.
Speaker 2:Anyways, he was the first guy. I mean, you think about it like why the hell would that guy be my advisor? I have one store I'm not even a franchise yet, Right, but it's again selling the vision so I got him on as the advisor. Then he brought on the second advisor, steve Hart, the owner of the largest property management franchisor in the world. So now we have the third advisor and then another advisor, and it's again you're giving them half a percent to maybe a percent equity.
Speaker 2:You have a senior advisor that I gave a percent and a half and then the other one's half a percent to a percent over a two-year vesting period to protect you. And the expectation for your advisor is like answer my call, be available for one-ish hours a week. And what happens is starting out, you'll use them for probably two or three, sometimes four hours, and then after six months to you, you don't really use them. Um, but not only now. You have the perseverance keep going, keep going. But you have the people to say hey, I just keep hitting roadblocks, where do I go next? And they will respond to you and they like to help you. And it's crazy that you could get such good people to help you for equity of a company worth nothing, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I mean that was probably some of the best money you ever spent was giving them those shares, because I'm sure their advice helped you be able to do so much more than you probably could have done on your own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, imagine, you know you're trying to buy a franchise for me and I'm like, hey, I'm, you know, I did door to door. I, you know, sold Cutco knives, I sold solar. And you're like, okay, well, how are you going to support me as a, as a franchisee for dirty dough, right? And the answer is like I don't know. But when I'm saying, hey, we have a great team. We have the former CEO of Jimmy John's, which has been the number one food franchise over the last 30 years, measured by percentage growth. Like he's our CEO now People will buy into that. Or Jill Summer Hayes being our CEO, and these advisors rather than just you. So it's not just the advice you get, but it's also the PR, I guess of like, and it's more marketable, but it's. But it's real clout because they are answering your phone and they are, I'm sorry, they are answering their phone, they are answering the hard questions when shit hits the fan. You're like, hey, what do I do here? And that does give confidence to existing franchisees and new potential franchisees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's great advice Finding good advisors, good mentors that can you know, kind of answer your hard questions. That have walked walked that same path before For me for a long time that was my grandfather I had. I had a weekly call with him pretty much every week until he passed away in November, and it was he was such a I could ask him any question and he could speak my language and he always gave me good advice about things. And so having those people in your corner as advisors or mentors or however you want to call it, that's an interesting concept. I don't have any of those kinds of advisors that are on board with equity, so that's probably something I'll be looking into some more.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, one of the things right now that I'm struggling with, I've been with transparent staffing. I've been pretty in the business since it started. I've had people on my team that I can kind of outsource stuff to and pass things on to, but still pretty involved with the recruitment process and engaging with clients and things like that. And now that I have, you know, I've hired a VP of sales and recruiting, figuring out what to you know, delegate to him versus what I should be focused on, like, where my time is best spent in the company Right now.
Speaker 1:Like you, I like the sales side. Like I love networking with people, I love selling, I love, you know, talking to new clients. So that's where I'm trying to spend as much time as I can, but there's so many other things in the business that I have to deal with as the owner and being a small business. But, uh, how do you, how do you you mentioned getting to the point where you can work on your business rather than in your business how do you, how do you do that? Like, how do people go from you know, from being the person, the person like when you first start that you're doing, you're wearing all the hats to starting to be able to delegate things and focus more on strategic growth of things versus in the business.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the strategy that I learned that I think works really well, comes from a book called the E-Myth. E as in entrepreneur, the E-Myth revisited Michael Gerber, I think. The example he uses there is a baker and it's most entrepreneurs are technicians, they're a good plumber, they're a good painter, they're a good baker. So then they say I want to start a bakery. And it's like well, those are different skill sets.
Speaker 2:Anyways, the activity and my brother forced me to do this was when we partnered with solar and it's envision what your the organization looks like in however many years three years, five years what does the organization chart looks like? Right, so it's me and my brother, we have two positions, right. But no, we built out the whole organization chart because eventually we wanted to have a CFO and we wanted to have a regional sales director and a sales manager and sales reps and we wanted to have a bookkeeper over here and we wanted to have whatever. Right. So we built out the whole org chart and we said, okay, what's you, what's me? And again I'm like Brent, this is stupid, it's just us, let's just do it. And he's like no. So you, you, you put all your heads in and then like, okay, well, I'm a, I'm over sales, I was also over the finance side. So, like I'm the bookkeeper, I need to go create the SOP on how to create books and what our finances, and all of that.
Speaker 2:Then I hire somebody in there for sales. Um, what is? How many hours does a sales rep work? What's their pay like? What's the pitch? What do they do If they're not selling? What is their incentives like? I build all of that out and then I promote myself to the sales manager and then I hire a sales rep. And then now I'm the sales manager and I'm managing that sales rep. And how do I motivate them? How does the manager motivate them? What's their budget like for incentives? How is their pay incentives? How is their pay? How do they train? How often do they train? Develop all of that? Then you either promote your sales manager sorry, your salesperson to the manager, or hire a manager, just move on to the next position.
Speaker 2:But it's very clear right from the get-go. You're like, okay, here's where I'm at. I don't want to be CEO, I don't want to be any of this. How do I get myself out of this as quickly as possible? And that's the strategy SOPs, hire, kind of place in there.
Speaker 2:So, right right from the get, go like what dirty dough. I hired a CEO. That wasn't the plan. It just kind of presented itself and I was like, yeah, I, I will take a CEO right now. Um, and then what did that do? It freed up my time to do this podcast and interviews and things like that and that had the biggest impact.
Speaker 2:And they kind of thinking how many people can give the dirty dough story and how many people can run the company? A CEO? There's still not a ton of people that could run a fast growing franchise like that, but there are, right there, but it exists. How many people can tell the dirty dough story? It's really just me, right? So let me hire other people to go do those other things and let me focus on what I good at. To go do those other things and let me focus on what I good at. And.
Speaker 2:But this comes back from like door to door days. Um, as a company owner and as a sales rep, like I know what I make per hour, even though it's all commissioned. I know how many, how much money I make per door knocked, even if they don't answer. It doesn't matter if they answer. If they don't answer, because it's the law of averages, right? So then I could calculate and I'm worth a few thousand dollars an hour if I'm knocking doors. So why would I ever do books? You know, if it costs me $20 an hour to get somebody to do my books, why would I ever do books? Let me just go knock more doors.
Speaker 2:And then then the thought is like crap. Well, you know, I don't have enough things for an assistant or to offload, and it's I don't know. That's just another skill. I think it's like take a week off today, nick, and you'll realize like nothing, like people just figure shit out without us as business owners. Like we kind of inject ourselves in there and we're like they need us. You know, if they, if I don't pay them, they're going to who's going to feed their family, and it's like no, they've always fed their family. We're not important as business owners, we're just an option that they've chosen for a little bit. But like, at the end of the day, um, they can do it, they can run it, we just need to oversee it a little bit. I don't know. I just think we put a lot of stress on ourselves as the business owners, thinking that it is us, because we want the control, um, and you just can't, you just can't scale with the control.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love what you said about how you and your brother created the organizational chart for where you wanted to go. No-transcript. That's a really good analogy for how to do that. Yeah, it's an ongoing thing for me finding out where the best place to spend my time is. But when you're thinking about people who are, I call it entrepreneurs, they're wanting to get into entrepreneurship what kind of closing advice would you give to them, as they are, you know, looking at starting, whether it's they're going to start a side hustle or side business or buy a franchise, kind of what advice would you give them or insights?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you talked about the goals, so I'll go with that Like know what, know what you're after. And to know what you're after, you have to realize that we don't want things right, like we want material things, we want money, whatever, but not really. We want to feel a certain way. That's all we ever do. All we're acting is to achieve an emotional state. If your goal doesn't have that emotional state in it, then I think it's the wrong goal. So, like, the goal is for me, joy and fulfillment, right, if my goal is.
Speaker 2:My first goal for solar was a millionaire. I want to be a millionaire before 30 and I and I hit it whoopee. But I also gained a hundred something pounds and was in a terrible relationship with my wife and it's like who cares about any of that? And then I achieved it and the dopamine hit. And guess what happens with dopamine Once it comes to your brain, it goes away, right. It resets to baseline so you could feel it again, and that's just how it works.
Speaker 2:But we think that there's this magic bullet that's going to give us the everlasting happiness, right, and it's like no focus on what your goal is and it's most likely going to be material goal. Then you say, hey, what is that material? What do I hope that material goal makes me feel on a day-to-day basis? Set that as your goal and then shoot for that, because it's a lot easier to make a decision based on do I partner with this person or this? Do I take on this vendor or this vendor? Do I take money from this investor or this investor? When I measure it on, what is going to be more successful for the business, I don't know right. You're making all of these scenarios in your head that may or may not play out as far as like revenue goes. Or you can say what's going to bring more joy and fulfillment? Well, I like this person better and they're easy to work with. That's going to be more joyful and fulfilling. Boom, pick them.
Speaker 2:So I would say have your goal picked out, make sure it's an emotional goal, and then you measure your success or failure based on that, rather than, did you hit a million dollars your first year? Did you sell every single door you ever knocked on? No, but my goal on knocking doors wasn't to sell every door, it was to get better and become a professional communicator. So somebody gives you an FU. It's easy to get down, but it's like, no, I'm just going to go to the next door and I'm going to adjust my pitch. So it's like, no, I'm just going to go to the next door and I'm going to adjust my pitch. So it's a little bit better for the next person. And that's how I was measuring success, not based on the money, based on, in that scenario, communication and learning. And it's easier to keep going when you get kicked in the face.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I would. I would just say take the first step. It's easier to take that first step, whether it's to build your business plan or to test the market and whatever idea that you have just do it, take that first step. Stop sitting on the fence and take the first step. Have goals in mind and then don't be afraid to fail. Make sure you're failing forward. Don't take such a high risk that it could cripple you, but don't be afraid to fail, because every entrepreneur who has ever gone into business has had failures. If they didn't fail, they weren't trying, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:So I think that when I played baseball through college and I think baseball and sports was a great way for me to learn how to deal with failure and get comfortable with it and sales you're not going I don't know what your percentage close was on door knocks, but it's not going to be every door You're going to. They're going to have people tell you to go kick rocks. It's just going to happen. So I think being able to you know, have goals, learn how to deal with failure and be willing to take the first step would be kind of some of the things that I would advise people on. But well, bennett, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate having you on the podcast and taking the time. Is there anything else that we should know about you or where we can find you and what you're working on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Myfirstandlastnamecom, but at maxwellcom is my website that has just links to social medias because I'm posting, you know, one or two times a day and then also anything to do with Craveworthy the glow tanning business. All of that should be centralized there. So love to connect.
Speaker 1:Sweet. I'll drop a link in the podcast notes and thanks again for being on the podcast.