Episode 8: Kelsey Stuart, CEO Bloomin' Blinds

Kelsey Stuart, CEO of Bloomin' Blinds, shares the story of how the family business evolved into a successful franchise system. He discusses the unique services and products offered by Bloomin' Blinds, as well as the support and training provided to new franchise owners. Kelsey emphasizes the importance of differentiating the brand and the role of technology in the business. He also highlights the various operating models available to franchise owners and provides insights into the financial performance of the franchise. Kelsey concludes with advice for potential franchise owners, emphasizing the need for commitment and hard work.

Takeaways

• Bloomin' Blinds started as a family business and evolved into a successful franchise system.
• The franchise offers unique services such as blind repair and maintenance, which sets it apart from competitors.
• Bloomin' Blinds provides extensive support and training to new franchise owners, leveraging the experience and knowledge of the founders.
• Technology plays a crucial role in the business, from customer communication to quoting and ordering.
• The franchise offers different operating models, allowing franchise owners to choose the level of involvement that suits their goals and preferences.
• Financial performance varies based on the number of territories and vans, with multi-unit owners experiencing higher revenue and margins.
• Potential franchise owners should have a strong work ethic, enjoy working with people, and be open to coaching and learning.
• Partnering with a reputable franchise sales organization can help accelerate growth and attract high-quality franchise candidates.

Chapters

00:00
Introduction

01:08
The Beginning of Bloomin' Blinds

03:06
Expansion to Dallas

05:58
Differentiating Bloomin' Blinds

06:25
Supporting New Franchise Owners

08:15
Services and Products Offered

10:35
Technology and Processes

12:44
Operating Models

19:22
Home-Based Business and Start-Up Costs

21:56
Maturity of the Brand

25:37
Characteristics of a Successful Franchise Owner

28:03
Performance and Financials

31:56
Partnership with Franchise Fastlane

36:47
Advice for Potential Franchise Owners

38:13
Conclusion

Free Resource for Franchise QB Listeners:

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Contact me and my team with any questions along the way. www.calendly.com/franchiseguy
Mike Halpern, CAFC
mike@franchiseqb.com

Transcript

0:00

This is the Franchise QB Podcast, where we empower entrepreneurs to win big in franchising. We huddle up weekly to educate our audience about the most successful small business model ever created – franchising. Welcome to the Franchise QB podcast. I'm your host, Mike Halpern, a 20 year industry veteran and entrepreneur. My mission is for listeners to achieve their American dreams of creating wealth and independence through franchise ownership. Every week we speak with franchisees, franchisors, or vendors that support the industry. Thank you for joining us and let's get started. Today we have a very exciting guest joining us in the huddle, Kelsey Stewart, CEO of Bloomin' Blinds. Welcome to the show, Kelsey. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you having me. Looking forward to it. Great. So Bloomin' Blinds was started as a family business way back in 1995. And I'll reveal that was the year I graduated from high school. I'm kind of a dinosaur. And it was subsequently converted into a franchise system. So. Take us back to the beginning when your mom started the business back in 95 and eventually when you and your brothers joined it. Okay. And for the record, I'm 94. So I'm right there with you. So my mom is a serial entrepreneur. She's always had businesses. My brothers and I grew up and we've never seen our parents have a nine to five job. It's just, it's how my mom grew up. It's how we grew up. It's in our blood. So we're in Seattle, Washington, about an hour north of Seattle. And she's reading through the back of the local paper and sees a blind cleaning tank for sale. Never heard of it. Realized there's no competition. There's no availability in the current market. And she's just a woman who likes to see the holes and fill them. So she worked out a deal where she went and bought this blind cleaning tank thinking that she's going to come back to the Northwest and basically solve the world's problems through cleaning blinds. And very quickly through her advertisement, she realized that most of her customers were calling about repair, not cleaning. So they saw the cleaning, but then they started asking about the repair. She had to go to great lengths of trying to find parts. All the repair concepts were self-taught. And over the course of seven years, she built a pretty good one woman business where it was a blend primarily of the maintenance side of the window covering industry. and she was unique in that Northwest environment because nobody did any sort of cleaning or repair. Through the course of time, she started selling blinds as well, but she started off on that maintenance side, realizing that was kind of a hole. After divorce and a move to Dallas, she decided to rebuild the same business model. Again, a one-woman show at this point. She gets to Dallas, again, in a city of millions of people. Nobody's doing cleaning or repair. So she takes off on the same business model, starts cleaning and repairing, starts building it up. This is like the company's formation was the day in 9-11. So that's Blumenwein's birthday, is not the morning of 9-11. And so in that economic environment, when money gets tight, people go into a maintenance mode. And so while the market was stepping away from buying new products left and right, coming off of a very hot real estate market, Now people are holding onto their dollars and they're taking care of what they have. And that kind of led the way to this repair and cleaning side, getting off the ground really well. Within a couple months, my first brother jumped in as the first employee, the middle brother, Chris. And then about nine months into the business, I moved from Washington down here and joined as the first quote unquote sales guy. Okay. And I remember started dating my wife, who's now my wife, within a couple months of getting into town, I met her. And I remember telling her when we were dating, like, babe, when we do 10,000 a month, like I can get a $200 a week paycheck. And so we dove in, I worked for free for nine months. I was a bartender at night and I was slinging blinds or trying to learn about the industry and draw customers in during the day. Over time, Again, that uniqueness of the model, the fact that we were the only cleaning and repair company really started to kind of take hold as it was we've seen as a franchise. And then after about three years, we started offering blinds because our repair customers were asking for it. We were telling them no. And we realized that you just can't turn away that much volume and that much opportunity. So we ran that business as a family unit for about 18 years, built it up to almost a $3 million a year company. and still were the only maintenance focused or maintenance available company. To do 3 million, you're primarily sales revenue, but a lot of our appointments and new customer acquisition was through that maintenance side. And even after being here for 18 years in a big, big city, we were still the only ones. And we knew that we had something unique and a true differentiator. I like to challenge candidates with the question, why does the world need another one? So if you're looking at a franchise and you're looking at a sandwich shop or a blind company or you know, anything, a dry cleaner, like why does the world need another one? And if the brand has a really good answer to that, now you have yourself a viable business model that can penetrate a busy market. Yeah, absolutely. Without that, you got to wonder where it's coming from. Right. So we'll talk a little bit about kind of what differentiates Blumenbinds from the pack here in a minute. But, you know, it's really impressive. It's hard to start a business, especially an independent business. Your family did that from scratch. You beat the odds of starting and then sustaining a business that got to three million in revenue. Very impressive. So how do you use that experience to assist a new franchise owner in Bloom and Blinds to navigate those same challenges that you faced when you started your business? How do you help them to launch their business? Well, because we have 20 years of experience of doing the thing, right. Like my brothers and I have literally stood in tens of thousands of living rooms and built the company from scratch. And so a lot of that goes into the coaching and the support and the leadership that a brand new person in business, most of our franchise owners are first time business owners. And they're definitely first time in the window covering industry. And so the, um, the ability to lead them through it. the ability to see six months down the road so they can kind of begin to gear up and plan and be strategic versus reactionary is part of our daily interaction with franchise owners. No doubt how we built the business in 2001, 2003, there are significant differences between how you build a business today. But we have stayed boots on the ground the whole time, whether it be through our own corporate office. or whether it be through the interaction with the franchise owners. Now we get the understanding of the modern business with all of this historical piece. And because we're highly relational with the franchise owners, like all doors are wide open. There's no sacred cows. You know, anything you need to talk about is on the table. And we've built a system where we still love learning from our franchise owners. Like there's no ivory tower. There's no. You know, you're the little guy, I'm the big guy. Some of our best innovations and some of our current practices were directly derived from franchise owners who said, Hey, I'm seeing this. Can we talk about it? Yeah. And it makes sense. And I think that reciprocal relationship is really meaningful to a lot of, um, franchise owners that are joining intentionally an earlier stage franchise systems so they can be part of its growth and participate in kind of where it goes. So let's talk about the basic services and products that a Blumenblins franchise owner can offer to the consumer. Can you talk a little bit about the product lines and you did touch on the repair services. Can you go a little bit more into that? Yeah, so there's three main revenue drivers as in, well, sales and install, I guess, are kind of paired up together. If we sell it, we're assuming we're putting it in. And we don't often get called to put in somebody else's stuff. So... most of the installs are on stuff. So you have your sales and install and then you have your repair. If a franchise owner chooses down the road, they can grow into blind cleaning and window washing, two additional maintenance services. We haven't had a lot of draw on that because the money's been so good on the sales and repair side. But if we, we've taken this business model through two recessions and so we know if money gets tight, those maintenance services are going to be really But no one's offering it now because we're still rocking and rolling. No one's no one's wanted to do the hard work. Right. From a product line perspective, we're a full service window covering company. So if it's in the window covering industry, inside the house or outside of the house, we've got the capability and the vendors to provide that. OK. Yeah, we're not in those products are generally going to be drop shipped to the consumer's location when they make a purchase for installation. Almost. So everything's made just in time by major multinational manufacturers. So we're not dealing with little mom and pops in a garage. We're dealing with the big boys from a manufacturing standpoint. One of the better parts of this business is we're kind of playing with house money the whole time. So a consumer will pick out a series of products, they'll pay a 50 percent deposit, and then we order the product and it's then it's manufactured. So none of this stuff is sitting on a shelf. It's assembled within days of us ordering it and then shipped to us. Then we go do the install and it's shipped to us, not the consumer. Okay. And then we do the install and get the second half, but we're on net terms with the factory. So we're typically installed and paid in full before we're paying the factory for the product. That's great. I like that. So you talked a little bit before about, you know, if you're gonna be in the business, you need to have a differentiator. You have to explain why it makes sense to be in business in this space. So what does, in your view, differentiate Blumenblins from other competitors that operate in the space? Yeah, we've identified three distinct legs, legs of a stool, if you will. The most tangible and the most recognizable from a consumer standpoint is the fact that we do repairs. And not at... not a begrudgingly, yeah, I guess, or I'll only do it with my product. What makes it unique and valuable is that we have the capability in the parts to fix 95% of everything that we see. Even if we didn't put it in, regardless of the brand, we have all that experience and know-how and have been able to curate inventory so that we can go fix something when a dog chews it up or a string wears out over time. And... That's a huge customer acquisition play for us. The marketing is incredibly cheap because there's no competition. Our SEO is incredibly strong because there's no competition and the margins on repair parts are. not polite to talk about in public. Okay. So it's not the repair side. We're not going to get rich off that, but it's going to help us build our business. If you have a long-term perspective on what you're building, repairs are critical to that growth to move faster than a traditional window covering company. Yeah, you're building trust with the consumer. You're getting in their home. So I think that is a foray into other services you guys can provide. That makes total sense. Yeah, Bloom and Blinds franchise owners got into 4,200 households under the repair appointment that they wouldn't have gotten into. This is last year, so 22. 4,200 appointments, 4,200 households and people that we touched that if we didn't do repairs, we would have never touched those people. Yeah, that's significant. 4,200. Impressive. So let's talk a little bit about support. A franchise owner decides that Bloom and Blinds is the right match for them. They joined the system, but as you mentioned before, many of them, most of them are not gonna be experts in the window covering business. What's your initial training and ongoing support look like for that new owner that's new to Bloomin'? Yeah, good tie in because that's actually the second leg of the stool. I realize I like the sound of my own voice. So my answer's good. But that's our other shining, that's probably our shining star to the franchise owner, not the consumer, but the franchise owner is. the intimacy in which we interact with our franchise owners, the open doors that are available. And then not only do you have myself and my two brothers who are actively engaged, I've already talked to three franchise owners this morning and it's, you know, 11 o'clock my time. But then our support team. So our training team. has window covering experience anywhere from four to six years before they came on board. Our VP of operations has nine years of experience at a high level from a manufacturer. So we've integrated the entire team with depth of knowledge. The training starts off primarily focused on doing the job. Most nearly all of our franchise owners are hopping in the van in the very beginning. They may not always stay there, but They're learning the industry, they're learning the widget so that they can support their team and hold them to a high standard. If an owner's never done the thing in a trade like window coverings, it's really hard to hold your team to a high standard because you don't know what they're supposed to be doing every day. So we start off with a four week onboarding sequence, helping new franchise owners establish their business, the business license, like. basically walking them through the things that you need to do to start a business. Right. And then during that four weeks, we're also diving into our software, which is the third leg of the, the awesomeness is all the technology that we have in this industry, but, um, teaching them about all the software, getting them familiar with that, and then teaching them the basics of window covering vocabulary, because we roll that directly into a two week in-person training. Today's actually day three of a new class. I've got five people downstairs. Um, And that way, when they come to the in-person training, they're coming in with a baseline of knowledge. They've already been kind of warmed up a little bit. And there's still a fire hose of information, but at least this way, it isn't the first time they've heard those terms or seen those concepts. And by going through that onboarding sequence, and once we added that, the retention going home has gone through the roof. That's great. So let's, you mentioned the third leg of the stool briefly, which was the technology systems processes. I know a lot has changed since the business was founded back in the 90s, but how does Blumen keep up with the latest technology as it assists franchise own. Well, we, it's a dichotomy. It's a, it's a push and pull because as a franchise organization, I don't think franchise owners really appreciate being yanked around in different directions on a regular basis, right? Stability and consistency is really important. So anytime that we look at a piece of technology, we have to evaluate it with two lenses. One, does this make the franchise owners lives better? Does it make their business more efficient? Is there a return on investment, whether it be on our end or theirs? And then secondly, is this going to drive consumer appreciation of bloom and blinds? Is this going to affect the conversion rate or just the overall, who should I pick mindset out of a consumer? And any technology that we bring on has to serve both of those purposes. We're in a pretty antiquated industry. It's still pretty much run on pen and paper and a, you know, a pencil behind your ear kind of scenario. There's some really great software that we utilize in the window covering industry specifically, but then there's some other pieces that aren't part of the window covering industry that we've been able to pull in because we have the scale of a franchise, things that you couldn't access if you're a mom and pop. So our customers watch us drive to the house like an Uber driver. They see who's coming, a picture, they know when we're four and a half minutes away. And that goes a long way because our customer base is primarily women at home. Yeah, that's huge. I mean, they want to know when you're coming. Anytime you order a pizza and Uber, it's kind of an expectation. So the fact that you guys keep up with that is really important. Yeah. And it's interesting because we've had that for five years. So when we got it, it was like Domino's has it and Bloomin has it. It's getting a lot more popular and it's a lot more accessible than that particular feature. So it's not so cool as it used to be. It's still very valuable, though. We're on iPads, not notepads. We're using lasers that Bluetooth the measurements into the iPad instead of a steel tape measure and writing down the measurements. We're on a quoting platform called Solitech, which is a window covering specific platform. This one's awesome for new owners. It's like bumping, it's like bowling with the bumpers up. It's really hard to get into a gutter when you have a software that says, you can't build this or you can build that before you promise it to a customer. and then it handles all the pricing and all the ordering to the manufacturers. It's a really efficient system. We utilize artificial intelligence in our marketing. We use augmented reality to bring the window coverings to life. If you want to talk about purple Roman shades on your living room windows, I can take my iPad and I can put those purple Roman shades on your windows and I can move them up and down. I can change the colors and the configurations. I can bring the product to life in your house in the middle of our sales consultation. Yeah, that is really cool. And I'm assuming that estimate can be provided at the time of service or is there a kind of a period of time that goes by before that estimate can be provided? Industry average is one to three days. Typically, they're either in Excel or on a notepad. They got to go home to the office and put it all together. Because we have a system like Solitech, we're able to just input the data. It's got our pre-built margins already in it. And so as soon as we input the last measurement, we instantly have a price and a PDF to present to the customer. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, you don't get that with a lot of house calls in the service industry. So that technology I can see is a really good investment for your owners. Even then, it's still pretty cheap. Very cool. So this is a home-based business. So what... You know, does it require a showroom? Clearly not if it's home based. Inventory is all on the iPad. So is that how you're able to allow an owner to kind of get in the system at a low kind of barrier to entry is because it's kind of you're talking bands, you're talking maybe light equipment. What's that look like to kind of get started? Yeah. So we've kitted it out for a franchise owner. So when they come on board, we used to give them a shopping list and tell them, go get all this stuff. And Sometimes there's problems with availability. Sometimes owners might have cut a corner or two and not had something they really needed. So we learned to just kit it out. And so when a new franchise owner comes in, they're getting the tools, they're getting the repair parts, the sales samples, they're getting all the tangible items that you need, the van wrap, the hotel for training, all of this is wrapped into one bundled kit, if you will, financially and physically. So the stuff we use, I mean, we're talking about power drills and screwdrivers and step ladders. I mean, maybe a chop saw or something, some sort of cutting device. But there's nothing that's more than a couple hundred bucks, even at a Home Depot, if you had to go replace it or buy something else. That's yeah, it's a and then there's no inventory. So everything's made just in time. And while some owners have grown to a commercial space because of their size and their scale. You could easily run this out of an extra bedroom or one bay of a garage. Okay. So that kind of leads me to the question about operating models. You do allow an owner operator that's going to come in and run this full time. You also offer executive model where maybe they have a job and they bring in a GM and a semi-absentee or semi-involved. Can you kind of explain the different? requirements for each model in terms of territories, vans, staff, just a basic overview of the differences between the kind of ownership types. Okay. Yep. Well, I'm going to probably redefine it just a little bit, but I'll try and tell you from our vision. Yeah. Tell me how you guys do it. Yeah. The owner operator is somebody who's looking to escape their previous world. Typically, it's the corporate world, right? And they're not quite sure how big they want to build it. They just know they want to control their life and they want to be able to get back to, you know, some sort of income that they're used to. And so an owner operator, a one man band, if you will, typically starts off with one or two territories and they're in the van. And then it's up to them how far they push it. I've definitely got owners who are simply having a job they control. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's our origin. I get that. I get that a lot. My favorite model is kind of the scalable solution of that. So that's a franchise owner who understands there's value in learning the trade before you lead a team. And so they're coming in as the owner operator in the start, but they're starting off with aggressive plans. They bought two to three to four territories. They're spending more than the minimum on the, on the marketing. They're getting very strategic with us on their growth plan and how do I see six months down the road? And as the business starts hitting particular benchmarks, usually about 40,000 a month, then they begin to add more and more technicians. Basically, they're duplicating how many people are on the road that are doing the daily business. That scalable owner operator typically stays in the van through the first two, three, four employees. And often they graduate to the sales only, to the point where all they're doing is setting up the appointments, and then the repairs and the installs are all done by the guys in the other vans. Yeah, that makes sense. I like the chronology of it. Get in there as the owner operator, understand the business, don't ask your manager or employees to do something that you don't know how to do yourself firsthand. And then once you kind of have it figured out, and it's time to scale. Yeah, and window coverings is a trade. you know, similar to carpentry, similar to plumbing, similar to all these other home service things. We're a clean trade. Our shirt's the same color when we come home as when we left. But in the long run, we're still a trade. There's still a technical aspect to what we do and what our employees will end up doing. Now, on the far end of the spectrum, somebody who doesn't want to leave their job, I'm not opposed to that. And we have owners who are doing that now. We've also learned that it takes more capital. it's inherently more risky. Ultimately, the entire business success rests on the quality of the general manager that you hire. They're really the key. So choose wisely. Absolutely. At the same time though, we are going to be fairly selective on this business model because I wanna make sure that the owner of the business understands that there's still a high level of engagement with the general manager, teaching them how to lead your business. Ultimately, there's some personnel development skills that need to be in place for that distanced owner. Someone who's got a GM in place. If you've just been hiding behind a keyboard doing coding and you happen to collect a pile of money and you want to buy a business, I guess we just don't let people treat Blum & Blinds like a stock. Yeah, that's smart. That's a good way to run it because then you'll reduce the failure rate. So, I mean, that leads me into my next question. Regardless of the owner-operator model or the kind of the model you talked about where you get in and then scale it and then eventually become more semi-involved, what's a great candidate look like for you? What have you seen that it translate to a high degree of success in terms of characteristics in a new franchise on or for Blim and Blinds? Yeah, I had someone describe this to me the other day and I thought it was a great way to say it. It's all the stuff your parents taught you when you were a kid. Okay. None of it is window coverings or skill or handy or technical know-how. None of that. The success is driven by those intangibles pieces of your personality. And so to summarize that a little bit, you know, work ethic is definitely in there. Any owner of a business has to have a high motor and a high work ethic. We're also in home sales. There's an intimacy and a real connection and a rapport building that has to occur before someone meets you and an hour later, write you a $5,000 check. So we need fairly gregarious, outgoing individuals who like people, who like to teach. We're not salespeople. We are incredibly soft in our process. We are educators, not salespeople. And so someone who's really got that energy, you can just feel it. You like them when they get in the room. And then the other two components are an insatiable curiosity. I'm a firm believer that in business, you got to pick up every rock and see what's underneath it because you never know. And the owners who are pushing the most revenue, they just have this inquisitive mind. The last part is they need to love coaching. They need to look at us and want to be mentored. because I have a wealth of knowledge. This entire system is built for knowledge transfer. And it breaks my heart when an owner comes on and doesn't utilize that. I want to give it. And if they don't like coaching or they don't really want to be helped, very rarely does a franchise owner soar when that's the case. Yeah, now it makes perfect sense. If you're gonna join a franchise system, you're doing it. intentionally because you want the guidance and the proven predictable track record that a franchise system offers and to Not accept that coaching is very counterintuitive. So you have to weed that out in your in your process So let's talk a little bit about numbers I know the FTC has its rules, but what can you share with us about performance in your item 19? I Think our item 19 has gone to great lengths to provide transparency we have It's a 23 page item 19. Wow. It's reporting on 33 owners. So we, we report on any owner who has opened the entire calendar year. Previously. Okay. And so it's 33 owners. It's not 13 owners or three owners. And the most valuable part kind of talking back to those business models is it separates all of the financials for franchise owners that have one van. And then franchise the tent at that time. the 10 franchise owners that had multiple vans, two or more. And those 10 comprised of seven owners with two vans and three owners with three vans. So we're not talking a fleet of 22, or just a couple. But the difference and it articulates the value of multiplying yourself and getting beyond that owner operator, the owner operator with one van did $435,000 on average. 30% net. So, if you're coming out of corporate and you need to replace a $100,000 job, man, all you got to do is be average. Then at the same time, the multivan operators did 1.2 million. It's almost three times the magnification of revenue simply by putting more vans on the road. It's more exposure, more efficiency, more opportunity, more public awareness, all of it. It is a magic little thing when you just start duplicating yourself and getting out of that owner operator box. And does the item 19 differentiate in terms of the net income with the multi-unit versus the single? Yeah, the multi-units sitting at 23%. Okay. On average, really attractive margin. Yeah. And it goes from 30 to 23. You've got greater overhead, but you have a much bigger pie. Very cool. So, How much does it cost to get started in terms of, you know, I guess there's a difference between buying the van, leasing the van, working capital. You know, I always say that you, when I work with candidates, it's look at the high end of that range and be over-capitalized, have a really strong runway for marketing and just intangibles. But what's, what's it cost to get into a Bloom and Blinds franchise? So, one territory and the materials and all those things that you need, you're with working capital. your hundred grand. As you start getting into second, third, fourth territories, then you're adding 30 and $40,000 increments to it. So even a three, you know, three territory startup with one van is. 150 to 170. Well, I'm affordable. Yeah, I know it's kind of fun to use that word in conjunction with 170, but true. It's all relative, right? Absolutely. And and I'm right in line with you on the. working capital to have a longer runway before you get into a nervous situation. Like again, in-home sales customers can sense if you're pushing too hard or if you're not relaxed and having fun. So we do believe in a greater bucket of working capital. You know, from anyone listening to this, like we don't touch that money that stays in your account. We just want you to have the runway or the bandwidth to. grow when you need to, not wait for the money if possible. Yeah, and be able to make good decisions, not based on kind of what's going on in the bank account, which can happen if you're running low. So let's talk about kind of the maturity of the brand. Clearly, you've been around for a long time, since the 90s. You originally, when you converted into a franchise system, you handled your development in-house, and then subsequently partnered with Franchise Fastlane, a franchise sales organization that's well-respected. I like that approach because you've already seen what it's like to grow organically, and now you're likely handling a higher volume of new owners going into training and supporting since you had that organic experience. So right now, how many owners are active in the Bloomin' system? How many territories have you launched? How many are in the pipeline? Well, because we're not a brick and mortar, generally, if somebody comes on and they acquire two territories, then both of them are live as soon as they go live. Okay. So 65 owners and I think we're at 126, 127 territories, something around that. So the average territory or average owner has about two territories? Yeah. And that's, that's one territory is kind of like, you can support a family on that eventually, but when you move into two and three territories, that gives you a lot more breathing room and a lot more control on your, on your glass ceiling and how high that is. Um, we, when we got into franchising, we franchised in 2014, put the first one on the ground in 15, in 2015. I was still in the living room selling blinds. We had no idea what it meant to be a franchise or I'll be completely. So you're being an operator and a franchise or concurrently. Yeah. As I'm driving from appointment to appointment, I'm calling prospective franchise owners and trying to get in conversations. Um, and we did that for three and a half years. But when we when we launched into a franchise, we knew we did the franchise route because we didn't want to do company stores and split up the family. We like working together and we didn't want to send one to Oklahoma City and one to Kansas City. And so we franchised it not knowing what we were doing over the course of a couple years. We started to get a grasp of what it really meant to be a franchise or the responsibility the pieces that are in play the legalities behind it the significance of it. Now we're almost eight and a half years in. And, you know, it's been three, four years. And since I feel like we've really kind of grown into understanding what it meant to be a good franchise order. And so now it's kind of a refinement and building out infrastructure and looking for opportunities to make a better brand. Um, now we know what we're doing. Um, the evolution has been amazing in terms of our growth and understanding who we are. Fastlane has been a great pick. I was doing all the development and we got to about 50, 55 owners, I guess lower 50s. And we began to realize that I couldn't service the franchise owners and pursue the new ones. And so pursuing the new ones was getting left because I'm already committed to taking care of people who are already in the system. And we knew that was going to hamper our growth as a brand. Our goal is to become a household name across the U S. And so we went looking for a partner who could take on that early element of the education. Yeah, that's great because you're still involved in selecting. I mean, it's your business, but you don't have to deal with a lot of the initial vetting that takes place kind of offsite, so to speak. And obviously Kelly and her team do a great job at that. So I think it frees up your time to do what you do best, which is train owners on how to run a successful company. Yeah. And. Part of that growth curve is it's a different candidate pool. So as a young franchise, really not knowing what you're doing, not having any clout in the system, you're working through these directories and you're getting people who, some of them are very interested in some of them are just playing on their phone. Uh, where now a significant part of our lead flows coming through consultants like you guys and the quality of the candidate, the mentality, the business acumen, the ambition, financial resources, it's all at a greater scale than what we initially started with. And it's awesome because it's turning into franchise owners that are growing and being far more successful because there's a, not only the consultant, but then Kelly, our rep at Fastlane, and then our growth. Everyone's better at evaluating if this is a good fit than when I was just doing it by myself not being from the franchise industry. Yeah, sounds like you made a really good choice. So Kelsey, anything else you'd like to add to the mix before we wrap up? One piece I like to talk to franchise candidates about is, and this is kind of my heart of a teacher, anyone who's looking at getting into business needs to have an honest gut check. I think as you go through this process and you start really getting into it, some of the emotional swell can carry it. candidate sometimes and that's typically when I meet them. I usually meet them towards the end of the process and we've learned to call that momentary ambition. It's tough because by the time we meet them they're like all ramped up and it may or may not be who they really are when the dust settles. And so as somebody is looking at franchising for your own benefit to make sure you're making a good choice for the next chapter in your life and own it once you decide to move forward. You need to have a gut check. Are you ready for this? Because building a business is fun. It might be the funnest thing you've ever done, but it's going to be the hardest and scariest thing you've ever done as well. And you gotta be ready for that ride and you gotta be in with two feet. You can't half and half it. So I hope anyone who sees this or hears this takes that to heart and make sure that you're making a good choice for your family and your household way before the brand. We come after that. But... Once you're ready and once you're committed, jump in with everything you got because there's opportunity if you really go after it and follow the recipe of your brand, whichever brand you pick. Yeah, that's really, really good advice. Well, if you'd like to connect with Kelsey to learn more about the process to own a Blumen Blinds franchise territory, contact me at franchiseqb.com or on Twitter at qbfranchiseqb. I'll get you connected with Kelsey and his team. Kelsey, thank you so much for taking the time to get in the huddle and speak with us today about Blumen Blinds. Yeah. Thank you for listening to the Franchise QB podcast where you're at the helm of your future as a franchise owner. If you enjoyed the content, please rate the show and recommend it to anyone that might be interested in franchising. Make sure to visit franchiseqb.com to subscribe to my newsletter and for an actionable playbook to go from walk-on to legend in your new business. Follow us on Twitter at QBFranchiseQB and join us. every week for a new episode. See you next time. Visit franchiseqb.com to take the next step of your journey towards wealth, independence and franchise ownership. And remember, when working for the man gets old, you must do something bold. Thank you for listening.