Franchise QB

Episode 80: Dan Feltman- Co-Founder and VP of Franchising with The Garage Floor Company

• Mike Halpern • Season 1 • Episode 80

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In this episode of the Franchise QB Podcast, host Mike Halpern interviews Dan Feltman, co-founder of The Garage Floor Company. They discuss Dan's journey from law enforcement to entrepreneurship, the unique business model of The Garage Floor Company, and the booming market for home services. 

Dan shares insights on how the company differentiates itself in a competitive landscape, the training and support provided to franchisees, and the financial performance of the business. The conversation highlights the potential for growth in the franchise industry and the opportunities available for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Takeaways

The Garage Floor Company focuses on residential and light commercial epoxy flooring.
The home services industry is booming, projected to grow significantly by 2030.
Differentiation through branding and marketing is key to success.
Franchisees can start from home, reducing overhead costs.
Training is comprehensive, with hands-on experience provided.
Franchise territories are based on qualified households, not just population.
The investment to start a franchise is relatively low compared to industry standards.
The company offers a unique moisture vapor barrier epoxy as a standard service.
Franchisees benefit from ongoing support and marketing assistance. 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
01:05 Dan Feldman's Journey to Franchising
02:55 Understanding The Garage Floor Company
06:05 Market Potential and Industry Growth
09:13 Differentiation in a Competitive Market
11:50 Business Model and Revenue Streams
15:11 Service Offerings and Unique Selling Points
18:00 Training and Support for Franchisees
21:02 Franchise Territories and Expansion Plans
24:12 Investment Costs and Financial Performance

https://www.thegaragefloorcofranchise.com/

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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

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. Franchise it! 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. Joining us in the huddle today is Dan Feltman, co-founder of The Garage Floor Company. Welcome to the show, Dan. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you having me. Absolutely. So you're a retired senior trooper with the Indiana State Police, and you previously owned an ice cream shop, and now you own a flooring business. Tell us about your background and what led you to franchise. Yeah, so a little all over the board there. I guess I like to do a little bit of everything and didn't really plan on that from the beginning, but I graduated college, had no idea what the heck I wanted to do. My dad ended up giving me a pamphlet and says, hey, why don't you try and be a state trooper? Your family's all been in law enforcement and wanted nothing to do with it in the beginning. Actually applied for it, got on my first try. and just kind of took it from there and just started running with the state police. I had the opportunity to actually guard three of our governors while I was there. And uh while I was there, really, I didn't know what I really wanted to do. I knew I was meant for something else and I knew I wanted to be something bigger. I just didn't know what that was. And my background at school was business. So I'm like, well, I'll into businesses. And I actually started looking into businesses and came across a similar franchise of this industry, got really deep into it and really checked it out and that's what kind of led me into this direction, which kind of spins off and that's kind of how I ended up meeting my business partner. He was actually part of that franchise that I was gonna be joining, hopefully. And so I ended up doing my... uh... you know my due diligence and that's how I ended up meeting him actually called him and asked him you know different questions on why or why not i should should be joining that that company so was was just your partner franchise owner at the time or was he working for the franchise or something else so he was he was on his own at that time when i had contacted them but he was previously a part of that other franchise that did a similar what we do in this industry now uh... for the for the stuff So you guys just kind of clicked and there was an alignment and you decided, hey, let's kind of partner up and see what we can do with this garage floor business. Absolutely, yeah. So we kind of formed a partnership and we hit it off and we just, knew we could be better and we knew there was franchises out there that weren't doing well and we knew we could build one that was better. So that's when we ended up linking up to uh grow the Indianapolis market and uh start it here and see as like a test franchise to see if it's even viable to franchise down the road. Right, very cool. So let's kind of, at a high level, for anyone that's listening that's not familiar with the garage floor company, sounds pretty intuitive in your name, but tell us a little bit about your concept. Yeah, so we try to make it really simple for everybody. It's like, what do we do? Well, we do garage floors. ah So we are actually a residential and light commercial epoxy flooring company, as well as we do storage solutions for your garage. So anything that's got concrete and you're looking for a different type of coatings, we have different options that we can choose. And we transform those concrete coatings in your garage, main lane, basements, patios, things like that into a masterpiece and showpiece for your homes and then residential and also light commercial and stuff like that. So we do a lot of like kitchens and things like that. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I could see with the garage being like the extension of the home. It's like the new front door, oh even before COVID, but certainly during and coming out of COVID, everyone's like, Hey, let's maximize the space we're living in. So I know that the garage has been. focal point for that kind of thought process. So tell us a little bit about the, I mean, you're in the home services industry. How big is that industry? And then how big is your sub segment in the garage flooring segment? Yeah. So the home service industry is obviously we all know it and it goes by no surprise in the entire end world. It's booming and it's been booming for the last few years. Ever since COVID hit, it just kind of took off. ah So it's over a billion dollar industry and we're just a small segment of that industry that we take a piece of. But what they're projecting is by 2030, we'll be well over $400 million in our industry alone as annual revenue coming in for these things. So they're very popular. um It's like a It's more of a want than a need, but it's starting to turn into that need because it's actually a protectant for your concrete. So it's a really neat industry to be a part of and it's a transformation that, you know, you get to actually see it within a couple of days versus waiting for a long time for something to be built. It's actually built within a day or two. Yeah, I can see something like, you know, a garage flooring overhaul is similar to painting where it's not a tremendously massive. ticket for the consumer, but it has a really quick and pretty noticeable impact on the improvement of the space. So when you get it done, like it's noticeable. It's something your neighbors are gonna be like, man, that looks really good. Tell me about how you got that done. Absolutely, yeah, it's really neat. Yeah, that's cool. So I mean, obviously that leads to 400 million in a couple of years. There's gotta be significant competition in the garage flooring industry since there's so much demand. So how does The Garage Floor Company kind of differentiate from the rest of the pack? Yeah, so what we ended up doing is back a couple years ago, we partnered up with Kick Charge Creative. So Dan Antonelli, owns that. It's a branding company. And if you would have saw our last logo, it was awful. It was literally just three little letters, GFC. And people go like, what the heck do even do? And it's like, yeah, you're right. So we ended up finding him through Tommy Mello. and Tommy rebranded through him and he's like, you guys gotta go through this guy, he's amazing. So we ended up rebranding, got this whole package, got our logos that we have now. We call it our disruptive marketing. So we're actually going out and we're just trying to be different. That's our whole goal is whatever everybody else is doing, we just wanna be completely opposite. So our big trucks and everything that we have is big, bright and orange, it's going down the streets. Everything we do is totally different. The products that we use are on a different scale than most people. So we're just really just trying to be differentiate ourselves by just being different and honing in on that differentiality of standing out. Okay. Yeah. I've seen the trucks and the logo, obviously on your hat. looks pretty awesome. eh The trucks are definitely noticeable. Like you're not going to forget. So let's talk a little bit about the business model. You mentioned it's kind of B2C and B2B. Like when a new owner launches, my guess is that the lower hanging fruit are like smaller residential jobs and that's kind of where you hang your hat and then you can kind of get into bigger projects when you have more equipment, more trucks, more people. Is that kind of how it works when someone kind of gets into the space? Yeah, absolutely. It's exactly. It's really simple uh model that we have. It's very low key and everything structured and built out for you, but it's very simple. Going out, finding the residential is relatively easy. We do a lot of home shows. um We are part of a lot of us are part of different chambers of commerce. You don't see a lot of people doing that really outreach in what another form of revenue we found is actually teaming up with contractors and builders. That way they're out there, they're always building houses. mean the houses are going up like crazy. Once you get in with that and you get those reports with those builders, they're selling the floors for you. So while you're sleeping, they're getting sold. So it's a whole other line of revenue that we find that we're passing that knowledge on to other franchisees to teach them how to get in with those types of people to help grow their business. And so they're not only just having to rely on pay-per-click and wasting money on Google or Facebook. ah We still do a lot of that, but getting in with these builders has been a really turnkey for us and really revolutionized our industry. Yeah, I can see if you get in with a builder, with an HOA, with a condo association, whatever it is that has garage flooring or even the other applications of your product, I can see how that would kind of springboard an owner to having a ton of business versus just like hunt and pecking and just getting one-offs through those different sources that you mentioned. m So, you know, I know those trucks, you know, the box trucks especially can hold a lot of equipment. When an owner launches, do they need real estate? Do they need storage space to kind of operate your model or can they operate out of the trucks? Yeah, so what's really neat about our model um is it's recommended to get a storage unit or something like that or an office in the beginning. But if you can't afford it or you don't want to, you don't have to, which nice is you can start off from the comfort of your home. If you have a garage, you can store some stuff in there. You can store everything out front of your house if you have a pole barn. So you can start off at home and you have zero overhead for your office. So it's literally the comfort of your home. Everything's ran out of there. Obviously as you scale, you'll end up growing out of that. So you end up moving into an office. But in the very beginning, you do not have to. Everything is right there in your home. You can work out of your truck. It's very, very small, simple, lean structure that we built in place. Yeah, and we'll talk about the Item 7 a little bit later, but I can imagine that that gets reduced when you don't have a construction project or a retail space to lease. So in terms of people coming in to operate the business, do you have it set up where someone that wants to be the truck in a truck that will be in the field, working the job, and do you also have an executive model? maybe they can take more of a white collar approach where they're on the laptop kind of liaising with corporate and hiring people and running the marketing campaign and they have technicians in the field. Do you allow for both models or do prefer one way or the other? Yeah, so good question. So we actually do allow for both of those models. like you touched on that first one is that owner operator model. And that's what Jeff and I actually started off. We still own and operate our own locals. So I own one in Indiana. He's in Nebraska. He owns his own. We still own and operate that. um And that's how we started out. And so we really like that model because that's where we come from and we know it. But it's not saying that we're going to limit ourselves on that. So um as far as that goes, you you're going to be the You're wearing all the hats and things like that. You're gonna get your hands dirty hiring a small crew, one person, maybe two, if that. um And then the other model is that executive model like you talked. And if you have the funds, we do recommend that. So people are coming in and they're hiring a general manager right out the gate. They got their installers. That way they have time to focus in on the business and what really grows it. To funnel that. And those are really good models. And that's what most people end up growing into eventually. Just some people end up wanting to start off with that and right at the beginning. Yeah, okay, makes sense. Well, it's good that you allow both types and you guys have kind of walked the walk with operating your own locations in different markets. So you have proof of concept there, which is cool. So let's talk a little bit more about the services. You touched on kind of epoxy flooring. You talked about the kind of custom cabinetry, that kind of stuff, like for the storage. Can you kind of walk us through a little bit more what the service offerings look like that a franchise owner can kind of bring to the table for a customer? Yeah, absolutely. So what we offer here that's very unique than other most models, we offer our base coat, which is that very bottom protectant coat, is actually called moisture vapor barrier epoxy. A lot of people don't know what that is. They've never heard of it. They just hear epoxy. They know the common term of epoxy. But epoxy is kind of widespread. There's so many different forms. There's so many different levels of that epoxy. So what we always offer is that moisture vapor barrier epoxy. That separates us from the chuck in the trucks and the one day install companies. They're not doing it. So we're actually adding an extra barrier to that base coat so no moisture content from the ground will ever peel up and delaminate your coating over time. That's just something we do standard. It's always what we do. It really helps to set us apart. uh We do a lot of the flake floors, so you see those speckled flakes that are on the floor. We do a lot of those as well. And then our top coat is that polyaspartic, which is the non-yellowing UV Resistant. That's a standard across the board of what we offer every residence that we do. And then we also obviously we offer slat wall, which is those things that you can hang on the side of your wall. You can hang all your tools off of them, shovels and things like that. We have overhead storage, which hangs down from the garage up the top. And then we also offer a wide range of different cabinetry to fill in with your garage. So it's really a complete transformation of garages. um And it's really just kind of, you know, made it complete package when somebody really wants to transform their garage or before they even move in. That's what we ended up doing for that. And that's different lines of revenue that they're going to bring in. as well as getting into the commercial lines where they're doing restaurants and bars and different things like that that they're going in to actually help out with those grind and seals and polished concrete. So there's a lot of different forms we can do with the concrete and that's what we offer forever. All of our clients. It gets really exciting once you make a name for yourself in the market and you get those bigger commercial jobs where you're doing like 10,000 square feet. I know they don't come every day, but when you get them and you build the reputation, that's kind of a pretty exciting thing that can catapult revenues. oh So that's really neat. So tell us a little bit about kind of the equipment package. Like if someone joins, uh they're going to lease some vehicles or maybe buy the vehicles. I mean, can you lease them? And are those upfitted by you guys or does the owner upfit them or is there a third party? What's it look like when you maybe place that order for the truck and the equipment that's required to get things going? Yeah. So we have a lot of different options that you can choose from. So if you have a truck. we recommend using that truck and then all you have to do is just buy a trailer. So a seven by 14 trailer, it can be purchased through us, we can supply that or if you find one that's cheaper, we actually allow our franchisees, if they're finding it cheaper, we want them to save that money up front. And then we actually have a nationwide wrap company that wraps all of our vehicles. So they deal with all that in. As far as if you wanna start off with like a box truck and things like that, you really wanna start off heavy. You can lease vehicles or you can buy them if you have the cash flow. But the neat thing about us is start small and start to scale is our growth model. So starting off with a $5,000 trailer is a lot more cost effective than a $80,000 box truck. So there's different models that we offer. you can kind of grow into that. That makes a lot of sense. And then you got some revenue coming in and you kind of get the model and you can start. Yep, absolutely. Yeah, and then all the equipment that goes into it, it's very small scale. There's not a lot that it takes. ah A grinder, um a vacuum, a generator, and some hand tools. That's it. And then you get started. So it's very, very small, very easy to get going. Yeah, that's awesome. Cool. Yeah. So can you touch on your training and kind of ongoing owner support? What does that look like when someone signs on the dotted line, they kind of come out for training? and then what can they expect kind of beyond their launch? Yeah, so what we tried to do is revolutionize the training. As you know, Jeff was part of that other franchise and he learned from them and it ended up being like a two day class. We ended up calling it a two day demonstration because there's a lot of them out there nowadays. They're saying, hey, come out for two days, we'll teach you everything and then you're off and good and running and now you're a professional. We take training a lot more seriously. we know that that's the bread and butter. Like if you're not trained properly, you're not gonna be able to run a business correctly. You're not gonna be able to do the jobs or train anybody else to do them. So what we really did is focused in on building a training system that's gonna make you successful. Our first week of training uh of 40 hours is done at the comfort of your home. So you're gonna do that and it's really on the computer. We're getting everything set up, going through all the logistics on that end. The next week of training is actually at our headquarters in Omaha. you're gonna do 40 hours of on-site training and actually get hands-on. We're taking you out to real-life jobs, we're not doing the stuff sitting on a board all the day long, we're actually gonna be doing jobs so you can actually get that feel for it, what it's gonna be like day to day, as well as sales. You're gonna go on sales calls with us, we're gonna teach you the different sales techniques, and then after you're done with that, we're gonna ship you home, get everything ordered, once it gets all set, you're gonna get some jobs sold. And then Jeff and I actually fly out to their location and train them on their home site. So they have jobs where they're with them to get them going. And we believe that that's like the biggest thing that really makes them feel comfortable because now they're like, I don't have to remember too much because I got the bosses here and they're watching over me and they know what to do and things like that. So it really makes them feel a lot more comfortable to be able to continue to run that business from then on. Yeah, I can see how that would be a nice comfort blanket when you have the top dogs. that have been there, done it, multiple units, are gonna be in your backyard helping out. So let's talk a little bit about continuity beyond that. Like what about your marketing and your technology? How do these owners, once you guys leave town, how do they get appointments on the calendar to provide quotes and kind of earn jobs? Yeah, so we have a marketing system in place. We have a lot of different suppliers that we teamed up with to get them jump started. We have obviously we have our SEO team that's going to be able to get them on their websites and get their organics ranking pretty high. We have all these call tracking numbers so they can actually track where these leads are coming in from. We do a lot of uh social media, so Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. um I don't know much about it. I'm very bad at that social side, so I let somebody, know, our other companies take care of all that kind of stuff, but our partners, they do really well on getting them up and running on those things, and it's really gonna help jumpstart their business for that. Awesome. So tell us about the franchise territories. How big are they? Are they built by residential density? Are they built by population? Like if a franchise owner comes in and they want to build a big business, they need to look at, you know, what's my coverage? So what does that look like on the territory? Yeah, our territory sizes are the largest uh around for my knowledge in our industry. A lot of people go off of population and what we go off of is actually single-family households, but they're qualified. We make sure they're qualified by a program that we have and they have to have certain just different demographics. So basically we put in what we want them to see and then we We pick those 150,000 plus single family qualified households that have a 75,000 or more income. So we're actually giving you qualified households and we know the areas that we want you to be in to be successful because if you just go off of 200,000 population like another franchise does in our industry, they're not gonna be successful. And to get what we offer, you actually have to buy three of theirs. uh We know we want to make you successful and we'd rather deal with a small group of franchises that own a large territory than a bunch of multiples in that same district. Because we know you need to be able to grow. So having those large territories is going to be able to help you scale in that area to be successful, to be able to service more more customers throughout the years of your tenure. OK, very cool. So I you guys are an emerging franchise brand. curious 2025 how many locations are you operating? How many are in development? What's kind of the state of the company currently? Yeah, so we have three corporate locations, one in Indiana, one in Nebraska, and one in Arizona. Those are up and running. They've been running for quite some time. We have a franchisee currently in Tennessee, and we're getting ready to sign our new franchisee, hopefully within the next week, ah up in Wisconsin area. So that's really exciting to be able to come out there and let everybody know about that. And, you know, we're just, we're just starting to uh get some traction and people are starting to find out who we are. And hopefully we start, start getting a lot more different franchisees in our system. Yeah. So in Tennessee is it Nashville or somewhere else? Yeah, he's in Nashville and he owns a very large chunk of that entire organization. So it's completely sold out right now. So, um, cool. And then Wisconsin is it Madison, Milwaukee, somewhere else? Yeah, so it's basically it's Madison. It's just to the west of Milwaukee area. And then some smaller towns just to the west of that as well. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how they perform because like Nashville is obviously a ton of growth, a ton of new development. Like that is literally if I could think about a market, it'd be great for your concept. I think that would be on my short list. And then you have Madison. I went out there last year for the first time. Really awesome town. And I don't know where they are in terms of their current growth, but it just seems like a smaller market where you can kind of juxtapose a mature market like Nashville with something that's just a little bit smaller. Yep, absolutely. Yeah, it's going to be exciting to see the growth. Yeah. So um what are you guys looking for in a franchise owner? Do you have like an avatar of someone that's like, if you have these characteristics or this background, we think you're going to be great at this? Yeah, so when we actually go through the process, I actually interview a lot of them. Jeff does at the very end, but I interview them in the very beginning. So I'm kind of looking for that really entrepreneurial spirit that that's kind of like a go-getter that really just wants to make a difference. ah It's a different breed when you're an emerging brand and you're so small. To get started, you need that certain unique person that has that capability, that really that drive that wants to grow and put their footprint on you. And what's nice about our concept is being the first ones in, you get that first pick of where the locations you want, whatever you want to put your footprint on, different options and things like that. So we're kind of looking for those entrepreneurs that are like that, like-minded like us, that really want to go out and work hard to get things done. um They're not afraid to join different organizations and talk to different people and just kind of be an outgoing type of person. And, you know, just that that they may have a little bit of sales backgrounds, that's a plus. You don't have to have that. We'll train y'all in all those. We just want somebody that really wants to be a better person in their life, and that's who we're kinda looking for to get going. Okay, I appreciate that. Looking for an ambitious go-getter, kind of high energy, not afraid to communicate and connect with people, good communicator. It sounds like those are things that would work well in Absolutely. So let's talk Item 7. How much does it cost to launch a location like single territory? know when you add on additional territories, there's more fees to kind of lock down the geography. But what's it cost to kind of get in with the variance of like leasing and buying? Yes. So on a very, very low end, just to get started. So somebody just coming in right at the gate, you can get in as low as $133,000. That includes everything. Your franchise fee, all your equipment, the leassed vehicles. You name it, it includes it. It is a full business in a package and here you go and you're off and running. Obviously, it can go up from that up to like $300,000 or some thousand, but the low end is$133,000. It's a very low investment. Yeah, it's a low investment. It also falls within the SBA Express box. So there's probably people that can get in with 10% down. So you can use some leverage to get into the deal. What about Item 19? Do we have any performance data you can share today in terms of how they have historically performed in the affiliates? Yeah, absolutely. So we have all kinds of data. It's on our Item 19, the FDDs live and stuff like that and streaming. We just released our 2025. So those numbers came in. We have a top line revenue of $944,000 last year. And then we ended up having a, I think the bottom was $252,000 out of that, that we ended up bringing home. for that business. it's a very, very, very lucrative business. Nashville. The margins are incredible. Is that a combination of multiple territories or is that one of your locations in like Omaha or Indiana? Yeah, that was Omaha's and they have two different territories that they're running out there. uh Indiana is obviously a single territory and then Nashville is running as a single territory as well. uh Nashville actually did really well for their first year. They did well over $200,000 in their first year. So, I mean, they were net positive from their initial investment. Yeah, I mean, it seems like a high margin business and one that you can get to a pretty significant scale. And, you know, it's profitable dollars, which is pretty exciting for anyone that's getting in the space. um Really great, Dan. I appreciate all the information. Sounds like an exciting opportunity. Anything else you want to add to the mix before we wrap up today? Yeah, no, I I appreciate you having me on and we look forward to meeting everybody. If anybody wants to join us, we definitely welcome you to reach out to us and give us a call and we'll put you through the process and see if we're a good fit for you and if you're a good fit for us. So we'd love to chat with you. If anyone listening would like to connect with Dan and his partner, Jeff, to learn more about becoming a franchise owner with The Garage Floor Company, contact me at FranchiseQB.com or on X @QBFranchiseQB. I'll get you connected. Thank you, Dan, so much for taking the time to get in the huddle today and discuss The Garage Floor Company with us. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you. You got it. uh Follow us on Twitter @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.