Franchise QB

Episode 81: Lonnie McGowan, Multi-Unit Franchise Owner- Image Studios

• Mike Halpern • Season 1 • Episode 81

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In this episode of the Franchise QB Podcast, host Mike Halpern speaks with Lonnie McGowan, a multi-unit franchise owner of Image Studios, about his transition from a successful corporate career to franchise ownership.

Lonnie shares his journey, the unique business model of Image Studios, and insights into the beauty and wellness industry. He discusses the importance of supporting beauty professionals, the operational aspects of running a franchise, and the training provided by the franchisor. 

The conversation highlights the characteristics of successful franchise owners and the significance of building a community among beauty professionals.

Takeaways

✅Lonnie transitioned from a corporate career to franchise ownership.
✅Image Studios operates on a salon suite model.
✅The beauty industry remains resilient even in downturns.
✅Quality build-out differentiates Image Studios from competitors.
✅Engaging beauty professionals is crucial for retention.
✅Absentee ownership allows for a flexible lifestyle.
✅Training and support from the franchisor are vital for success.
✅The franchise has achieved 100% occupancy since opening.
✅Successful franchise owners prioritize community building.
✅The beauty industry is a lucrative market with ongoing demand.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction 
04:54 Transition from Corporate to Franchise
08:09 Understanding Image Studios Franchise Model
12:44 The Beauty and Wellness Industry Landscape
15:00 Differentiating Factors in the Franchise Market
18:13 Finding and Supporting Beauty Professionals
22:22 Operational Insights and Absentee Ownership
24:43 Training and Support in the Franchise System
26:31 Growth and Investment in Image Studios
29:46 Characteristics of a Successful Franchise Owner
31:11 Conclusion

https://www.imagestudiosfranchise.com/

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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 Lonnie McGowan, franchise owner with Image Studios. Welcome to the show, Lonnie. Thank you so much, Mike. Thank you for welcoming here and looking forward to having a conversation with you here. Yeah, it's great to have you on the show. So you spent 18 years or more in corporate America, which is a common thread with a lot of people that I speak with exploring franchise ownership. You're focused on serving as a people and culture strategist for a Fortune 200 organization. About five years ago, you became a franchise owner with Image Studios, which is the brand we're going to discuss today. Tell us a little bit about your background and what ultimately led you to franchise. Yeah, it's interesting. I graduated from San Francisco State University. I was a student athlete, so I thought I was going to go overseas and play some basketball. thought I was pretty good. And then I found out I was a lot better to myself than everybody else thought I was. So I ended up defaulting back, which wasn't a bad thing to my business management degree and knew I always wanted to be in business. And so I graduated from school and landed an entry-level management trainee position with the Sherwin Williams company, which is a fortune 200 company. They're the number one supplier and maker of paint and coatings in the world. And so I had the opportunity to interview with them and with no experience in uh the work industry because I basically played basketball my whole career life and college. They hired me on the spot. And so I was excited about that. So I got a chance to start with them right out of college in 2001. then it just, my career took a really favorable turn. I ended up becoming, you know, I tapped on the shoulder and promoted several times over and moved several states with my wife and family and ended up in my dream role as a vice president. of human resources. So I covered about 13 states and I had about 8,000 employees of a company of about 50,000. And where were you at the time? What market? I was in the Dallas market. So I started in the Bay Area in San Francisco, California, where I graduated and then subsequently moved to Denver, Colorado. So I covered that market along with Missouri and Kansas and and some of the other markets out there and then moved to Dallas to take on the vice president role. So I went from uh manager trainee to store manager, did a lot of sales work. And then in the middle of that, they tapped me on the shoulder and said, why don't you come over to the HR side? And uh so I had not gone to school for HR, but the company really prided itself on bringing people from within and cross-referencing positions. And so I crossed over the HR as a HR recruiter and got a chance to cover places like Hawaii and and all California, Arizona, Nevada. So was going to some pretty cool places and schools to recruit graduates. I then became an area HR manager and then fast forward, became a uh director for all of the plants and distribution centers west of the Mississippi River. So I did that and that was part of the global supply chain timeframe that I had with the company. And then they tapped me on the shoulder and said, why don't you come on to Dallas for a VP role? So I was, you know, just a short little deal here. I was the first African-American male. in the company's history. making a little bit of a fun history there. So I did that for about four or five years and loved every minute of it, except I was working about 60 to 70 hours per week. uh At the time, my wife was a uh UT Southwestern nurse on night shifts. And so we did not see each other. And I remember uh when my wife came to me one day, she said, Hey, she goes, man, it'd be good to see you every once in a on a weekend or something, you know? So that kind of was a gut punch to me. And I knew that the writing was on the wall at that point that we needed to maybe bet on ourselves, you know, and look at something from a business standpoint outside of corporate America. As much as I loved Corporate America, I felt like it had trained me to go out and do my own business. So I mutually had the opportunity to part ways with the company. And that was in December of 2019. So I'm looking forward to 2020 thinking that the sky's the limit. And believe it or not, before I found this franchise, my wife and I, we'd watched a lot of HGTV because we were in Sherwin-Williams. And so I felt like we could do a business where we would buy homes and flip them. And I would be the guy to buy the big purchase and then my wife would come in and make all these little small decisions on the design and we would blow up. So we sort of opened up an LLC and started at it at February just to get hit by COVID in March. And so it knocked us off kilter. And obviously I had to kind of start back from scratch to figure out what was next. And so it wasn't until I talked with my mentor who then connected with me with a franchise broker and they told me a little bit about Image Studios. And the first thing that caught my attention was Absentee. because obviously I've been working a ton of hours. So I'd made a really good name for myself, good reputation, and just figured I would bet on me and my wife to go out and uh make a name for ourselves with Image Studios. Yeah, that's really good backstory. you and I graduated college around the same time, and a long time ago, right? And it's interesting. Sherman Williams, I do a lot of work in the home services space in every painting franchise. you know, has a partnership of some sort with Sherman Williams because they're the biggest and that's where they go to source their subs and do some wholesale work with those guys. And they're always approaching, you know, the managers, they're trying to figure out, who's the best team to work with in this market. um, and I like the fact that, you know, a lot of ex military athletes, they thrive in franchise models. Yes. You know, you're disciplined in order to achieve to get to play collegiate basketball and be on the brink of professional. need to have that discipline and show up and do the work. And I know that translates really well. Absolutely. Business ownership. In fact, a lot of the franchises I work with will give discounts or something of that nature to recruit people that are ex-military or ex-athletes or current athletes because they know that they'll be culturally a really good fit for the model. That is totally true. In fact, we did that at Sherwin Williams. We did the same thing there, too. We targeted sports, athletics and recruitment from that standpoint, as well as ex-military. And we felt like that discipline uh applied very well into the company culture. And so that background really did help me because I was team captain of the last two years in college. And so a new leadership, management of people. uh Really building relationships, networking, I knew that was going to be crucial for whatever I did in life. uh It turned out to be a very significant point for me, even with the franchise, because a big part of that is connecting with beauty professionals out in the field and convincing them to come lease from you, because this is kind of a real estate play model. So uh that really came in handy, and I think that's what's led to a lot of the success that my wife and I have had so far. Yeah, that's great. So I want to kind of pivot a little bit and talk about the franchise that you decided to invest in, which is Image Studios. Tell us a little bit more about the concept. For anyone that's unfamiliar with what Image Studios is and what it does. Yeah, Image Studios is basically a salon suite model. You basically take an average of 5,000 to 6,000 square feet of space, and you build it out into individual suites, and then you lease them. to beauty professionals and you allow them to come in and sort of run their business as is. And you're sort of playing a mini landlord, if you will. And so that's where the uh ability to have absentee ownership is kind of placed on is the fact that you're dealing with beauty professionals that basically run their own business. You don't have to do anything other than provide a space and an atmosphere and a culture for them to thrive in. And so uh if you would have asked me, you know, Five years ago, if I'd be in the beauty industry, I'd tell you, man, I don't have any hair. I don't know what this is. So I would have said, you got to be kidding me. But what really attracted me to this model was the fact that it's a real estate play and you're dealing with something very similar what I did with Sherwin Williams, you know, contractors, vendors that come in and sort of deck this place out for beauty professionals to come in and thrive. So that's a little bit about the business model in a short. Yeah, it's an interesting confluence of real estate and providing the service for these kind of beauty professionals. So I can imagine upfront, it's a lot of work with the construction project and being the GC and kind of overseeing that whole thing and dealing with the lease negotiation and the permitting and the build out. And then all of a sudden you're like, all right, now I have to fill the space and go out there and find great people to be my tenants. oh So you launched yours, you mentioned about five years ago and in the green room, you told me that you are. Congratulations, you just signed a lease for your next store. Thank you. uh How long did that process take to kind of find both sites? you mentioned that you built them both from scratch. Yeah, our first uh site was uh helped by a commercial real estate agent who partners with the franchise. So that's one of the things we love about the franchise is they connect you with vendors that they work with across the country. And so I happened to connect with this particular vendor who helped locate my first location. And quite funny is I was arguing with her about it because it was nothing but plywood all the way around and dirt inside the building and first generation building. And I kept thinking to myself, who's going to want to come and rent from me from this particular building? You know, it's not even built out. It doesn't look right. It doesn't even have a storefront. But what it's taught me is, you know, you got to have vision as well. when you're going into a business, you gotta see through a year, five years, 10 years out ah of the process. And so after we put together a good team, whether it's a general contractor, an architect, and then you have ah all of your subcontractors that come in and build out to design, all of a sudden you have a beautiful space that people want to come and thrive in. I... give all the credit to my commercial real estate agent. uh name is Carly Wim. She'll be appreciative of the shout out here because we went back and forth quite a bit on it. em And so she was also the person I went to for the second location as well. It took us about two to three years because we only bought one territory license and we just wanted to see how it went. Mostly your owners may buy two or three at a time for a discount, but this was my wife and I's first time going out on a limb. to bet on ourselves. so, you know, it's a pretty cost, you know, impactful transaction. And we just wanted to make sure we did it right the first time before we venture out on the second location. Yeah. And that sounds like you took a really thoughtful approach to site selection because in your model, you have to be in the right spot because it's not going to move once you sign that lease and put down that deposit and you get going. and like you said, you have to the foresight of what's this market going to look like five years from now, 10 years from now. So. Patients there, I think, will pay off long term, which is really cool. So let's take a step back. Tell us a little bit more about how big is the beauty and wellness industry? It's huge, particularly in Dallas. When I was doing my research, when you talk about the beauty industry, I had totally forgot about the fact that Mary Kay is headquartered here. That's one of the biggest makeup conglomeratories in the world. Also, Sally Beauty Supply, if you're a male or female and you need supplies, whether it's to apply to your hair or just equipment to cut your hair or whatever it may be, Sally Beauty Supply is also located and based here in Dallas, Texas, Ulta as well. So as we started doing our research, we realized that Dallas was really a hub for beauty. We also found out that Dallas was the home place for the first salon suite concept. ah So Dallas is home to salon suites. They know a salon suite. You don't have to spend all of your time and effort to convince people what a salon suite is. ah And so that was a big part of it. And then during COVID, I think it was sort of the right time for salon suites to really catch on fire. If you recall, there was a lot of concern about people gathering in large areas. ah And the regular hair salon has a bunch of chairs and one. open space and I think a lot of duty professionals were concerned moving forward not just about themselves but about their clients sharing space. So what a better way to to leverage a salon suite model where you can come and get your own individual space still have that collaboration with some of the folks that are in there that you share the space with but you have privacy where you can either have one-on-one conversations with your customers and you don't have to share an open space with a bunch of folks as well. that I think helped us make the decision that this was the right way to move forward. That's a really interesting observation. So you mentioned how DFW is kind of a hub for person care, beauty. There's a couple of huge companies operating in that space. It's kind of a blessing and a curse, right? It's like, there's got to be lots of competition if everyone's mindful and they're familiar with the whole Salon Suite concept. So how does Image Studios differentiate to get you excited about investing in their franchise versus the competitors? Yeah, no, that's a great, great point. Let me just go back real quick to also emphasize the reason why we thought this was a great play to get into from a franchise standpoint. I remember during COVID, was like yesterday, me and my wife got together and we started talking about, what can we do to optimize our resources, our finances so that... We're prepared to come out on the other side. And so we were doing budgeting, uh you know, talks and it got a little sticky because there are certain things my wife and I had to give up. But the one thing she said she wasn't going to give up was doing her hair. OK, so she told me, I remember she says, hey, we don't have to go out to eat all the time, but I'm going to get my hair done at least once a week or every two weeks. And so it hit me that, know what, even in a down economy or an uncertainty time in the economy. There is a lot of folks out there that still want to get their nails done, hair done, brows done, lashes done. So the beauty industry is going to be here to stay. ah And that's kind of how they sold me on it. uh Initially is that the beauty industry, even in downturn economies still thrive because when people aren't feeling well about their finances, they want to look good. And when you look good, you feel good. And so that's sort of. what drives this industry, whether you're having fun with a lot of money in the bank or you're budgeting really close to some pennies, but you still want to go out and pamper yourself every once in a while. Yeah. And if your wife's taking that position, then you can pretty much assume that there's a lot of other women out there that are going to spend the money to look good, regardless of what's happening out externally. So exactly so that was kind of what sold me early early on in the first part of that I knew it Okay, we I think we're safe in this particular industry, but to your point your last question uh What differentiates us from our competitors is the quality of build out? A lot of our competitors. There's a lot of sheetrock walls, know low ceilings very dark Looking areas for us. We want a lot of natural light a lot of Euro glass that we use to build out That's what contributes to a little bit of the expensive nature of the build out. But it's worth it. You know, we have been at 100 % occupancy, Mike, since we opened up in 2021. so that's impressive. Yeah, 100 % occupancy and we have a wait list. And so that's what also led to me saying, okay, I'm tired of doing these tours and everybody's saying, where can I sign? And we don't have a suite available. So, you know, my wife and I got together, we got a We got to look at a second location, you know, and if we. many suites do you have in that flagship unit? We've got 30 suites in our flagship unit, and so the new space will have 38. ah But I can tell you over the last three years, we've done 100 tours and said we don't have space, so we would probably filled out another two locations if we had them at time. Yeah, now I mean, that's just like really leads me to my next question about the business model. I'm thinking are there enough? beauty professionals out there looking for space. You've answered that question. If you have a hundred people touring and you have a wait list, but tell me a little bit about the types of professionals that are, you know, knocking on your door and trying to find a home for their business. Yeah. Well, just, just to kind of go back a little bit, the reason why I felt like I can do it was because of my prior experience. You know, I was responsible for hiring hundreds of thousands of employees as Sherwin Williams at a time. And I had a team that did that. um And so when someone tells me, all you need is 30 people to come on board of your space to succeed. I'm thinking to myself, I can't find 30 people in the Dallas metro area. So something's wrong with me, you know? So that was sort of the other selling piece to it as well. But Sherwin's, I mean, Image Studios, we're looking for hairstylists. We're looking for lash artists. We're looking for. tattoo artists, looking for anybody in the beauty industry that feels comfortable running their own business outside of a conglomerate. And so this allows us to partner with other beauty professionals to help them build their business and run a business. And so in effect, we are a small business supporting small businesses. And that's what we love. This is not just a regular W-2 type of business model. This is... We care about our build out space and usually when you work with another business, they care just as much about the space as you do because they're a business. um We're looking for people that are go-getters. We're looking for folks that play nice in the sandbox that, um you know, they're going to support our business as well. um And so that's the kind of person that we're looking for. People that are wanting to grow a luxury brand with our brand as well. Yeah. And I guess you have to be real careful about how you. who you put in there because like you said, you have 30 people that have to coexist and hopefully collaborate and help each other and that can't all be guaranteed, but you can, with your experience in HR, you can probably sniff out someone that's gonna be a problem child. That is 100 % correct. I make it a point to meet with every single beauty professional candidate that wants to join our space. And so whether it's over a cup of coffee, or a one-on-one in our lobby or out front, uh we're always meeting with them to just sort of gauge where they're at in their business and whether or not they'll be a good fit. We've said no more than we said yes. And I think that is uh a huge sign that we want the right people to fit the culture that we have here. So with my HR background to your point, I'm looking for folks that if I ask them why are you wanting to leave your current location, they're asking to step up. and get into a better place. They're not downing the prior owner or talking negative about other people and putting the blame or deflecting. They're saying, hey, I want a responsibility to grow my client base, but I want to do it in a very luxury environment that I feel can help me not only succeed and maintain my client base, but raise my prices and get better economy of scale. So that's really the kind of person that we're looking for. And we take people that are right out of... Beauty school we take our risk with those two so you don't necessarily have to be in the beauty industry for fifteen twenty years. There are some beauty professionals that got a really good heavy presence on social media and they they blow up right away because they got a good following and they know how to get behind the mic and and and camera like you do and and sell their business and so there's a lot of the younger generation that does that very well whereas you got folks that have been in the game for ten fifteen years that rely on their their you know. consistent customer base. Yeah, and I can see if you make good tenancy decisions. Those are the folks that are going to kind of recruit their friends and other like minded individuals to fill the space. And I think that would work to your advantage as an owner. It does. And we also engage in them as much as we possibly can. I think that's the reason why we have a high retention rate. uh Not a lot of beauty professionals leave us. They tend to stay. And that's because my wife and I do everything we can to spoil them. You know, we're visiting them every day. We're bringing food in, catering food. We're offering education seminars via the franchise. We're doing everything we can to make sure that they can thrive and have success in their place of business. I love it. So let's talk about the footprint. How much real estate, I mean, you just went through this process. Do you have a certain sweet spot of like, you know, 4,000 to 5,000 feet or 5,000 to 6,000 feet? What do you need to kind of get those 30 to 38 studios, you know, within your scope? Yeah, think the franchise preaches and I agree with this that you want at least 5,000 square feet because what it does is it gets you at least 25 studios in there and really the scale is the studios. The amount of studios you have is the revenue that you're billed. And this is a unique model that it's pretty much capped at what the rates are going to be until you get a renewal uh from your client to sign up again and then that's where you can raise prices. For the most part, really wanna get enough space to build out enough suites to make enough money. Okay. I was gonna ask if you can operate this as an executive model. You've already demonstrated that you're doing that yourself with your wife. I imagine that there's not much to do as an owner-operator because, know, like, do you have, like, a front desk person or do, is that not even the case in the model? No, no. Yeah, we literally build it where we want every single possible square foot to be sellable. ah And we want it to kind of run itself. That's the whole purpose of being an absentee model There's a lot of franchises out there that say it's absentee But when you get in it, you're you're working a full-time job again, you know And so our goal is for me not to be there all the time. So I'll give you an example of my day I wake up and drink some coffee read the paper Look at the internet. I'll go work out and then I go to the salon around 12 to 1 o'clock Everybody knows that that's the same time that I try to get there every day uh And it'll take me five to ten minutes to make the round say hi shake hands, kiss babies um Make sure the heat and the air is working and I'm out of there um That's a pretty good life to live for a franchise owner, you know I would say so and so that's a big part of what we do now sometimes we'll spend a little bit of extra time just making sure things are right if something's breaking down or a particular beauty professional needs some help will manage that as well, but ah Really, it runs itself and you don't necessarily need somebody in there to help it go. And that's what I love about it. Yeah, so I'd imagine that the training is really critical upfront on how to lay the foundation for like the culture of the business, how to come up with that daily routine, how to get it fully occupied. Can you touch on some of the training that you went through when you joined the system back four or five years ago? I know that you're getting ongoing support from the franchisor. but it does seem like it's a little less impactful in your model, maybe something that's more labor intense. But yeah, if you talk a little bit about the training and support, that'd be great. No, thank you so much for leading into that. I think that's a very critical part of this particular franchise and whether or not you'll succeed or not is the amount of training that they provide for you. So Jason Olsen, the owner and CEO of Image Studios, he and his brother, when they created it, one of the things they wanted to do is make sure there's enough training upfront. So before you start build out, before you start recruiting, you're gonna have to go through a set of modules. I think it's 12 modules at two hours a day. um And usually it's two to three days out of the week that you're spending going through these modules training with a lead facilitator. And so the goal is to make sure you know everything about the business, whether it's how to go about the build out. What are the policies and procedures that you're going to share with your pros? The tools and resources that you use in CRM systems, things of that nature walking you through that. um Who are your vendors for accounting information so you can have your P &Ls and reports lined out? These type of things are so critical to the owner so that you can hit the ground running once you get your build out started. So the training, um the knowledge that they provide. The materials that they give you to be successful is uh short of amazing. Awesome. I appreciate that. So let's talk about this system. How many image studios are currently operating? How many are in development? What's the size of the total franchise system within Image Studios? Yeah, think right now, so we just hit a milestone for the franchise. They just opened up their 100th store. My thoughts my gift ran out in Austin had the ability to be celebrated for that. So he was the hundred store opening So they're moving pretty quickly I know just about that much, you know It's all about timing, right? So so and I think they have roughly almost 300 territories sold at the moment. So Definitely yeah across the country too. I mean, you know, there's opportunities from the east to the west, north, south. So Image Studios has made a footprint through most of the states too as well. So that's a good sign. So I know that there's going to be a variance in the Item 7, what it's going to cost to get open depending on what equipment you put in and what TI money you get back from the landlord, et cetera. But just generally speaking, what's a good range of investment that someone can expect if like you, they're getting into a first generation space to launch their Image Studios? Yes, so Image Studios is not the most cheapest opportunity for franchise and you're definitely going to spend a little money uh on your build out. um What I would tell you as well as one of the barriers is that it's not necessarily SBA approved yet and that's because it is a real estate play. But um what they do really well is connect you with banks uh and fundraising and lending opportunities to help. supplement what you're trying to do to build out. So typically I would say it costs roughly a million dollars to build out a location and that includes your mechanical, electrical, and plumbing. Those are going to be your three biggest items obviously with the salon. And so what we try to target is about $50 TI from the landlord. If you can get that and more, it's really going to help you, know, a price per square foot if you will. So $50 price per square foot. uh TI allowance from the landlord will help build that, obviously, loans and lending from the bank and or investments and or opportunities that you have to invest in it as well. You mentioned that it's not necessarily an SBA friendly business. I have heard that because it's more considered real estate than it is an operating franchise model when it's kind of a combination. So can an owner, know, whatever bank they partner with, and I'm sure it depends on their borrowing credentials. But is it still around and 20 % cash in and 80 % funding or is it different? Yeah, in most cases it's 10 % cash in so it's even lower. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So that we've seen those terms as well. So usually you're getting a pretty good loan term from the bank. Obviously interest rates are a little bit higher than normal but anywhere from 7 to 10 year loan terms and anywhere between 7 to 10 % on interest rates right now is what we're seeing. But if you supplement that with the TI from the landlord and some investments that you may have saved up It really could become a little bit of a smaller number than the original million to go in Yeah, I appreciate that. So in your opinion, what makes a good image studios franchise owner? What characteristics do they need like what when you look at your peers in the network and the ones that are really successful? What are they bringing to the table? One of things they're bringing is the ability to care for the beauty professionals that they bring on. You know, that you're not looking at them as just a number. um One of the things that we've seen is that if you don't engage these beauty professionals, they will leave. um And when you have high turnover, the number one cost of your business is trying to find another beauty professional to come in and replace another one. So the key is to engage uh and build relationships. Make sure that you're not afraid to get out there and get to know these folks as much as you can. uh My wife and I, do everything we can to make sure that our beauty professionals are happy, that they're satisfied. One of the things that we pride ourselves on is doing what you say you're gonna do. Our CEO was talking about this at our retreat last week. If you've got a broken light in the back and one of the beauty professionals say, hey owner, your light's broken back there in the back. and you don't do anything about it. It looks bad on us. It looks bad on the franchise and it looks bad on the location. So making sure that we take 10 to their needs and also make sure that our place looks good 24 seven, I think is a good landlord and beauty owner. Yeah. And I can tell that you check all those boxes. You come across as someone that really cares about not just your business, but the people that are occupying the space and making your business successful. And I love that whole mantra of like, we're a small business for health. or small business owners. Sounds like a really good symbiotic relationship. So Lonnie, this has been awesome. Anything else you want to add to the mix before we wrap up today? Just one other thing I would say that makes a really good owner is the ability to kind of bring them together outside of the business and just do seminars, whether it's education training. We also do happy hours where we get a chance to allow them to come together and get to know each other. That kind of lets the walls down. So that they get to know who is next door to them to the right and to the left so creating that culture of collaboration ah and uh You know friendships for the long term. I think that helps the business owner. So yeah, I mean it reminds me going back I don't know ten years. I was in a shared office space environment Not for beauty professionals, but for kind of like office employees when I kind of launched my business I didn't want to rent my own space. I wanted to kind of go into a common space with a kitchen and boardroom and all that. And that's where we had a social hour with kind of food and drink. And that's where my wife and I found our dream home. were talking about another tenant that was in there. And he's like, Hey, by the way, my neighbor's relocating to Minnesota. And it turned out to be the neighborhood that we really wanted to move into. that connection is what led us to buy this house seven years ago and raise our kids. And I can see how like, when you have that collaborative nature, like good things happen, even if they're indirect. Yeah, there's a lot of competition between beauty professionals in Dallas So it's actually while Dallas is pretty big a lot of the folks that are doing well than a beauty industry know each other and So what we found was you know, we'll sign somebody on for a lease and we publicize it and sometimes these other artists will see somebody that they know and they go Hmm, you know, they do the same thing we do they do extensions or they do color and so there's this inner competitive nature Which is not bad ah But sometimes if you don't facilitate a time where they can talk and just sort of lay their hair down for per se and and have a Cold beer and get a chance to just talk about careers and what they're doing. It can be a little contentious in there So that's what we've learned is just you know, the more they get to know each other the better the environment is uh for everybody Yeah, seems like having a good blend of healthy competition and collaboration is gonna make everybody better at what they do. So Well, if anyone listening would like to connect with Lonnie to learn more about becoming a franchise owner with Image Studios, contact me at FranchiseQB.com or on X @QBFranchise QB and I'll get you connected. Lonnie, thank you so much for taking the time to get in the huddle to discuss your business and Image Studios with us today. Thank you, Mike, for having me. I appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks. 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. 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