Franchise QB

Episode 87: Ford Saeks- Entrepreneur and Business Growth Accelerator

• Mike Halpern • Season 1 • Episode 87

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In this episode of the Franchise QB Podcast, host Mike Halpern speaks with Ford Saeks, a seasoned entrepreneur and AI integration strategist, about the essential elements of successful franchise ownership. 

They discuss the importance of mindset shifts for aspiring franchisees, proven marketing and sales strategies, the role of AI in streamlining operations, and common pitfalls to avoid. 

Ford emphasizes the need for personal accountability, critical thinking, and the importance of leveraging the franchise network to become a top performer. The conversation also touches on the future of franchising in the age of AI and the necessity of adapting to new technologies.

Takeaways

Mindset is crucial for franchise success.
Franchisees must follow the system provided by franchisors.
Customer experience is key to effective marketing.
AI can enhance business operations but requires understanding.
Networking with other franchisees can provide valuable insights.
Avoid overconfidence and follow proven strategies.
Set clear goals and break them into actionable steps.
Measure performance using MT and O (Minimum, Target, Optimal) metrics.
Personal accountability is essential for growth.
Emulate successful franchisees to improve your own performance.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
02:19 Mindset Shifts for Aspiring Franchisees
05:04 Marketing and Sales Strategies for Franchisees
09:19 Harnessing AI in Franchising
13:40 Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Franchising
17:38 Becoming a Top Performer in Franchising
22:08 Implementing Effective Strategies for Success
26:59 Conclusion

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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, 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. Joining us in the huddle today is Ford Saeks, serial entrepreneur, AI integration strategist, marketing and sales expert, and hall of fame keynote speaker. Welcome to the show, Ford. Hey, thank you. I'm so glad to be here. It is great to have you. And I really like your setup back there. You can tell you're a pro. So Ford, you help organizations with growth, outpacing disruption, turning complexity into clarity, 25 years of experience, and more than one billion with a B in client driven sales. And you specialize in aligning leadership, marketing sales, and AI innovation to deliver measurable results, which I know a lot of companies are looking for. You have launched more than 10 companies, authored six business books, earned three US patents, and trained thousands across multiple industries. So before we get into your strategies here on the Franchise QB about how franchise owners can benefit, Tell us a little bit about your background. Well, I really appreciate that. I can tell you this, the more I've learned, the more I know, the more I know I don't know. So I just want to say that I love that introduction where I get all the accolades and social proof. People want to learn more about me, they can just Google me. But my background really started as an entrepreneur at a very young age. and I was able to come up with some ideas and add value. I was kind of a troubled youth and got a lot of attention negatively. And then once I found out that I could uh add value and make a profit and create things of value, then my entrepreneurial journey started. So I started 15 years old in my first business, and now I've had over a dozen, and three were eight figure businesses. And so I've had a chance to really learn along the way and make a lot of mistakes. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And it's good to turn all that negative energy into positive stuff for the universe. So it's a good thing that that shift took place and it sounds like it's made you really successful as an entrepreneur and businessman. let's, know, here on the franchise QB, we want to help franchise owners figure out the way forward and what franchising is all about. So in your view, what is the biggest mindset shift that an aspiring franchisee needs to make before they sign on the dotted line and actually join the franchise system. Well, know, when they're an entrepreneur and they're looking to either a new franchisee or they've already signed or they're considering, I think it's really important to understand that regardless of where they are with the growth or the opportunity in their business, to get where they want to go, there's going to be three main areas of focus, okay? I found this in big brands, small brands, service brands, senior care. know, retail, quick serve restaurants, fast casual, everything in franchising. I found that the gap from where someone is to where they want to go comes down to one of three areas. First, it's their mindset. You know, if you ask me, what's the most important thing that they should do? It's their mindset because all the strategy and tactics in the world, especially that's one of the advantages of joining, becoming a franchisee is you have a system to follow. But if your mindset isn't dialed in, if you're not open-minded, coachable, a critical thinker, proactive, and take personal accountability for your own results, systems in the world won't help. So start with that mindset first, and then of course, follow your system. The biggest thing in franchising is we both know my decades in franchising is the franchisor just wants the franchisees to utilize their tools and follow their systems, and the franchisee, mostly new franchisees, are like, hey, I just invested my life savings, or I've just invested in this new business. Why isn't national or corporate driving more business? So you've got your mindset, you got your strategies, and then it's how do you actually execute? Yeah. And I think the mindset thing comes into play with the candidates that I interact with because a lot of them, you know, if they take the approach of, you know, the franchise or us to sell me on whether so great. It's like, well, you you, as the owner really dictate the success of the business. The mindset you bring to the table is how those systems get executed. So, you I really spent a lot of time with people educating them that like, hey, go in there. This is a two way street. Like they're vetting you the way you're vetting them. Make sure this is a mutual fit. And then like, don't get in this thing to reinvent it. Get in it because you like what you see as it is. And yes, you can add value and kind of maybe make enhancements, but you're not investing in this thing to reinvent it. Right. So that's really good advice. So let's talk about what are some of the proven marketing and sales strategies? that franchise owners can use to ramp up faster once they're in the system? Well, for proven strategies, it's really important to think about, in business, they're going to be strong in one of three areas. Marketing and sales, finance and accounting, leadership, managing the business, or delivering the product or service. A lot of people get into franchising because they were a practitioner. Maybe they were a plumber and now they wanted to buy a plumbing franchise, so they were a practitioner. And so the best marketing tools work is first to remember that all the marketing and sales tactics in the world won't overcome a bad customer experience. So you have to make sure that you look at your entire customer journey from a suspect to a prospect to a qualified lead to a customer client all the way to an advocate. And you have to look at that customer experience and say, okay, where do I really need to communicate the best? Now that's, I just want to cover that first. Now, as far as the sales tactics, A franchisee is responsible for their local territory, their local marketing area, right? And so it's a combination of uh being present in the community, building the network, building the relationships, realizing that there's a lot of opportunity for growth, even if there's increased competition and even if you feel like you're in an over-saturated market. Having that mindset of there's always more business. So I always ask, you know, the centers of influence, who else reaches the same target market? that you're trying to reach and how can you build relationships with them? So that's one way, centers of influence. Obviously referrals. I talk to lot of businesses and they're like, yeah, we get some referrals. And I'm like, do you have a referral culture? What's that? Do you have uh something very specific you do to generate referrals? Well, not really. Does your frontline staff and the people who answer your phone do it? No. And so when it comes to referrals, helping your staff and everybody understand these two sentences. First, every time there's a happiness moment, ask for a review. So as soon as someone says, oh man, this was a great, just had whatever the service or product was, as soon as you see happiness, ask for a review or get your cell phone out and get a testimonial because that's social proof, right? So that's the thing. Second thing is to tell them, don't keep us a secret. And then they're gonna look at you, Mike, and go like, what do you mean don't keep us a secret? And you say these exact words. We're never too busy to help your, fill in the blank, friends. colleagues, coworkers, solve whatever the business is. if it was home services or senior care or a quick serve restaurant, we're never too busy to help your friends or colleagues with a wonderful meal or a wonderful experience. So, the referrals, the local area marketing, the centers of influence, those are really important ones that don't cost a lot of money. It's just really about training and the mindset. Now then of course there's always how do you get traffic and how do we, stand out in a search business and AI has changed the game. So I tell people right now that there's no SEO anymore, it's IAO. It's optimizing for artificial intelligence because the search engines aren't search engines anymore, Mike, they're not. mean, Google's not Google anymore. It's an AI tool and the AI tools are now becoming search engines. So I think within the next few months, you're gonna see this change, this catastrophic seismic change in how businesses get leads. And so I know if you're listening to this right now, you're probably thinking, my goodness, there's so much disruption. I would tell you, you got to really pay attention to what's going on with the AI landscape. know, AI is not going to replace humans, but it's going to replace humans and franchisees that aren't using it. Yeah. And we're going to talk about AI in a moment. And I like your point about kind of making a system around your referrals because people like franchise owners generally will do that. at the direction of their franchise or through traditional lead gen, but they don't do it with referrals. So coming up with a predictable, repeatable, teachable referral program. mean, those are, you know, potential clients that convert a lot quicker when they're warm instead of cold. So I really liked that. think that's good advice. And on the AI, you're totally right. Like you go to Google and type it in. Most people don't even look at the, you know, the first result. They just look at the AI summary and that's very different than it was a year ago. So. Appreciate that. So let's kind of continue down the road with AI automation and franchising. How can today's franchise owners start using AI to streamline tasks, gain a competitive edge without having to be tech experts? Everyone's scared of AI. How do we harness it? Well, I would say the first caution is everybody with a laptop is now an AI expert. So just there's a lot of disinformation and misinformation. I mean, you can't open up your inbox. without seeing every vendor and every supplier soliciting some type of AI, including me, by the way. I'm sending out emails on AI webinars and lead magnets, so I'm part of that bandwagon. Although you can check my credentials, I actually can deliver real value. But anyway, I never want to cut anyone else down. I just want to say this. The biggest thing is just be cautious. Use common sense. Understand that this is a tool. It's not an or, it's an and. You are going to be using AI, and you probably are using AI in everything, because every program going forward is gonna have some element of AI. It doesn't matter what it is, AI is gonna be embedded in it. So not to get scared of it, and just to understand some basics. So let's go through a few basics. First, AI will hallucinate, it's biased, it can give you the bad results. So as a brand or business or franchisee, you have to make sure you set up acceptable use policies for your team. What's acceptable? What isn't? What's going to keep us compliant? What's not? And to set some guardrails so you just don't have employees doing things or sharing data that might not work. you've got to be careful of the pitfalls. The next tip on AI would be, this is a human business. Deals don't happen before dialogue. Be visible. Be... Personally, AI can replace certain places in the customer journey. It can automate it. Like I was just, I've done over 500 episodes of my own podcast, Fortify. It's live on Wednesdays at 11 a.m. And I go and I interview CEOs and suppliers and brands to learn what they're doing. And I was just on with a quick serve restaurant, very famous, big brand if I told you who it was. You guys can go through my history and find out who it was. But I was asking him this question because there's a lot of, uh QSRs now that have those kiosks. You know, go in, I go through an airport and if I want to order a hamburger, you don't see any people, right? You just walk up to the kiosk, you pick what you want and hit order and it goes. And what this CEO told me was they did a test that if there was an employee with an eyesight of the kiosk, that sales went up by 30%. In other words, the employee wasn't even necessarily helping the person fill out the kiosk, but the fact that there was an employee there, that could give guidance. It's 30%. They bought more foods, they tipped better. So just having that one employee. So it's really looking at the whole experience with AI. Where should you use it? Because ultimately, you can't keep up on the technology is advancing so quickly. What I would tell people is you need to be using it. I would download it and I would put it on your phone. ChatGPT is where I would start for most people. If you have a ChatGPT account on your desktop, it's the same. account you can get on your phone, you don't have to pay double, and start using it for voice, start talking to it. That's what I have found to be the most compelling insight when I do this at a conference as an opening keynote speaker at a franchise brand. I'll pull someone up on stage and I'll do two things. One, I'll have them translate to different language. So I pull someone out of the audience, like in PuroClean, I keynoteed PuroClean and I said, what do you like best about PuroClean and say it in Spanish? So AI converted to Spanish and the participant answered in Spanish and then it said in English and everybody in the room was like, that's so cool, which is really easy. It's like a party trick. Yeah. But they didn't even realize that they could use AI for audio. That's cool. Yeah. And like I mentioned to you in the green room that we have our annual convention for France or on Sunday, and it goes through Wednesday. And the first day, I wish you were a keynote because a lot of the insights you're sharing here will be great, but obviously people can tune into this podcast to pick it up. But, know, we're going to be talking AI all Sunday. That's what it is. It's just a training session and everyone's going to kind of pitch their take on AI. And that's what people are like going there with their kind of notebooks out and their AI listeners so that they can kind of gather as much data. So that's definitely first and foremost in our industry. It's at the forefront. uh So let's talk about some mistakes. You mentioned AI mistakes. What are some of the other pitfalls that franchise owners make and how can they avoid those? Pitfalls in general or with AI or both? Well, it's up to you. mean, however you want to handle it. so the biggest thing I think is being overconfident and not following your system. The biggest problem in franchising, you know, is not following your system. Second thing is probably not taking advantage of the other franchisees in your system. No matter what system you're in, whether they have 25 units or 25,000 units, there are leaders in that system that have learned the life lessons that can help you. So taking advantage, going to the conferences, going to like your conference and participating. So even though you think there might be a lost opportunity cost by going to the conference, go to the conference, get out of your room, go to the lunches, sit somewhere different. Don't sit, if you come with three people from your team, don't sit with them the whole conference. Spread out, have someone's at a different table and do something different, right? It's just, you already spend time with those people, go. They're used up, go find some new people, right? So I think the biggest pitfalls are not taking advantage of the systems and trying too hard. know, right now, and I'm gonna jump back to AI for just a second, there's really no excuses anymore. It doesn't matter what you wanna learn, there's a resource. I mean, it used to be we had to read books, and I've got hundreds of books behind me. We had to read books, we had to go to seminars, we had to learn. Well now, if I asked you, Mike, for example, how many books do you think you've ever read in your whole life? What would you say? Just throw out a number. Let's say 400, but I'm probably being generous. All right, so 400. What do you think your percentage from zero to 100 % of recall is of those books? Very little. Right, mine too. I I'd probably say too. I forget sometimes. I've even interviewed, I've even met people at a show and they're like, hey, Ford. And I'm like, I don't remember it. And my assistant goes, he was on your podcast last year. So here I spent 45 minutes with the guy and maybe it's a senior moment, right? I don't know, maybe that's it. But I didn't even remember it, but I would say this, AI has 100 % recall. It's watched all the TED Talks. It's watched all the videos. It's read all the books. So why wouldn't you tap in to that knowledge base to try to get a better solution? So when I'm looking for problem solving, instead of trying to make mistakes, first of all, I take personal accountability for everything in my life. The first thing is, you want to avoid mistakes? Forget the mistake, learn. The lesson, well, okay, great. And I have made plenty of mistakes, everybody. ah There's no shortage of mistakes that I've made. We wouldn't have enough time in this episode to cover anything that I've made mistakes on, it's so many. But I would say just take personal accountability for your own success, step back, take an assessment, where are you now, where do you wanna go, and then create a strategic and tactical plan to get there. But again, going back to the show opening, the episode opening. You gotta have that mindset piece because again, I've seen it. I'm a YPO member, entrepreneurs organization. I speak at YPO and other organizations outside of franchising. I sit on boards and think tanks and I can always tell the ones that are struggling, it's their mindset. It's not the product. The product is 20 % of their success. The other 80 % is marketing and letting people know that it's available. Yeah, I had this conversation yesterday with my 17 year old son. I'm like, it's okay to make mistakes in life. It's okay to fail. You just have to go through these things and get better. And a lot of young people are scared to make those mistakes. A lot of old people are skilled, scared to make those mistakes, but that's how you learn. That's how you get better. But you have to be accountable and say, okay, you know, I did it this way. It didn't work. Let me try this way. And I think if that mindset's in place, you can accomplish things a lot quicker. Um, and it's just a better game plan. I think that makes a ton of sense. So let's talk about, know, every franchise system has the top performers, the bottom performers. Anytime a candidate is looking at Item 19, they're like, well, I want to be like this person. How are they doing, you know, so much revenue compared to the field? What can franchisees do in your view to become standout performers in a brand and get noticed by the franchisor and be a top kind of, you know, operator within that model? Yeah, I think the first part is creating that vision. And again, I'm not telling you to harp on the, hey, you got to have a mindset piece. You know, I'm all for dream boards and positive thinking and thinking big. In fact, I have a Jeep Rubicon, the license plate is Think Big, T-H-I-N-K-B-G. But what I've learned is you got to think small too. If you want to be a top performer in any organization, you want to have that big, bold vision. But you also need to break it down into baby steps. Because sometimes that big, bold vision becomes too overwhelming and you find yourself, a quarter goes by and a quarter goes by and you're looking at your income statement and your balance sheet and you're looking at your metrics and you're thinking, gee, really haven't moved the needles that much. And so I like to think big, but I also like to think small and then to take action. So, I'm gonna have these big, bold goals and visions and things, but then I'm gonna ask, okay, what am I gonna do for the next two weeks? What are my top three priorities? I like to prioritize things in A, B, and C. Something that's absolutely necessary, that's an A. And then I have to ask myself, is it urgent and really important, or is it just something that I think is important? Because I can easily condition myself as an entrepreneur to think everything's important, every shiny object's important. And it's not always, right? I have to look at what's absolutely necessary, that's the A. B is something that's before a certain date, so that would be something before date. And C is just something that can wait, it's kind like the parking lot. And so I've learned it with my team, I've taught my team that when something comes up, we have a decision-making matrix, we look at our vision, mission, and values, and our goals for the quarter, and if I come up with a new shiny object because I always come up with something new. they're gonna say, which one of these 17 things do you wanna take off the list in order to do the one thing that you want? And so I've had to surround myself with critical thinking decision makers. Otherwise, I'd drive our bus right off the cliff. Like I'm just telling you, I have to have smart people around me. So as a listener to this show, you have to know what your strengths and weaknesses are. Hire your weakness. Yes, you can try to make your weaknesses better. But for me, Mike, it was always people. You I understood how to market. I was a savvy genius marketer, but I wasn't a great leader in early days. And I remember my first million dollars, I sold a million dollars. I went to my accountant and I'm like, I sold a million dollars. I'm a millionaire. And she said, hold on there, Skippy, you sold a million dollars. You're $150,000 in debt and your actual salary was $16,000. So before you, and so she said, are you looking at your chart of accounts and your income statement. I didn't even know what any of that stuff was. I was paying people to do my books and my taxes and I was just running out of my checkbook. If I had money in the bank, I was successful. And so I didn't understand inventory turns and uh the value of money and net profits and I didn't understand departments. And so I had to hire people, but then along the way I've learned that now. So A, B, and C is one thing. Second part is MT and O. If you're gonna do any key performance metrics, You want to have minimum, target and optimal. So whenever I have a team, if they're working, let's say on video marketing and we're looking at YouTube and we're trying to increase our influence, we measure MTN and O. So what's the minimum that we know, okay, we're here, we need to get better, we need coaching. And sometimes it might be outside help. Target means, okay, we're hitting our target and optimal's optimal. So with every team, every franchisor and franchisee actually, could do MTNOs with your team. so that they understand what success looks like. If you're asking me what the best practices are, it's you gotta clearly communicate best practices and train people to standard and understand what situation do they need. Handholding and what situations can you just delegate. My biggest problem, Mike, is I delegated without details for years. I'd say, Mike, go take care of this. And I wouldn't give you all the details and then you might fail and you'd come back and be like, Mike, what the heck is going on? You know, this isn't even right. And you'd be like, well, that's not what you told me. And I'm like, yeah, it is. And so we'd have this big riff, right? Hypothetically now, this is not my, I just want to be clerical for this episode. I appreciate that, Ford. But I had to learn that it was really those three areas. So marketing, sales, leadership, delivering the products. You know, don't overcomplicate it. Start simple, get complicated later. Yeah, let's get specific. Let's bring it home for people that are listening, that are in the throes of operating a franchise. um You you've outlined a lot of strategies. Give us an example or two of how you've implemented those strategies to transform results for franchise operators. once I had a vision and metrics and a strategy and strategic plan, I went through a process of doing a brain dump. So we would get in a room and we would brain dump all our ideas. And if it's a franchise. brand, you look at what is the franchise or say what are the best practices? We look at that. And then we would say, OK, we're going to do a brain dump. We're going to categorize them. We're going to chunk them into certain areas. So categorizing chunk is the same thing. Then we're going to prioritize which ones of these efforts are going to get us the best return based on our local market. And we're going to prioritize them. Then we're going to look specifically at the action steps and not just make a big long list, but once we had our list, then we would say how long, what are the time and resources needed to execute that one thing? So maybe it's building relationships with schools or sponsoring a ball team or having an open house and having people come, or maybe you have a corporate program where you're gonna go out to businesses and offer your services to the business. And again, it depends on the franchise brand, right? But you brain dump first, chunk and categorize. Then you list the activities. Then next to each activity, you think about specifically, what's the time and resources? Can we hire it? Or is this something we have to do as a team? What's it gonna take? Now that's not the calendar. That's just, this activity takes this much time. From there, then you open up the calendar and you have to ask, what can we realistically get done? I know for me as an entrepreneur, I would always underestimate how long things took. and I would overestimate how much I could get done in the period of time. So you have to track it in order to understand is this real? Because there's this delusion. It's just like I do sales training for people and they say, I called everybody and they all said no, or everybody tells me the price is too high. And I'm like, okay, who did you call? Like I wanna see the, give me the names. And they're like, they called six people. I'm like, that's not everybody. But there's this delusion because they get conditioned or they hear it or. or someone on their team says, everybody says our prices are too high or like, who's everybody? So it's really about that critical thinker. So once you've got your time and resources, and you're gonna have to go back on this episode, because I know I'm talking a little fast today, because I'm excited. I haven't had too much caffeine. But this is not a keynote everybody. So just be clear, this is a podcast episode. I'm trying to put as much in this short little episode that we have for an action packet in. Well, once you have the time and resources and you schedule it, then you have to execute. You gotta measure what's working, what's not, modify and repeat. So from the top, do a brain dump, chunk and categorize, pick your priorities, what action steps are gonna help you reach those priorities, how long is it gonna take to execute on each of those steps, you can see if it's really realistic. You can't put 30 hours of work in an eight hour day, you know, have to look at is this realistic. then you're gonna look at who you can actually hire or leverage to get the work done. Then you're gonna actually schedule it, execute, measure to see whether it worked, and then you're gonna repeat what works and you're gonna throw away the stuff that doesn't. And for the full disclosure for this episode. This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. We are not giving you legal advice, nor are we telling you not to follow your systems. So you cannot hold this episode or me or my assigns responsible. Just use your systems. Okay, there we go. I to put that in every recording. Yeah, I appreciate that. think what my big takeaway is you got to take the action. I know there's a lot of ways to categorize it, chunk it, measure it, make sure that we're not going too far down the path of doing something wrong. But the best thing to do is just do it. Don't keep talking about it. Get out there and do it and emulate the people in the system that are crushing it. The people that are doing it right. Don't be afraid to talk to them. Like go up there and figure out, hey, you're the person at convention everyone's talking about. You're the one in my power team group that everyone says, hey, they have the best process. They're the best at sales. They're the best at keeping their profitability high. Those are the people you want to emulate. So that's the benefit of being in a franchise. You have this network of like-minded people that want to collaborate and help you. That whole kind of key to action that you were just referencing makes a ton of sense. So, you see a lot of brands. I know you're a keynote at a lot of brands. You mentioned PuroClean. I've placed some clients in the PuroClean restoration system. I love that system. What's next in the world of franchising? How can listeners prepare to stay ahead? Well, I think what's next, I mean, I do have a crystal ball. It's sitting right here behind me. I actually do have a crystal ball. Because people always ask me, do you have a crystal ball? I'm like, yeah, actually I do. But what's next is be ready for a complete disruption in the customer journey. just think that AI is going to take hundreds of millions of jobs. It's going to create hundreds of millions of jobs. So don't sell everything and move to the forest. The world's going to keep spinning. That's not worrying. I'm not worried about AI taking over the world yet. I'm just saying that yet. And I would just say this, you know, don't get seduced by technology. It's just a new tool. It's no, you know, it is going to be the most disruptive tool. It's not like the internet. It's not like social media. It pales in comparison to the disruption that those elements created. You know, we can, you and I are probably old enough to remember when email came out and, and, know, I'm certainly remember color TVs and TVs and went from eight track to cassette to CDs, to DVDs, to streaming. I've been through around the block a few times, but what I would say is next is. Seriously, everybody, if there's one thing from this episode you can take away is just be a critical thinker. Just don't drink the Kool-Aid and assume that everything is this way or that way. It's okay to question. I always say, if you have a belief that isn't serving you, it's time to get new beliefs. So I'm gonna ask you question, We just met in the green room up here, and I'm gonna ask you a question out loud. What color are yield signs? oh White, black, and red. Okay, so all your listeners, I'm just curious, how many of you listen to this episode? If you're in the United States. Yeah, if you're in North America, United States, actually in Canada too, by the way. So North America, uh in US and Canada, yield signs changed to red and white in 1976. But when I ask a group of 500 people at a conference, even millennials that weren't even born then, instinctively they say yellow. And the reason I asked that question, the reason I asked you, it's a little harder with an audience of one as opposed to if there was 10 people here, I guarantee nine of them would have said yellow. And some of you were thinking yellow. have told me in the green room I would have said yellow. Yeah, yeah, of course, right? So what I would say is this, the point of that exercise is if you have a belief that isn't serving you, it's time to get some new beliefs. Some people think that Google Pay Per Click doesn't work or networking doesn't work. But if you execute it ineffectively, then it doesn't work. It's no different than marriage. People say marriage doesn't work. Well, there are people that marriage does work, right? mean, so you can't say this or this doesn't. I want you to be careful of wide brush thinking that it's all or nothing. And that's what I would say. You know, the biggest failure is having a belief that isn't based on any real research or validation where you're just, you know, maybe it's your old conditioning and you just think something that isn't true. And so if you're asking the wrong question, then the answer doesn't matter. So ask better questions about your business and you will accelerate the growth in your business. I love it. Ford, great. And I appreciate you putting me in the hot seat. Hopefully I did okay. Oh, you did great. So, so you great. Well, Ford, this has been great. Anything else you want to add to the mix about franchising before we wrap up today? No, I would just say if anybody has any questions, connect with me on LinkedIn. Connect with me on social media. If you're a franchise brand and I'm throwing in a plug and you're interested in having a speaker, check me out first. Watch my demo video. Don't take it from me. Go check out my Google reviews. Go watch my demo video. I've keynoted. IFA, keynoted this, I was the opening keynote for the Canadian Franchise Association. I work with a lot of brands and I'm so thankful to be a guest on your show, because you reach the people I reach, which are franchisees, which are my people. Yep. Well, Ford, I appreciate it. And if anyone listening to follow on Ford's blog would like to connect with Ford and his team to learn more about aligning leadership, marketing, sales, AI innovation to deliver measurable results. Contact me at FranchiseQB.com or on X @QBFranchiseQB. I'll get you connected. Thank you for it so much for taking the time to get in the huddle with us today. Thank you. You got it. 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 @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.