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Announcer,

 

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welcome to the latest edition of the heart of franchising, where we take you beyond the brand to bring you the people, stories and heart behind franchise success. This podcast is brought to you by home franchise concepts, one of the largest home services, franchise networks, that empower franchise owners to achieve financial independence while transforming lives homes and the communities they serve. I'm Marcy Klein Sasser, your podcast host, and I'm so excited to speak with our guest today. He is a former music educator who transitioned from over a decade of public education to business ownership, he has grown his two maids business to six territories in just six years, all while mentoring fellow franchisees and giving back through causes like Cleaning for a Reason and alliance for Hope International. He operates multiple territories with two maids in Colorado and Missouri, and he has served on the franchise Advisory Council. Beyond franchising, he co founded break up with cake, a health snack brand sold nationwide through direct to consumer and retail channels. And if you have not tried one, check it out. They're really yummy. He was a 2024 franchisee of the year, recognized by IFA, the International Franchise Association, and a 2025 Franchise Business Review franchise rock star in the millennials category, please join me in welcoming jordan black Jordan, thanks so much for talking with me today. Thanks so much for having me. It's my pleasure. This is awesome. Glad to have this chat. So Jordan, tell us a little bit about going from a music educator to a two maids franchise owner. How did you find two maids? Why two maids? And how did that transition flow for you?

 

01:58

Gosh, it's not the common path for most franchisees that we all know. In fact, when I first met the two maids Home Office team, I think they may have said I was the first, like public school educator, inquiring seriously to join the business. But no, I grew up in a family of teachers. Everybody was teacher, mom, dad and my sister. In fact, my sister is a music teacher, and I followed her path, and we kind of all settled in that. And what I what I kind of learned growing up was that it's a great, it's a great profession to be in,

 

02:34

and, you know, it's very, very stable and consistent, and you know, you're going to be there for the long haul, and just, just jump in. And I did that, and it was great. And then after so many years, I started to realize that I had a lot of entrepreneurial sparks kind of going on with me, within me, I was starting little businesses on the side. I would start a music group, and I would want to be the director and the Business Director and all kinds of stuff, and see how, like, you know, how far we could take it, not just from a musical standpoint, but from sort of a business standpoint, and, like, the marketing and all that just really excited me. And eventually I thought, I don't know if this is my whole, you know, my whole life is going to be in my music classroom. So I did have a father in law that was a franchise owner, not any and not in any relation to one of the home franchise concepts, brands, pretty different company, but, you know, he kind of said, Why don't you, why don't you reach out to one of those franchise consultants and just talk to them and and see if there's not a path for you, and you have that spark in you, but you know, maybe you haven't done business or been in the corporate world, but you still have that spark. And that spark. And see, you know, using a franchise model, where you don't have to make it up and reinvent the wheel, how your personality can can mesh with a certain franchise. I did find two maids right out of the gate with my franchise consultant. It was one of the options we came up with house cleaning. I'll be honest, was of the franchises presented my last choice right off hearing, hearing the options, I was like, No way. Am I going to do a cleaning company that's just that's too hard dirty work, and I don't want to get into it. And, you know, I was more like, let's see what the most you know, the the newest trendy fad of franchises out there that we could, we could find in my in my area, and what I learned through a few calls with my franchise consultant is

 

04:27

it's not just about, you know, something that looks nice and shiny, like a new shiny object or or even What's your what your passion is, but you need to kind of establish what you want your life to look like in your business and outside of your business. So like, let's say it's a, it's a yogurt or ice cream bad franchise. Well, okay, do you want your busiest time for your business to be on Friday and Saturday nights? Is that what you want? You know, I had a family, you know, young kids, and I was like, You know what? That's actually a good point. So let's look at some of the business, the business perspective here, and from a business.

 

05:00

Perspective, house cleaning made a lot of sense for me. It was, it was basically Monday through Friday, during the day. Service industry building a team of people.

 

05:09

Because, you know, in house cleaning, our people are everything. And in the teaching world, you're building a classroom of people. You're you're having to be all the same team. And you know, when you have kids for a whole year in your class, you can't fire any of them, I was like, if I could do that and motivate them and inspire them to build a team within my classroom, I could surely do it with a with a smaller group of employees, and that excited me. And the recurring revenue excited me to service industry recurring revenue, and the fact that I didn't feel like, you know, a technology company like a Google or Amazon or whatever is going to come in and just destroy us, you know, like, there's just not, that's not really what it's all about. We're such a local service industry and that those companies can't really get too much into that. So that excited me. So I stepped forward, and after 10 years of teaching, I left and haven't looked back.

 

05:59

Yeah, I would say so now with with six territories. So talk a little bit about how you open the businesses, and then how you went from your first kind of opening to now you have six territories. What? How did that the time frame six territories in six years? It would probably take six years to explain the whole story,

 

06:20

but I know it's just like, I'll tell you right off the bat, I did not see myself where I'm at right now. I thought, you know, so I grew up in St Louis. I started my first territory for teammates in the St Louis, Missouri area. And I thought, you know, if I get to the two or maybe three territories, that would be like a dream come true. I could have this, this just this whole region of service businesses, and we all are next door to each other, and it's all going to be a great thing. And and just about two years in, I think I got a call from two maids saying, Hey, we have a franchise in Boulder, Colorado that the owner needs to get out and he can't find anyone local. So we're starting to call around to other states and see if you know someone's interested in you've been doing a really good job the first few years with your with your Missouri territory. Missouri territory. Do you have any interest? You know, it could be a good deal to work out. And I thought, you know, I love Colorado, I love I love the mountains, and I love hiking and things like that. So, yeah, I'll consider it. And it seemed like a pretty good deal. I didn't want to pass up, so I just went, went for it. Had already had a manager in place, but this was right before covid. So I took over, literally, march 15 of 2020, and it was about as worse of a timing as you can get. As far as taking over a business. The business had been doing pretty well, but that business and my other businesses I already had back in Missouri, just everything just blew up at once. So definitely put me through a roller coaster of challenges, emotions. Why did I do this? A lot of regret, but we pushed through, like everybody during those first few months of covid, if you were really affected, like nobody wants to come in their house to clean. So we were pretty affected. And, you know, we pushed through. Just took it day by day. We survived. And finally, that business, I found the right the right manager, who's been basically almost like a business partner with me. She's been with me since 2020, and, you know, I could go back to Missouri and find that she was, she was running things like, almost like an owner would. And so I felt good about that. Eventually, about a year later, I moved out to Colorado because I loved it so much, going out there to visit the business, and brought my family. And in the process, we've been just scaling and acquiring a few new territories and a few other previous, you know, just resale acquisitions from other owners. So that's, that's the story. I mean that as quick as I can make it, but it was quite a journey. I didn't see coming, and sometimes opportunities come that you just have to really consider and think there must be a reason for this, and I'm really glad they came. Yeah, that's great, certainly opportunistic, but you made it work. Certainly persevered through the challenging time during covid. You chose a business that, to your point, wasn't the shiny Penny, but it was a necessity, maybe not during the first couple of years of covid, but you sustained the business through those times, and now you're at six territories. Obviously you needed a support system through all of that, and still do. Can you talk a little bit about the two maids team, how you lean on them for support, not only through your launch, through your first territory and all of those that you've launched since, but but now tell, tell the listeners a little bit about the support team at two mates. Yeah, I think from the from the get go, I was really connected to to the home office people. I thought, you know, if you're, if you're going to be going into a franchise, you're basically going in as a this is a business partnership, right? I mean, you are, if you do well and make money, your franchisor does well and also makes money and is able to grow be more successful. And if one of those isn't working out, then it's going to affect each other. So I realized pretty early on that it wasn't like them versus us. It was.

 

10:00

We're a team together. We're basically a business partner together and for the long haul. So let's try to find ways to work together, to listen to each other. And they did a really good job of giving me attention and support from the from the get go. You. They had a great system to open up, as far as onboarding new new franchisees, opening your store, a lot of attention with boots on the ground, field reps coming out to give you attention to to open your store with you, to come check back in a few times in those first the first year or two, in person. So there's a lot of support there. I felt like the people running our franchise, our home office team, had everything the right idea in mind, just good good values, good people. So eventually, when HFC came in, I think there was a, you know, a level of increased support, from definitely a financial perspective, you could tell, like, Hey, we're going to really invest in these businesses. And that's, that's obvious. We've really seen a lot of, you know, home office taking more initiative to change operational things, technologies, platforms and systems that we're using, trying new things, piloting new things, because, you know, we're we're still a long ways off from from being like, we're really good, but we're not great yet, and and there's a lot of opportunity to become, I will say this in the seven years that now I've been doing it every year, has been better from that perspective, and We're still growing. I was able to join the FAP

 

11:24

just in the last few years, and then, you know, give continued input as part of that team to work with home office and what, what really are our biggest pain points as franchisees, they do a great job of listening, kind of letting us lead the even our, you know, our quarterly meetings like, what? What is the content we most need to talk about and discuss? So it's been a, it's been a great system. I tell people all the time, like, you know, this, this business, you're not going to feel like you're you're failing at all because of of the two mates, franchisor side of it, it's definitely, you know, it's going to they're doing their job. Are you doing your job? Yeah, that's super helpful. So if anyone was considering a two maids franchise, what are the questions you would recommend that they would ask franchisees such as yourself, so that they are making the most informed decision?

 

12:12

I think, yeah, it's a great question if they're considering it. I have a lot of calls with people. I always ask them, what is what is your life look like right now? And what do you want it to look like? Because we need to, obviously establish that vision first. That's kind of what you know. Brings me back to my early days when I was meeting with my franchise consultant or close mentors and trying to decide if I want to leave my career. Because, you know, do you are you in another career? Do you want to leave it full time and be all in on this business? You know, 40, 5060, hours a week, whatever that means to you. Do you want to kind of start it as a semi absentee owner, but then you need to have more investment, obviously, for management right out of the gate. So we're trying to establish what that looks like for each person, case by case. So I think if you know what's your investment level, are you wanting? What do you want your life to look like? Are you wanting to be in it? Are you wanting to be kind of in it? I mean, obviously no one can ever be really out of it. It's is a business. It's not, it's not a, you know, it's not a stock investment. So, you know, there's semi absentee de but there's not fully absentee business ownership that doesn't exist. So we have those conversations. I think those are good questions. I think, you know, the question about just, do you want to be in a really heavy people business is important, because we are, our staff is everything. And, you know, there's some difficult moments in our business. We have a lot of employee turnover. There's no doubt about it, we're in a high turnover industry. A lot of people who are working, you know, more unskilled, lower wage positions like our staff are, you know, they they don't have a huge commitment sometimes, do you they might, they might join your company today, and you may see them tomorrow. You may not. And so you have to be okay with the reality of that. Some people say they are, and they get it, and it just shocks them. And so I try to have those conversations up front. Are you ready to face what that looks like? But it's going to be fine if you, if you love building a team, because then it will affect how you show up for your employees, and it's all about relationships. At the end, if you're not into building relationships, I say, find a different business, because it's all about building relationships with your with your employees, who are going to get, of course, build relationships and take care of your customers. The customer side of teammates comes a lot easier to me and a lot of people than than the staffing side. So I think those are the big questions we ask. And finally, you know, we ask, are you okay with owning a cleaning business? Like I said earlier on, I was kind of had a shock moment for for a minute I thought, that's not something I want to be associated with. It's kind of a dirty a dirty industry. It's kind of, you know, blue collar and and, you know, humbling at the say the least is when you open up your business, you do have some employee turnover, and you're the next in line to go clean the house that's the owner. So you are trained by two maids. And, you know, we used to have our original founder, Ron, ask the question.

 

15:00

Question, are you okay with cleaning toilets? And if you're not okay with cleaning toilets, you got to find a different business, because at some point you will clean some toilets, probably early on, maybe not down the road, once you get really more established. But yeah, I've cleaned plenty of toilets, and you have to be okay with that. Yeah, that. I mean, that's great advice for sure. And the industry is very people intensive business. And you also mentioned that your leader qualities emerged early on when you were in in the teaching profession. How has that kind of helped you, knowing that it's people intensive you know you're you're a natural leader, and that those qualities emerged early on. How has that helped you, you know, to be successful in your business and to lead these teams, and what, what's been your biggest challenge at the same time? So what's been your biggest success and what's been your biggest challenge, knowing that this is a people intensive industry, I think when you're in the people building business, you learn to to how to talk to everybody and see, see the best in people. If you're out to find what's wrong with everybody, you're you're never going to give anybody a chance. And we are. We're always hiring, right? So we have to, we have to look at everybody's potential and and kind of weed through some other things and say, What? What does this person have that I could work with, and they could be a part of our team. And it's also being savvy and recognizing somehow that there are some people right off the gate or out of the gate that you know don't look the part, and you know there's some early signs that this is not the right person. So I think being in that people business, like I was in teaching you you find the best, you find the potential in people. And you have to, in my old career I was I had to work with them and find the best and build them up, inspire them and have them learn something. And so in two maids, it's similar, you know, you're going to find the best in your employees, build those relationships with them. So I found that to be a way that I was able to succeed. Early on, I also with that in mind. You know, later on, when I started having managers help run the day to day operations, and now I'm turning into this role of of managing my managers. Had a lot of managers tell me, you know, how, how great I am at sort of listening and get coaching them and helping them find the positives in every situation, because it could be a very stressful position at times. And I've had several managers on the brink of wanting to walk out. And I've kind of coached them through that and help them realize sort of the big picture, and and calm them down and, and sure enough, like the thing they were worried about, you know, one month later, it's like, Oh, I forgot about that completely, and the business is doing just fine. And so, you know, I've had one of my most proud moments of when a manager that I was just so, so zen and so chill, and she appreciated my presence. So I would say that's where I've been successful, a challenge that I've faced. Oh, that's a great question. There's been plenty of challenges. Of course, I think

 

17:55

not taking the highs and lows of the business too seriously. I was told that early on. And of course, when you're an entrepreneur, it's really easy to get caught up in things that go really well, and you get really excited and celebrate, only to hit some kind of disaster, or what seems like a disaster, right after that, you ride that roller coaster. And so I tell people all the time, I tell myself, like you just have to to bring the highs a little bit lower, and then take your lows up a little bit. You just, you know, if you, if you find somebody, like, like a new employee, that's just amazing. It's okay, great. Let's see. Let's see them show up on day one. Let's see how they do a training week. Let's see how they do for that first month, that probationary period. And then let's just, you know, give them that opportunity. And then let's say, Oh, this person's going to run the next door for us. You know, let's give them that chance. Because, you know, sometimes you get disappointed, and then sometimes something seems like a total disaster and and this is the end of the world. My business is going to is going to fail. All my customers are going to leave, all the employees are going to leave tomorrow. And sure enough, the next the sun rises the next day, and people showed up. And yeah, there might be some short term pains, but, but sure enough, like we're still standing, things are going well down the road. And so yeah, I've been able to learn for myself how to just manage my emotions. And the roller coaster of emotions for an entrepreneur can be pretty extreme. Yeah, absolutely. We call that riding the transition curve. If you've ever seen kind of that, that transition curve, and it's all mindset, right? It's like it really is your mindset. So I love that. I'm going to start calling you Mr. Zen now when I see you,

 

19:35

I love that. All right, so let's transition a little bit into what are some of the trends that you're seeing in your industry that's kind of making to me, it's like, a hot franchise. I mean, it's a hot franchise to buy right now, right like, so what are some of the trends you're seeing that's like, you know, residential cleaning, it's hot and it's an industry, obviously, that you've expanded. So talk to me a little bit about.

 

20:00

That, and then we'll go kind of down the consumer side. So I guess I'm fortunate in that, like my age group, I'm I'm about to turn 40, and I've got a few kids, and I've got a home, I've got a busy life, so I'm kind of like the the prime family. You know that the consumer of Team AIDS is basically my family, and I'm able to see it very clearly that there is just so many families out there that, you know, dual income families, both parents working or if or if they're not, they're really busy with their kids, and they're running around non stop. They don't have any time. They're not making any time, so the last thing they want to do is clean their house. That that's that is like so far now,

 

20:43

in the old in the old days, I don't if whoever's listening to this interview, I don't want to offend anybody, but let's just say, like my parents, generation, or even older than them, I think people just found a lot more ways to do things themselves, and it was a pride thing, and they would save money and, you know. And there were great, the great things about those generations, of course, but, but I think now everybody's like, No, I don't want to do all the hard stuff. So I want to pay someone to clean my house. I want to pay someone to do my lawn. I want to pay someone to do this and that I and, of course, with all the do it yourselfers out there and and, you know, there, there's always going to be that. But I think with, like, my generation of millennials and even younger who are becoming homeowners. There's a like, every year, I don't, I don't have the stats, per se, but I'm sure they're out there that every year it's like, there's less and less people who are willing to do things themselves and would rather just find the money and put it aside to hire a service and do it for them. So that's the trend I see, is that is that there's just so many millennials that are becoming the homeowners now, or even younger people and and like we have all of them as potential consumers out there. I mean, very rare. Do I hear about, like I said, People my age, that that still clean their house? It's just so rare. So there's that trend, there's the trend of

 

21:58

just people, I guess I don't, I don't want to poo poo on some of the mom and pops, because they're not really our competitors. But I think there's a trend of people that are just using, like the online, online reputation thing with Google. And I mean, they just don't want to mess around, so they're searching on Google. They're looking quickly at your reputation. And a lot of those mom and pops don't have that built up, but we do. We have a great marketing team. We have a way to get people to review us. We have systems for that. And you know, if you look at my more veteran stores, I've got, you know, hundreds and hundreds of reviews online close to a five star. And for someone really busy, they're just going to search online really quick, and they see that, and that speaks to that a lot. And I'm not sure that was this case, you know, 20 years ago. But now more than ever, we're also finding that people like literally, in the last few weeks, we heard, I'm just talking to AI, talking to chat GPT, asking for the best cleaning companies in my area. And chat GPT is pulling from those online resources. They're not, they don't know the mom and pops if they're not, if they don't have a online public presence. So we're finding that we're getting referred by AI in this generate in this new era. So people are finding us and then and then calling us for quotes. That's amazing. And also that kind of leads me to the question on like the customer experience, talk a little bit about how you set up not not not only two maids, but your business in particular, you and your teams kind of to deliver that kind of better quality, unique experience from the point where they do find you through either, you know, Google AI mode or chat GPT, talk about the experience from that point and how your team delivers that.

 

23:40

No, it's a great thing. And we're talking a lot about the customer experience and customer retention piece. That's kind of our biggest, our biggest push the last year or two, and still continues to be, because it's one thing to get the customer, to get them, you know, as a lead or quote, and then to book a cleaning with them. It's a whole nother deal to keep that customer for the long term. So it does, at the end of the day, come back to the way we we communicate our expectations upfront. You know, being professional, that's that's where we really try to separate ourselves, is, can we be the most professional house cleaning company in our area? How does that look? When customers text or they call, we're getting back to them right away. We are available, we pick up the phone, because, again, there's a lot of cleaning companies. They're so busy, they're not even picking up the phone. So trying to be as professional as possible, going to check on the cleanings, having that relationship. So even though we are a franchise, we do stress that we are locally owned, that, you know, the manager you're talking to is available, you know, during these hours, to help you out that manager also goes out in the field and checks on customers. So, I mean, we've, we're really proud of the fact that we have customers that have been with us for more than five years, and get doing cleaning with us every two weeks, because it's really hard to to build up trust in somebody.

 

25:00

Us to come into your home and we, I tell people, we have to be also the most trustworthy, because we're literally in their bedrooms, in their bathrooms. And

 

25:08

once and once you have that relationship established, it's really hard to find another company to build up that same relationship. So let's not, let's not do anything to, you know, to to ruin that relationship, we need to always be thinking about and taking care of the customers, even if they've been with us for the long haul. So that's how we we do separate ourselves from some of the competition. Yeah, can you think of a memorable customer story or or client that you can share? Anything come to mind? Well, there's all, all the time, there's customer there's memories, there's good and there's some bad

 

25:47

share that's appropriate for this podcast. There's all kinds of stuff, you know, I can't share,

 

25:53

yeah, I would say, Gosh, I'll make it, of course, positive. There's a lot of positive ones, speaking of what I just talked about early on, when I first opened up, I wanted to make sure that I was trying to do as many in home estimates as possible. Yeah, I can give a quote over the phone, but if I can go out and meet the person face to face and tell them, hey, I'm Jordan. I am the owner. This is a franchise, but I'm locally owned. I live in the area, and I would love to the opportunity to clean your home for you guys and just build that face to face relationship. I was able to to land a lot of of, you know, first time cleanings and recurring customers back in the early days when I was was able to get out there more often. And I, by the way, I try to tell my managers, you know, however, you can try to get out there and do in home estimates, because it does make a difference, but it is hard because we, we do get so many leads you can't, don't think you need a full time position just for IN HOME estimates. But we, we had a customer that he

 

26:49

took me up on the offer. This is probably two or three weeks from the from the day we opened, seven years ago, by the way, and we cleaned her house. It was one of our first customers. So we were new to this, and all my staff, all two of them, were new to it, too, and she was very picky, and we failed. And she literally wrote us an email of probably 20 different things that she walked around the house finding and was like, This is unacceptable. We went back. We probably spent two hours all of us, like all three of us, owner and my two team members, cleaning her house, fixing these things, and then she still sends another email like there's still a few more things that I remember. We went back again, and she was finally satisfied, and she had cleaning every two weeks, and that customer, seven years later is still on our schedule. That's amazing. So two maids and corrections.

 

27:42

It's like I thought, if you were to ask me, that customer was long gone the moment I saw that email, she's not even going to give us a chance to come back, but we gave her the time of the time, you know, the time and attention to make everything right. And we put a lot of heart and soul into making sure she was satisfied. And I think she saw that, and here we are, seven years later, she's still, I'll go back to that office, and I'm not even running the day to day talking to manager. I'm like, Oh my gosh, so is still on the schedule. It's just amazing. I bet she's a big referral source for you too. That would be my No. I It's, yeah, it's, it's possible. I don't know all the ins and outs. I'm not that are day to day hearing all the customer referrals anymore, but I'm sure, yes, if you're with a company for seven years, you're absolutely, you know, a fan of them. Yeah, I love that. So what about owning a two maids franchise and six territories for seven years has changed your life from the very beginning. You know, it was, it was, of course, all new to me. And you're learning, and it's a challenge day to day. You're, you're just in the trenches of your business, and once you finally kind of get it, and things start to go smooth, and then you learn to scale it. It's kind of like the sky's the limit if you, if you are able to start scaling. You know, from 10 customers to 20 to 30, you've got something down, and you start building your staff and realizing people are staying here for a while. It just some of that. It just takes time. But once you get into 612, months, you go look at the trends that we are working our way up,

 

29:19

you just keep pouring in the same things, and it just keeps scaling. There have been, of course, challenges along the way, maybe some setbacks, some plateaus, but then you realize, okay, well, what we did with 10 employees, now that we have 20, we need to handle a little bit differently. You learn so all of this to say being able to scale this business, because it is the same model from territory to territory, and it's a pretty simple model. There's nothing overly complicated about running the house cleaning business, other than, I think for most people at the getting the staffing down, it's like learning how to build a team. That's not like a an easy science to learn. It's more of an art. But once you get through that and you keep scaling, you get managers and.

 

30:00

All of running day to day. And for me, my life a few years in, really changed when my manager started taking over, and I was able to really focus on higher, higher level things than, you know, responding to that customer or doing an interview. It's like, okay, now I'm taking care of what are the overall trends of our business? Where are we? Where do we have, you know, strengths, and where our gaps or weaknesses that we need to address, and I can start looking bigger picture, and as I say, working on the business, rather than so much in the business from day to day. So my life became my managers are running operations, and I'm able to take a step back. I don't even have to be there every day. I can talk to them on the phone, and I get to sort of be the

 

30:41

big cheerleader from the sky, which is a lot of fun. It frees up your time. I mean, I do work a lot in my business, but it's very, very flexible, sort of how I want to create my schedule. So I could, I could work all day on it, and that will be great, because it will grow my business more. And if I don't want to work on it today, I have that freedom to do that now it's going to come back, invite me if I don't work on my business ever. But I have just that total freedom, total flexibility, to build my schedule the way I want to to work, where I want to work.

 

31:11

And, you know, I do a lot of vacations, but I'm working on my vacation. So I have my laptop, I'm on the phone, and that's the beautiful thing, because with my old job. You know you were there from this hour to this hour. These are your days off. And you know it while there were some great things about that, you really you're locked in as a w2 employee, and that the very different life as the owner, absolutely, I love that well. Before I wrap it up, this podcast is called the heart of franchising. What characteristics do you think a business owner needs to really have the heart in their business?

 

31:46

Yes. So as far as

 

31:49

franchise business, I've kind of speak to

 

31:53

you need, obviously, the core entrepreneurial traits are going to be things like, you know, I started, I talked a lot about mindset on this interview today. You know, having the right mindset, understanding that there's going to be a lot of highs and there's going to be a lot of lows, and looking in yourself as you know, if the I had a coach for a long time, he used to say, when the business owner grows, the business grows itself. So if you're not growing as a person and learning how to be better in every aspect of your life, then it's probably showing up in your business that way too. So when you grow yourself become the better version of yourself, then your business will obviously grow too. So I think the business owner has to be open minded growth, growth mindset. That would be, you know what I'm talking about, and I'm always a learner. So those are the most fundamental things when it comes to to, you know, obviously you have to be willing to take a bet on yourself and to risk it, to know that, you know, you do have the power and belief in yourself to do this. And I'm just going to be a lot of times you doubt yourself. But I think a lot of people just they don't even give themselves a chance to build their own life outside of, you know, a w2 position, and don't think it's ever possible. So I think it's, you know, when you take the risk, you start to find that there's things about yourself you never knew that you could do. And again, you're growing yourself. And you, you know, usually I'll say to people, you know, the business, the only way the business will fail is, really if you quit,

 

33:22

not if the business doesn't fail, you just quit. You quit doing things. And that's fine if you sometimes it's the right thing to do, but often it's like the business just didn't fail, and you were doing everything possible. You made a choice to do something that's not going to make it work. So that is, you know, fixable a lot of times. So those are the core traits for Franchise Business Owners. I think you have to understand that partnership piece, that you're in a partnership with the franchise if you want to be all about you, and you don't want anybody ever telling you what to do, and you want the pride. And I'm saying this like it's negative, but there's a reason some people should be in this other side of it, which is, hey, they create everything themselves. They're proud of it. They don't want anyone else involved. They want to just be the alpha, whatever you know, you call it. Then going outside of a franchise and doing your own business is what you need to be doing. But a franchise is like, hey, we have a proven model. You don't have to do it all yourself. Try this and and a lot of times you see franchisees who get a little too much pride, and they try to create their own thing, and it doesn't really work, because that that thing that you're doing hasn't been tested. So I think there's a there's a level of humility and understanding that, hey, I don't have to know it all. I shouldn't know it all. There's other people come before me in this business that have already proven it, and just follow that model. That's what it is, and don't stray from it, and then you'll be successful. So the via franchise entrepreneur, that's that those are all the things I think it takes. Yeah, I think that's great, and that's really great advice. Just to say, also lean on your fellow franchisees, right? Certainly, those that have Yes, and even those that come into the system after you, they may.

 

35:00

Have great yes, if I could say one thing about that, I always tell people, you need to be reaching out to your franchisees to be successful. Like there's no reason to put the investment out there and to sign up to be a franchisee in this big network. If you think it's all about just your own store, I mean, it's not everyone's doing the same business. But why would you not leverage that network of people? I mean, there's people out there that are doing great. People out there are failing talk to both of them, see what these people are doing and what these people shouldn't be doing, and learn from it. I mean, you have this whole network, and it's really sad sometimes when people don't do that and they think they're all alone on their island when they really shouldn't be, you have and I think the best franchises out there are the ones that that are able to get that network of people talking and working together and realizing that, hey, if you all lean on each other, we're all going to be, you know, more successful in our businesses. Absolutely. All right, one last question for you before I wrap it up. You were the proud winner of the pink jacket. So for those of you who don't know what the pink jacket is, it's kind of like winning the green jacket at the Masters. So Jordan, tell us about the pink jacket, and how did it make you feel to earn the pink jacket?

 

36:12

Pink jacket is basically franchisee of the year within two maids. It used to be just a number that you had to meet, or you were like the top number, but they realized that there's more to that, so they made it. Hey, you have to be very successful, but also you have to be out there being a brand ambassador and to be out there helping our network. So I take pride in talking to a lot of franchisees and being very well connected and being on the FAC. So to win that that jacket didn't just mean I was very successful in my own business, but I was helping to made as a whole, and the other franchisees try to be successful as well. So yeah, it meant a lot. There's only two winners every year, and it's a pretty big deal. So I saw when I first joined, I saw other people winning that and thought maybe someday, and sure enough, a few years later, that someday came true. And so I do wear it. We come together once a year at a at a convention, and you know, I'm on on one of the nights, the awards night, you know, we're supposed to all wear it. And it's a proud moment to wear your blazer, to wear your jacket, whatever you call it, and and I think the best part of it is walking around having other people, wherever we're at, see us and wonder, what is that bright pink jacket all about? Though

 

37:29

it's fun to see all the pink jackets come out, and I'm a big fan of pink anyway, so yeah, it's great. Well, Jordan, thank you so much for being here. I have learned so much. I do want to quote you. I love the quote, business owner. A business owner grows so the business itself grows. I think that was your quote, something I think it's at as the business owner grows, the business grows itself. There you go. Love that quote. Yes, our listeners write that one down. I've got that written down. Um, again. Thank you so much for being here Jordan, and thank you for listening. I hope you learned a thing or two. I know I learned a ton from Jordan today, and a thing or two about the heart of franchising with two mates. Please subscribe to our channel, follow us on social media and to learn more about two mates, or any of our home franchise concepts, family brands, please visit home franchise concepts.com. I hope you'll listen next time when we talk to another guest and get to the heart of franchise success. See you next time on the heart of franchising. You

 

38:40

Leon.