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Dean,

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welcome to the latest edition of the heart of franchising, where we take you behind 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 systems, which inspires franchise owners to achieve financial independence while transforming lives homes and the communities they serve. I'm Marcy Klein Sasser, your podcast host. I can't wait to learn more about our guest today, joining us from kitchen, tune up and bath, tune up. Our guest spent 20 years in corporate America as a managing director for FedEx. Once he retired, he could not sit still, and went to a privately held company as the CEO for 15 years. Once retired again, he bought kitchen tune up in 2020 and added bath tune up in 2023

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he now runs a true family business with himself as owner, his wife is the boss, along with his son, daughter and son in law, working in the business outside of work, they love boating and relaxing together as a family. He has six grandkids and spends as much time possible with them. Let's welcome Craig Smith, owner of kitchen tune up and bath tune up of Williamsburg, Virginia. Welcome Craig, good afternoon. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Well, I love the fact that you said in your bio that you said that you retired twice but couldn't sit still. So tell us a little bit about what was it in your bio, and how you found kitchen tune up and then bath tune up. Yeah, well, it was just meant to be, I think I I taken retired the first time from FedEx, took a year off work, and it was pretty nice. My kids were younger, so you know, that allowed me sometimes spend with them that I had not been spending with them. But after that, I got a little bored, and I went to work again in the transportation business, and when that little stint ended, 15 years later, I was sitting at home, and I happened to be looking and my wife says, You're not gonna stay home. You're gonna have to find something. And I'm like, Yeah, I'll go to Walmart or, you know, be a greeter or something. And she's like, I don't think that's gonna do it either. So, long story short, I started researching franchises, and I looked at maybe 20, I think was 27 or 28 different options out there, hired a broker, a franchise broker, to come in and help us look at different opportunities. This Williamsburg location was a resale opportunity, so we I was real excited about that. He had been in business since, oh, five, so almost 15 years, and we became good friends, bought his business, and you know, the rest is history for us. We We hope to pass this on to our kids and maybe even our grandkids if they want to keep doing this, because I'm getting old and I'll probably retire again pretty soon, but you know, we'll see what specifically stood out to you when this opportunity was presented to you for kitchen, tune up, What? What? What did you love about this brand, maybe, perhaps, versus anything else that you were considering, right? Well, the first thing was the family feel when you talk to the leadership of kitchen. Tune Up. Back in 2020 it was very family oriented.

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They were down to earth, people, people that I knew I could work with and alongside of. And I was impressed by that, by them, the system they had in place, the process they had in place. It didn't require reinventing anything. And

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you know, not that I didn't want to reinvent anything, but I didn't want to run out of time before I had time to reinvent something. So it was there. It was sitting there. The business had done fairly well over the past three or four years before we bought it, he was gearing it up to try to sell it.

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So I think it just aligned perfectly for us. Had instant revenue stream.

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You know, we we always kid each other, how much did you put in your business? Well, you know, beside what I pay for the business, I'm real. I'm a little hesitant to say this, but I put $25,000 of my own money in a bank account. And I said, You know what? I'm going to put this 25,000 and if we don't sell anything, and we, I know how to advertise. Long story short, we, I've, haven't touched that $25,000 yet. You know, almost six years later, it

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was just instant cash flow. We worked the system. We followed the system, and it just worked for us. And that's when my son in law decided he wanted to come on. He He worked for the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, Virginia. He was an HR manager, and he called one day my son had left Maryland, came down to join us when we started, and he, my son in law, said, you like, you're having fun. I'm like, it is pretty fun. You just talk to people about kitchens or home improvements, and you know, they either buy it or they don't buy it. And.

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Didn't you keep going to the next one? So, so he came on board with us as well, and he started selling. And my daughter, she also works in the business. That's Sam's wife,

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but yeah, it just felt like a family, and our family was kind of interested in doing something together to build some long, lasting, hopefully, a legacy that they can have, and they can keep working this business, or we could sell the business. Never know you work the system, but you were having fun. It seems so simple, right? You go in and you present your proposal, and they either buy it or you don't. But I'm sure it's not that that so simple. Craig, right? So for those that are listening and potentially interested in kitchen tune up, talk to us a little bit about, you know, what is involved in running a kitchen tune up, and some of the things that you and your team maybe are challenged with, and some of the things that maybe you had to overcome as you launched your business, obviously buying a resale but you still had to make your own, Craig, right? You still had to learn that you are working so talk to us a little bit about that, and then weave in how you are utilizing then and and currently, the ongoing support that the kitchen, kitchen tune up team provides to you. Yeah, so I think the first part of that question, I'll address that. Yes, buying an existing business had some advantages, but it also had some disadvantages. Process that wasn't quite as clean and clear as we wanted to be to give direction to employees, so that had to be worked on a lot. But for me, I'll speak from an ownership standpoint. I own the business. I'm not a passive owner. I'm active in the business because I choose to be. I believe every owner ought to at least know a little bit about what they're doing. They don't have to be an expert at it, but they need to know a little bit about everything in the business. So

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I guess for me, I just knew that,

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you know, we could make a successful business, because I've done that many, many times before. But when you go to that second part about the support that the franchise, or that they give us, took me a few months to learn, I have to follow that process, go back to it because it's proven.

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That's why I bought the business. It was proven. And they'd already been doing a lot of volume, and they had a lot of other owners out there. So I thought, well, maybe I just follow the process. So that's what you know was probably the hardest thing for us, is trying to follow a process that you know is proven, but yet you see things that you think as an individual, oh, I can do that better. Well, I'm here to say you can't just follow the process, because it's proven to work. And there's been a lot of people before me, and there'll be a lot of people after me that are successful following the system. Talk to me a little bit about the support and how you leaned into that and how that's helped you. Yeah, it didn't take me long to get back on track, because, you know, we weren't selling what we had had been selling, and business had gotten busy. We were real busy. I mean, we sold a lot of lot of kitchens that first seven months we owned the business, and we were coming out of covid. But, you know, I can't speak enough about support, because, again, you know, I said something earlier about these people are down to earth, people. They are. I mean, I can call any of them, text them, email them, call them, and they'll always answer or get back to me, and they'll always give you some solutions, but they're going to ask you some questions. You know, they're going to ask you, what are you doing and how is this being handled? So that they keep you focused on what you're supposed to be doing. So from a marketing standpoint, I mean to me, they provide so many different options, not just one option for

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marketing, but many options out there. And you you could pick and choose the ones you want, and you can talk to corporate about those options,

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you know, learning things. And you know, for us, I'm having to go back in time, but

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I remember we would order. We used to always sell shakers. Man, that's all. We sold white Shaker Doors, and we had sold a lot of them, and one day I get a phone call from a client, and we've been on the job for three or four days. We were already hanging over half the doors were hung in the kitchen. And the customer name is Eddie. And Eddie said, Craig, you know, I think I got the wrong door in here. I'm like, What do you mean? What do you mean? So, you know, I race off down there to look at it. And yeah, it was the wrong door. My wife had ordered a Shaker Door, and he wanted a raised panel door. So, you know, I immediately, you know, say, what do we do besides reorder everything for him? And we did. But, you know, corporate was very supportive in that one to know and understand we made a mistake. It was a mistake we made. Is all on us, but they made us feel.

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Better by helping us out with that. And here's how you prevent that from happening in the future. And I should have known better, because, you know, working at FedEx, they always teach primary, secondary, tertiary checks on everything you do. We were not we were simply doing a check. I would sell it, somebody would measure it, and somebody else would order it, and nobody else would look at those orders to make sure. So, you know, they just they find ways by asking questions, and as long as you're upfront and honest, they're going to find a solution to whatever problem you've had. We haven't had a lot of problems. I mean, I

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don't know it's

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tariffs have scared a lot of people. We haven't support from them has been outstanding. They're on the front end of talking to suppliers. They're keeping us posted on what are the tariff increases? What are they going to look like? You know, to me, it's just, it's a win win, because they support us, no matter if it's marketing selling, what vehicle Do you want to buy? You know, they're going to ask you a lot of questions so that, but they always going to give you an answer that I think helps you, if nothing else, it solidifies what you might already be thinking, yeah, that's important. So they're there to coach you through. Oh, absolutely. Training. Training is phenomenal. I mean, we went through training for a couple of weeks, and we go back through training. In fact, my son in law, Sam, is on, he's on a weekly training for sales every Tuesday. He's on it right now. And they do that for 12 weeks. You know, they they offer you all kinds of training, and there's no real expense to it, if you're doing it virtual, but you can also go to Dallas to the training center and be retrained and learn some of the things that you might have forgot or simply or knew and you never learned them. Yeah, you mentioned that your son in law, Sam, who works with you in the businesses, on a sales training right now for 12 weeks. Give our listeners a little bit of a glimpse into what that is and how that's helping you in your business, right? So what they start with this course is the sales process. It's this one's focused on sales process, not not really the qualification generating the lead, but when you're on the appointment, here's what you do. And they walk through the 25 step process to that sales appointment, so that that reinforces us to use it. So you can go in, and as you're doing your appointment, you're recording yourself, and you're then you go back and replay it, and you listen to yourself and how you hit these 25 points, or how you hit what you were supposed to hit. And it's, it's kind of interesting when you hear yourself talk, because, you know, I talk too much. Already knew that, but that just validates, yeah, you talk too much. You gotta listen, and you gotta let the client talk a little bit more. But that's kind of what this process is. It's 12 weeks, about an hour and a half, and they'll talk through the sales process itself. And actually they'll do some one on ones, and some

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like role playing customer sales person so that for newer people, because there could be new people doing some of this. Sam's been been here for five years now, but he's still,

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you know, learning, because the one thing we own, the kitchen side, and then we bought the bath side, and we went through the bath training. But there was really no sales process training. We went through because, you know, we were going to sell it like we do kitchens. And that's just not true. Bathrooms are different than kitchens. Everything's a little different there. But, you know, the support, the train they give you, is just, it's amazing, and it's constant. I mean, it's not like, oh, it's once a year. You can be on some training call or even a podcast call, almost. I mean, every day there's something out there, every single day that we can read and listen to that corporate gives us to help our business. And you know, you can pick and choose what you use from that. Not everybody uses it, but if you're struggling in a particular area, then it's a good opportunity that they have things out there for you, and they'll help you anytime you need it. Yeah, I love that. Thanks for sharing that. And I think it's great that your team is taking advantage of the sales training. And to your point, there's a library of different topics that you can reach into, yes, and all these are kept on file. We can go listen to them anytime we want. It's kept on the source, which we can go in listen to videos. That's great, good info. I want to touch on what you said about expanding your your business portfolio, and you, you adding a brand to your business, talk to talk to me a bit, a little bit about your decision to do that, and what it's been like to be kind of a multi brand owner with kitchen tune up and bath tune up.

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Well, you know, it just made sense, because a lot of our clients that we have, some we have.

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Some great clients who have left us nothing but outstanding reviews. And those clients would always ask us, can you do our bathrooms? And we're like, Well, yeah, we could do certain things in the bathroom, but we weren't doing full blown remodels. We could do vanity work, countertop work, but we weren't moving toilets or doing any of that. And you know, it just dawned on me. It's like, why wouldn't we do it? You know, we've got kind of a captured audience. Not everyone that wants a kitchen done wants a bathroom done, but it's pretty, pretty high number of people. So we knew we'd have some instant customers, and it just made sense for us. We We knew the kitchen tune up system in the process. We knew the people. It was just kind of a easy decision for us to buy it

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and keep going. So we did, and it's been okay for us. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I mean, obviously there's one kitchen, but there's typically two or more bathrooms, right? So that's right, that's right. Certainly, that's what we have learned from the bath tune up team. So I love that. I love that for you, talk to me a little bit about what you how you interact with other franchisees within the kitchen tune up and bath tune up system. Craig, how have they been a resource for you? And how do you stay connected with franchisees within the network. What is that like for you? Right? Well, I think some of the most real conversations that you have are with other owners. And for us, there's a group that's called mastermind, and there's a lot of them around the system. So I am a member of a mastermind group. We meet every other Monday afternoon, at four o'clock. We usually meet for an hour to hour and a half, and we're talking about numbers, sales, closed jobs, we're talking about the real things of the business, marketing, what's working, what's not working. And then we bounce some of those ideas off of each other. So I get to,

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you know, listen to those people

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couple times a month, and that's been real helpful. I've had the honor of serving as the president of the FAC, that franchise Advisory Council, so I get a lot of people, I guess they think, because I've got that title president, I can make some decision. I keep telling them, No, I can't. But a lot of those people just reach out and they bounce things off of they want to hear something. And you know, for me, there's nothing better than talking to someone who is thinking about coming into the business, and maybe I've been on a call with them, or some other owner has, and we see them in the system, you know, a few weeks or few months later, and then seeing them be successful. You know, it just to me, that's really what it's all about, is helping other people be successful, because the more successful we are, the more successful everybody else is going to be in this brand. And you know, that's what we kind of have to strive for. I I'll tell you a quick story. I know I'm getting off your screw up, but I have a nephew. He's, he's, he's in his 50s. So it's my wife, some nephew. He just bought a kitchen tune up in Pittsburgh. He was a he owned a business, pretty nice business. They were into the robotics, and he's an engineer by trade. And he called me, and he'd been down to our house, and we were, he was sitting right here in this room I'm sitting in today, and I had taken the afternoon off, and I sold like five jobs in the three days he was here. And I'm like, you know, you Doug, you need to keep coming back every so often, because, you know, selling five jobs in two or three days is a really good run for us. And so about a month after he left, he said, Hey, I'm thinking about buying kitchen tune up, but he looked at other franchises, of course, and he settled on kitchen tune up, and he's been doing it for not quite a year now, and you know, I do get to talk to him a lot, and he's, he is re emphasized what I told you, the people in this business, the other owners, they're just fantastic, and they're open book. They'll share with you,

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and always try to encourage everyone to get in one of these mastermind calls, because that's where you really get to talk about the real things happen every single day in this business. Yeah, that no two days are alike from from what I see and from what I hear, well, that nothing is more flattering and validating to

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our kitchen tune up brand than for you to recommend, not only recommend someone, but recommend a family member. So congratulations to your nephew. Glad to hear that that he's doing well in Pittsburgh. So I love that. Let's talk a little bit about the economics of the business. So what are some of the leading indicators that you watch weekly to know the health of your business, beyond just top line revenue, high level, you don't have to get two too deep. But for our listeners who may be considering one of your brands, how do you know that your business is healthy? Well, by looking at my P and L and make sure I'm making money at the end of the month, for sure. But we you know in any business, no matter what businesses it is, you.

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You have to know a couple of things about your numbers. Of course, top line, and you don't want to talk about that. So we'll talk about below the top line, which is your overhead number. And you know, to me, it's where every business owner, no matter what business you're in, you have to know your overhead number, because that's really what you have left to work with there at the end. So how do we we simply look at the P and L. I look at the monthly P and L. I look at it every day. I track my numbers and enter them every single day. If we sold a job or finished a job, it goes on a spreadsheet so that we know what we finished. We can then begin to cost it out ourselves before we even turned into corporate to see what kind of money we made on that job,

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we began just offering the five core services of kitchen tune up, which is painting tune ups, redoing refacing and all new kitchen cabinet. So we kind of that's all we did for a while. People wanted back splashes and flooring and walls moved and plumbing and electrical, we just referred them to someone else. And I had a lot of clients saying, Craig, you know, we like to do one person, you know can and so we now offer everything,

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plus the five. We do the five core, but we move walls, we do plumbing, we do electrical, flooring, all kinds of things and that that's a lot of fun to look at, from a numbers wise, because, you know, you have to look at that, because the corporation is mainly focused on those five core services. But we look at the cost out by job to see how profitable that job was, or how much more profitable it could be if we would have done something different. We also, you know, how the health of the business, I look at the install calendar, you know, for me, the install calendar is important because, you know, we've got a lot of full time employees, our installers, that rely on us, and they want to make sure that they've got good, steady work. And so I look long and hard to check the heart the health of our business. If we're six weeks or eight weeks or 12 weeks, or whatever that number is, we have to balance that so that one, we can keep our guys working. Two, so we can keep our clients happy and not drag these jobs on. And then the last thing would be that those jobs are making money for us. I mean, absolutely, because, you know, you don't want to lose money on any job.

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But that's kind of where we look. I look at a lot of different numbers, but at a high level, that's it. I look at the top line, the bottom line, my overhead number. I know what that number is, and

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once we hit that number in cells, we're pretty good. Yeah. And are you keeping your people busy? I love that they stay busy. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Well, thanks for sharing. Sharing that, Greg. I want to kind of shift a little bit back to kind of the core makeup of your busy, your business. And I think I know the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it this way, and have you kind of dive into it a little further, do you believe this makes for a great family business? I know the answer, but tell us why and how you balance your family business. Yeah, that's a great question. I get asked that question a lot, and a lot of people say, Oh, you're a family business. So you're not like the rest of us.

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I'm exactly like the rest of you, in fact, it might be a little different. But you know, for me, having your family work for you, if you've got the right team on the field, it doesn't matter if they're family or not, but when they are family and it's the right team on the field, there's a lot of skin in the game. There's a lot of people that look at a lot of things that some employee may not look at

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but we've we've got some great employees too that are not family members, and they do great job for us. I think that comes back to setting their expectations, monitoring those expectations, and giving them feedback on that, and then rewarding them for doing a good job. But how we balance it is,

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it's hard. I mean, I'm being perfectly honest, it's hard because my wife is good at separating it, because she works totally in the office. She never hits the field, but she knows the inside of our business. She knows what goes on behind the scenes on the financial side,

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when we get together, she can separate that me and my son and my son in law, we're not so good, and my daughter, she's not so good because she's like me. She's high strung and ready to take care of business. So we just have to remind ourselves that look we're going to have, and we just block it out. I have to, we're an S corporation, so we are required to have meetings. So we have a meeting and we'll talk for 15 to 30 minutes, whatever time need. We're going to talk business there and get it all out on the table, and then we move on to whatever we're doing. So we kind of combine that in there. That's great. Well, I imagine that you've definitely been successful in whenever Strong.

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Sure you have because your business is doing well. You've won many awards being part of the tuniverse. So I mentioned tuniverse Talk to me a little bit about and share with the listeners what it's like to be part of the tune of verse. What is the tune of verse and the culture within these brands?

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It's kind of like having an extended family. You can always have those owners that you will gravitate to. We all gravitate to someone, right? And, I mean, just this morning, I talked to five different owners about various things they call or text or email to find out, you know, what's going on. What about so I think it's kind of like you have this extended family that's a great resource that they can relate to what you're going through. I

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was just listening to a podcast, I don't know if you guys did, or know what, with an owner. I know him very well. His name's Chase Vincent. I thought, man, you know, how hard is that to come on board and say, Man, I've been really struggling, and I'm the one that wasn't making it work, and now I have to go back and humble myself and retrain myself to do it right. And I'm like, Yeah, I've been there before. Man, I just didn't tell anybody. I think what that does as an owner, it helps other owners to relate to him, because they may not relate to me. I mean, I'm people might not relate it anything I say, but they may relate to something Chase says, or vice versa. So I think we've got so many great owners out there that are really all heading in the same are trying to head in the same direction. And that's build the brand and make more money and free up some time. You know, have some some good life work balance, because it's not all about making money. I mean, most of it is, but at the end of the day, you know, what are you going to do with your money? I mean, if you, if you're only making money, you got to, got to find something to do to have fun with some of that money. So I think the tune of verse just again, if I had to sum it up in a few words, it'd be like an extended family that you know, you can trust and count on these people, and they'll tell you what's going on out there. Yeah, that's a great, great some summary of the two universe. Love it. I'm going to wrap it up with this question for you, Greg, what? What are your goals for your business in the next five years? Where do you see yourself as a kitchen tune up and bath tune up owner in five years? Yeah, well, you know what I what I have in my mind and what we put on our paper, and versus the reality of what happens is always two different things.

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You know, in five years, I will be retired. I think I'll probably still be doing something in the business, because I don't know if I can fully retire, but you know, the reality is, I'm not gonna get any younger, so I will retire and my son and my son in law, my daughter, will run this business. I have a younger daughter. My our youngest daughter.

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She does not work in our business, but she's the only member of the family that has a degree in project management, and most of us have business degrees or HR degrees. So she, she has a project management degree, and I'm trying to get her, and they're looking, and I'm trying to get them to think about coming on board, because her husband is a firearm salesman for Remington firearms, so he knows how to sell. If he comes on board and sells and Angel and comes in and does a little bit of what I do, then I can retire, you know? And so, yeah, I would probably, you know, in five years, I think our business will be

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at least two and a half, if not three times larger than it is today. That's been our run rate. So far, we've got a three time, about 3.2 times larger than we were when we started. I think that number will continue, which means maybe I can retire, but move into a more stay at home kind of role, or I can just look at numbers and go visit people, because I enjoy doing that. I enjoy seeing people. But, you know, I think we'll see some tremendous growth. We will see some tremendous change, I think, in buying habits from people, which is always fun to watch. What's going on in the market.

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No, we'll either I'll be retired, or, who knows, five years, the right people come along. I would sell the business, if my family's okay with that, but I don't want them to all have to go out and get jobs. You know, it's like if we sell it. I don't want you to have to go get a job, you know, not for a long time. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you sharing those thoughts and your goals and your dreams for your business, and I wish you nothing but the most success. And I hope you achieve all those goals, and whether you go the path of a legacy for your family or you end up selling at three times, 30 times multiple. I wish all of all of that for you. I love that you shared your story, and thanks for joining me today. Greg. Welcome Marcy. Thank you, and thank you everyone for listening. And I hope you've learned a thing or two about the heart of franchising with kitchen tune up and bath tune up and.

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Be subscribed to our channel and follow us on social media and to learn more about kitchen tune up or bath tune up, or any of our home franchise concepts, Family of 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

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you.