Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to American wealth in Franchising and Kim Daly tv.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: I am your host, Kim Daly.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: I want to educate, motivate and inspire your business ownership journey by interviewing business leaders, coaches, and exceptional franchisees to learn their valuable insights and strategies that we can apply to our own business ownership dreams. Now onto the show.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: In my studio today, a woman who owns a business that Kim Daly should actually own because I spend thousands of dollars a year with my dog groomer. Please welcome to the studio Jennifer Lucera of Ponte Vedra, Florida, and she is a franchisee with Aussie petmobile Jennifer, welcome to the studio of Kim Daly tv.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: Hi, Kim. Happy to be here.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: So happy to have you here. And as I said in the intro, I spend thousands of dollars on two golden doodles. And every year they are groomed every three weeks. One week they have a bath, three weeks later they have a haircut. So I understand the need for your business, and the mobile aspect of it would be phenomenal because I always have to take time out of my day to, like, schedule to drop them off and then schedule to go pick them up. I don't have a mobile room or where I am, so I can't wait to talk a little bit about your business. But we are here mostly to talk about you and your journey to franchising. So let's go back to the beginning. What was happening in your life at the time when you answered the call to franchising?
[00:01:31] Speaker C: Well, it was a little different. Different? We had moved from San Diego, California, so coast to coast. We moved from San Diego to Florida right at the end of COVID about four years ago, just wanting to make a switch. And then my husband, he was. Could work anywhere. He has a software company. His partner unfortunately passed away unexpectedly, and that kind of made us reevaluate where our future would be. You know, he wanted to run his business on his own, but he always wanted to say, let's do something together. So we said, okay, let's do it and figure something out that we both enjoy and started down the path of trying to find a franchise that would fit our lifestyle, our needs, and kind of like, tick the right boxes for us.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: I like it. So your husband was an entrepreneur before, and then you looked at franchising. What made him say, well, let's consider a franchise. Why not just go buy a business for sale or start another business from scratch?
[00:02:22] Speaker C: Because he had been there, done that. So he owned a software company for 20 years, and he knows how hard it is to start it up, have the knowledge of what you need to do, how to get by. And at this point in our life, he's like, we need something that we can just kind of turn key, right? We don't want to build it from scratch. He had done that. I had my own law practice, so I had worked kind of on my own trying to establish clientele, and we understood the hardships of doing things on your own, and we'd already done that, so we wanted something that we could kind of just step in, bring our experience to, but with somebody else that had all the previous knowledge to that industry.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Amazing.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: So.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: So my former entrepreneurs are the easiest people to convince of the true value of a franchise for everything. Jen just said, it's so great. Starting a business from scratch is like the hardest, longest, most expensive way. Once in a lifetime is enough. Let's look at franchising, where we can buy down that learning curve, partner with people who've already spent all the money and all the time figuring it out, pay them a franchise fee so they can give it to us, and then we can just get to the point where we get to execute and start making money from day one. That's the value of a franchise.
[00:03:30] Speaker C: Are you worried? A year in, as we just wrote, you know, kind of our royalty check yesterday went, oh, you know, more successful, but that's higher. And then we both sat and thought, could we have done this on our own? And we both looked at each other and said, no, it would have cost us more than that to figure it out, to start it up and to get to this point, this quickly. It's not possible.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: That's awesome. Okay, we're going to come back to that. Okay, so you mentioned something. You were an attorney in a law practice. So what makes an attorney? And you said your husband was in software. Okay, what makes the two of you turn to dog grooming?
[00:04:02] Speaker C: Me, I guess it was when we decided to do something together. Well, one, we owned three golden retrievers, so dog lovers to start. But we wanted something that we could do in the community, something that was fun working with people. I mean, I was an attorney, but I was an estate planning attorney, so I worked with people and families, and I wanted to do something where you're working with people that enjoy the product or the service. So people love their pets. That's an easy one. So we kind of went down different avenues, and for us, it was more of what can we do? That we would enjoy what we can do in our community and give us the flexibility of the type of business we wanted.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: It was Also factoring in there that you were moving and probably leaving your network and all the people that you knew like trusted you. Moving to Florida and starting new, did that factor in? Because there were systems in place for like call centers and things like that. With Aussie Petmobile that allowed you to know the business would come even though you didn't have deep roots in the community.
[00:04:59] Speaker C: Well, from everyone we had talked to, you know, we vetted calls and they're basically like, if you can turn the water on, the business will be there. So. So that was a huge thing because neither one of us wanted to be salespeople. We're much better at people managing and business managing. So we wanted an industry that was growing and that seemed to be kind of like just ready made. Right. So we do our research with that. But yeah, it is a little different when you try and post in social media and all your friends are in San Diego and you know you're trying to start a business in Florida. But really with the marketing structure and that was another big factor. You have that marketing background. We're a national franchise, so it's well known. I mean my husband, even Travis knew about Aussie in San Diego. So, you know, it's name recognition we thought that would carry over. You have their back end support on how to do local marketing, how to do national marketing, how to reach out, social marketing. Those are the things that we didn't want to have to start over and recreate on our own. We wanted somebody with that know how for this industry, what to do really good.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: And when did you start this business?
[00:06:00] Speaker C: We started almost exactly a year ago, May 1st of 2024. So we had our one year.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: So you've been in for one year. So you mentioned like it wouldn't have been possible to be where you are at this point if you had started on your own. So tell us a little bit about where you are one year in.
[00:06:16] Speaker C: So we started one man, one groomer. We were extremely lucky in that our groomer moved from Texas. Aussie just happened to be moving to Florida right when we were opening. So she was a blessing.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: A little dividing corporation like the stars aligning. I love it.
[00:06:32] Speaker C: So one van, one groomer. We now have three vans and five groomers and still growing. The nice thing about Aussie is as you fill your schedule, you get another groomer, you get another van, you fill that schedule, you get another groomer, you get more vans. So that's kind of moving up. You know, that's where we're at and we're now my daughter works for me a little bit. She does some project based for us. We just hired another dispatcher because I'm too busy to manage all the appointments and the calls. So we're feeling very positive and very blessed.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh, it's so good. Yes. Like, that's a tremendous growth in one year. And so for the listener following, look, when we traditionally think about investing in a franchise, oftentimes we're thinking of a brick and mortar, right? Because all we know franchising is, is food and retail. Until you come to Kim Daly and she says, no, there's this whole other world out there that doesn't require all of the fixed costs, the startup costs of building out a space and then maintaining that space. In food and retail, there are these, what I call marketing and sales businesses where we're going to market, allow the customer to raise their hand, say, I think I'm interested. Tell me more. And then we're going to build a relationship and sell them on our product or service. And sometimes that sale happens in the home. Like if you were selling window treatments or, you know, you were going to build a fence for my yard, you'd have to come and measure and talk to me and sell me. But something like dog grooming happens over the phone, right? So you have that transaction, maybe even on a website, and then you're going to build that relationship with the groomer, and that's what's going to help you come back again and again. And we're going to come back to that relationship with the groomer in just a minute. But what I want to help the listener see is that wealth is always created through scale. So if you're in a brick and mortar location, chances are you're not going to build all the wealth you want through one, right? So it's going to be like, okay, if it costs me 3 to 500,000 to open one, let's just say I'm not making an earnings claim. Just giving you, like a rough idea of an investment of something you were looking at. And then you were like, but I want a 3x that return, then you've got to have the capacity or the loan capacity, the ability to get funding for two additional stores, and you'd still enter the market one store at a time. But the idea is you would need to multiply the locations. So what Jen said is in order to grow, you get one truck busy, you fill the schedule, and then you order another truck, which is infinitely easier and less expensive. So you kind of get to tiptoe into the market. And so when we're working together in our consultation together, I'm going to explain all of this to you and I'm going to explain money in and money out so you can really see the differences. I'm not saying that marketing and sales options are better than brick and mortar. They're used by different investors for different outcomes. It really comes back to what are your goals, which comes back to the whole point of the show is to help you get acquainted with people like Jen and other franchisees and understand their why and why they invested. Why does an attorney and a software person invest in a dog grooming business? So you can start to let go of the preconceived notions that you may have. You can start to open your mind to the possibilities and then go, wow, there's a lot to consider. I can't do this on my own. I need Kim Daly. And then you're going to follow the link in the description below. That is the point of this entire podcast and all the videos that I push out at Kim Daily tv. So, sorry for the tangent, Jen, but I needed to fill it together. So you're in this marketing and sales space, and so you're generating leads, and then you're filling the calendar, and then you're investing. And so in one year, you've been able to grow from one trailer or one Mercedes Sprinter van and your groomer to now you have five groomers running three different vans and still growing. And so when you look at the territories that you purchase, do you feel like you'll have a cap? Like, do, you know, like, okay, in one territory we can run four vans without cannibalizing, or is it really just based on an expanding dog population?
[00:10:19] Speaker C: So what we want to do, and I think that's where kind of our experience came, is we have only opened three zip codes total. So we have, I think, a total of nine or ten zip codes. Oh, wow. And so what we didn't want to do was open the whole territory and then not be able to service it. So what we did was we started with two zip codes open. Those felt like we were growing enough to open a third zip code. We service some other areas, but we don't market to them and they don't list as being open. But people see the vans now, so they're on the road, so that gets more marketing than anything. So what we wanted was a slow build so that as we open those zip codes, we have the vans and the groomers in place. So that people call in and they want an appointment. We're not saying we can't get that for you. So right now, just based on that, we're three vans in. We've only opened three zip codes.
Yeah, that's been really good. And that also takes your, like, trying to centralize your location so you're not driving as far in between appointments. You know, we're not going from one end of the territory to the whole other end of the territory where we're trying to focus in certain areas so that we can kind of saturate that area first and then grow.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: It makes total sense. And I'm guessing that the franchisor helps you with this strategy. You didn't just come up with it on your own. True.
[00:11:30] Speaker C: They've helped us with like the zip codes, they've encouraged us to open the other ones and we've kind of had the ability to then say, no, we're just not ready yet. And as long as they see our numbers and realize what we're doing is working, so they're fine with it. So it does have some flexibility. But yeah, they're there to say, hey, it's been a year, let's open some more. And we're like, nope, not until we have the, the backing. Because we just want to make sure we're doing it right.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Hey, Daily Coach fans, if you're loving this episode, please do me a quick favor and leave me a five star rating and a short review. Your feedback fuels my growth and rank rankings and shows others that this podcast is valuable. Now back to the show.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if you can fill a van by going deep, why go wide? Right? Because then you're just more efficient. The optimization of the route is a key part to being profitable in a business like this, along with a lot of other marketing and sales type businesses. So it's. I think it's very essential and very smart of you. So I want to go back to one other thing. So in this business, you said as long as you can turn on the water, the business will be there. So I want to come back to that comment because if I was coaching somebody looking at Aussie Pet mobile, I would bring them to this exact idea that the customers are going to be there. The limiting factor to growth is probably more finding groomers. Would you agree with that or no? Like, how hard or easy has that been? And not as a judgment. Like I would say to the person, if they're like, oh, yeah, it's going to be really hard, I'd be like, no, if you come in with that mentality, then it is, but that's the business. Like every business has an issue. If it did it, no, everybody would do it and there would be no applause.
[00:13:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: In my business, I was eight years an average performing consultant. Why? Well, I didn't know at the time until I did something different. But looking back, it was because I looked at myself as a consultant. But in my ninth year, I decided I was ready to grow. So I set a really big goal. Not based in reality. Nothing can be. It was like 350% more than I had ever made. Why not just go for it, right? If I didn't get it, I wasn't going to be upset. I was just going to aim for it. But when I thought from the million dollar idea that was the goal, I thought to myself, oh, wait, if I want to make more money, I need to help more people. If I want to help more people, I need to know more people. So I'm not a consultant, then I'm a prospector. Because the limiting factor to me getting what I wanted, which was more money, was to help more people. And so I needed to know more people. So it was like the light dawned on me in my ninth year. Okay, maybe I'm a little bit slow, but I'm a nutritional biochemist. I don't have a business degree and neither had anybody in my industry ever thought of this way either. And many of them still don't, even though I tell them, you hear a prospector before you're a consultant if you want to have a business that's in your control. Anyway, so when I did it, of course I made history, changed history for my industry, but mostly for myself. And I've never slipped back to average performing because once I saw the truth, you can't unsee it. Right. And so you're like, oh, and so, you know, 13 years later, I'm a world class prospector. So why is Kim Daly the number one franchise consultant? Well, because she's a world class prospector. So going back to the original question I was asking you is I would look at this business as kind of that aha moment is, oh, there's going to be lots of people who want a dog groom. The harder part's going to be how do I attract and then retain that good and employee? So I'm just curious, from your perspective, is that the thing in this business that you really dial into and have to focus on?
[00:14:50] Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean, groomers, one, you want to keep your quality at a certain level. So you're carrying a name and you want to have. It's a luxury brand and needs to be a luxury service. So you want to have the best groomers. So within that you need good groomers, you need ones that can drive, you can need ones that have a good personality, ones who are good. They're representing your face at the doors. And the other thing is we're always hiring, we are always interviewing because we don't know when that next band is coming and when, when it's needed and how we can fit that person in. We had somebody who's starting with us now who we had told her maybe part time, maybe fill in here and there. She was like sure. And then all of a sudden we're like oh nevermind, you're going to be full time. So now she's like great. So we're always constantly hiring, always, constantly looking for the next best groomer, best fit. Because that is the hardest part of the business. We knew that it's like anything, you still have to hire good personnel to represent you. Whether it's, it's serving sandwiches or grooming dogs or cleaning houses, you know, you're still have to entrust your business into those people.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Yeah. The cool thing in a model like this is because it's a one to one, like one groomer to one van basically you don't have to have hundreds of employees to build this awesome business. I mean I joke that it's a 20 van business in the making but even if you did maybe what, you would have 30 groomers, you know, to have this multimillion dollar business. Right. So. Or maybe a little more than that. I don't know the ratio, but yeah. So it's not like a cleaning company where you have two or three people per team. And so as you take on a certain number of homes now you need two or three more people here it's one to one. So you're able to keep that a little bit more in check. So when you go to hire, I'm just curious why we're going down this rabbit hole. Are you hiring for personality and training grooming or are you hiring experienced groomers right now?
[00:16:32] Speaker C: A little bit of both right now because we don't have the staff to train within, then we really need to hire experienced groomers and then we want, you know, obviously the personality. We have met several groomers that we enjoyed their personality but maybe they didn't have the experience and we had kind of said like can you go get some? Or if you have more, come Back. We're hoping as we grow then we can train within. So if we have a larger staff, then we can hire and say we just need you to have a little bit more training. And we're willing to do that. So we're kind of not quite there yet, but that's something that obviously we can do in the future.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really good. Are there franchisees within the system who do that, who kind of create their groomers?
[00:17:12] Speaker C: Yeah, we're lead groomers. Groomer that we got from Texas. She went to a grooming school but then moved to Texas and she was trained through Aussie because they were a much bigger franchise. So they were able to train her on site. So that's where the bulk of her experience came from.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: I imagine it's even a little bit like a notch above because there's no bad habit. Like if you have your way of grooming, right, and using your equipment, if you can train from the ground up, there's like no biases, there's no, well, I do it this way, kind of an aptitude and like, okay, I'll just learn your system. And so it's such a fun business. I mean, look, pet services is like when people are like, I want to do this, that's recession resistant, you know, and they're thinking H vac or plumbing. I'm like, no, like pet services, right? Like we take care of our pet as well, if not better than we take care of our kids sometimes, right? So like it's not like this industry is going anywhere. It's so long term sustainable, right? Can't be outsourced by AI human element. And then you add in the mobile factor to this business and it really is so great because the convenience of it for the homeowner, it. The extra money that you would pay for the mobile part is like a wash, right? When you look at someone like Kim Daly who's, you know, back to back to back every day on, you know, working from home, but like on calls. And so in order to get my dog over to the groomer every three weeks, which I typically do on a Friday because that's a lighter day for me, I still have to like plan for like a 20 minute ride over there, 20 minute ride back, and then two or three hours later a 20 minute ride over. And not to mention the stress, right. As soon as my dogs figure out where we're going, like it's all good and tails are wagon until we get to a certain road and they totally know where they're going. You know, and then you see them shaking in the backseat and I have to carry the little one in because he won't walk and he's like so stressed out. And so all of that completely disappears in a mobile service. Correct, Jen?
[00:18:54] Speaker C: Perfect. Because that's. We do a lot of elderly dogs, we do a lot of nervous dogs, we do rescue dogs. But also it is. You don't want to sit and have your dog sitting in a wet crate waiting their turn to be dried and cut because they've been bathed and they're there for hours listening to other dogs barking or crying or whining. And so it is definitely a whole different experience having the mobile coming to them. You talked about, like, the industry. A lot of people don't have kids as much these days. They have pets and those pets are their children. I do want to say you talk about AI can't take it over, but I know I've let you know this in the past that having a husband who's in the software industry, he's used AI to help us grow, and then he's automated a lot of our systems that we're fortunate enough to have. It helps me with, like, people are getting information right away. People have an ability to call in if I'm busy. So. So being married to a software engineer definitely has helped out.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: There are many franchises embracing the power of technology to help, you know, with whether it's a bot, you know, to help customers interacting with frequently asked questions or booking or scheduling or things like that. So it's awesome. So let's go back to your story. So you and your husband had this dream. You moved to Florida, you changed your life, you invested a franchise. So, like, you're growing, you're feeling positive about everything that's happening. Has this been a totally uphill experience or has it been a little bit like a couple steps forward, a couple steps back, a couple steps forward? Or is it a little more even? Because you both owned businesses before?
[00:20:19] Speaker C: We just so probably we had this conversation about a month and a half ago. I would say. Oh, it's been kind of easy sailing, right? No, I think it's like any business, you know, it starts off great. You have a couple hiccups here and there. There's some van issues you don't expect. There's just random things happen at any day, like cancellations or, you know, a dog is sick. Those are just normal things you kind of of expect. We've had a little bit of employee issue, but again, those are all things to expect. So as we've grown, I would say we've mostly been going straight uphill with a couple, just little knots back down the hill. But nothing that's really overly concerning. Just kind of say, well, we're just now two weeks behind where we were going to be, you know, so we're both kind of like, I think we get that business is not always sunshine and rainbows. Like, you have to deal little things, you have actual problems and. But you take that on and has.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: It's still your problems and they're better yours to manage, right? Because you get to work through it. You get to decide the energy that you bring into it, how it gets resolved, how quickly it gets resolved.
[00:21:21] Speaker C: Right?
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Like, and you're not out there on an island because you're part of this long, sustainable franchise, right, where you can pick up the phone and know that you're not my bone in this. There are other people who want to help you and who might have answers to the problems you hit. Correct.
[00:21:34] Speaker C: When you talk about having a franchise behind you, you need to think beyond just the actual home franchise company, not just the people who run Aussie and that have given you your training. It's of the whole industry, of all your other franchisees. We talk to the people we trained with almost daily. We bounce ideas off of each other. I had this problem. How do you fix it? We have, you know, a circle of other franchisee Aussie owners, and everybody's quick to help. They're quick to answer your questions. So when you say, like, you're on this island, you're not, because not only do you have the backing of the corporation behind you, it's really about the community of your other franchisees. That that's the huge support.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: And do you level up against him because you're like, get a little bit, you know, the humanness in us gets a little competitive, like, ooh, like we're seeing that. But I mean, like, oh, so, so and so was able to, you know, open a second or a third truck in this amount of time. So that gives you kind of like a benchmark that you're, like, aiming for.
[00:22:28] Speaker C: I think, you know, we see the success of others and we kind of see, how did you do that? What did you you do? We have a lot of our friends that are kind of looking towards us and saying, you're like our beacon of where we want to be. So we try and help them as much as possible. I think it's a little bit, you know, you're always envious of others doing it. Well, but then you just kind of talk to them and try and replicate.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: That or figure it out, be a.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: Nice guy, slowly just try and build. But we're doing well for definitely amongst our class of like one year ends.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: And so when you find somebody who is a history maker, somebody who's doing something a little bit different and getting a different result, you know, because we're not competitive with each other, really, everybody is so willing to share. It's been my experience. Jen said that's been her experience. And you know, hopefully for you, listener, if you one day are in the franchise, that will be your experience as well. So on that note, Jen, this has been so fun. I find your story so inspiring. You know, you're living the American dream, right? Like, you took a chance and you moved your family and you're thriving in your franchise business. And it is sunshine and rainbows even though the clouds come out. But the rain has to fall in order for the grass to grow. So you can't expect it to all be perfect all the time. Even in a franchise, we have our bad days because business is business and it's hard sometimes. So. So with that, like set up and in conclusion to this awesome story, what advice do you have for that listener who may not yet have reached out to Kim Daly, who's tuning in to try to find the courage to say, yeah, I could own a franchise, I should reach out to Kim Daly.
[00:23:57] Speaker C: I mean, just knowing that there's options out there. You don't have to go with the big box labels. You can go with something out of the box, make sure it meets your needs. Like, we wanted something. We didn't have to go to a brick and mortar every morning we weren't baking bread every morning we weren't out pounding the pavement making relationships to sales. There's something for everybody. And just realize that there's different things you've never thought of that are out there in industries. And if it can check all your boxes, then you can make it work.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: So good. And how do you do that? Contact Kim Daly, who has 23 years of experience, relationship and knowledge. So on that I want you to follow the link in the description right now. If you believe it's your time to start exploring, not to say, yes, I'm ready to own a franchise. You can't do that unless you're willing to take the first step and explore some options. So follow the link in the description right now. Jen, thank you so much for being our special guest here today on Kim Daily tv.
[00:24:52] Speaker C: Thank you, Kim.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: You're so inspirational. And don't forget, if you made it to this end of the video, thank you so much for watching. And please don't forget that my name is Kim Daly, and I want to be your daily coach.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: You can find more content just like this on my YouTube channel at KimDaily TV. And if you're inspired to take the next step to explore franchises matched to you, please email me right now at InquireimDaily TV. That's InquireimDaily TV.
