Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Create wealth through Franchising. I'm your host, Kim Daly.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Whether you're a CEO, a military vet, a real estate investor, or simply in career transition and ready to take ownership of your future, with each episode, you're gonna learn valuable insights and hear inspiring stories from within the franchise industry.
On that note, my guest stories are their own. And as a franchise consultant, I do not make personal brand endorsements or earnings claims, but I do educate, motivate, and inspire dreams.
Now onto the show.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Welcome back to Create wealth through Franchising podcast and Kim Daily tv. In my studio today, a new friend. Her name is Ashley Clark. She lives in Franklin, Tennessee, and she is a multi unit franchisee with Kilwins Chocolate fudge ice Cream. Welcome to the studio. It's such a pleasure to meet you today.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: Thank you. Really honored to be here.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: I am so excited for you to share your story about this new little food dessert gem that's in my inventory that I really don't know too much about. But you know a lot about because you own six stores. So take us to the beginning of your story and tell my listeners and Kim Daly, what was happening in your life when you said franchising is it? And it's Kilwin's Chocolate fudge ice cream.
[00:01:36] Speaker C: Yes. So interestingly enough, I like to say that Kilwins chose me. At the time, I was 22 years old. I had just graduated from Clemson University with a bachelor's degree and I was trying to go to law school, and I sat for the LSAT and did not score on the lsat. What I wanted to to go to the law school where I had chosen. And so my dad, who had owned his own business, said, why don't you open a kill ones? And that is how I found kill ones.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Okay, wait, we have to thank our dads. I'm a daddy's girl too. But so your dad just randomly pulls Kilwins out of the air?
[00:02:11] Speaker C: So kind of. I have a twin brother who went to Appalachian State and there's a very iconic Kilwin's right next door in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, that's been there for decades. And so he introd my parents to kill ones and they would visit and get ice cream whenever they were visiting my brother at Appalachian State. And so it was just a brand that my dad had grew to love. I didn't know much about. There was no Kilin near Clemson, and so it wasn't something I really knew anything about. And it wasn't even like, should we franchise? Should we open our own? Should we check into other brands? It was just kilns or nothing.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Well, what I really love is when you're like, kilwin's found me. Because in franchising, that's sort of the question that's always tossed around, like, how did franchising find you? The fact that you said that kind of organically just makes me smile so big. Because, you know, most people don't just jump out of bed and go, oh, yeah, I want to invest in a franchise. It's more that they're at some sort of like, crossroad in their lives. Something has happened, they're solving for a new problem. And it's the idea of, wow, I want more freedom, I want more control, I want ownership. And then they think about business ownership. And then they go, no, then they think franchising. And so then they might hopefully find someone like Kim Daly who can guide their education process and help them understand what would be a good fit for them. So I love that story. And bless you to dad. He's smiling from here to here now. So you were young, you were on your way to law school. Actually, that's when franchising found me too. I was on my way to medical school and answered the call to franchising and never looked back. And that was over 30 years ago. So careful, because it might just have you for the rest of your life. Ashley.
[00:03:54] Speaker C: I'm okay with that now.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Okay, so you invest in one. How do you go from one to six? Like, what transpired and in what kind of time frame that just had you doubling back and adding more stores to your portfolio?
[00:04:07] Speaker C: Yeah, so my husband and I do this business together. We opened our first store in Greenville, South Carolina in 2013, and we worked that store together for five years. My parents gave us a personal loan to open that store at about the five year mark. We realized we knew nothing about business up until that point. And so where we've learned about business and we're learning about hiring and firing, and we're working the counter also, it wasn't a high volume store. So we were in the store five to six days a week and eventually realized that if we're going to make any real money at this, we got to have more than one. And so when a store in Highlands, North Carolina, which is geographically close to Greenville, came for sale, my husband and I drove up there, met with the guy and asked him, how do you suggest we buy this? How do you suggest we pay for it? Because we want it, but we don't know how to do this. And he said, get an SBA loan. And so I did not know what that was at the time. We get in the car, I'm like Googling, what's an SBA loan? And we needed $80,000 to put down on the SBA loan as our 10% financing. And we sold our first house and got $86,000 out of our house. And so we moved in with my parents, put all of our money down to buy the store. And thankfully we bought that store, moved to North Carolina to operate it, got it going, and then because it was already an existing store, the cash flow just looked a lot different. It hits 30 years this year. And so it was just a lot more instant. And so that then catapulted us financially to be able to, okay, well, if we can do two, I tell people now two is the hardest number to have because you still can just barely be in both places at once. But then when you have three, you have no choice but to learn to start to rely on others. At three, you start morphing into a company. And so after we got two, it was kind of like kill ones would present us with opportunities, so that would fuel some of the growth. But then also people just learned we're kind of becoming a sucker for kill ones. And so people would call us. We also will reach out to Hillman's franchisees that like cold calling. That's what we did with Franklin Tennessee. We called them and said, that's a store we'd like to own. So if you ever think of selling it, think of us. And we were actually standing in number three under construction when Franklin the Tennessee people returned our call to say, yeah, we'd love to sell. And I was pregnant with our second daughter. And of course everything has to happen at once. So we're now at the 12 year mark and we have six stores. We've had seven, but we sold one. Not seven at once based on the timing, but one of ours we opened and sold. The five year mark is when we went to number two. And then we've added about one a year. And at about eight years, we got out of the day to day, and now we're at 12 years and we have six. And they all run by general managers.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: I got to go all the way back. First of all, we have to again give your dad and your mom, your parents, a little bow down, right? Okay. So first he had the idea, don't want to go to law school, invest in a Kilwins. Then he gave money to support the cause and then he offered housing on the road to this is going to work good parents.
[00:07:16] Speaker C: I know he had a lot more faith in me than looking back, I wouldn't have hired me. So he had a lot more.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: I love it. So going from five years in the store to now, you know, you have general managers running stores. Do you think that if you had experience running a business before that would have happened faster or do you think that it was just the nature of a startup business for you and this particular business that being in it was the only way to get your arms around it?
[00:07:50] Speaker C: Yeah, no, it doesn't take five years. Probably just because we were young and I mean we were just like didn't know. We didn't know and we had nothing. And you know, we're literally just trying to work to bring them a paycheck to eat. And so just no, I wouldn't tell someone new that's 50 that it takes five years to get to number two. But that's just what it took us just because also, I mean it was very important to us that we pay my parents back. That was a much more priority than growing our business at that point. And so also it just. The first store was a lower volume store and so it didn't start out. You know, if the cash flow had been different, maybe the story would have been different. But it was manageable for us at the time and it's what worked for us. But no, it doesn't. It wouldn't take five years.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: And was that a lower grossing store just due to like a smaller demographic area?
[00:08:40] Speaker C: No, it's not the best location. We're on the end of downtown and we really should be in the middle of downtown.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Let's go to you step into this established business for sale. And I have to address the elephant in the room because there's a lot of people listening that when they hear a business is for sale, they think, well it's so good. Why is the owner want to sell it? I want to address that like there's a life cycle here to owning a business. But from your perspective, I think there's two parts. Why do you like taking over established stores and do you ever have that sort of head trash? That's question number one, Ashley. But while I'm thinking of it, the other part of this is when you stepped into that already existing store, the first one, number two, and it was a faster ramp cause the cash flow was there. Did you bring something new to the business that the other owners Weren't bringing. And that's what made the difference in the growth.
[00:09:33] Speaker C: Yeah, good question. I love buying existing business. It's amazing. To me, it feels like zero risk, you know, just like all I have to do is not make it worse. It just feels so much less riskier than opening a store when you just really have no idea what's going to happen because you just really don't know what's going to happen until you open the doors. So I love doing that in a similar way of opening a new store. It has its own challenges, right. If you take on the team, you've got to weed out the ones that don't work. You're going to disappoint some customers because you're going to do some things different ways. But that store we bought in Highlands, North Carolina, we joke. So my husband and the owner had a lot of the same like physique and they would wear the same shoes. And he did a great job. He was like the mayor. And so when people came in and asked for him, we would just act like Miles and was his nephew or he's just not here today, you know, because none of the stores we bought have we ever wanted to blast new ownership because the owner was doing a good job. It was just no longer the right thing for them. The right fit, the right match for their family.
So, yes, if you see a business for sale that's doing well and the numbers work. And for us, it's easy with Kilmans to know if the numbers work because we are so confident in the business and we know what can happen. So I love to buy an existing business. I do that all day long. It does cost more, but it's a lot less risk. So the second question. So we almost doubled the sales. Covid helped a lot. He was also closed on Sundays, So that added 20% right there. We raised the prices and re merchandise the store. We eliminate skus at if at all possible. So we like to carry more of what sells and less of the bottom of the barrel of what sells. So we did that. Then Covid, it's a small mountain town north of Atlanta. Covid just, it exploded. People that could now work, remote work, moving out of Atlanta. And so the town really changed as a whole. It didn't have a ton to do exactly with us, but we were just in the right place at the right time. And now I wouldn't sell that store for anything.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: That's how luck works though, sometimes, right? You created that luck. I love that.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: 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 rankings and shows others that this podcast is valuable. Now back to the show.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: So now let's fast forward to today. So you're at six for Ashley and Landon Clark. What does the future with Kilwins look like? How big do you aspire to. To become?
[00:12:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know exactly. The goal right now is to try to get to 12 stores, so we've committed to opening two more downtown Nashville. We already have one. We have the rights to Roswell, Georgia, Marietta, Georgia. There's some other stores around North Georgia that we'd love to purchase existing stores when the time is right. So hopefully we can get to 12. We're trying to build these geographic regions right now. So Tennessee, Carolina, North Georgia. But there was a time when I wouldn't have guessed I'd have six, so who knows how many we'll have one day?
[00:12:47] Speaker A: And how many children do you have now?
[00:12:49] Speaker C: Two girls.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Two girls. And they're going to grow up and be just like mom, at least the.
[00:12:53] Speaker C: Oldest one for sure.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Wait, Mom's going to have the idea. Mom's going to give the money. Mom's going to open her house when they need to live with you.
[00:13:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know about all that.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Hey, your dad's gonna say, I did it.
[00:13:05] Speaker C: He did.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: What goes around comes around, girl. So this is such a fun story. So a lot of the times, Ashley, I work with more emerging brands, right? Because the younger brands that still have wide open territories all over the US they're the ones that are looking for consultants to either help tell the story and bring, you know, qualified investors to them, or they're just the ones that have enough territory open for, you know, the kind of volume of candidates that Kim Daly and my colleagues can find. So what's so fun for us is when we get this sort of what I'll call a legacy brand, right. It's been around for a long time, but there's a new wave of growth coming in and they've come to Franchoice and said, hey, help us get to the next level. And so it's kind of the best of both worlds in that we have data, we have track record, but now we have this kind of like, new energy toward future growth. And I'm just wondering, as an existing franchisee in this environment, do you feel a new level of energy at the corporate level, or is it just my perception of that because they've come to us asking for a next level of growth.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: Yeah, no, you're exactly right. Killen's was privately owned for the first, what, 75 years, and now it is owned by private equity. And they are committed to growing the brand. And so it's really exciting. A lot of good changes coming down the pipe, especially for someone I'm only in my 30s, and so with Gilmans for the long haul. And so I'm excited to see what's happening and what's coming and the opportunity for more growth and to just better the stores we have.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah. When people on the outside, especially those who've worked in corporate America here, private equity came in and you're still smiling and you say good things. They don't understand what that means because in their job, when private equity came in, they lost their job. So share a little bit more, if you will, about the transition and how that's been at the corporate level and why in a franchise, when private equity comes in, it means good things for franchisees.
[00:15:10] Speaker C: Yeah. Great question. To begin with, I believe the Lord called me to this work, and so he's going to carry me through no matter what happens. I am not a big worrier about things I can't control. Kilwin's is a great brand to be a part of. The first 75 years I mentioned, it was privately owned by wonderful people that did gave the brand so much love and care and built it to what it is. And so now, to me, it's just like everything that we had before was good, but this is also good. Things like IT infrastructure come to mind. Like we need that. Things are emerging and the world is changing, and for the brand as a whole, we want to grow our businesses, too.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: She's saying, when you think about private equity coming into a franchise, the private equity has to shop the franchise very carefully, and the founders of the franchise have to very carefully shop the private equity. Because if the private equity purchases the franchise and then disrupts everything that all of these independent business owners bought into, the value of what they just bought just diminished. So it's a very careful match in most cases. And in most cases, Ashley has said, it increases the ability to build out technology, to modernize the brand, to add national advertising, like maybe a Super bowl commercial, or the things that help a brand get to the next level. That's often what private equity can do. Not to mention supporting the C suite and the executive suite at the franchisor office to support all of the franchisees underneath. Right. So if you're a franchisor and you want to maintain, like, let's say a 1 to 20 ratio, right? Like one corporate staff to 20 franchisees. Right. You've got to be able to afford continuing to add staff, and sometimes you have to add the staff before you even have the royalty stream from those young franchisees. So it's kind of a chicken in the egg. And that's a problem that a lot of founders find themselves in. And it's why the failure rate in emerging franchise brands is so high. And that also speaks to why private equity can be a great value add in franchising and can really help your investment when you're a franchisee. Be protected.
[00:17:31] Speaker C: Yeah, I think we're really lucky with the firm that bought Kilmans because they already had a proven track record. Like, all we had to do was look back at the brands that they've improved and know that we're going to be okay. They know what they're doing.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Obviously, by the way you're talking, there's full disclosure on it. It's not like it's some, oh, hey, by the way, we sold the franchise and now here's your new owners. Yeah, I love this story. Okay, so I'm curious, within Gilin, how many stores does the number one franchisee have today? Do you know?
[00:18:00] Speaker C: It's kind of hard to keep up with. I feel like around nine or ten.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: Wow. Okay. Amazing. I want to get all of you guys on this show because I think this is the kind of brand, right? People ask me for, food and retail every single day for 23 years, Ashley, I've been sitting here guiding people to explore franchise opportunities. And I say, why there's faster, easier, better ways to make money right, than food and retail. And then along comes a legacy brand like Kilwins and challenges everything that I've said for 23 years. But I'm excited to bring it to people because it does have all of the good things without the bad things, right? Food and retail can just be challenging. Slim margins, long hours, lots of minimum wage, employees like perishable waste, and the list goes on, right? Well, when you take a model like this, which combines kind of both the retail and the food, but it's a higher margin food. You can speak to it, but doesn't have as much waste, and then it makes me go, okay, this is really fun. Which is why I'm so excited that you joined me today, because I think this episode may resonate with a lot of Kim Daly followers. So speak a Little bit to some of those characteristics of the Kilwins model that really have you dialed in. And, you know, again, investing in six stores and maybe up to 12.
[00:19:22] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, Kilwind is a proven system that works. To me, I believe it stood the test of time.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: 75 years is a long time.
[00:19:30] Speaker C: Exactly. So the proven system that works and the profit margins are good. Like you said, we have very little waste. We have lots of happy customers. People are just in general, happy when they come to Kilwins, when they think about Kilwin's. And also just ice cream, like, it's just part of America. It's just. It's not trendy. It's solid. And I love nothing more than when Killins says no to trendy ideas because they don't want to be trendy, because we don't need to be trendy. Ice cream is just. It's gonna be here. It's not like what we have to offer is just something that people are always going to want, I think. And so it just brings a lot of happiness. And the brand also has a lot of great people. So we like to say we came for the product and stayed for the people. So it's just. It's a great company to be involved with.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: It's really, really well said. I love that. And I'll just wrap that up by saying, Kim Daly always says, franchising is who, not what. Oftentimes, it starts at the what. Ashley, you're not alone in that. But then very quickly, you realize, oh, this is about a partnership. And so I better find people who I like and who I feel I can be led by and coached by and who I respect, because this is going to be kind of like a marriage for several years. I love it. What a pleasure it is to meet you, and I want to have you back when you're at 12 and see how many kids you have then, too. We're going to follow your life story at Kilwins.
[00:20:59] Speaker C: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Oh, you're so welcome. To wrap up this awesome interview, I want to ask you, because you have so much experience now, right? Think about where you started from, from to where you are today. So the question I ask all of my guests is for those people who may be out there listening to this episode who haven't yet dared to cross the bridge and even call Kim Daly, they just listen, but they haven't reached out to say, hey, what kind of franchises might match my interests and my goals? What advice do you have?
[00:21:34] Speaker C: For that person today, the freedom and the flexibility is worth it. And yes, it will be hard, yes, it will be scary, yes, it will be risky. But you can do it. Especially with a proven system, a time tested franchise like Kilwins, you can be successful too. You gotta be willing to put in the hard work, but you can do it too.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: I love it. It's like a legacy because your dad had the idea. Now she's raising her girls in this environment and that's gonna change their lives. They're never gonna go to law school. They're probably going to own business too. Ashley, God bless you. It's such a joy to meet you. Thank you again for being my special guest today.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: For those who are inspired by this amazing story and you want your own story, maybe one day to be a guest on Kim Daily tv, please follow the link in the description right now. I promise I'll reach out to you as soon as I can and we'll begin your journey to find the perfect franchise. And until next time, my name is Kim Daly and I want to be your daily coach.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: 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 inquire imdaily.
That's inquire@kimdaily tv.
