Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Create wealth through Franchising. I'm your host, Kim Daly.
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.
Welcome back to Create wealth through Franchising podcast and Kim Daily TV in my studio today with her own amazing set. A woman who focuses on women in business near and dear to my heart, Trisha Stetsel. Welcome to the studio of Kim Daly tv.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Kim, I am so excited to be on. It's been a long time coming.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: For those who are listening, Trisha is a focal point coach. So if you follow me, you know that today we're going to get a double bang for our buck because she's going to tell us her own story of transforming her own life by becoming a franchise owner. But then we're also going to do a little bit of a business coaching lesson. So, Tricia, with that introduction, let's go ahead and start at the beginning of your story. Tell the followers a little bit about what problem you were solving for in your life when you decided, I think I need to do something different and maybe it's a franchise.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So if it's okay, I'm going to take it even a step back further from focal point because I do have franchise experience. I bought my first franchise almost 17 years ago. We'll be 17 in March, which is really amazing in the pet sitting and dog walking business. And so I knew when my husband started looking at focal point that this could be something really good for him. See, Kim, you probably don't know the rest of my story. 2015, my husband started looking at coaching. It was something he wanted to do when he came out of corporate and as he went along this journey, he bucks bumped into focal point and he did all of the things that everyone does right. We go through discovery and check everything out and talk to everyone and do validation calls. And I just happened to be there looking over his shoulder while he was going through this process. I went all the way to certification training as a spouse while we were in San Diego. I told my husband I really believe that this is something that I could do and would be really good for me to move into based on the experience that I had. So his experience first time franchise owner for him. And then I just kind of tagged along and said, hey, I want to do that too. So we became partners in the focal point franchise business.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Amazing. Take us back to 2007 when you purchased your first franchise. That's 17 years old. Congratulations and happy 17th birthday on that. I mean, how many franchisees can say that? And because it's in such an industry that has so much inherent longevity, dog walking and pet sitting. Right. So what was happening in your life when you bought that business?
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, great question. I was myself still at corporate and so I spent eight years in the military. We'll talk probably some about this love that I have for supporting veterans, especially women. So I had been in the military for eight years, went to work for corporate America for 10. And if I'm being completely honest and transparent, I didn't want to lay any more people off that I had never met in person. I just didn't want to do it anymore. It was too hard for me. So I wanted something where I could have my hands on it and do something that I really believed in and also support the community. So the dog walking business just fell in my lap. We were looking for a pet sitter at Thanksgiving time in 2007, and I couldn't for the life of me find a pet sitter. We had used one everywhere else we lived. So now we're here in Houston, we can't find anybody to take care of our animals. And lo and behold, this ad for a pet care franchise came across my screen and I started doing some discovery and I thought, gosh, if there's a franchise in this business, there must be something going on in the pet care industry. Like, it must be big. And because I was coming out of corporate, I thought, gosh, it would be so much easier if somebody gave me all of the systems and framework to go start this business. So that's where the story began.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: That's really awesome. I'm going to go back, even back to the military. What was your job in the military and then what did you do in corporate America? I'm curious about the skill sets that then led you, when you became a focal point coach, to say. I think based on my experience, I could enjoy coaching. Yeah.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: This is funny how we're going back further and further. Interestingly enough, when I was in the military, I was a cryptologic technician, maintenance. If I told you what that was, I'd have to kill you. I'm kidding.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Sounds very fancy, very techie, right?
[00:05:15] Speaker B: So I worked on the Equipment that the techs were using to record and listen to conversations that were going on. That was my job, was to fix the equipment, maintain the equipment. By the way, that's where I met my husband. We met in the military. So eight years of the military. I spent some time in Florida, moved to Okinawa, Japan and then on to Hawaii. And leaving Hawaii, we landed in the Chicagoland area. I know, sounds completely insane. It was, it was cold in April and I am not a Midwesterner, so my husband is landed there and got hired on by a company called Tech Systems who had a contract with IBM. So again in the tech space. Started as a desktop technician with Tech Systems, got hired on by IBM a year later and worked my way up from there and eventually became manager executive before I left IBM to open my own business.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: When you started your pet walking or pet service business, did you leave corporate America or did you do both for a time?
[00:06:22] Speaker B: Oh, interesting story. Yeah. So I bought the franchise in December of 2007. We had our grand opening in March of 2008 and I quit my job on the last day of May in 2008 and never looked back.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Good for you. Good for you. So back in the day with that first business, you were hands in, like in all areas. And now today, 17 years later, what does that look like for you in terms of a time commitment?
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Yeah, so I have a office manager that does all of the interfacing and interaction with the sitters, with the office, with our clients. And she and I meet for about 30 to 40 minutes every week. And I still have my fingers a little bit in payroll just to make sure that everything is going well. So really spending six hours, ish, that's the dream.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: But she's earned it, right? Like, listen, didn't happen overnight, so. And that's a people intense business. Right? In order to take care of more pets, you got to have more people.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: It's kind of like a staffing business. If you really dial it back to what's the core problem we have to solve for in this business. Correct?
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And there's two parts of it for me. It's the love of the people, the people that I have serving as well as the people that we serve. It also reminds me that I don't want to get into another business like that. Like, I love that business. But if we were looking at another franchise that had people involved like that.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: As a franchise consultant and a mindset coach to my candidates. And I always say, look, you have to look at the business as what's the primary business you're solving for. Right. And this is the thing that took me from an average performing franchise consultant to a history making consultant in a 12 month time period. And this was in my ninth year of business waking up and realizing, oh, I'm not really a consultant, I'm a prospector. Right. So the limiting factor growing my consulting business is having more people who want to talk to me about owning a business. So I need to wake up and solve for that problem every day and then let the problems of consulting work themselves out. In that one little mindset shift took me from like literally average performing to over 350% more revenue in 12 months. My process in franchise stayed the same. We were still in a recession in 2011. My skill set did not increase in 12 months. Well, maybe my prospecting skill set, but not my consulting skills. That right. That's why my whole point of my podcast is to share the inspiring stories so people out there can get a taste of like, who buys a franchise and why do they buy it and and then go, oh my gosh, that person sounds like me. But then also offer the business coaching side because I can't stand myself for not doing it because I've been a small business owner for 27 years. Because I know all of the limiting beliefs and the assumptions and the preconceived notions and the paradigms that keep most people stuck doing what they do because they believe it can't work for them, their market isn't good. The franchise is out for their success and not my success. And so that's the whole point of my show, is to bust through all these myths, help people go, stop making it so hard. Just come to Kim daily. Let's have some fun. Let's explore some options, zero pressure. And maybe you might change your life.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Absolutely. And it's so important to go in with the right mindset. I see so many like, I had the opportunity, Kim, to coach coaches coming through focal point. I get to see meet every brand new coach in the focal point system and I get to spend weeks with them. And it's amazing to watch these coaches flourish and grow, but also see the other side where they struggle. They struggle with things like, well, where's my market going to come from? I can coach anyone, everyone, someone, but no one's listening. Well, there's some work to do there. Right? And the mindset work around exactly what you were talking about. I gotta be a good marketer. I gotta go figure out how I'm gonna fill my funnel I gotta go figure out how I'm gonna talk to five new people a day. And that's hard. When you come in, you're like, no, I just wanna be a coach. You gotta go market your business.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: So, okay, you come out of corporate America basically more on a technical level, not in a, like, management or leadership level. And I'm sure you got some of that in the military, but now you're literally coaching some of the greatest coaches in the country, in the world. And as part of focal point, and we at Create wealth know this because I don't know if you know this, Trisha, but starting In January of 2024 this year, every other episode has been a focal point coach. We have met some amazing people this year, like all different little spins, exit strategy and mindset and stronger operations and becoming the leader that you wanted to be. I mean, all these topics we've covered this year on this show. And so you're the coach to those coaches. That's very impressive.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: I'm blessed and honored to be a part of their journey. It's beautiful and amazing all at the same time to watch these coaches come in and be so excited about getting out there and helping people. Like, that's what brings us all together. I believe in this franchise. Is that pebble on the pond. Right. We all want to create this effect with the one person that we might be working with that is affecting everyone else. Their employees and their families and their families under them, and even the community and sometimes in the state or maybe the world. Right. Which is huge. And so I'm humbled to be a part of that. It's been a growing journey for me as well, to learn a lot of lessons along the way.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Amazing. It's so good. Okay, so take us into present day. You have a focal point coach, and we mentioned in the beginning you love to focus in on women veterans. Tell us a little bit about the practice you run and how you work with different women veterans in case we have some listening to us right now who may be like, oh, can she help me?
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate that. I am hyper focused on working with female veterans who are in business, leadership or ownership. You heard my background. You know why I have an affinity for that. And what I typically spend most of my time working with these women on is communications and mindset. Listen, if we're not good at communicating with people outside of our normal communication style, we're missing 75% of the opportunities to get people to buy the product or service that we have available to them. That's huge. So we're only connecting with 25% of the population, naturally. So we start there. Like, we can expand how filling your funnel, how you're marketing, how you're selling by just understanding our communication style and the style of others. So that's where we start. And then there's a lot of mindset work. I work with a lot of women who are afraid. They're afraid to be strong. They're afraid to be on their own. They just open a business. They don't know what's on the other side. They may be, in a lot of cases, just hiring their first employee or their next employee. They're scared to death to do that. They look at the numbers and they aren't sure if they can afford to do that. But if they don't do that, if they don't make it affordable, then they can't grow their business, so they're not scaling. And that's where I spend most of my time is really working on communication style and mindset. I think that they come together really nice. And then, of course, we work on all of the facets of the business as well. But those are the two areas I believe are the most important and the engagements that I have.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Hey, Daily Coach fans, if you're ready to begin your own journey to find the perfect franchise, please email me right now at InquireimDaily TV. My services are totally free for you. That's InquireimDaily TV. Now back to the show.
I'm curious. Let's go to the first thing you said about communication.
So can you tell what kind of communicator I am just by talking to me for a few minutes?
[00:14:32] Speaker B: So lots of hand movement, lots of smiling, leaning in, asking personal questions, really having this connection with your eyes. If you haven't taken a disc, I might be surprised. Based on the way that you're running your business, you probably have some D tendencies as well because you just go get stuff done, right? So, Kim, if you could send the favor back my way because you seem to be pretty good at this, and I know that you probably are very good at it. What do you think my style is?
[00:15:00] Speaker A: I think you're same.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: You might be surprised. You might be surprised that I'm a high S. I have some adapted D tendencies, but for the most part, naturally, I'm a high is. The is actually stands for influencer. We also have a color associated with it, which is yellow, which I love. I think yellow is like the most amazing Thing. So those are the people that are going to be like the life of the party. They're going to be very engaging, they're very people focused. The D, which is more dominant and it's red, which I think makes a lot of sense as well, is more task oriented and they're the people that just want to go get stuff done. And you know, a lot of people like me, I adapt. I'm kind of a chameleon, right, because when I go into a training session I'm like, we're going to start on time, we're going to finish on time. This is what we're going to talk about, right? So people do peg me for being more high dominance when that's not natural for me, it's something that I have to pull out in order to be a good trainer. So I'm going to swing over to the S because that one is probably a mystery for a lot of people. And the S is more steady and very people focused, yet more introverted. You know, when we talk about extroverted and introverted, there seems to be a negative connotation around it. And here's the way I like to put it out there to people. Extrovert gets their energy from everyone else and being in the environment and being around other people. An introvert needs time for themselves in a quiet space to actually recharge. I like to use it that way so that people are, well, introverts. No, forget that. It's just because we need to recharge our batteries in a different way and we cannot leave the Cs out. We cannot leave them out. Husband is actually a high C, so we compliment each other really well. That high I high C and that is more compliant. It's someone who's very analytical, who is very introverted and task oriented. Just the one that wants to write you a three page email for those of you who are listening. You're like, oh no, I hate three page emails. You're not a C. I'm just saying that's so great.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: I come from a family of engineers. Like I am this. So the like ugly duckling in my family in terms of like which one of these things does not belong here? It's like the biggest ongoing joke. But I always say this like I am the driver of these people. I am the one that's out there, like, hey, look at me, look at me, look at me. I'm also a middle child but like my sister, my brother, both of my parents, they're all engineers. My sister's an actuary. They're like nerdy people. And going on vacation with those people is a joke in my family. While I have this very extroverted personality, I am an introvert. I have learned we all adapt to our environment. So in my family, I've learned through time it's better for me to zip it and just go with the flow. Right. I am so passive. Let these people figure it out and just follow along. Right. But in my own life, with my own children, it's like totally different. But it's such a fun thing. And not to like just stereotype our personalities, but it's really good. And it helps you, when you are a business owner, identify your strengths. And to identify that people on my team need to be what I'm not in order to complement my skills. I do need these, like, get it done people around me because otherwise I get annoyed if we just want to move the paper and not actually move the needle. But you need that conscientiousness. You need people that are more analytical thinkers. You need people that are going to look at the data or the situation from another perspective so you have that more comprehensive view. What a fun. I mean, being a coach is so amazing, isn't it? It's so fulfilling.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: It is, absolutely. And you know, it's an interesting franchise too. I've been able or been afforded the opportunity to spend time with all different kinds of franchises in my coaching business as well as the other one that I run. And what I find is that focal point is different. Hanging around these other businesses. They are not the owner, operator in your business, doing everything type franchises. Not all of them. Right. A lot of them are more service based and have employees. Back to what we were talking about earlier. Right. And being able to do that and serve people is absolutely amazing. But there are also in this business things that we're not good at and we should be paying attention to those things that we're weak at so that we can get help from others. Right. Like marketing, like lead generation. All of the things that we find hard or if we just want to go focus on coaching, let's allow those things to be coddled and taken care of by people who are good at those things. Just like you were talking about your team. Right. You got to have people who are analytical and people who are running from 1 to 2 to 3 instead of 1 to 5 and getting all of the things done. So yeah, it's been a very amazing business. We're going into our seventh year. I think we're in our Sixth year, we'll be going.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Amazing and still so passionate, I think. As we wrap this up, I have two questions I want to ask. It's kind of the same question, but to two different people. The first question I have for you, Trisha, is what advice do you have for the female business owner? Since that's your avatar, what's the problem you most commonly see these women getting into, and what's the advice you have to help them if they're listening?
[00:20:24] Speaker B: One that's very near and dear to my heart that we tackle a lot is pricing. You should charge for the value that you bring to the table.
So many women are underpricing the value that they bring to the table in their business. So my advice is think twice about your pricing. I want you to look at your competition or those that might be competing in that same space as you look at their pricing and charge more. So that's my advice.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: A hundred percent agree with that. You can toil for volume or you can find the people who understand value and who will pay for it all day long. Like Kim Daly. I was just telling a candidate earlier today, you're talking about a skincare franchise. And I was like, yeah, well, I'm that client. I had a facial last week and, like, they sold me some $68 lip plumper. I'm like, when you're selling hope, women will pay for whatever it is, right? She was dying. And I'm like, yeah, but there's more women like Kim Daly who will pay for that hope, right?
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Okay, so the other question is, what advice? And I end all of my interviews on this question. You've been a successful business owner now for 17 years, right? With these two franchises, you also work with business owners to help them be more successful in their business. So what advice do you have for the listener who's out there who's been following Kim daily but hasn't reached out to me, to Kim Daly to find the perfect business? Because they're just sitting there listening, but they haven't yet taken action.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Yeah, my gosh, Kim, to have somebody like you to help guide me, Someone, them, the listeners, through the process, they're missing a huge opportunity. Like, you do so much work for these candidates to put the right thing in front of them so that they don't have to go do all of the stuff themselves. I mean, that's what you're great at. The beauty of having someone like you on the team is that you meet them, you read them, just like you did today with us, right? Reading each other and what are you passionate about and what do you love? And you're going to go sift through the thousands of opportunities out there and present them with a handful or less things that are great matches for them. But why wouldn't you want to interface with Kim and she's going to take all of the hard stuff out for you automatically, just like that. And make it so much easier for you to choose the thing that's right.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: For you, even if the choices, hey, I thought about franchising. It's just not the right thing you're going to find when you work with Kim Daly. Zero pressure. I am never going to talk you into this. I'm going to talk you through it. I'm going to challenge your thinking. Right. Especially if I feel like you're getting stuck behind an assumption or a limiting belief. Right. This doesn't work in my market or, oh, I don't know about the people where I live, those kind of things. But end of the day, if you want to make this wrong, it is not right for everybody and you will feel zero pressure. So thank you so much for that little setup. So thank you for being our special guest here today. Tricia, is there anything else you want to say before we wrap up this awesome interview?
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Kim, thank you first of all, for having me on. It's a blessing to be a part of the focal point team. It's a bigger blessing that you are a very integral part of our team as well. And I appreciate you having me on the show today and this was fun.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: I love every single focal point coach I've ever met. Those who follow me know I've often said if I didn't love franchoise so much, I would 100% be a full coach. For those who are ready to begin your journey to have your own story to one day share on. Create wealth through franchising. You know that I want to be your franchise consultant, so please follow the link in the description right now. And don't forget that my name is Kim Daly and I want to be your daily coach.
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 tv. That's inquire@kimdaily tv.
