Jimmy St. Louis With Franchise123

Intro: [00:00:07] Welcome to Franchise Marketing Radio, brought to you by SeoSamba Comprehensive, high performing marketing solutions for mature and emerging franchise brands to supercharge your franchise marketing. Go to SeoSamba.com that’s SeoSamba.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Jimmy St. Louis with franchise123. Welcome, Jimmy.

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:00:42] Hi. Great. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about franchise one two three. How are you serving, folks?

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:00:50] Sure. Yeah. We created franchise one two three, really as a Zillow for franchising. We realized a couple of years ago that on the web, there wasn’t really this single source of truth for individuals looking to invest in the franchise. And it just wasn’t the ability for individuals looking to invest to connect directly to brands. But we did it with the credit franchise one two three. By aggregating as much data as we could from the web, and we created over 4000 company profiles of individual companies who are selling franchises both in the states and globally. And we built out those profiles and then we started marketing direct to consumer to bring individuals interested in investing in franchises on there. They create accounts to answer a couple of questions. We start to pair them up with not all 4000 brands, but brands that our algorithm thinks is best for them, based upon some questions that they answer. Then they have the ability to connect directly online with franchise owners and begin the process of considering an investment with them and quite a bit of success and looking forward to talking more about it.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:00] Well, if there was no franchise one two three, how were these folks kind of finding each other?

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:02:07] Sure. When you look at some other ways in which franchisees or prospective franchisees were engaging, they may go online and say, Hey, what are the best franchises to invest in? And that would either direct them specifically towards a brand that would direct them towards a franchise portal or may direct them towards franchise brokers or franchise consultants. So what took place then was you immediately went from the top of the funnel down to the middle of that buying funnel without having done enough research to really understand which brands are truly a good fit for you. If you click on top franchises and go directly towards a brand, now that brand is trying to sell you on their concept. Or if you go towards a portal, you’re clicking on it, whatever you think, looks nice without really understanding much about the brand. So those initial conversations, in our opinion, were far too early. Prior to Franchise one two three. And now that there’s a single one stop shop for people to go to, to gather information, to review franchise disclosure documents, to look at videos and sales presentations of each brand that’s on our platform now they have the ability to do a lot of their own research prior to having that initial discussion with the brand, that truly would be a good fit for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:34] Now, as part of a lot of people’s processes, going to a franchise broker, and I don’t think that everyone understands that a franchise broker isn’t showing you kind of the universe in terms of choices, they’re kind of curating that list. Does franchise one to three curate or is this kind of you’re trying to be the universe of franchise opportunities

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:03:56] Franchise ones or three is the universe of franchise opportunities. The way that it works is when you go onto our platform, you answer some questions. It starts with the roughly 40 100 brands that are on there. We ask you about location industries. You’re interested in minimum maximum investments. A couple of different questions that helps to narrow the universe, down from roughly 4000 to roughly five hundred or so. Then you can go out there and answer a couple more questions. And now we’re starting to direct you towards brands that were based upon your specific criteria. We are not directing them towards brands that have signed contracts with us or directing them towards brands that really are truly a good fit for you. And then you have the ability to engage directly with those brands directly through our platform. So different than when you mention a franchise broker who may not have the whole ecosystem of franchise or within their portfolio, they may have 10, 15, maybe 50, but they don’t have access to all of them. So what they’re doing is I discuss the forward. They’re starting with you in the middle to bottom part of that buying process or what they may call a funnel, and they’re leaving out thousands and thousands of other brand opportunities that could be a good fit for you. So what they’re doing is they’re controlling the universe that you operate within as opposed to you as a potential franchisee having complete control. That’s what we call it, the Zillow of franchising. So before Zillow, you were at the mercy of your agent to show you what was in the market. But now, when you go see your agent, you’re armed with all the information about all the comps, all the homes, what the market looks like, and now you’re much more educated buyer, which it gives you a lot more confidence that your overall decision.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:57] Now, are you finding that in the economy today that there’s a lot of folks out there looking for a franchise opportunity?

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:06:04] So the short answer is yes. There’s a lot more people now looking for franchise opportunities than we saw even a couple of years ago. However, franchising as a full franchise environment, you know, it really encompasses dozens and dozens of different industries. So we have seen that, of course, based upon the the way the world is today, there’s certain brands and industries that people are more attracted to than others. So some areas that struggled a little bit fitness franchising struggled a little bit there for a year. Restaurants and lots of bricks and mortar struggled there for a year, year and a half. We’re starting to see some traffic pick up where we are really seeing the fastest. Most movement is in franchises geared towards home services, whether that means working from home or actually improving your home. There’s brands that are out there like a garage, gangs or other home services groups where people who are at home want to make sure their house looks nice. And because of that, they’re engaging with companies to help their home look nice. And a lot of those are franchises. So we see that potential franchise investors have seen those as opportunities. Also, they were a little bit of a lower cost of entry. So that’s an example of a sector of the industry that we saw moving faster than some of the other ones were.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:31] So now are you? It sounds like you’re creating a marketplace where you have the franchise laws that can show their wares and show the opportunities, and then you have the potential franchisees that can kind of get a really broad picture of what opportunities are out there that might be the best fit for them. Is that a challenge to kind of maintain both of those and provide value to both of those people? Or do you kind of feel that you’re more useful to the potential franchisee?

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:08:03] But the you know, the experience really is managed as a multi-sided platform by the buyer and by the seller. And although we are there to provide the customer service to answer questions, we have onboarding specialists and programmers who will work directly with franchise owners to help make their accounts look and feel as powerful as possible and as accurate as possible. We also have customer service individuals who work directly with prospective franchisees to educate them on how to utilize the system. And of course, we’ll be there to consult with them and to answer questions and have give them a certain brands that may be a good fit for them to think about. But it is somewhat of a self-managed tool. However, we are starting to see that who’s really liking it are the franchisor wars, because not only do they have access to. A lot more leads. They also have access to brands or individuals who are ready to buy. So they’re more highly qualified, and they also have access to a dashboard, a series of other tools they can plug into to help make their buying selling experience more efficient. The prospective franchisees are telling us they’re really happy with it because they’re buying experiences better. They can navigate at their own leisure. They’re not getting bombarded with dozens of phone calls from dozens of brands that may have been generated from, say, a franchise portal. So their experience is a lot more pleasant as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:39] Now, if someone is looking for a franchise right now and they come on, this is it. Does this shrink the timeline from them saying them raising their hand and saying, You know what? This is something I’d like to pursue. And then you have you mentioned those questions that are helping me kind of narrow down my choices? And then ultimately at some point, I’m sure have a conversation with the appropriate franchisor that I feel is the best fit. Or together we self discover it’s the best fit if I do it through you. Is that kind of shortening my timeline to actually, you know, be in business? Is it just the same, but different? What how is it from a time standpoint?

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:10:21] They’re the number one factor that is speeding up the the transaction time is trust. We now have individuals who are on who can trust the system because they have all the information available at their fingertips and they feel much more confident because they have been in control of their decision the entire time because they’re in control of their decision. Now they’re able to go through and control that conversation, and that feeling of control has led the trust, which leads to a faster experience in terms of them making a decision to buy. We did not anticipate that, but that is often what we are seeing. We’re seeing when you give people more options, they’re actually more likely to narrow down their their decisions much more quickly.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:14] And then if you are a person who maybe is in corporate and hadn’t maybe considered franchising yet, but maybe you’re kicking the tires. Is there some kind of do’s and don’ts that you would recommend that potential franchisee? Like, what are red flags, kind of yellow flags and green flags when you’re kind of betting?

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:11:34] There so we did publish a book called Your Comprehensive Guide to Owning the franchise and available on our website and online, and you have a publisher who’s picking up as well. So we do take them through a series of exercises. The book is really it’s a workbook explains the ins and outs of do’s and don’ts of franchising. And then ultimately the objective is to help them go through the exercises to narrow them down from the four thousand down to one. The workbook is also available on our platform so you can go through the whole workbook. It’s pretty extensive, but you can do it efficiently. It’s a pretty intuitive tool. It helps you to ask all the questions. It gives you the guided tools to ask the franchise or the right questions gives you the guided tools to ask other franchisees who are going to eventually be your peers if you were to invest in that franchise. The the where they’ve been aligned and what has worked well for them and what has not met their expectations helps them go through the legal structure, even helps them get their budgeting and planning and preparation and pre-opening. So the goal of our book that we wrote was to arm potential franchisees with the tools to be successful and to make sure that they have the right tools in place to or the right have asked the right questions to arm them with the information so they can really make the best decisions for themselves.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:11] Now, from the franchiser standpoint, is there, if I’m a franchisor and I see that this is a great platform for folks. And I want to be kind of found first, are you? Is it? Do I have the ability to have like an enhanced listing or featured listing so that I am kind of at the top of the search when people are searching? Or is this something that you’re trying to be kind of neutral and Switzerland when it comes to this and people, it just bubbles up what the franchise prospective franchisee kind of would would find if it’s perfectly vetted.

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:13:48] Yeah, that’s a great question, the franchise or the first thing they should do is go on just grain accounts when they create an account. Now, instead of them having an incomplete profile with information about investing their franchise being not listed as not applicable or incomplete, now they have a complete profile when you have a complete profile. It’s going to work better. Take again our example with Zillow. If you click on a profile of a home and there’s no pictures of the home or there’s one picture of the home, very unlikely you’re going to continue your your research of that home. Same thing with this franchise. If they are signed up, they’re on there. They have their logo uploaded. They’ve completed the build of their microsite that lives on Franchise one two three. Their profile is done. They’ve uploaded information. It’s going to just be easier for that individual to engage with them. So that’s part number one. And that’s what we think is just the free, open market that franchise owners go on there and create an account. Great. If they don’t, unfortunately, those leads are likely going to go to a competitor now as it relates to enhanced listing after we have thousands of franchise owners on this system who are signed up and everyone’s site looks great, everyone’s profile looks great. We then will release some enhanced marketing where we will create banner ads and will allow franchise owners to advertise directly on their for premium placement, but it’s still up to them to manage their accounts. So we do anticipate finding ways for certain brands who are more engaged to continue to stay more engaged and to have pole position on leads by end of the day. It still is the consumers or the buyers decision on which brands are they clicking on?

Lee Kantor: [00:15:46] Now, in your estimation, haven’t been in the franchise business for a minute. Do you see franchising as just kind of growing at the rate it’s growing? Or is this something that you think is going to taper out? Or is this just kind of the future of businesses franchising in one form or another?

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:16:06] I think individual entrepreneurs are always going to be interested in expand their brand to a nationwide footprint, and that nationwide footprint becomes possible with franchising. It doesn’t mean other business models won’t work, but the business model of franchising is sound. It’s a way to deliver on the American dream for entrepreneurs who may not have been able to scale their brands before. So, you know, we really aren’t seeing any slowdown in the growth of franchises. But even if there was the great thing about franchising is there’s there’s retail opportunities and we’re working directly with large fitness franchises or called exponential fitness. And they have brands like Pure Bar and Row House and Club Plots and Rumble and 8K. And these are brands that are well known with a nationwide footprint, and a lot of their franchisees have had success, and now they’re selling their units. And so we have individuals who are interested in maybe buying an existing operation that’s already successful. The doors have been open for a number of years. So even within the franchise space, if there was to be stagnant growth on location numbers increasing, there’s going to be essentially facility trading that would be taking place. That’s something our platform offers as well. It gives people the chance to really understand the financials before they go in and take the keys over.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:42] Now is the marketplace. Is it franchise only or their businesses, like if I can buy and sell a franchise, can I buy and sell, you know, Joe’s Jiffy Lube type company.

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:17:58] Now, our platform is just four franchises. We know there’s other business brokers out there that work with a variety of other groups, and they help to do resells. Our platform is intended to give people a free, open look at everything franchising. But we’ve we’ve not gone into the world of business resales in general. It’s probably not something we would do. We think that we have an interesting niche here and we’re trying to position ourselves as the experts in this. And I think we’ve done a good job so far. So we’ll we’ll probably keep our focus pretty narrow.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:31] And so what do you need more of right now? Do you need more potentially prospective franchisees coming to you to sign up and go through the process? Do you need more kind of franchise orders filling out their listing in a more profound way? What what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:18:51] I think all three, of course, for a platform like this that’s going to allow us to understand what’s important to the potential buyers and the sellers. So until we have all four thousand plus franchisors on there, until we have a million users, we don’t think our job will quite be done. We think that’s that’s the magic number on both sides. For us, when people are on there, it’s a great tool. We’ve, you know, it’s kind of like we look at it like it’s a Ferrari that to get the keys and be comfortable getting into the end of the system and creating your account. And when you do, you’ll be very happy that you’ve been in there. So that’s that’s the way we’re looking at it. And yeah, what we need more of is just more eyes on the site and more individuals going on there. And when they’re on there, we know that they will be happy.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:42] And then what’s the fee to go on there for a prospective franchisee?

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:19:47] So for the franchisees, for the individuals, it’s free. So franchise one, two three, go on and you click, you create a free account. What most people don’t know when you’re buying a franchise is there’s an initial franchise fee that gets paid to the franchise or and groups like ourselves will. That’s how we get compensated. So we’re on a success based structure, which is really one of the line interest. We’ve seen that the market has been somewhat full of misaligned interest where salespeople get paid, whether a facility opens or not, and they may, they may sell three or five units and only one open. They still get paid for all three or five. We’re not doing that. We’re setting up the both sides for success. So the franchisee doesn’t pay the franchise or the company who’s listing their company. They pay nine point ninety nine per year, so nine hundred ninety nine dollars per year to be on there. And then they pay us a small percentage of the franchise fee as our commission, and that’s how we get paid.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:51] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success. One more time, the website.

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:20:58] The website is W W-w-what franchise one, two three,

Lee Kantor: [00:21:02] And that’s the numbers one, two and three, right?

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:21:05] Yes, it is. Yep, so that’s the number is one, the number two, the number three.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:09] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jimmy St. Louis: [00:21:14] Yeah, thank you. Thanks for all the great questions, and thanks for the chance to share a story with you. We appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:20] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.