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You Might Also Like: Millionaire University

2024/11/25
logo of podcast Nobody Should Believe Me

Nobody Should Believe Me

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Brien Gearin
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Michael Sutton
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Michael Sutton:Grill Hero的成功源于抓住烧烤清洁这个利基市场的先机,通过挨家挨户的推销和线上线下营销的结合,迅速积累了客户,并发展壮大。在大学期间,通过创业项目获得资金和指导,并对业务进行专业化改造。之后,通过特许经营模式,将业务拓展到加拿大和美国市场,并计划成为该领域的领导品牌。特许经营模式能够有效解决资金和时间限制,并帮助公司更快地扩张到新的市场。Grill Hero的商业模式具有高利润率和可重复性,客户通常每年至少会使用一次服务。新推出的会员计划也取得了良好的反响,进一步增加了营收。公司还提供烤箱清洁等额外服务,以增加平均订单价值。在营销方面,公司为特许经营商提供全面的数字营销支持,帮助他们优化广告活动并获得最佳效果。未来,Grill Hero将专注于美国市场扩张,并提升品牌知名度,目标是成为美国烧烤清洁领域的领导品牌。 Brien Gearin:本期节目访谈了Grill Hero创始人Michael Sutton,深入探讨了Grill Hero从创业到特许经营的历程,以及其商业模式、营销策略和未来发展规划。访谈中,Michael Sutton分享了Grill Hero的成功经验,包括抓住利基市场先机,线上线下营销的结合,以及特许经营模式的优势。他还详细介绍了Grill Hero的会员计划、服务内容和定价策略,以及公司对特许经营商提供的支持和培训。访谈最后,Michael Sutton还展望了Grill Hero未来的发展规划,包括美国市场扩张和品牌建设。

Deep Dive

Key Insights

Why did Michael Sutton decide to franchise Grill Hero?

Michael decided to franchise Grill Hero to expand quickly across Canada and the U.S., aiming to become the leading brand in grill cleaning before competitors could enter the market. Franchising allowed him to leverage the capital and entrepreneurial drive of franchisees to grow more efficiently than through corporate expansion alone.

What was the initial investment for a Grill Hero franchise?

The initial investment for a Grill Hero franchise was $67,000, which included a $30,000 franchise fee and $37,000 in startup expenses.

How did Michael Sutton and his partner start Grill Hero?

Michael and his partner started Grill Hero as a summer job while in university. They saw a demand for grill cleaning services in their local area and started by knocking on doors, eventually gaining five customers on the first day.

What marketing strategies did Grill Hero use to grow?

Grill Hero used a combination of door-to-door canvassing and digital marketing, including Google and Facebook ads, to grow their business. They found that using both strategies together led to exponential growth.

What is the expected revenue for a Grill Hero franchise in the first year?

A Grill Hero franchise is expected to generate between $150,000 and $300,000 in revenue in the first year.

How does Grill Hero handle marketing for its franchisees?

Grill Hero handles Facebook and Google ads for its franchisees, managing the campaigns either internally or through partners. They also use email and SMS marketing to drive repeat business and upsell opportunities.

What are Grill Hero's plans for expansion in the next few years?

Grill Hero plans to focus on expanding into Florida and Texas within the next 12 months, then gradually expand across the U.S. They aim to build the brand nationally and become the top name in grill cleaning services.

How does Grill Hero address seasonality in its business?

Grill Hero addresses seasonality by offering additional services like oven cleaning, which can be done year-round. They also plan to expand into regions with less seasonal variation to maintain a steady business flow.

What is the average ticket price for a Grill Hero service?

The average ticket price for a Grill Hero service is around $275, though this can increase with additional services like oven cleaning or parts replacement.

How many jobs can a single technician handle in a day?

A single technician can typically handle two to three jobs per day, with each job taking about two hours.

Chapters
Michael Sutton shares his entrepreneurial journey from a college summer job to growing Grill Hero into a successful business that cleans over 40,000 grills.
  • Started in 2015 as a student summer job.
  • Grew from zero to 300 customers in one summer through door-to-door sales.
  • Bootstrapped the business with a $10,000 grant from the university's entrepreneurship program.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
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Shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart Plus. See terms at walmartplus.com. With our business being such a non-competitive industry, we really want that first mover advantage. So a big reason as well for the franchising was we want to expand this across Canada and across the U.S. and become the brand name for this service before anyone else is able to come in and do the same thing.

Welcome to the Millionaire University Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Guerin, with you today. And on this edition of the MU Pod, we have a grilling expert. Maybe not in the sense that you're thinking, though I bet he could probably grill a mean steak just by looking at this man with his awesome beard. You feel like a steak guy. But rather, he's an expert at cleaning grills, and his name is Michael Sutton, the owner of the Grill Hero franchise. And he's going to be talking about how to grill a mean steak.

Founded in 2015, Michael started his company to help grill owners get the most out of their grilling season. And since then, Michael and his team have cleaned over 40,000 grills and he's franchised this concept. So Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Yeah, man, this is going to be awesome. I'm glad you're here because I'm a grill guy myself, and I freely admit that my grill is a disgusting disaster, yet I just scrape the top and I keep grilling on top. So maybe you can chastise me a little bit for that. But the main purpose we're having you here today is that we're going to jump in and examine your business all the way from your origin story in the startup phase to

through your growth phase to the point where you decided you were onto something. Then you decided, hey, this is something we can franchise and everything in between, like your logistics, your margins, revenues, team processes, you name it. But first I want to start with that origin story. What got you into grill cleaning? Yeah, it's actually, it takes us all the way back to 2015 when I was in university.

So I had a friend at the time, we were just looking for a student summer job, something that we could do to make an extra couple bucks, pay for tuition, that sort of thing. And we actually came upon the idea because my parents were looking for someone to come and get their grill cleaned. They really couldn't find anyone in the local area. My parents are kind of like our ideal customer, where they love barbecuing, but they hate having to deal with kind of the mess that it leaves behind. So we kind of just saw the opportunity there. There was demand for it, no one to kind of service it. And so we just

started going and knocking on doors and just pretending like we knew what we were talking about. Started going out canvassing, started talking to homeowners and people who love to barbecue. And the first day we went out door to door selling, we got five sales. And we had the big kind of idea light bulb kind of pop up in our head there that we were onto something and we had a pretty cool opportunity.

I think that's possibly the most fun part of entrepreneurship is when you go out and you get that proof of concept and then somebody gives you money in exchange for it. And you're like, light bulb. All right, we're on to something. Right. And then we were like, OK, now we have to figure out how to actually clean a barbecue. Yeah. Then you got to go do the work. That's that's the back half of it.

All right. So you go out, you get those first five people to pay you. I guess let's start there. How did you, I mean, clean and grill, it doesn't sound like rocket science, but you got to do it right and you got to do it well. What did you guys, how did you devise how to go about your work? Exactly. So we started where everyone starts, YouTube, started looking up videos, trying to figure out, okay, what do other people do to do this? We took our parents' barbecue and some friends' family started cooking.

testing it out. The first time we cleaned, it took like eight hours and we did a horrible job. So we just constantly kept trying it, figuring it out, going to the local hardware store, picking up different supplies. And then we just went out and started practicing on customers' barbecues. At the time, we were charging a lot less than we are now. So the quality of work might have not has been where we are, obviously, eight years later. But we just gave it our all, put in the work, spent tons of extra time figuring it out. And throughout our first summer, we just knocked on doors and did that.

kept reiterating the process, improving it, testing out different supplies, different processes, procedures. And by the end of the summer, we had 300 customers, pretty decent sized local business, a couple extra dollars in our pocket going back to university. And we had a pretty decent process and a good way to do things moving forward.

Wait, so in one summer, you went from zero customers and an idea to 300 customers, a couple bucks in your pocket, and a full-fledged local business. Yeah, and we didn't do any paid advertising or anything like that. All we had was a basic Wix website and door-to-door sales. That was it. Through door-to-door and our network, that was how we acquired all of our first 300 customers.

Wow. So in the early stages there, in your first weeks and months there, was it like two days a week you're out canvassing, knocking on doors, and three days a week you're doing the work? Or how did you...

organize that? So we would typically do about four barbecue cleanings in a day. So we would do our four cleanings, we'd enter about five, have a quick bite to eat at Tim Hortons or something at McDonald's. And then we'd go out canvassing from 530 until it was dark out. And we did that every single day throughout the summer. So we just tried to maximize the amount of time we had. And we're pulling 1214 hour days every single day for three, four months.

Wow. Wow. I love the hustle. Okay. So you're back to university. So I should say you're in Canada. We call it college. You call it university. You call it a barbecue. We call it a grill, but all the same thing. So yeah, but the Tim Hortons gave you away. That's what it was. All right. So you're back to school and you have 300 customers in the bag. What were your guys' thoughts? You were like, okay, we're going all in on this. Clearly that's what happened. But-

It must have been a seasonal business. Maybe it sounds like it could still be a seasonal business depending on where you're operating at. But that next year, did you guys come back full force and you're right back in it? Or how did you keep the ball rolling? Yeah. So I went back to university, went into classes and courses and all this stuff. And we just...

We shifted a lot. We were both really good students in first year. And then second year came, we put all of our time, attention while we're at school on growing the business. So the grades definitely suffered, but we were lucky enough to get into the entrepreneurship program through our university. They gave us some funding, some mentorship, got us involved with the local innovation center. So through that process, we professionalized our business, started putting processes in place, had some local mentors who were helping us with things. And we did a rebrand and all kinds of things to just

professionalize, revamp our business pricing structure. So we pretty much spent our entire time at university that year, just like working on the business. And then when we went back that next summer, we hit the ground running, hired teams, scaled our business, started using like digital advertising and things really took off from there.

Okay. So tell me about that summer of scaling. What was your first move? Was it hiring out a team? What did that look like? Or what was that first step? Yeah, we hired out a bunch of our friends who were looking for summer jobs, right? We were talking about our business at university, everyone wanted to get involved. So we hired, I think, four friends of ours, and we would just drive them out to job sites. And then we would focus on the sales, marketing, work

on the business. And then we launched Google advertising to take us kind of the next level, set up good campaigns on Google ads and launched our budgets there. And then worked on a bunch of other things through our branding, better uniforms. And then we would still do a lot of the door to door and canvassing ourselves.

So at this point, were you and your business partner kind of out of the actual operations in terms of scrubbing the grills at this point? Yeah, exactly. We would jump in and do jobs when we needed to. But for the most part, we were focusing entirely on like developing the business, sales, marketing, and managing the team.

Wow. Okay. Was training of your team, your friends, was that, I mean, again, cleaning grills, not rocket science, but there's got to be a certain technique and certain ways to do things that you and your partner had developed to that point. Was it difficult to train that or it's just once you bring someone on new, you're on site with them for, I don't know, a couple visits and then they've got the hang of it?

Yeah, back then it would be just we're on site for a couple days, get them up to speed and then let them run. At the time, I think we're actually like driving them around. So like we were able to do quality control checks, we would come into the backyards and check everything out, make sure everything was good. So so we had a pretty close kind of handle on the operation since we were still so close to it. And we were still like only two years in. So our processes, procedures, quality control stuff was like nowhere near where it is now.

Wow. Okay. I like that. I like that. So you're a couple of years in now, you've got a team, you've got processes, you started advertising. What was it that really started driving the growth? Was it still that ground and pound or did the digital advertising, was that something that really started driving more of that growth or was it combo platter?

It's the combo. And it's something we preach to our franchise partners now all the time is doing both very well is the recipe for success. So you don't just rely on digital. You don't just rely on neighborhood canvassing and local marketing. You do both of them at the same time. And it creates like a super magical effect that exponentially grows your business. So people would see the lawn signs. They'd see the flyers. They'd have conversations with us in person. And then they'd see our Facebook ads or they'd look us up and they'd find us on Google.

So those two things combined led to a pretty great growth year for us. Did you guys have first movers advantage? Was there any other businesses out there doing what you were doing or are you the first on the scene? We were the only one. So we had some competitors at the time, but they would only operate in Toronto. Like they weren't going outside of Toronto at the time. So we were kind of owning our local market in Oakville, Mississauga, Burlington.

Arlington area in Ontario there. So kind of in the suburbs, higher net worth area that we were targeting. And our competitors hadn't even gotten the idea to come out there. So we're the only ones offering it. What we were really doing when we were selling is like teaching people about the service. Like no one even knew it existed. They had the need, they had the demand, they had the dirty grill in their backyard, but they didn't know they could hire someone to do it. Something that they either neglected completely or did every couple of years and didn't enjoy doing it

took a long time, got super dirty, didn't do a great job. So yeah, it was something that we were just getting out there about the service and we were the only ones reaping the benefit of that because there was no competition. Yeah, I love that. So how did you decide what to charge, especially starting out, but then as you started growing, was it just, hey, this costs...

this amount and let's see if it works. We started like really low. So we started anything at like $80 that we were charging. And then each like multiple times a year, we were raising it up to see like where that level was. So I think by the end of the first summer, we got to 120 and then third year or second year, we would have got to like 160. And then we just kept going up to see where the resistance level was. And we never really hit it. Yeah.

Did it get to a point where were you charging the same for any grill of any size? Or is there maybe this is a question for later down the road now that you're 10 years into this almost. But does it depend on the size of the grill at all? Yeah, that's how we do our quoting is it's based on barbecue make and model. Right. So we figure out exactly what barbecue grill do you have? Then we can do a quote for that right over the phone, right on the spot. Okay. Okay.

And did you guys ever need or have or want to take advantage of startup capital or was it all bootstrapped? How did you guys get off the ground? I know you started real basic. You're just canvassing and probably the startup cost was pretty low there. But once you started growing, what did those expenses look like?

Yeah, we just bootstrapped. Like I mentioned, we got involved with our school's entrepreneurship program. They actually gave us a grant for $10,000. So at the time, that was like all the money in the world. It's like starving students. And we put all that right into the business. And that was really our kind of like seed capital. The rest, we were just bootstrapping through doing the jobs, reinvesting any earnings back into the business.

Wow. So then I imagine once you start getting more and more jobs, you start getting a little more free flowing capital in order to, because you have to buy trucks, you have to buy equipment. I don't know, maybe the tools you use are expensive. Was it at that certain point where you're like, okay, we're at a certain level of cashflow where, hey, now we can add a second truck so we can go carry our guys to more places, right?

So at the time, we were actually just like everyone was using their own personal vehicles. We would throw some magnets on the sides and then we would comp them for mileage. So we were keeping it super low cost at the start, like super variable. So we could scale up, scale down as quickly as possible. And we weren't carrying a ton of like overhead expenses. Okay, awesome. So very, very low barrier to entry in terms of funding.

and then a helpful grant from the entrepreneurship program. I think that's something that small business owners forget a lot about a lot of the time is that there's grants and SBA loans, things like that out there that are available to help you start a business when a lot of people think that the financial side of it is a total game changer and ender to their idea, right? Yeah, once you start looking into it, you find all kinds of different grants and free loans and different opportunities to get startup capital. So definitely something all business owners should be looking into and keeping their eye on.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's fast forward a little bit. What year did you start franchising? So we started franchising, well, we sold our first franchise in 2022. That launched into 2023. Okay, gotcha. So what was the impetus leading up to, we should franchise this?

So throughout the journey, so over there, like I gave you the first two years, third year, fourth year, fifth year was really testing out different business models. So we tested out independent contractors where we had some sort of like revenue split. We tested out employees and then we figured out the employee model worked the best and we went to another location. So we were primarily operating across Toronto, the greater Toronto area, and we moved our business into Ottawa and set it up our own corporate territory there.

And what we realized is like, we ended up spreading ourselves too thin. We didn't really have enough capital to invest properly in growing into a new market. But it worked really well. Like there was no other companies operating in Ottawa. And so we always like we still operated there. We still did our expansion, but we always wish we would have done it with Ottawa.

a couple more dollars in our pocket and more time and attention because we were just spread way too thin. And so what we determined over time was that it makes a lot of sense to do the franchising model where we can find passionate people who want to be entrepreneurs, who have the capital to invest properly in growing in new markets, and can come and just own that market and dominate it. Because we were really just scratching the surface in Ottawa. It took us probably four years to build it up to...

anywhere of a decent size operation, where if a franchisee came in with the right amount of capital, the right time and attention, they could have done that growth probably within the first year. Wow. Okay. So deciding to head into franchising as opposed to just growing organically and growing your own corporate,

Sounds like it was more time and capital intensive to do it on your own when you could go essentially spread your wings and find people who want to be entrepreneurs or other entrepreneurs who are out there that could also aid with the startup capital and kind of presumably have that experience enough to know what it's like to own a business and just be handed the keys. And is it kind of like a business in a box? Yeah.

Is that ready to roll?

With our business being such a non-competitive industry, we really want that first mover advantage. So a big reason as well for the franchising was we want to expand this across Canada and across the US and become the brand name for this service before anyone else is able to come in and do the same thing.

So we look at it like very similar to how 1-800-GOT-JUNK started in like the late 80s and how they expanded their brand and really owned the junk space across North America. We look at them as the proven roadmap for that. And we want to do the same thing with barbecue cleaning or grill cleaning.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You come down here, people are going to be calling it grills or smokers, I guess. Okay. So what's it like to be a franchisee with Grill Hero? What's the startup capital needed? Are there only certain areas, certain cities, certain states that you'll go into? What does that all look like?

So we actually just got our FDD finalized in the US. So we're right now in the process, we have like a compliant FDD and franchise agreement. And we're now just starting our state registration. So in terms of like where we can sell into right now, it's any of the states that you don't need to register in. And we're in the process right now of registering in the state of Florida as like our first kind of registration state.

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Okay. Very cool. That's exciting. How many franchise locations do you have in Canada right now? In Canada, we have five franchisees. Okay. So I don't want to gloss over how going from a single corporate entity to five franchisees goes. What was the growth pattern like when you started? You started franchising out one location, then on to two. Did it get easier and easier because you built out systems and processes, or was it an extreme learning curve with especially the first one, but then any of them after that?

So our first franchisee, I would say we got really lucky with. He was actually one of our internal managers. So he knew the business super well. We worked really well with him. And so he gave us a really easy job when he became our first franchisee. He already understood everything. He knew the cleaning process inside and out. He did great quality of work, didn't cause any issues and worked really closely with us on developing the systems and processes.

So we kind of limited our first year to just, okay, let's just operate. Let's get one franchise going. Let's figure it out. Let's tweak things. And then we launched to three additional locations the next year. And so that was a really good foundational year for us to really like dial everything in, get the training program up,

to speed, get everything improved to the level that we wanted it to be to really start going bigger and bigger with our franchising program. And so then the next year, we brought on three new franchise locations. We had everything ready to go, right? We had the ops manual dialed in. We had the training dialed in. All the processes, procedures, all the different resources we had were really honed and ready for that next level of growth.

So what's a single franchise initial investment look like? So right now there's a $30,000 franchise fee. So that covers obviously the territory. And then there's an extra $37,000 in startup expenses. So all in, you're only looking at about $67,000 to get a territory up and running. Wow. Okay. And as far as franchise and franchising goes, that feels awfully affordable, right? I mean...

Depending on who you're talking to, but that's lower barrier to entry for sure. Now, the franchisees, do they need to have a real estate like an office location? Do they need to go purchase a truck? Or can they start just as granular as you did where they can probably operate from their desktop at home and then hit the car, put a magnet on it and go clean some grills?

So you don't need a physical location. We typically have our franchisees, they'll have a storage unit that we can ship down supplies to for them, or some location that they can do that for. But it's typically going to be like a 10 by 10 storage unit to keep costs low. And then they'd invest in like one branded vehicle, typically, they're going to lease that on a monthly or bi bi monthly lease.

And other than that, startup supplies, equipment are pretty reasonably priced. A lot of the initial startup capital is going to go into your initial advertising spend. So it's $15,000 in initial advertising and another 15,000 in working capital. So like $30,000 is working capital.

advertising. And then the rest is going to go into your first vehicle expenses, couple months covered there, your first months of insurance and supplies equipment. So it's pretty low cost to entry to get started and scaled up. And yeah, we like it that way. We want to keep it low barrier so we can expand and grow the business across. Like I said, we want that first mover advantage. So we want to be awarding territories across the US by the end of this year, and all the states that we could possibly operate in and keep growing. So...

So how quickly can one of your franchisees expand? I mean, you went from zero to 301 season.

Are there expectations of new franchisees on starting on day one till day 100 or day 365 that they should be hitting certain milestones? Yeah, absolutely. Within the first year, we expect our franchisees to do at a minimum $150,000 in revenue. So it's between $150,000 and about $300,000. That's kind of the range we expect. And we work with them very closely with our coaching and support program to get them as close to that $300,000 as possible.

Okay, very cool. So now we're talking a little bit of business numbers here. So between you said between 150k and 300k. So it sounds like from one franchise, the certain or certain revenue levels are pretty set there. What does it look like your business in general, or just a franchise in terms of margins at all levels?

So it really depends, I guess, how you operate your business. We're going to have our item 19 come out. That'll have all the detailed stuff in there, but it is good margins. I don't want to speak to specific numbers and get any trouble with my legal team there. Yeah. Because I mean, this business is genius because it's low overhead to start up. I imagine the tools and the equipment you need are nothing earth shattering in terms of expense. Yeah.

And then as long as you go there, you clean the grill, get in, get out, and you have a happy customer, that should allow for some pretty serious margins, which is good all around. And it's recurring. So typically people will get their grills cleaned once per year. We have many customers who do it multiple times a year. So there is like a recurring nature to the service. So you're not just one and done. You're acquiring that customer and hopefully you're building a customer for life.

Wow. Okay. So do you guys have it? You said it's recurring. Is it where it's just on their own volition? They're like, Hey, I'm going to do this in January and I'll do it in July. Or do you have like an actual program where they can buy in on a subscription basis?

Yeah, we actually just launched our membership program. So yeah, we're selling subscriptions anywhere from once to 12 times per year, signing customers up on contracts so that they have recurring memberships. And then typically we're charging those customers once per year, you know, at the start of the year for their membership. And they take advantage of all the services and different things that they get in that membership. Okay, I love that. I want to talk a little bit more about that. If you're able to share what's the uptake on that from your customers?

It's been great. Like we've launched it now probably for the, we're like a month in and we've only kept it like pretty, we're actually just like reaching out to people who left us good reviews. So reaching out to like our best customers, people who've left us five stars, express that they had a really good experience. And we already have between, I think, 50 and 70 memberships signed up and we're only like a month in. So we're kind of ramping that now. We're going to start advertising it more heavily, start email blasting, that sort of thing. But initial reaction is people are really excited about it. So.

Okay, that's awesome. So what's the average ticket price on this? If you're doing just a one-off, I know it's based on size, but if you conglomerate them all into one pot and average them down, what does an average invoice look like? And then I'll ask that same question about the subscription model too. Yeah, so what we've seen in average job size is about $275,000. And we're obviously constantly working on increasing that. But for your typical average grill cleaning, that's what it looks like.

Okay. And then for someone to sign up for a subscription, do you have like monthly, bimonthly, like what are the levels and prices that they can sign up for? Yeah, right now we have it set up as so annual cleaning. So once per year, they get like a 10% discount. And then we have biannual, so twice per year, four times a year, and then 12 times a year.

Okay. And I will mention as well, we also do oven cleaning as another service. And so in that membership, sometimes people will split, okay, I'll get my barbecue cleaned once and then my oven clean once per year.

Okay. Genius. I like that. So is there, have you found people picking a certain level of membership that's most common? I imagine it'd be the one in the middle. It's yeah. It typically tends to be the one in the middle. I would say the bronze or like the annual membership is also quite popular just because people typically just want to do it once per year, but the next level up. So the two is, is, is like the next most popular.

Okay. And have you found that you guys end up, I don't want to call it an upsell, but I imagine there's been plenty of occasions where you go to service a grill and the grates are rusted out or the flavor riser bars are like all burn up. Is that where do you have the opportunity to go in and say, Hey, we cleaned your grill here, but we're noticing that like your grates are about to fall through. We have a solution for that. Is that something you guys get into?

So yes. And like thinking about it too, like how many people's barbecue or grill igniters don't work, right? Or their partners are rusted out, have a hole in it. So yeah, there's a whole other opportunity with repairs and parts replacement. And so what we do on the corporate side is we actually stock a bunch of inventory for all the parts and, or I shouldn't say all the parts, but a lot of the most popular grill parts and accessories. And then we're able to provide that to our franchisees.

So we have relationships with a bunch of the major manufacturers. We bring in stock and we're able to get that out to customers as well. So that's a pretty big part and something that we're growing and working on as well is having more fulfillment capacity to be able to get people the exact part they need for whatever issue they're having with their grill. Yeah.

Is that something where you keep the trucks would be stocked with certain very common pieces of equipment so that like day of your technician can be like, hey, we noticed this is broken. We can fix this for this price and be done today.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So with the branded wrapped vehicles, they have the ability to carry around a lot of those parts as well as accessories, right? So that customer might not have a grill cover or they might have one, but there's holes in it. So like a common thing we get asked after people see their grill, like cleaning and sparkly and looking the best they've ever seen it is, okay, how do I keep it clean? And then if you're able to then upsell the

the grill cover, the grill scraper, any other parts they need, you're able to increase that average ticket size. So that's something we're very focused on, like improving and getting out to all of our franchise locations. I'll be honest, we're not doing it enough. So we're moving more and more in those directions and working on a bunch of different programs to help scale that to increase our average job size. Okay. So increasing average job size. What about the average job in a given day? How many jobs can one truck handle?

Typically, the way we set it up is one technician can handle two to three jobs per day. Okay. Two to three jobs per day. So probably an hour and a half to two hours per job? Yeah, roughly around two hours per job. And then it can obviously drive time and different things. Depending on the technician, more experienced, you can actually do quite a bit more jobs depending on how proficient you are with cleaning, the different kind of variables that come into play there. But yeah.

Okay. So I imagine for your franchises, your franchisees, they're bringing in a new technician pretty quickly because if assuming that the, it takes off as quickly as it did when you started, there's going to come a time where they're not gonna be able to keep up with their book of business and it's probably going to happen pretty soon.

So when we launch, we actually we have in our launch program for our franchisees to start with employees. So the way we set up our franchise opportunity is we don't want people who want to just go buy a business and then go clean barbecues. That's not the intention at all of who we're looking for as franchisees. We're looking at people who are looking to scale, build and be managers from day one. So they're going to start with at least one technician. Typically, they're starting with two, three, four.

four technicians, and then their manager on day one, and they're focusing on growing their business. So they're focusing on local sales, marketing, building their network, getting out in the community to build their business and their brand. And so yes, there might be some situations where they're going to get out into the field, help a technician, they're going to do training, they might jump in and do a job here and there if they want to, or they need to. But typically, we want them staying away from spending all their time going out and cleaning grills.

Right, right. Yeah, that would be, I imagine if you're looking to buy into a franchise, chances are you're not trying to actually do the actual production for very long. Exactly. Yeah. So what are some of the, again, I don't want to gloss over, like starting a franchise and running a franchise is not easy. What were some of the struggles that you ran into when you decided the franchise and what are some of the struggles that you might run into on a daily basis?

So, I mean, it's a completely different world being a franchisor. It's actually kind of funny. Before we started franchising, I had our corporate operations so dialed in that I wasn't involved at all in the day-to-day operations. So I had managers in place. I had everything running super smooth. So it was very hands-off for me. My girlfriend at the time would always...

constantly be saying like do you actually work like what are you doing on a day-to-day basis because i was so hands-off and then when we did the franchising it completely switched so now i'm like pulling you know 12 14 hour days every single day because it's a whole new business that we're figuring out and expanding so the biggest change for me was really just with the lifestyle because we had that great situation for myself where i was very not involved in the day-to-day and now i'm like

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What does your corporate team look like? How many folks are on your team and what are the roles acquired in order to build out a franchise or as a franchisor? So at the height of our season, which in Canada, it is quite seasonal. Like I mentioned, we do like oven cleaning and other services throughout the year, but barbecue or grill cleaning is still our main focus. So

At the height of the season, we had about 70 technicians in our corporate store with a whole kind of, you know, we had four seasonal managers, two full time managers in there, and some other kind of staff that helps with that. So yeah, a sizable operation in corporate. Sorry, what was the other question?

I was just curious what your team looks like today in terms of now that you do have franchises, who's all at the corporate level that helps get these franchises out there besides yourself? I know you said you're highly involved again now, but what is the help around you look like and what are their roles in bringing more franchises to more towns and cities?

Right. Awesome. So yeah, so the corporate square, like I mentioned, we have a pretty sizable operation. Then we have our general manager, Matt, who runs corporate. So we can not be very involved in that at all. And then on the franchisor side, we have myself, I focus on kind of big picture stuff. I help with marketing as well. And then working with our franchise partners.

And then my director of operations, Nathan Brewer, he focuses more on the support and franchise development side. And then we also run our call center. So we have a head of sales and call center who runs the sales staff and customer support staff. And then we have a franchise coordinator who helps behind the scenes on facilitating a number of different things, different projects with franchisees. She helps with a lot of the social media marketing and a bunch of different things to help keep things running smoothly.

So you mentioned seasonality and I kind of glossed over this. How does that work? Especially starting in Canada, you guys have a long winter compared to us down in many parts of the US. It sounds like you added the oven cleaning to the mix. Was that to offset seasonality or do you guys earn so much money during the season that the winter is okay and it's just planning time for next year? How does that work? So historically, that's how we did it was we would shut down

reduce expenses as low as we can. And we'd make enough money in the busy season that we would get through to kind of next year and revamp. And then we would grow super fast because we'd be focusing the entire off season on growth plans, marketing, sales, pre-booking for next year. And then we launched our oven cleaning with kind of two focuses. So

A great part of the oven cleaning is it's an additional service we can upsell to our customers so we can increase that average ticket size. So you can go to a job, you can clean the oven, you clean the barbecue. And now instead of $275, you're at like $400 or $500. So that's a big benefit of it. The other benefit is it's indoor service and you can do it all year round.

And we typically have a lot of people who are interested around Christmas time, around Thanksgiving, big holidays where they're going to be cooking in their oven. They want it clean. They want it ready to go. Or they're going to have a bunch of family and friends over who are going to be looking at it and they want it to be in decent condition. So those are the two focuses of that.

But throughout, obviously, a lot of the US, we have different markets where there is no seasonality with the barbecue or grill cleaning. And you can get down and you can be doing it all year round. So we have a lot of experience on the seasonal side and how to make that work. And we're even more excited for moving into states where there is no seasonality and we can really hit the ground running, offer the services all year round. And it makes the model go from good to amazing. Yeah, I was going to say that, especially from about where I am in Ohio and south, I

There's no reason why this wouldn't be a year-round business because I still grill in the winter. Granted, it's a little bit less because we have about two months where it's really cold, pretty cold. But.

but my grill is still a mess and I might realize it in January, right? So that's genius. I know you said your first thing you're working on is in Florida. So there's a good start. You got one of the warmest States in the union. So well done there. Okay. I like that. And then with the ovens, that's something where I'm sure mine's messy too. You guys go in and basically you don't have to like reinvent the wheel. You've got probably the same equipment that you can clean the grill with, can go in and clean the oven. I imagine that's probably for roughly the same price and the same amount of time.

It's a little bit lower price, but it's similar. It's very similar price, very similar time commitment. And like you said, this supplies overlap. So it's a really easy thing for us to do while we're at the job, as well as the training is very similar, right? It's a lot of the similar techniques and things that we're teaching the technicians for cleaning grills. So it's a great upsell opportunity and it's a great way to increase that average ticket.

Because you could be going doing a grill cleaning, a grill repair, and an oven cleaning all at one job. And your ticket size could be $600, $700 instead of $275.

Right, right. Okay. Now I know I'm going to be hopping around here, but you also mentioned the marketing. So I know this is different at just about every franchise or franchisor that I've spoken to does it slightly differently. How do you guys handle the marketing for your franchisees? Or are you more of a franchisor where you say, hey, kind of go do your thing. Here's...

are ideas for marketing, but go do your thing? Or is it all internal on the franchisor side for you where they pay you a certain amount of money per month and you guys handle all their digital? So right now, the way that we're working is we are handling the Facebook and Google ads for our franchise partners. So they all allocate spend and we'll help manage those campaigns either with partners that we're working with to manage them or we do it internally. We are looking at the agency model where we have agencies come in and handle it at

some more of the Facebook ads as well, but we're quite involved with it, right? So we're creating the creative through the brand fund. We're working with either the agency or internally to help optimize the ads to make them as good as possible. And then working with franchise partners to kind of bring their ideas to life if they have specific things they want to run in their area. So, yeah,

Yeah, we don't leave them to their own devices to like, hey, go figure out digital because it is complex. And it's it's honestly, it is very hard for them to just become a digital expert overnight and run good campaigns. So we support heavily on that side to help them get the best results.

Okay. And especially, I imagine over all these years, you have a bit of a playbook in hand on the types of ways to advertise digitally that push results. Exactly. We have four or I would say five years of history, for example, on Meta Ads platform of like, okay, we've run all these different ads. We know what works, what doesn't work, what copy works the best, what different...

video works versus other types of video images. So we have a really good system of we know what works and what doesn't work. And we've applied that to a bunch of different markets, and it's always been the same thing. So we know what works and what doesn't work. And we're able to pass that along to our franchise partners, rather than just saying, hey, everyone, go figure it out and start from scratch.

So what does your tech stack look like of the things that you invest in on the digital side? You mentioned Facebook and Google. Are there any other platforms that you guys advertise on or other things that you use that would still technically be in the digital marketing realm like email or text message or any of that?

Yeah, so I would say Google and Facebook are like our primary focus. And then we have email marketing is a big part of our mix as well, especially to drive repeat business and bring people back, get them on memberships and other upsell opportunities. And then we do SMS marketing. And that's been very successful as well.

Those are our main focuses. We are looking into other platforms as well. So we're testing out things like Pinterest, LinkedIn, but we're on a corporate side just kind of testing out different platforms constantly to see, okay, what works? Where can we get a really good cost of customer acquisition and start diverting more budget to? But keeping our franchisees sticking with the ones we know work until we're able to prove some of the different platforms.

Right, right. And then do you guys do a lot or do you handle the Google business profiles for your franchisees and the like the automation or the review automation? Do you use automation for review getting or is that kind of up to the franchisee to go acquire those five star reviews? Yeah, so we use a software called Nice Job. And they've been, you know, honestly amazing for getting reviews. I think, you know, our average franchisees like gotten like over 100 reviews this year alone. I think across,

our locations. We've probably gathered like 14 to 1500 five-star reviews this year. And so it's been awesome using NiceJob for that. So we set them up with our NiceJob system. We have a franchise-wide discount that they use. And then we're able to manage... We have access and we help manage their Google My Business. And we set that up for them from the get-go. And then they have access to it to update. So they'll update. Obviously, if they need to update hours or add additional images, pictures, text, different things like that,

they're able to be in there and doing what they need to do to help improve and grow it.

Yeah, very cool. I know, obviously, Google services, Google business profile being one of the small but possibly mightiest thing that a small business can do to help grow their visibility and get more phone calls, more inbound calls leading to more business. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's awesome. All right. So what's coming up for Grill Hero? I know you're launching into the US here. That's got to be incredibly exciting. What are your plans for the next 12 months, two years, two to five years? What does it look like for Grill Hero?

So yeah, I mean, the biggest, the most exciting thing for us right now is US expansion. I think we've done a really good job to prove the market in Canada. We know it works there. We've tested it. I would say going to naturally grow across Canada and sell out Canada within the next three years.

The U.S. is really where the room for growth is and the most exciting opportunities lie. So our main focus right now is let's get into some of the warmer states. Let's focus on Florida, Texas. We're actually going to just stick with Florida, Texas. That's what we're focused on. If we get other prospects from other areas across the U.S. and in good markets, obviously we're going to talk to them and we're going to look at setting them up. But we're really going to focus a lot of our time attention on Florida, Texas, and

and try and grow as quickly as we can down into those states over the next 12 months. And then from there, once we have a good base, we'll start expanding out and shifting more of our marketing dollars and focus on the friend dev side across the entire US targeting states that we know the business will do well in. And so, yeah.

US expansion, that's going to be our focus, as well as like building the brand. So alongside obviously just selling franchises, we're going to do things like podcasts and other ways to get the brand visibility out there, start working with national ad accounts and different things that we can do to grow across the US and really develop Grill Hero as the brand name for grill cleaning services.

and grill repairs, like everything to do with helping homeowners get the most out of their grilling season. We want people to think immediately of Grill Hero and become that name in the US market for the services we're offering before anyone else can even think about getting there. Yeah, well, that was going to be one of my last questions. Do you still have first mover advantage here in the US? Because I know where I am. I can't think of knowing anybody, any businesses out there that provide grill cleaning service. Granted, I haven't looked, but I certainly haven't heard of any. Is it different?

There are. I mean, depending on the market, there's going to be competition. There are other people providing grill cleaning services across the US. A lot of them are just they have a website up and they show up and they clean your grill and it's your money on the weekends. There are some others who are professional services who are across counties and different states, but there's no big brand in the industry.

It's all regional or mostly local players, a couple of regional players, no one who's really brought it national. And so that's what we want to do. We want to get down and we want to bring it national and do it well, make it a great opportunity for our franchise partners so they can expand, they can grow big businesses, they can acquire new territories and they could really just enjoy and love their experience of owning a grill hero franchise. Yeah. Well, like you said, you're going to be the 1-800-GOT-JUNK of grill cleaning, right?

That's right. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Awesome. Well, Michael, this has been fantastic. Learned a whole lot about franchising and especially in a niche market that is nowhere near saturated. I want to make sure that all our listeners and viewers can get a hold of you if they want to either A, talk to you about possibly being a franchisee or learn from you, learn what you're doing or just connect in general. What's the best way to do that? Yeah.

Yeah. So if they're interested in franchising, they can go to grillhero.com, click start a franchise and they'll fill out a quick form there. And then we'll get in touch with them, have a conversation, give them all the additional information they need to make a decision on if it makes sense to go forward and take them through our franchise development process there. If they want to just connect with me, they can hop on my LinkedIn profile. It's Michael Sutton on LinkedIn. And I think there'll be a link as well in the description. They can connect with me and we can have a chat.

on LinkedIn or just keep up. I post content there regularly about the business. So that's a good place to connect with me as well. Okay. Awesome. I love it. Well, folks, you heard it here first. Go ahead and reach out to Michael. Hit him up on LinkedIn. As you can tell, he's an awesome dude. And Michael, thank you for your time and knowledge today. This was a pleasure. I appreciate it, Brian. It's great being on. All right.

All right. Thank you to Michael Sutton for joining us today and sharing his time and knowledge. Lots of invaluable lessons. One that I really took away from him was the fact that when he and his partner started this business, they were in college and they just wanted to go see if people would pay for this service. And they went around knocking doors. They ended up with five paying customers.

And I think that's the number one way to get your little business off the ground is just go knock on doors, go tell people who you are and what you do and how you can help them and see where you can take it from there. Once you get that first exchange of money, you have proof of purchase, proof of market necessity in what you're doing. So take that advice, run with it, get that business going if you haven't already. And folks, this is going to be it for me today. But before I sign off,

I want to ask two things of you. One, if you enjoyed this episode, please go ahead and hit the share link button on your pod player and text this episode to a friend or coworker, colleague, whoever it might be who you think would enjoy it as well. And number two, I want to do a little tease here at Millionaire University.

We've been putting together our first foundational course. So I want to plant that little bug in your ear and put it on your radar that there's something big coming from us here at MU in the not too distant future. So keep that in mind. All right, folks, Brian Guerin signing off today. I cannot wait to see you on the next episode of the Millionaire University Podcast. I hope you all go out there and crush it today.