From D1 Athlete to $4M+ Business Owner: My Franchise Story

The following is a transcript from Episode 1 of The Franchise Champion Show, where host Alan Regala shares his complete journey from D1 athlete to successful franchise owner. Originally interviewed by Wes Barefoot on the Franchise Unfiltered podcast, Alan tells the story of how he built and sold a multi-million dollar ShelfGenie franchise business over 14 years. Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform. 

Alan Regala: Welcome to the very first episode of the Franchise Champion Show. I'm your host, Alan Regala. What is this show about? It's about providing useful, practical education on franchising and what it takes to be successful as a franchise business owner. This is for people that believe they were meant for something more, and they're tired of working for someone else.

This is for people that want to build generational wealth and have more control over their time. And this is for people that want to learn how to become a future franchise champion.

So who am I? I'll give you the short version. I was a competitive tennis player growing up, and I played Division 1 at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Go, Mustangs!

After working for a few years for someone else in the corporate world, I went on to start my first business where I invented a product, got patents, handled manufacturing, branding, marketing, sales and everything. This was a little product called Pico Pad wallet notes. It was sticky notes and a little miniature pen that slid out so you could take notes while you're on the go, and then the whole thing fit in your pocket. Pretty cool.

It went well for what it was, but eventually it fizzled out thanks to the iPhone coming out and kind of wiping out the need for it.

So I needed to do something different, and I decided that franchising would be perfect for me because there's a proven business model and they have systems and processes in place, and all I needed to do was execute. I used a franchise coach to help me find the right business, and I bought my first franchise: ShelfGenie.

I spent the next 14 years growing my team, becoming the top performer in the system and generating over $4 million in annual sales. My lifestyle was fantastic. I had a manager and a team in place, so I would spend my time doing the things I was interested in, like design, sales and marketing, and managing the team.

At some point I decided that 14 years is a long time to do the same thing for me. I had other friends doing entrepreneurial things that really got me excited, and I was like, I just don't have the fire in me for this anymore. So I think it's time to sell.

So I sold my business in May 2024 and retired for about nine months. I played a lot of golf and tennis, and then I found my next calling: franchise coaching. So I came full circle, and now I help people that want to do what I did.

My company is called Athlete to Owner. Why athlete to owner? Basically, I use the principles of high performance training as an athlete to be successful in business. Principles like discipline and grit that I learned from competitive tennis were instrumental in my journey.

Wes Barefoot: What's up everyone? Welcome back to the Franchise Unfiltered podcast. Today I'm joined by a good friend of mine, Alan Regala. Alan, how are you doing man?

Alan: I'm doing well. Thanks, Wes.

Wes: This is going to be fun. You and I have known each other for... Actually, Kelly told me this morning something popped up on one of her social media timelines. This day, seven years ago, we were at new franchisee training for ShelfGenie. So we are right at our seven year anniversary of becoming ShelfGenie franchisees.

You were a long time ShelfGenie franchisee up until pretty recently. You sold your ShelfGenie franchise business and congratulations on that.

Alan: Thank you. Yeah, it was about a year ago. Time flies.

Wes: You had that for 14 years. You were very successful. I'll say it because I know you won't brag on yourself, but you were the highest volume ShelfGenie franchisee for pretty much the entire time I've been involved with ShelfGenie. Very successful, and you were able to sell it, which is a huge accomplishment.

Alan: Thanks, man. Yeah, it was quite a ride, quite a journey. I learned so much throughout that entire process and met a lot of good people. At some point it was just time to sell and I'm glad I ended it and had a really great experience overall.

Wes: It's cool to see it come full circle. I think it's something a lot of people don't put thought into when they're getting ready to start a business - most people don't start a business and own it forever. People buy and sell businesses all the time, and I think in a lot of ways it should be the goal.

If you've built a business that is profitable and has value in someone else's eyes to where they will come in and write you a check to buy that business from you so that they can take it over and hopefully grow it from where you have it, that's what it's all about.

Alan: Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. When I was at the Meet the Team day 14, 15 years ago, Alan, the CEO at that time, had asked me what's your exit strategy? I was like, I have no idea. He said nobody these days plans to have this business forever. Kids don't typically want the business necessarily. So I said, well, I have no idea. I asked him what's yours, and he said, well, I'll probably run this for like five years and then sell it. And I said, that sounds good.

Wes: I think it should at least be in the back of your mind. Some businesses are easier to sell than others, so that's something you should put thought into. What do I want this journey to look like? Life is full of chapters, and chances are if you start this business or buy this franchise, it's not going to be forever.

Assuming the opportunity to sell the business down the road is part of your goal, then really put some thought into it. Is this a business that's sellable at some point if I build it the right way? I've seen people not really have much of a business to sell when they get to that point.

Alan: For sure. I think one of the reasons that it's really good to think ahead is when you get into that space where you're a couple years out, is your business sellable? What are the factors that make it sellable? How can you prepare it ahead of time?

One of the books I read very early on that was recommended to me was The E-Myth Revisited. It's so good. It's like, prepare your business like it's a franchise. So all the systems and processes are in place, which obviously makes it very sellable if everything runs and you don't need to be the one doing everything.

But then also run it so well that you may not even want to sell it because it's running so well.

Wes: That's the thing, right? If you really do all of that well, you may get to a point where it's like, hey, I could sell this, it's very sellable. But I also don't need to because it's not like I've just created this long term full time job for myself.

When I came to ShelfGenie in 2017, there was a little bit of this misconception that ShelfGenie was one of these businesses that you couldn't really sell, because up to that point, the franchisees that had exited the business weren't really able to sell their business for some multiple of their EBITDA.

But it was really just that up to that point, the people that had exited were doing okay in the business, but they weren't really doing great and they hadn't really built a business. Everything revolved around them. They, as the owner, were responsible for the majority of the sales that happened in their business, or they did most of the installs.

That's very difficult to sell a business that revolves so tightly around you as the owner, because anyone looking at it thinks, okay, well, you did half a million in revenue, but it was all you. If I buy this business from you, that means I have to come in and sell at least half a million myself.

Alan: Yeah, it really is about the systems and processes. I think going in, knowing what you want out of the business, knowing those goals - for some people maybe they're fine with that and they need something to do. They're happy to be in the day to day and be the business basically.

Hopefully that person isn't thinking like I'm going to sell this for a big multiple later because that's probably unrealistic. Versus someone who does have the goal to eventually get to that point where they can sell it and make a nice profit - start early and start with getting systems in place earlier. It's just so much better to start like that from the beginning.

Wes: I can tell you from being a franchise consultant for five years now, the vast majority of people I've worked with, their primary motivation for wanting to make whatever pivot they were making and get into business for themselves was to have more control of their time and more flexibility.

If that's important to you, which I think it is for most people making this decision to leave a corporate job that pays pretty well to go do their own thing, then make sure you're clear on exactly what you want that to look like for you. Make sure that you get into a business that can realistically help you accomplish those goals.

Alan: Absolutely. Even when I was hiring people like designers or installers, that full time control of your time was probably the biggest thing. I would put it in the ads, and when interviewing people, so many people found that to be one of the biggest attractors. Obviously they wanted to make good money for the time they were working, but having that control and being able to set their schedule, do other things, having other gigs - that was huge.

Wes: I want to talk about your decision to sell your business and when you started realizing that maybe it's time to seriously start thinking about this. But before we do that, I think it'd be helpful for the audience to hear about what you did prior to owning your ShelfGenie franchise and what were some of the motivators for you to even start considering business ownership.

Alan: Yeah, I graduated in mechanical engineering a long time ago from Cal Poly, worked for a year. I was excited about working in the medical device industry, and in the very first month I was at work, I was like, I don't think I'm ready to work yet.

Immediately I applied for grad school that same month, and then I worked for a year and then left and went to school. I got my master's in engineering at Stanford and went to work at IDEO, which is a fantastic design consulting company. I was doing amazing work. It was super fun, great environment, smart people.

But there was still something like just never feeling like I was getting paid what I was worth. I was helping with work, and I knew I was capped to some extent on how much I could make. If I stay on this track, there's a ceiling that I can't really break through.

Part of it was I was doing consulting work for these other companies like Fortune 500 companies, startups, medical device companies. I was like, I'm doing this work, and if this works out really well, it's really going to benefit these companies, which is great. But I'm not really seeing the bigger benefit of that if it is really successful.

I was in this mindset of like, I would really rather get paid for the work. If it's successful, I want to be more successful.

Then by chance, I had this guy in the accounting group came to me one day and he's like, hey, have you thought about business ownership? And he handed me Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So I read it and I was like, wow, this makes a lot of sense. I read the Cashflow Quadrant and was like, I really need to own a business one day.

That kind of started the idea of like, okay, owning a business sounds like it has a lot of advantages from a financial standpoint, obviously, but from a time perspective and just getting paid what I'm worth.

So I started thinking about designing some of my own products and I basically invented a product, a little widget. It's like a credit card sized notepad with little sticky notes and a tiny little pen. I patented it myself. I ended up leaving IDEO after a couple of years and started this business, not knowing at all what I was doing, but thinking that this was going to be some home run product.

I got manufacturing set up overseas. I was going to trade shows all over the country selling this thing. For this little $4 product, it really did pretty well for what it was. I had to sell a lot of them, but I got them in stores like the Container Store and Barnes and Noble. I was selling it online.

Then in 2007, the iPhone came out. I saw the writing on the wall - notes on the go probably weren't going to be quite as important in the future. The product did well, but it just wasn't the home run that I thought it was going to be.

What I realized in meeting other entrepreneurs was that the really successful ones had a whole line and what they were creating was a distribution channel, and then they created things to fill that. Versus one thing where you think, oh, this is going to be amazing and blow up.

So when we moved to Seattle for my wife's work, I was like, I want to do something different. I really like the idea of owning a business for several reasons, but I also like the idea of having a partner, not just being me doing everything.

I had dismissed franchising years before. I was getting Entrepreneur magazine and reading about these entrepreneurs, and then I'd get to the franchising section and I was like, yeah, those aren't real entrepreneurs.

But then at that time I was like, you know what? This is actually perfect for me because I've got a built-in partner. It's not just one person, but it's an organization. They have a proven business model. They've got the support, they've got all the help I need, and really I just need to execute.

So I used a franchise consultant at that time and went through the process, and that's how I found ShelfGenie.

Wes: I think there's something about a well-structured franchise that would appeal to someone like you that's very engineering minded, because so much of it is systems and processes. What other types of franchises were recommended to you or did you consider initially?

Alan: Several different types. My number one choice was a hood cleaning business, which I was like, oh this is amazing. And then it was purchased by someone else. There was a senior care business. And then the second choice actually was a disaster restoration company.

ShelfGenie was third on the list. So I went out and did a Discovery Day with the restoration company in Florida, and it was good. But for some reason, I just didn't feel like it clicked with the people at the home office. The business model seemed fine and everything else, but I just didn't feel like there was a match.

So on the way home, I went to Atlanta and visited ShelfGenie, had my discovery day there, and then I was like, these are my people. Even though it was third on the list, I just felt that connection with them. And then that became the top choice.

Wes: That connection's important. It's why you should, if you're seriously considering a franchise, go meet with them in person. Go sit down with them face to face. Because it's a partnership. That's what this is. At the end of the day, franchising works when it's done correctly because it's a partnership and you've got alignment.

You want to make sure that it feels like a good fit culturally just as much as it feels like it's the right business and will play to your strengths and skill sets.

Were you concerned at all about the fact that you didn't have any industry experience with something like ShelfGenie?

Alan: I don't think I was ever nervous about that. I mean, the whole purpose of the franchise is they had systems and processes that are put in place. So it's really just about learning. And I feel like I'm a pretty good learner. I can figure things out. And if they're there to support me, I wasn't really too concerned about that.

Wes: I think that's the right way to think about it 100%. It's something a lot of people get stuck on. The tendency for many people is going to be to look at whatever the product is and say, well, what do I know about custom pull out shelving or organization?

By the time we got involved in ShelfGenie, you were a thought leader within the organization. You knew the technical side of that business just as well as the people in the manufacturing plant that built it. So you definitely were able to become an expert, but it wasn't necessary for you to already be an expert in order to get started with the business and start having some success.

Alan: Yeah, exactly. That is the beauty of a franchise system. I think the critical skill there is just being open and willing to learn and to be coachable so that you can learn more effectively.

Wes: There's this evolution where most people tend to focus on the value that the franchise is going to bring for them in the beginning, which is super important - having the systems and processes there, that initial training, that support as you're learning the business and getting established.

But you'll get to a point where you don't really need the franchisor any longer when it comes to teaching you how to run the business. Your successful franchisees are in some cases able to teach the franchisor things about how this business could be run better.

You were very innovative with a lot of what you did in your market with developing referral partnerships and grassroots marketing things that are now best practices within ShelfGenie. Anyone coming through new franchisee training, they're telling them, hey, you need to be going out and doing these things. But you were kind of pioneering some of that in your business back in the day.

I know people that are very bitter as franchisees - they're still paying royalties, but they're established in their business and they feel like they get basically no value from the franchisor any longer.

Alan: Yeah, it's an interesting thing. It's an evolution, both your journey as a franchisee and how much you need the franchisor. At the beginning, of course, to get everything up and running and to learn all the things that you don't know. And then at some point, the training wheels are off, you're on your own and you're like, hey, I got this.

Then at a certain point you're like, I know enough now and I'm creative enough where I need to come up with some other things that maybe the franchisor hasn't come up with yet. These are the things that you don't want a new franchisee to do at the beginning because they think they know what's going on, and then they try other things and don't follow the system. Don't do that at the beginning.

But once you're in it enough and you can start to make intelligent connections between things and can really come up with some cool creative solutions as far as marketing goes and sales, I think that's part of the fun. That was a lot of fun for me.

But also the franchisor is evolving as well. Depending on when you get in and how long they've already been open and how many franchisees they have, they're learning too. Part of it is they want your feedback so that they can share that with the rest of the system and grow the system as well.

When it comes to the royalty thing, honestly, it's really interesting because I just never paid attention to it. I know from the beginning this is part of it. At the end of the day, it comes down to like, can I be happy with what I'm making? The return I'm making, the money that I'm making. Can I be happy with that? Obviously that royalty is just a part of that calculation. It's just another expense.

Certainly it seems like they are earning it more at the beginning. But there are things throughout the course of their evolution that they're also putting in to help grow the system and to do better things for the system and improve their infrastructure.

At the end of the day, I just think, hey, can I make the money I want to make? It's kind of like when we spend money on marketing - I don't necessarily want to spend a lot of money on marketing, but at the end of the day, I'll spend what I need to spend if I can be happy with the return.

Wes: I think that's the right way to look at it when it comes to royalties. I give this coaching when I'm working with people as they start evaluating maybe 3 or 4 different brands early on. A lot of times, they'll come back and say, well, this one has a lower royalty percentage than the other. And I'm like, don't even start comparing the percentages. It's not apples to apples.

You want to look at it individually and just, if we're talking earning potential, you want to get a good sense of how much money do I think I could make in this business? I've seen plenty of franchises where you've got a franchise with a higher royalty percentage and their franchisees are probably netting a higher percentage on average than in a franchise with a lower royalty percentage, but for whatever reason, just the nature of the business or the unit economics, their franchisees can't actually make as much at the end of the day.

Alan: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there. It comes down to the money you want to make. The royalties are a part of that. But at the end of the day, if you can make whatever number that you're shooting to make, it doesn't matter what those other numbers are. You could have all the other costs of goods, manufactured stuff, labor. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter in business. It's the net. At the end of the day for me, it's like, okay, what's the revenue, what's the net percentage.

Wes: Do you remember what year it was that you bought your ShelfGenie franchise?

Alan: 2010.

Wes: Okay. So pretty early. Do you remember how many franchisees they had already at that point?

Alan: It was probably around 15 to 20 maybe.

Wes: So a handful. I'm going to go out on a limb and say back then there probably weren't too many franchisees that had built businesses anywhere near the size or the revenue volume that you ended up building your business to.

So as you're looking at data they had in their FDD, speaking with franchisees with ShelfGenie at that point in time, how did you get to a point where you had the confidence - even if you didn't necessarily see an example out there today of the type of business you know you want to build - how did you get the confidence that you would be able to do it with that model?

Alan: I guess the way that I answer that is you don't know what you don't know. I wouldn't say that I had the confidence or it had anything to do with confidence in me thinking I could do something and then actually doing it. It was more about what I was focused on.

What I was focused on - there's these KPIs for any business, right? What are the things that I can control that I can really focus in on? I hate waste. So a big thing for me is not wasting.

When I first started the business, I intentionally didn't spend as much in marketing all at once as they wanted me to. I started with a home show and a newspaper ad or something else. But I wanted to learn, go through the whole process with some real life clients and then figure out where issues were in my systems as far as measuring the install process and all that other stuff, the design, and then tweak all those things a little bit and then be able to really open it up for more marketing and bring in more leads.

That way I didn't get a whole bunch of people, and then screw up a whole bunch. I didn't want to spend all this money to get all these leads, and then learn on them.

Wes: Spoken like a true engineer.

Alan: That was my prototype phase. It was just like a couple months where I could get at least through one cycle. That was in the fall of 2010. Then in January of the following year, I said, okay, let's open it up, let's do a lot more of these, let's start doing more marketing.

But I still held off. I was told about this big fair at the end of summer that's really popular, and I was like, we're not ready for that. I'm going to hold off a year or two. I don't want to get all these leads and then waste them. Let's learn how to do sales.

That was a big thing for me at the beginning - we were not closing, we were not doing a great job. I hired a bunch of people right from the beginning. I hadn't even sold a job yet and I had two designers. So we were all kind of learning at the same time, and it basically took time to figure out how to do this.

One of the biggest things for me was learning how to sell. Talking to people at the home office and talking to other franchisees, reading a lot of books on sales - that really helped.

So eventually I got better at those types of things. I mentioned those KPIs. Revenue per appointment for us was probably the number one thing for in-home people - how much money you make per appointment that you go to. Focusing on that, and I will tell you throughout the rest of the 14 years, that was probably my top thing that I would look at.

And then what are the other things? First you need to get people in the door. So marketing - where can I find leads. So focusing on leads. For us that was a lot of home shows, and then newspaper and direct mail and all those other things. But a big focus was like, okay, we're bringing in enough leads. There's no marketing budget because as long as it has that ROI, we're happy to spend as much. If it cost me $1,000 for one lead, it's fine if I can make a $10,000 sale.

So the marketing and then the sales or the design - we really focused on the design. I never called it sales. It was all design work for the client. And then the installation - if we're installing and people aren't complaining and we're getting great reviews, that's taken care of. Hire good people, have them do a great job and then that's done.

Bring people in, sell it, install it. Those are my three things that I was focused on. And I just focused on those. And the results were what they were.

I'll be honest, throughout the entire tenure of my career with ShelfGenie, I had goals, but they were really just based off of what I did the previous year. I was trying to level up my own business. I wasn't feeling like I was competing to be top in the system or anything like that. It was just doing the best with what we had. Let's get better every year. And that's just how I ran my business. It just was what it was.

I remember talking to another franchise owner about conferences. He's like, we just surpassed $1 million that year. He's like, do you really think $2 million is even possible? And a couple of years later, I was like, wow, that's great. And I never really looked at a ceiling. It was, again, just about getting better every year. How can I keep improving that revenue per appointment, which we did every year, which meant how do we create better designs? How do we provide a better experience for our clients? Basically problem solving better.

Wes: I know in our ShelfGenie business, our best designers have had no prior sales experience. Because it's one of these businesses where you have this warm opportunity - someone has proactively reached out to us, whether they see you at a home show and come up and talk with you, or they see an ad that you've run somewhere, but then they fill out a form online or pick up the phone and call you, and then they literally invite you into their home to look at what solutions you can offer them.

So at the end of the day, it is sales, technically, but it's problem solving. It's asking good questions, understanding what are the pain points, and then how can we solve that. And the better you can solve that, the easier it's going to be for them to say yes and pay you to come in and do it.

That's the case with a lot of these franchise businesses out there. I very commonly hear from people, they're like, I don't want to do sales. I'm not a sales person. And there's two things that I usually want to make sure they understand.

Number one, it doesn't have to be like this hardcore aggressive timeshare pitch approach to sales. Some businesses are going to require that, but if we know that's what you don't want and we can make sure we're looking at businesses more like what we just described with ShelfGenie where it's truly problem solving.

And the other piece of that is, assuming flexibility and time freedom is part of your goal, you shouldn't pick the business that you're going to own based on the fact that you don't want to do the sales. You want to learn how to do it yourself in the beginning as the owner, probably. But the goal should be to sell yourself out of having to be the primary salesperson as quickly as possible, in my opinion, if flexibility and time freedom is part of the goal.

Alan: Yeah, for sure. Having those systems in place and having the people in place, if that's your goal. My goal was to have a team. So I hired installers while I was in training. I had my Craigslist ad up, and one of those installers was with me for 13 years.

Wes: That's incredible.

Alan: It's crazy. And then on the design side, the sales side, it was a little more tricky. But I went through a lot of different people because I had no idea what I was doing. You get better with any of these businesses. You get better at learning who's going to be a good fit for the different positions you need to fill on your team. You get better at recognizing quicker when someone's not the right fit, instead of letting someone sit in the wrong seat for too long.

Wes: At what point did you start thinking, okay, this has been good, I'm having some success, I'm getting a lot of what I set out to do out of owning my business. At what point did you start thinking, hey, it might be time to start thinking about selling it?

Alan: It was actually at one of the Neighborly reunion workshops that they had. It was about preparing your business for selling. So that was really nice that they put this thing on. It was like how to get your business ready, make sure your financials are in order, here's the process, and all these other things.

That kind of just put it in the back of my mind. I ended up contacting the presenter and just picking his brain to get a few more details on it and get an idea of what do you think I could sell my business for. And then I was like, actually I might be okay with that. That's pretty cool. So that was like the first step.

But then in the following years it was really interesting just in talking to friends that I had. I have a friend who was in the construction business and he was like, yeah, I'm very successful. This last year was great. But I know what I need to do to get to the next level, and I don't really want to do that.

He got in touch with one of his buddies that was starting an indoor golf simulator business franchise, and it sounded so cool. Just talking to him about it, I got super excited and then I was like, hey, I haven't felt that kind of excitement in a while. You know what I mean? I always enjoyed working with ShelfGenie and meeting with clients was great. But that level of excitement, I was like, whoa, this is something that's been missing for a while.

Wes: The idea of doing something new, building something again was exciting to you. And I definitely see your point about, hey, I know what needs to happen to take this business to the next level. And I just don't think it's what I want at this point in my life.

We talked about it earlier - chapters. ShelfGenie was a big chapter in your life. But kids are getting older and stuff like that. You probably had other things on the personal side of your life that you wanted to make sure you had time to do. You got to weigh these decisions. Do I want to put in the time and energy and effort that's going to take to take this business from where it is now to that next level? And does that line up with other things that you want to spend your time doing?

I think that's a very natural progression for business owners to go through.

Alan: For me, I was really happy with where the business was at. Honestly, all the years leading up to it, I was like, I'm happy with the business, I'm happy with the money I'm making, having a team in place and being able to do the things I want to do, go play tennis tournaments all over the country and the world.

I felt very fortunate to have all those pieces in place, but I just felt like I'd never done any one thing for so long and for me, I just needed that change. A new challenge.

Wes: From the time you officially said, okay, my business is for sale, about how long was it until you had a signed contract to sell your business?

Alan: I forgot one important piece here that helped me along this process. I have a friend, a tennis friend of mine, who contacted me the summer before I ended up selling, and he was actually interested in buying a business like an existing business, and he was just curious to talk about franchising in general.

So we got to chatting, and then eventually it was like, hey, I might be interested in selling my business. Let's talk. And so we actually went pretty far down the path together without any kind of brokers or anyone like that. It was just us two.

We got to a point where at some point he was just like, I just don't think this is the right fit for me. And I was like, all right, no harm done. That makes sense for you, that's fine for me. But I've gone down the path now. And my mindset was I already kind of made a switch in my mind - I'm selling this business.

So I was like, I'll just put it on the market. By the time I first put it on the market, I'd say it was kind of the end of September timeframe. We got some inquiries at the beginning, but then the holidays came around and it slowed back down. January picked back up again. I think we signed an LOI maybe in February and everything was done, and the official switchover day was May 1st.

Wes: Was it tough to mentally stay engaged over that time frame? I've seen this happen where they make that decision to sell and then there's like a switch that flips in their heads. And then they kind of take their foot off the gas with their business. That can have all types of negative impacts depending on how long of a period of time it is and how much they take their foot off the gas. It can have a negative impact on what your business would be valued at.

Was that a challenge for you at all? Just mentally staying engaged until it was officially done and no longer your business?

Alan: No, not for me. If anything, it actually had the opposite effect in which I was really focused on, well, one, I want to make sure this actually went through. I have a goal in mind. What can I do that's within my control to make sure that this is the highest likelihood of happening?

And so I need to keep things going. Make sure the business is running, do all the same marketing I was doing before. If anything, I was trying some new things. I was actually spending some money on testing some new things because I wanted the new owner to be successful. And I wanted my team to be successful. That was a big part of it. I want this to continue on and I want everyone who's been working for me that's been fantastic - I want to take care of them.

So it didn't make any sense at all to sit back and take the foot off the gas. If anything, I was hitting the accelerator a little more just to make sure things were set up well and I was actually documenting a lot of things. I was setting up an internal training system. I had started setting it up the year before to train designers. So I was adding to that and every little process that I was doing, I was adding to that, and I was trying to get my team involved in being able to really build that out so that I could have all those systems in place for the new person.

Wes: That's awesome. What did the transition look like? There's logistics that come up that can be tough to navigate. Like when do you tell the people on your team that you're selling the business? This is a tough one because you don't want them to get scared and jump ship. Usually the team is a pretty critical part of why someone's interested in buying the business. They want to essentially inherit people that already know what they're doing. So you don't want to start losing people.

The buyers want as much insight as they can into, okay, who's on this team that I'm going to be inheriting? I remember that was a little bit of a sticking point for us when we were in the final stages of negotiating. The buyer wanted to meet the team. And we were like, sorry, you'll meet them after they're your employees.

Were there any challenges that came up in those final stages of finalizing the deal that you didn't anticipate, or that looking back on it, you're like, man, that was tough and I didn't realize it was going to be that tough?

Alan: Overall, it was a really good collaborative experience. I think I was fortunate in I had a broker who was really great, Sally from EXITS, who really helped me out and the buyer was really great. He and his partners are the ones who purchased it. And it was just a very collaborative experience.

So we came across things like, okay, how are we going to handle this? And then we would talk about it like, here's a concern I have. And the question was always, how can I achieve this? How can we figure this out?

When it came to the people side of things, someone's buying a business, they want the team that's in place. Obviously. And so the biggest one for us for the buyer was the manager, Kelly. So she was the critical piece to do this. And so we figured it out and we said I'll talk to her ahead of time, ahead of the closing, and part of the agreement was that she signs a work agreement so that she would continue on contract, which I thought was totally fine.

So letting the people know was definitely the most difficult part. We had dinner, she brought her partner, I brought my wife, and we had dinner. She didn't know it was happening. It was very bittersweet. She was happy for me. But then at the same time, she was sad. There were some tears involved. But at the same time, it was kind of this like, hey, this is an opportunity for you to step up. This is a promotion for her. And so she was like, yeah, let's do it.

Wes: Her being able to see like she was instrumental in helping you build this business that has enough value for someone else to want to come in and buy it. And she's critical enough that they wanted to sign a contract saying she's going to stay on and not leave because you're not the owner anymore.

I appreciate you sharing some of this because I think it's things that most people that are just in the process of deciding if they're going to own their own business, they're not thinking about these types of things. It's not that you have to have it all figured out exactly when you're going to sell your business and all the logistics of what it's going to look like - that's impossible to know. But I think it's just good for people to hear a little bit of this experience that you went through so they have some expectation of like, hey, this is what it looks like to build and eventually sell a business.

Alan: Yeah, it was a great experience. I'd obviously never been through it before, but I think I had the right mindset going into it, especially going into the sale of like this is a great business. I know it's worth a good amount of money with my broker. I want to find someone who's going to take care of my people and who's going to be able to build on it. And it was about coming up with a fair price and a fair deal rather than me trying to be greedy and squeeze every penny possible out of it.

Wes: Yeah, I mean, I think in this type of business where you built a very nice business, but relatively small team to the point where you knew everyone on your team pretty well - we're not talking like a big corporation with hundreds or thousands of employees - that's a big consideration.

I know Kelly and I've kicked around the idea of selling our ShelfGenie franchise and we will at some point. We're seven years in, nothing lasts forever. But that's the one thing that she gets caught up on real quick - she's got some really close relationships with people on our team. And if and when we get to the point of making that decision, that's going to be the hardest part for her without a doubt.

Well man, congratulations on the success selling your business. Tell us a little bit about what the next chapter's shaping up to look like for you.

Alan: Well, for me, I took six, seven months off, played a lot of golf and tennis and now I've - it took me that long to figure out okay, here's what I will be doing next. It's come full circle which is great. I started this whole journey seeking the help of someone that was a franchise consultant like you who helped me through this process. And so that's what I'm going to be doing as a franchise coach and helping people get through the process, matching them and trying to share my expertise that the things that I've learned to become a good franchisee and to be successful in the business.

And yeah, it's called Athlete to Owner Franchise Coaching.

Wes: I like it. Yeah man I think it's a great fit for you. Look I think just like in most things, if you're going to have a coach of any sort, you want a coach that's done it themselves and is not just teaching from theory or whatever. And so you've bought the franchise, made that transition, built the franchise. I think you may have even had a fumble along the way with a different franchise. So learning lessons, lots of lessons learned. All of these are things that anyone you work with is going to be able to benefit from.

Similar to what I think I'm able to bring to the table for the people that I work with. I think it's a great fit for you. And I'm excited to see how things go. But I know you talked about this - you're going to do a podcast yourself.

Alan: That's the plan. I want to start that soon and hopefully have some cool guests like you. You're my inspiration. I've got zero followers, zero listeners now. So I gotta start from somewhere.

Wes: You gotta start somewhere. Well, do you know what it's going to be called? Or when people can expect to be able to go check it out?

Alan: Hopefully by the time this is out, it'll be up and running. So very soon, in the next couple weeks. Athletetoowner.com is the website. And you'll be able to find links to it. That'll be the name of the podcast too - Athlete to Owner.

Wes: Cool. All right. Well we'll put all those links in the show notes and social media handles and anything like that. We'll make sure to make it easy for people to get and we'll point them your way. But super excited for you man. And again, congratulations on bringing this whole thing full circle. It's really cool to see.

Alan: Thanks guys. I appreciate it and appreciate your support. And it was fun being on here with you always.

Wes: Thank you.