From Family Construction to a National Repair Franchise

This is a transcript from Episode 57 of The Franchise Champion Show.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

Alan Regala: My guest today watched his neighbors write big checks to replace things on their homes that didn't actually need replacing. And that observation became a business. Ten years and one franchise launched later, he's running Preservan with his wife and watching it grow. Ty McBride, welcome to the show.

Ty McBride: Hey. Thanks, Alan. I'm super excited to be here.

Alan Regala: I'm very glad to have you here. I love your business and what it does, and so I'm super excited to educate our audience on what that is. But before we jump into that, I'd love to hear what life was like for you before this whole franchise thing started.

Ty McBride: Before this whole franchise thing, you know, it's funny, my family's been in the construction business, I grew up in that. Grandfather was a home builder. Dad did home building and roofing. Got to see that kind of firsthand, got to join it. And as I started to go my own path in this, what life was like was, well, you know, it was always my hair on fire, right? Like you're a fireman, that's what business ownership was, that was my perception of business ownership. So I was running to save a job that was going the wrong way. I got to go put out a fire because maybe a homeowner wasn't happy, or because we forgot a material, and so I had to run to the lumber yard, run somewhere and go pick something up and deliver it. Or I had to go do all my own sales. So anytime we needed a job done, I was running and doing sales at night. I was doing quotes on pad and pencil, adding them up on a legal pad and typing them into QuickBooks. I would stay up till late at night doing quotes, I was always behind, people messaging me or texting me saying, "Hey Ty, what are you going to give me that quote for my kitchen renovation, or my new roof, or my patio, or whatever." I was driving down the highway getting calls on my cell phone, which I hoped were customers. I wasn't ever fully sure. You'd take the call and realize that one was somebody trying to sell me a warranty on my pickup. But other times you'd take the call and it would be somebody who needed your service, and you'd scrounge around in your truck looking for your notepad, not know where it was, so you're grabbing a McDonald's bag and a carpenter's pencil, pulling over to the side of the road and scribbling things down on that. Oh, the good old days. That was what life was like. And this was me doing this as an employee, working for my dad and my grandpa. That's what life was like, always on call, always busy. You tell yourself that being busy is good, but then you realize that maybe that's an excuse, my busyness was an excuse for not building a system, not having a system to operate my business. So before becoming a franchisor, and before launching what ultimately became our corporate location, that was what life was like, pure chaos. I'd had a corporate job prior to coming back into the family business, and I knew that my corporate job wasn't like this. There was structure, there was organization, but I just didn't want to go back to having a corporate job. I wanted to do my own thing. So I was like, I've got to figure out how to put these two things together, structure and organization while also being my own boss.

Alan Regala: Wow. Well, yeah, that's quite a shift, from being in the corporate world to, yeah, hair on fire and McDonald's bags. That's crazy. So, it's in your blood, obviously, the building part's in your blood, passed down through generations. Didn't like the corporate world, didn't want to go back there, but you were also kind of in this mode of craziness and wanting to blend in this discipline, organized systems and such. So how did you, where did you go from here?

Ty McBride: Yeah, so a mentor and a business coach, he's like, well, you had a really interesting business, and he could kind of see my entrepreneurial spirit. He was like, but you need to slow down, you need to work on your business, not in your business. I'd heard that term before, but he handed me [AUDIO UNCLEAR — likely The E-Myth], which is an incredible book. I highly recommend it to anybody thinking about business, whether you currently own one or you're going to buy one, it's a great place to start. And it talked about building your business as a franchise, that's the whole premise of it. Not to build your business to be a franchise, but build it like it's a franchise. And it talked about the way at McDonald's, where you're able to deliver this high quality, regular, consistent service that doesn't matter where in the world you go, you basically get the same thing. And you can do that with relatively anybody, anybody can walk through those doors, and you can put them at that station and get the same flavor of fry everywhere. And that really sparked a light bulb for me. The challenge was, the business that I had grown up in, there was no way to make that McDonald's. I looked at the business I was operating in, working in, and I was like, there's no way. It takes really high-skilled employees, high-skilled subcontractors that I'm not in control of. So I started looking at all of those elements, and I was like, I can't do that in this typical kind of construction remodeling business, where you'll roof a house, add a back patio, or replace some windows, whatever, you'll do anything. So I saw that you can't build this like that, and I committed to figuring out how to build this. I learned a ton of stuff about HVAC and the typical home service business model, and I started to envision with my business partner, how do we take what we do well and put it into a systematized business? Where the marketing is systematized, and the phone answering is systematized, so we're not writing things on McDonald's bags, and the scheduling system and the service is systematized, so that you know a person's going to show up to a job. Because that's what makes HVAC worth all the money, incredible businesses that you can show up to the job with everything you need. Ninety percent of your work is on the vehicle you showed up with. You can just go, hey, I see a problem, I'll go to my truck, get my tools and my parts, and come fix it. For me, that's the Mecca of home service. There's no special ordering, no lumber yard visits, none of it. And what we started working on is trimming and pruning our business to the point that we could deliver that. And that's ultimately what we came up with. We realized wood decays, it rots. It rots on windows, doors, siding, pergolas, all of that. And we knew of a technology that we could use to fix it without replacement, and all of the tools and gear could fit in a small van or pickup, and that was it. We could produce consistent results. And that was the whole journey, wanting to recreate that home service business model in a new category, a new space.

Alan Regala: I love it, I love it. I mean, that's actually one thing I love about this business, it's so niche, and it's not trying to do everything. It's just trying to do one very specific thing, but do it really, really well, and all the systems and things built around it. So that's fantastic. Okay, so someone, probably most people out here listening who's never heard of Preservan, please tell them what you actually do for a homeowner, in a sentence or two, what's that thirty-second elevator pitch?

Ty McBride: Yeah, for sure. It's real simple. All houses have wood on them, whether it's windows, doors, decks, columns, posts, all kinds of wood, all houses have wood on it. If it ever rains in your area, or any kind of moisture whatsoever, that wood is under a constant state of decay. It's being attacked by the environment, and it's going to decay, or it's going to become a food source for pests. So it's either going to rot because of the fungus that exists in the air, and there's nothing you can do about it, or it's a food source for termites, carpenter bees, carpenter ants, or the animals that want the bugs inside of it, like woodpeckers and others. So it's under constant attack, and we fix it so you don't have to replace it. Replacing things is a big headache, it's a big hassle, it's a huge industry, the window and door replacement industry is like nine billion dollars annually. But we use a proprietary epoxy resin system that can repair the wood rather than replace it. And it honestly gives [AUDIO UNCLEAR — likely "a better-than-new"] result, and for that reason we're able to [AUDIO UNCLEAR — likely "offer a ten-year warranty"]. So it's really simple, we just fix wood rot with epoxy.

Alan Regala: Yeah, it sounds amazing. Now I love it, I mean I think that's great, you're doing multiple good things. It sounds like you're preventing a lot of waste, it sounds like, I mean, to me that hits home because I just hate waste in general.

Ty McBride: Yeah, and when you can save the majority of what someone has there, and it doesn't end up in the landfill, that's a great thing.

Alan Regala: And obviously then you're saving the customer money, I presume, because I'd assume it's less expensive.

Ty McBride: Yeah, no, it's a win-win-win, it's really fun. For the overall, just like the planet, it's a good thing, whatever you believe about all of that, we all know that we should probably not be wasteful. We all know that, we all know the landfill is ugly. And we all wish, or at least I do, I get super frustrated by manufactured obsolescence, this idea that manufacturers, like my favorite iPhone here, they make this thing in a way that I have to replace it, there's no way around it. And they do the same thing with manufactured windows and doors, they make them in a way that in their mind is unrepairable. And we've figured out how to repair it, and that's really fun. And to your point, then people save money with it. They save money because a single new window, on average, a wood window, is about two thousand dollars. Most people have like twenty to twenty-five wood windows on their house, so on the low end you're talking about forty to fifty thousand dollars. Our average ticket is twenty-five hundred. So rather than spend fifty thousand dollars, you're going to spend twenty-five hundred, which I always say is ninety percent less than replacement, but it's even less than that. And then the other thing I think consumers really appreciate is that it's convenient. If you've ever had a major construction project done at your house, if you've ever had your windows replaced, if you've ever had a door replaced, if you've ever done anything, you know it's like a big headache. You've got strangers in your house, all of your house is opened up, all of that's just a big pain in the neck. And we're in and out in like twenty-four hours, so it's really convenient. It's really great if you're trying to sell your house, put your house on the market, trying to close, or just trying to get it ready for the holidays, whatever you're trying to do, our service is very convenient in that way.

Alan Regala: That's really cool. I mean, it's yeah, win-win-win for sure. Very unique, this is something I haven't heard of in any other kind of business. So tell me about, you know, just the start, how you decided to go from owning the business, starting it, and then deciding to franchise it for growth.

Ty McBride: Yeah, so we had this thing going, and I'll say that once we got it dialed in, the one thing, and you kind of led with this in your intro, was being frustrated that my neighbors were paying all of this unnecessary money for things I knew could be fixed. I don't know, maybe I'm sentimental, or I watched too much Mister Rogers as a kid, but I always think about my neighbor, and I thought, it just frustrated me that my neighbors were paying too much for things I knew I could fix, or that somebody could fix. And then when I looked across the United States, I thought, you've got millions of people spending billions of dollars on things they don't need to do. And you think about what people could do with that money if they didn't need to spend it on unnecessary things. And by the way, unnecessary things that nobody ever really wants to spend money on, it's like the worst of the worst. There are cool things you can spend money on in your house, you could organize and put some shelves in your kitchen and make it more usable, more to your liking, you could completely renovate your kitchen, you could put a pool in your backyard, you can do cool things. Windows are not cool. New siding is not cool. Nobody buys their house, spends half a million dollars on it, and thinks, "oh, I can't wait until I can spend fifty thousand or a hundred thousand dollars on new windows." That's not what anybody ever wants to do. And so I knew that frustration, being a homeowner, I knew that frustration with my neighbors. And for me, I was like, I just think people deserve this in their area, in every city, I just think people deserve to have this option, and I want to figure out how we're going to deliver it to them. That was where my brain was at. And then the second part is, okay, I want everybody to have this option, but we have to be able to compete on the biggest stage. So I'll go back to, yes, it's a niche service, but when you're talking about competing against the window and door and siding replacement industry, you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing that's been going on for the last hundred years, that you now have to go out and compete with. So the only way I could envision competing with that is you're going to have one voice, one brand, one message. Individually, me in Oklahoma City, I can't compete. But maybe collectively, when you get ten, twenty, or maybe even a hundred people spending a little bit, now we can compete on that national stage and get awareness for our service. So I knew you had to have one brand, one mission, one service. But the other thing that for me makes all the difference is I believe in local business ownership. It's not that I think corporations are evil or anything like that, but I believe in the power of the local owner, and I know that when I serve my community, I'm going to do a better job than, say, a manager or a general manager or whatever. So I believe in local ownership. And so I'm trying to put these things together in my mind, one brand, one mission, one service, local ownership, what do we call that? And my brain was circling, what do we call that legal framework in the United States? And that's called franchising. That's ultimately it, that's how we're going to do it, we're going to find franchisees who believe in what we're doing and want to open up in their area.

Alan Regala: It makes absolute sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then that combined with the book, you're like, oh yeah, you put all those pieces together.

Ty McBride: That's right. On this call, I've described this whole process in seventeen minutes. And in truth, you're talking about, from the first moment to like seven years of going through these things. It's crazy how long it takes, and anybody who's ever franchised their business, it's crazy how long it takes to get to the point that you actually have something a person should franchise. It all sounds like it just came together really fast, but there's so much trial and error that happens before anybody, hopefully before anybody gets out there and franchises their business to somebody else.

Alan Regala: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's the whole point, people want to buy a franchise because it's been tested, and hopefully most of the mistakes have been gotten out of the way by someone else before them.

Ty McBride: Yeah.

Alan Regala: So what does this business look like for a potential franchise owner who might be interested in starting their own business with a franchise? What does that look like from, let's say, a staffing model, and what their role is as an owner on a day-to-day basis?

Ty McBride: Yeah, you know, for us, and I speak to the majority of our owners, we have a few nuances in this, I think, as all organizations do. But for a majority of our owners, from the very beginning, they kind of take on that community leader role, they're directing the business, this is their full-time commitment. And so for them, the one benefit is that we're a relatively lean company, and I say lean when you look at a single territory, most of our single territories have one or two technicians per territory. And that's a good thing, because when a technician can do two hundred to two hundred fifty thousand dollars per technician, so you've got one truck, one person in the truck, doing two hundred to two hundred fifty thousand dollars in revenue, it makes for an easy-to-manage business. Because if I can do half a million dollars in top-line revenue in a single territory, managing two people is not that bad. It's not that hard to keep two people's schedules busy, it's not that bad to go out and do quotes and keep two people busy. And then when you think about the scalability, you think about, well, maybe I'd like to get to three-quarters of a million, maybe I'd like to see a pathway to a million, you built a huge business, so when you start thinking about it like that, you start thinking about, well, what's my capacity for leadership, maybe from my background or whatever. It's like, okay, there's a pathway where I could do really well with four, or I could do really well with five or six or beyond with some leadership experience. But it makes the model make a lot of sense, as opposed to running some franchise businesses where they say they do one thing, they say they're a cleaning company on the logo, but when you look inside the business, they're a staffing company, that's what they really are. And that's the nice thing about what we are, we're the service company we propose ourselves to be. So for that, it looks like an owner going out and doing quotes, doing some kind of local business engagement, and working on building their team. They're not really doing any kind of technical work, in the early stages they get their hands a little bit dirtier, that first three to six months. But after that, they're building their business, building their team, coaching their technicians. That's kind of the day-to-day, it's doing a little bit of sales, a little bit of coaching, and then focusing on developing relationships to grow your business, going above and beyond. So in that sense, all business is tough, and I don't want to make it sound like it's super easy, but there's worse ways to spend your day, I guess.

Alan Regala: Quick pause. If you're ready to move on from the corporate world like Ty, it might be worth taking a look at franchising. I'm a former franchise owner, fourteen years, multi-million dollar exit. Now I help corporate professionals find out if franchising is right for them, and if so, what's the right brand. I learn about you first, your goals, your skills, your investment level. Then I match you with a handful of opportunities from over six hundred brands. I support you all the way through the process. You may end up with a franchise concept you're excited to move forward with, or you may learn that business ownership isn't a good fit at all, at least not for now. My service is completely free, I'm only paid by franchisors after you find the right fit and move forward. Book an intro call, just go to athletetoowner.com/fit. Now back to Ty.

Alan Regala: So for someone who, let's say, wants to build a big business, they want to have six, eight, ten technicians, is there a model where someone could hire a salesperson to take care of that part of the estimating, so they can step back and just manage the people?

Ty McBride: You know, we're in early stages now, we're just in those early stages of building our business, with just right around twenty locations. But what we're starting to see, as owners really take this to the next level, is absolutely. One of the best examples is our team in Orlando, which is now almost exclusively manager-run. They have a manager that runs about eighty percent of the day-to-day business operations. The owner spends two or three hours a week checking in, coaching, going over KPIs. And that means the business can start to grow, because they can start to look at other opportunities for business growth. We're seeing that in our Dallas location as well, we've got Ben, our owner there, he's got four territories. His first year in business he did six hundred thousand dollars in top-line revenue, servicing, he has four territories, but his first year he really just built into the first one, with, I think, a fifty-plus percent gross profit margin on that number. So really great profit. And what did he do? He hired a sales rep, and elevated one of his technicians into an operations lead technician role, so he can build out the business to get to the next step he's trying to get to, going above and beyond.

Alan Regala: Yeah, yeah, it's smart, lessons for anyone out there who's trying to grow beyond themselves, is to start that process early, have that mindset to bring on the right people early, and elevate the people you see the right potential in, to help them help you grow your business beyond just yourself.

Ty McBride: I think that's awesome to see.

Alan Regala: Cool. Okay, so I'm going to go in a little bit of a different direction now. You started this business, I believe, with your wife, is that correct? Not everyone could do that, I don't know how good I'd be doing that, so I'd love to hear a little more about that and what that journey was like. How did you separate roles, is it like work coming home, is it all work all the time? How do you separate things out as far as roles and responsibilities, as well as the balance with family life, especially, I know you have six kids now, that's crazy.

Ty McBride: Yeah, so, man, of course working with your significant other is a unique challenge. We have several of our franchise owners whose spouse works actively in the business, and they work together. And so my advice on this has been, and you said it, understanding roles, that's kind of a lot of times, and we do this with everybody, but we always use Predictive Index, there's all different kinds of tools out there, but I like Predictive Index, and we work with a couple when we work with them, my wife and I have taken Predictive Index ourselves, and we understand, hey, Ty's a good big-picture person, I'm a great big-picture person, I have a lot of ideas going on. My wife, however, is a great detail person. And so we acknowledged that and said, there's things like early on, scheduling, accounts receivable and accounts payable, she does that. Plus, I hate asking people for money, I like going out there and selling, but I hate asking people for money, and she could ask people for money all day, every day, no problem. So there's those elements. And so one, it's really understanding those. The other thing for me is that regardless of whether or not your franchise business is difficult, you're going to go through times where, sometimes you're having a killer year, and then something hits you that you weren't planning on, it just kind of takes you off your game. For me, having my spouse involved, having April involved in the business was so helpful, because there are times where you're like, I don't know why I'm doing this, and having that kind of champion alongside you, that's cheering you on. So I always tell people, and it's not about husband or wife, you just want that person to be your champion, because it's going to be tough, and you definitely don't want that person going, "I told you so, I told you not to do that." That's not great. So you've got to be mindful of what relationship you're in, but that's been huge for me. The other thing you talked about, how do you separate it, I can't say that my wife and I do, and I don't mean that in a bad way. People talk about work-life balance, and I've told a lot of our franchisees, because they come into the conversations and say, well, I'm looking for work-life balance. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know how much work-life balance you're going to get in this, I like to call it work-life integration, because what you're going to do, because this is now your thing, it's your family's thing, there's no more of like, we're not going to do this, we're going to go and do work and then come home and do home. We're going to do personal things during the day because we can now. And that was a big light-bulb moment for me, yeah, you've got six kids, it's tough to get a date night, but you know what, I can always get a date day. So I own my schedule. If we want to go to lunch together, we're going to go to lunch together, that's just what we're going to do. Also, with my kids, when I had a job, I was like, oh, my schedule, I can't take off, I can't do this. Now I just mark it on my schedule that I want to be at the fifth-grade awards assembly, and it's on my schedule, nobody schedules me for it, and now I can go be part of that. But at the same time, and for me this is cool, it might not be for others, but my family's part of the business. We sit down for dinner, we eat dinner at our table four out of seven nights a week, we try to do more, but it's crazy life. But we talk about work, we talk about the wins, we talk about that big job we got, we share our highs and lows, and sometimes I talk about the employee who just won't follow the system, and unfortunately I have to make a hard decision. So my kids are interacting with this, and my wife is sharing perspective. And in that sense, not everybody wants that, but for me it's just really rewarding. I don't know whether or not my kids will ultimately decide to become entrepreneurs and business owners, but they have a deep respect for those that do, knowing what mom and dad have to go through. So working with my spouse, I wouldn't have it any other way. She still does the bookkeeping for our franchise system. And another thing, it's really great to have your spouse taking care of the money, because you can trust where it's going to go, they're watching out.

Alan Regala: For sure, I think that's really great. I like how you said that, the work-life integration, or home-work integration, or however you want to say it.

Ty McBride: Yeah, I like to just say, you know, work-life balance, it's just life balance. Because once you own a business, hopefully it's something you enjoy, and you're kind of infusing it into everything that you do, so it's not like you can just shut it off at a certain time and be done with it. That's something you do when you work for someone else, and it's usually something you do when it's something you really don't want to do, you want to shut it off, not pay attention to it, and focus on other things. Where I think, if you do it right and you have the right business you're really passionate about, and you care about what you do and the impact you have on your clients and your team and all those other things, it's just natural, I think, to think about what's happening in the business, what things you can do to improve, or some new marketing ideas, or the tough situation you're dealing with. And I think, honestly, with your family in particular, especially if you have kids, I think it's fantastic to bring that to the table, because, man, to get that perspective of what it's like to own a business, and just the real world, here's the real world, here's the things we're dealing with, I think, like you said, it gives your kids a newfound respect for the work, what work really is, when they're younger and they don't really have a concept of what that means, working hard, and the challenges you face. And I mean, all those are just life lessons you get to share with your family four days a week, which is amazing. And there's elements of it, not all businesses can do this, but for ours I've been able to do this, which has been, once we dialed in our systems, that ultimately came to the franchise system, once we brought systems into franchising, I've been able to travel, short and long travel, go somewhere that's three or four hours away, drive, or go to Mexico or somewhere else, and not completely shut it off, but still be able to go, because there used to be seasons, being an employee, where it was like, why can't I do this, I can't do that, and now it's like, no, I can. I've built a business in a way that I can leave for a week, and I don't want to fully check out, and my wife's totally okay with that, but it's like, hey, I'm going to log on to a meeting, I'm going to take this meeting at nine in the morning, and get done with it, and then I'll meet you down at the pool, and we'll do that for the rest of the day. So that's the thing about business ownership and working with your spouse, like I said, I really enjoy it. And I think for those people who don't know their spouse that well, or would like to work with them, I think it can be really rewarding.

Alan Regala: That's awesome. That's cool. All right, so we're going to shift again here. What's the biggest thing that you got wrong in the early days, whatever it was, hiring, tools, systems, whatever it was, and what did you learn from that?

Ty McBride: Man, the biggest thing that I got wrong, for me, the amount of cash, right, money. How much money do you need to do something? And I don't mean this like, some of my biggest mistakes were not appropriately capitalizing for things, that's been my biggest mistake. I've always been able to weather my way through it, but I would have slept better at night if I'd known, specifically in certain types of construction businesses, or any kind of business, you might have accounts receivable, and then you have accounts payable. And if you have any kind of terms on that, that can kind of mean you're owing money before you get paid money, and understanding, managing cash flow, managing capital resources, and making sure I had the capital I needed when those times were happening. The hardest thing I ever did, I took on a project, and I coach our franchisees through this all the time, because as a franchise system we sometimes take on larger projects, and I would say on a very large project, I did not go get any extra money for it. And I remember just how tight everything felt, how stressful everything felt, I was on, you do sometimes in commercial work, a pay-when-paid contract, and when I realized that I had paid all of my labor, I had paid all of my material, and yet I wasn't going to be getting a check from the contractor for forty-five days, after I'd already paid all my bills, and I paid a lot of bills, that was probably the biggest lesson I've learned, about capitalization. And I think, definitely if you're thinking about buying a business, make sure you're appropriately capitalized, plan for the worst, capitalize for the worst, you can never have too much money, as long as you're being conservative, spending wisely, when you're done with it, if you have too much, you can always just give it back.

Alan Regala: Yeah, of course, of course. I think that is a very surprising thing to a lot of people, who have a business that's actually successful and profitable, but still seems like the bank account is low, or seems like it's running out. I think that's surprising for a lot of people, which makes sense, because it seems counterintuitive.

Ty McBride: I mean, a lot of people, I think, manage their business out of their bank account, they're just looking at the account, and it's like, okay, well, I've got money today, so it looks pretty good, and then it's going down, it's not so great, but things feel right, but the cash is running out.

Alan Regala: So knowing how the business works, how you get paid versus how you pay out, and the timing of all of those things, is super important for business owners to understand early on, so that especially when they're getting into a franchise, like you said, you're capitalized appropriately, so you can grow without worrying about running out of money.

Ty McBride: And growth often does take more money, just because of the payment cycle. Yeah, it's crazy how expensive success can be. And that was the thing, you think that because I am profitable, because I've got these big projects coming up, or we're winning all these jobs, you think that. But everybody will tell you, growth is expensive. And that was just one thing, I thought, if my business is doing a million a year, and if the CPA tells me I made two hundred thousand dollars, that means I'll have two hundred thousand dollars in the bank, and then realizing that's not how it works.

Alan Regala: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, this is good stuff to think about early on, and when you're in the business, just making sure you keep those things in mind, especially as you're growing, and what the requirements for growth are. When we look at, you mentioned having made some of these mistakes earlier, and losing sleep over that, not everybody is able to just get back up after hitting, kind of get knocked down, right? And that's a lot of what happens in business, is that things don't go your way, or you get surprises thrown at you, whether it's someone from your team not showing up, or something happening where they're no longer able to serve you and you need to fill in, or it could be a big job that got lost, or any of those things. Where did you, in your life, develop your grit, your ability to get back up after facing these types of blows?

Ty McBride: Man, such a good question. Two places come to mind as you're saying this, I was circling back to two places I've gone, and have gone again, and this is one I think one of the best benefits of franchising. The first is that I love listening to a good story, and so, by chance, several years ago, ten-plus years ago, I got turned on to the How I Built This podcast, and I would listen to this podcast, and yeah, some of the stories are hockey-stick growth, and those are fun to listen to, but some of the stories are about the grind, and there's this one that always comes to mind, and I repeat it all the time, going back to the capital question, there's [AUDIO UNCLEAR — likely "Stonyfield Farm"], the yogurt company, started twenty-plus, thirty-plus years ago, sold to Dannon for a billion-something dollars. But during this season, the founder is talking about not having enough money to make payroll, and calling his mother-in-law, who was one of their main financers, to cover him for another week's worth of payroll, and getting the call not going through, a busy signal, because his wife was on the other end saying, don't loan my husband any more money. And then talking about walking into a boardroom and realizing there was a hostile takeover, and you hear these stories, and when I listened to it over and over again, you hear the stories of all of these founders, the Bob's Red Mill story, walking out and seeing your mill burned to the ground, and all of these things. And so one is going back to those stories and reminding myself, I am not unique in this, others have done it, others have survived, and sometimes others have not made it, and that's okay too. There's the other story, of the Dippin' Dots guy who just lost his business and had it taken from him because of these circumstances. And so, I'm going to make it, I'm going to go through it. The other one, this is what I got somewhere else, and then decided to recreate it when we franchised, is when I started my first business, I joined this community of like-minded people across the country, and I was on the board of this trade organization. I went to all the meetings, and there were a lot of conversations, my mentors, I found my mentors there. When I was having a tough time, I was calling them up and saying, hey, this is what I'm facing, I had this major issue, have you ever been through it? And they would tell me what they'd been through, and I got that kind of feedback, learning from them, having a sounding board when stuff wasn't going right, being a sounding board when they had things not going right, that for me was huge. And that's where my grit was developed, their advice, and then the advice given through the podcast of, you know, just keep going. Just keep going. Going back to my wife being a champion for the business and for me, telling me we haven't come this far for it all to be lost. Just keep going, that's what I always tell myself, just keep going. But you've got to have voices around you to tell you to just keep going. And that's what I love about the franchise, or at least the right franchise organization, I'm here as the founder, our team is here to tell you to just keep going, but probably more important than me telling you to just keep going is those others, the franchisees alongside you, telling you, "hey, just keep going, I went through that similar thing a year ago, here's what I did, just keep going." That for me is how you develop grit, you have to get a group of people around you to hear those stories of survival, and then you can survive as well.

Alan Regala: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I mean, I think listening to podcasts, just reading books, just hearing those stories of failure that lead to success, right, I think we all know there's no such thing as an overnight success, right? Those all come over years of toil and failure to get to that point. So hearing those kinds of stories is very inspiring. And like you said, I think the support system, with the other franchise owners, creating this franchise community, is what really makes a big difference between having an independent business and having a franchise business. Having that support from all the other owners, people who've been there before, people to help answer your questions. And of course, you get to a point where you become that person helping other people who are newer in the system, which then helps reinforce what you've learned and makes you even better at what you're doing. Very unique, and I think very, very cool, that this is a benefit of franchising.

Ty McBride: Yeah. Yeah.

Alan Regala: So, I appreciate your time, and I've got just one more question, for anyone out there, Ty, who's interested in leaving the corporate world, or maybe they've already left the corporate world and don't really want to go back, and they're trying to figure out what to do next, considering franchising as that next step, what sort of advice would you have for them?

Ty McBride: Well, the advice I would have for them, I would say find a guide, find somebody you trust, whether it's somebody who's done it before, you can get connected with somebody like Alan. I could get on here and say, contact me, but that wouldn't be true, because not everybody is a great fit for us like that, we have a certain culture and certain things that make us a good fit. But getting a guide, a coach, an advisor, a consultant, who can hear your story, hear what you're trying to accomplish financially, personally, what your skills are, what your background is, and what your vision for entrepreneurship is, and then walk you through the options you have, for almost any budget, that's what you need, you need a guide. And that's going back to, if I've had any success, it's come from having a guide. So that would be my advice, and ChatGPT is not a guide. ChatGPT is a resource to use to evaluate things, but you need to talk to a person who can tell you the stories, and then tell you, based on what they know about you, what would be some great options. So that'd be my advice, go find yourself a guide.

Alan Regala: It's perfect, I love it, Ty, great advice. Thank you so much for joining me today and sharing all of your nuggets of wisdom, and congrats on Preservan, as well as on being a franchise champion.

Ty McBride: I appreciate it, Alan, thank you.