Sales Comes First, Even in a Franchise

This is a transcript from Episode 59 of The Franchise Champion Show.

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

Alan Regala: My guest today got into franchising back when his brand was still figuring itself out. One of the first dozen owners in the whole system. Seven years in with Fitness Machine Technicians, he's built something most people never expected out of that early bet. Jesse, welcome to the show.

Jesse Rorvig: Thanks, Alan.

Alan Regala: I'm super excited to have you on the show. This is one of these brands that's kind of a sleeper, if you will, in that it's not very sexy at all in how it sounds, but it's a very interesting business model. Before we get into the franchise story, take me back to before franchising. What were you doing beforehand, and how did you get into this?

Jesse Rorvig: All right. I'll start in 2011. I moved from Minnesota to Oregon to learn how to surf. That was the reason. I was 27 at the time, and surfing was my retirement plan. I was still competing in snowboarding at the time, in amateur. So I chose Portland. There are only a few cities where you can learn how to surf and still snowboard. It took me a long time to learn how to surf, but I did it. I'm fully intermediate now. You can learn how to surf in Oregon. There are some real gems here, and it's great. I love it.

Prior to that, I was a jet engine mechanic in the Minnesota Air National Guard. That's what kept me in Minnesota. Once my nine years were up and I got back from Afghanistan, I was like, I'm out, I'm moving out of the state. It's cold here, there are a lot of mosquitoes. Love Minnesota, but Oregon's great. And I was a school counselor for about a decade. I met a gal in 2017, and I was like, man, I'm going to have to level up for this one. Otherwise I don't think this is going to work out. She's got refined tastes, we'll say. And it's not like you can level up tomorrow. So I'm like, I need a strategy where I can slowly level up over the course of five years, and I'll get there. That's what happened. That's up to franchising.

Alan Regala: Wow. Okay, that's interesting. I could spend half an episode just asking about the desire to surf while you're snowboarding. But I'm a fellow snowboarder as well, and I grew up surfing in San Diego, so I hear you. I'm going to have to go visit you in Portland and do both of those at some point. All right, so you're in Portland, you met a gal, and you decided that your current occupation maybe wasn't going to get you where you needed to be for the long term. How did you find franchising as the path forward for you?

Jesse Rorvig: I had some entrepreneurship in the past. I almost owned a College Pro Painters and ended up just being a manager for a guy instead. So I had a little bit of hustle going on. I remember one summer in eighth grade, I really wanted my friend Matt Nowak to get a season pass to Valley Fair, which is like Six Flags or Disneyland. I'm like, let's mow some lawns and get you there. And I remember not being very good at it, because one of the lawns we mowed was right across from Matt's house, and we half finished it and got paid. Anyway, it was always in me a little bit. I had a painting company after grad school, so it was something that circled back around, and I thought, I need something that scales. I'm not going to be the owner operator.

I went on BizBuySell. I wanted to acquire. And you had mentioned it in one of your podcasts, I think, that oftentimes we're looking for a partner or something that exists already, because it's really uncomfortable. It's like, I might fail, but if I fail, at least I'll fail with a buddy. So I ended up with FranNet.

Alan Regala: A franchise consultant with FranNet. Okay.

Jesse Rorvig: Yes. We did a personality assessment, and it was great. I ended up picking three. I think I had a mobile personal training concept, which is cool by the way. It's just a little gorilla. There are signs on the side of the road. That was a cool idea. There was a cleaning service, there was mold and restoration, and then there was Fitness Machine Technicians. And I actually used the exact word that you used to describe FMT. It was like, this is not sexy, but I think it's going to make money. But now, looking back, I'm like, actually it is sexy, because when I mention it to people, they're like, I wouldn't have thought that's a business. So when you're shopping, if you have that first reaction of, huh, that's a business, that might be something to look into. It might not be a good idea, but it's something to give a second look.

Alan Regala: You're right. It shouldn't disqualify it just because you hadn't heard of it. It's funny, I work with people all the time who are like, wow, I would have never picked that. And this is something I've picked for them to look at. It feels to them like, well, if I'm trying to base this on a gut decision, I wouldn't have thought of that, so maybe I shouldn't look at it. It seems weird, but there is a reason I'm proposing this for you. You don't know it yet, but once you look at the details and understand the model and all those sorts of things, there's a lot more to it that you hopefully will learn along the way. But I digress. Thank you for mentioning that. Okay, so how did you end up choosing this one over the other ones you had looked at?

Jesse Rorvig: Well, in hindsight, it's like, jet engine mechanic. This is my small fitness center in my garage. I like fitness. So I can wrench, and I like fitness. It's ridiculously right up my alley, but I didn't see it at the time. It's beyond me how blind you can be, you know?

Alan Regala: Yeah. It was very similar with my situation. I used a consultant as well, and I had three options. The one I chose was this ShelfGenie business. I liked the business model, but what the business turned out to be, which I didn't realize at the time, was user-centered design in people's homes. And my background was mechanical engineering, design. I'm like, oh, this makes so much sense. But I didn't connect it until afterwards. I was like, oh yeah, that was dumb.

Jesse Rorvig: I have a small tangent, because I knew that about you, and now that you mention it, I was like, this is like design. My wife is in a program right now for interior design. What design boils down to is obviously making something beautiful, but it's also solving a problem. That's what engineers do. It's just a little bit more in the forefront.

Alan Regala: Yeah, that's so funny. Well, that's great. I'm glad it worked out. You picked the right one. So for those people who don't know what FMT is or what they do, what's your 30-second pitch to someone who has no idea?

Jesse Rorvig: I love this. We specialize in maintenance and repair of small fitness centers that you might find in an apartment or a hotel. We have a zero downtime guarantee. If you have quarterly maintenance, your machines should never break down unexpectedly. If they happen to, we don't charge diagnostic fees. That pitch took me a long time. But there are variations. Someone says, hey, what do you do? And I say, I specialize in maintenance and repair of small fitness centers that you'd find in an apartment or hotel. People get it. If I don't preface it with that, they think of Life Time Fitness or Crunch. It's not that, because that's usually not our customer, for various reasons.

Alan Regala: Got it. I love how you've figured that out over the years, how to say it in a nice, succinct way so that people get it. That's beautifully well said. And so it sounds like your customers are property managers, or whoever owns those fitness studios, right?

Jesse Rorvig: Property managers of multifamily. That was my first big boom outside of COVID. I swooped up a lot of really durable, really sticky quarterly maintenance contracts, tiny maintenance contracts. I mean, two treadmills, two ellipticals, and a cable crossover, quarterly maintenance. They're really small, but when you put together 200 of them, that's a pretty good basis to hire a couple of people on. So that's probably my primary. That's my foundation, multifamily. HOAs are a big one also. We've got a bit more work to do there. It seems really similar to multifamily, but it's not. And obviously hospitality is right up there, probably threatening for that number two spot, especially hospitality in the city, where people are traveling for business and they actually want to maintain their workout routine while they're traveling.

I don't know if I should mention specific customers, but Soho House called me this morning, and I'm like, yes, yes, yes. And I'm like, how did they find me? Oh, I knocked on their door and I got their email and I sent them an email. So it was direct sales. We knocked on apartment doors, because they're trying to lease apartments and there's always somebody there. So it's cold calling, but face to face.

Alan Regala: That's great. So I'm curious, keep going. For those out there thinking about potentially looking at this brand as an option, what does the day to day look like? What you just said is obviously part of it. It sounds like there's a lot of direct sales. What else are you doing? Or let's say a new franchise owner, not you now.

Jesse Rorvig: Okay. So there are three. What does my day to day look like as a salesperson? What does my day to day look like when I have a technician hiring emergency, like right now? What did my day to day look like when I was brand new? Which do you want?

Alan Regala: Let's start off with, at the beginning of any business, people are wearing a lot of hats and doing all sorts of things. So let's fast forward a bit. Once things are rolling along, after the first couple of years and a little more steady state, what does that look like?

Jesse Rorvig: Okay. So the first couple of years. I'm going to turn this into a little bit of a timeline. In 2019, I buy the business. And then a year and a half later, COVID happens. That's rough for multifamily, because we've got landlord-tenant laws that favor the tenants quite a lot, which is great. People need a place to live, especially during the pandemic. But multifamily fired all of their vendors, especially their preventative maintenance. In hindsight, I was able to benefit from that shakeup when things started to turn back on.

Once I acquired the business, acquiring recurring revenue was number one. So I had to learn how to do sales. I learned how to do sales. I learned how to teach my technicians how to door knock. And it is sales heavy. Everybody likes to say they're great at operations. Well, operations doesn't quite get the job done. You need customers, you need revenue that's predictable. I learned very quickly that being super organized isn't going to do it. You need the customers. And then once you get the customers, you're like, oh man, okay, I'm spending too much money. So phase two, for me, was, where am I spending my money? Everybody says to do a budget. So I tried to learn how to budget first. I'm doing my budget, I'm not spending money stupidly, what's going on? And then I learned about cash flow forecasting, which is very different from budgeting. And I figured out it's labor. It's your paychecks that are what's going if you don't figure out how to get everybody tight and efficient. So that was the sequence, just to put a bow on it: minimal organization, sales, efficiency. And at some point after those three, I became profitable in a meaningful way.

Alan Regala: Nice. That's great. I love how you sequenced those together. Gosh, man, sales is number one. It's great if you can execute on whatever service you provide, but if you have no customers, it doesn't really help. So you've got to start with sales. And cash flow is definitely something you learn along the way. Backtrack a little bit on the sales part. You said you had to learn sales. Did you have any sales experience prior to this?

Jesse Rorvig: I was a high school counselor. So I think, empathy. What do counselors do? They're trying to very gently get people to improve their own lives by using empathy, unconditional positive regard, paraphrasing, active listening. Does any of that sound like sales skills?

Alan Regala: Absolutely. Yes.

Jesse Rorvig: A hundred percent. So I think I really underestimated that, as far as what I already had in the bag. But I did need to level up. It's almost like embracing sales as evil. I was like, sales is greed, sales is evil. And then my father-in-law, I lived next door to my in-laws, my father-in-law was a career salesperson. His final job was engineering supplies for mining tools, big tools. Tools that honed the tools that fix the tools in the mines. They're too big to bring to a shop. And he said, sales is you're solving people's problems. They really want to solve their problems, but they have obstacles in the way, they have mindset in the way, and you're just helping them get over that hump and solve their problem. Once I was able to reframe that, I was like, all right, I'm going to learn how to sell.

Alan Regala: I love that. That was very well said by your father-in-law. Wise man. I had a similar situation. Maybe you had more sales training in your counseling than I did, but when I had to learn, I was doing a lot of reading, listening to a lot of audiobooks, and I used whatever I could from my franchisor. But at the end of the day, like you said, it's solving a problem. It's so much listening, and then interacting with someone to hear their needs so that they feel validated. Then it's a lot of education, so they understand their own situation, what the options are, and the value of whatever it is you're providing. You give them the option to buy, and then hopefully they like you and they want to buy. That's really cool. Awesome. Well, it sounds like you were one of the first dozen franchise owners in your system. What was that experience like, starting so early on? Was this the first year or two?

Jesse Rorvig: I think I was in technically year two. We're all 2.0s. There was a 1.0 franchisee, and all the 2.0s came in around the same time. So year one, year two, we're all tight and we're all competitive. We have our own WhatsApp group and we banter. None of us are shy about it. I want to beat you, you know? It's super friendly, though. It was bonding. And there was, not quite a few, but a handful who fell off, in territories that were really surprising, like Chicago. I'm like, what? So you scratch your head. But the ones who stuck it out, I ask them for advice, I vent, I call them all the time, and it's great. It's really cool being that first crew.

Alan Regala: Yeah, I can imagine. And it must be hard, being such a small group and very close, and then seeing some of them struggle and end up having to close shop.

Jesse Rorvig: There's one other piece of that. What was it like being part of that first group of franchisees, and then there's also the system that you're in. We had a different experience than everyone else who came in either during COVID, which is crazy, or after COVID. I sat down with Don Powers, the founder, and he told me how, yeah, he did sell fitness equipment, but he realized that's not where the recurring revenue is. And then he quit selling fitness equipment, and here he is. And he'd say, I'm not a sales guy. And you're like, yeah, Don, you are. People like you. He's not a pushy sales guy, I think is what he was saying. But now Don Powers is probably golfing in Scotland. He did have an exit. And we did get that ground-floor experience. We had a lot of input in what I describe, to say it politely, as a developing franchise. We get to be a part of shaping how we do things from here forward as a franchise system. Not everything that works in Malvern, which is the flagship store, which they still have, in Malvern, Pennsylvania, is going to work for everyone else. What other service offerings are we going to have that still fit within the system? They let us test that. They helped us. And I don't want to say it's like family, because saying that is kind of blasphemy in work culture. It's kind of toxic. If your boss is like, we're like family, you should run. But we did get to experience a tighter bond, I guess, even with the franchisor. Actually, the reason I'm sitting here with you today is I was on a phone call with Jason Pritchard, and I was apologizing to him for being a jerk. And he's like, yep, you were a jerk. But I think this guy wants to have you on his podcast, and I think you'd be great for it. So it's not like family, but I think I have an intimacy with the whole group that other, newer franchisees probably don't have yet.

Alan Regala: If the thought of owning your own business excites you more than it scares you, like it did for Jesse, we should chat. I'm a former franchise owner, 14 years, multi-million dollar exit, and now I help driven individuals find out if franchising is right for them and, if so, what the right brand is. First, I learn about you, your goals, skills, and investment level. Then I match you with a handful of opportunities from over 600 brands, and I support you all the way through the process. Then you get to decide if franchising is your path forward or not. My service is completely free. I'm only paid by franchisors after you find the right fit and move forward. If you want to book an intro call, go to athletetoowner.com/fit. Now, back to Jesse.

Alan Regala: Can you provide an example of how that situation played out in those early stages, when the brand was developing? It's not fully formed, and I think this is something a lot of potential franchise candidates would love to understand better: what it's like to work with an emerging brand that doesn't have all of its ducks in a row. When I joined ShelfGenie, it was two years in also. There were things missing, and I think that's true for every young franchise brand. Could you give maybe one or two examples of what that looks like?

Jesse Rorvig: Yeah. I think the biggest one was, I remember waving my hands in the air and being like, hey, let's not pretend we have our shit together. Let's not pretend all the SOPs are in place and everything's tight. Along with that, can you facilitate us getting together and learning from each other? Can you facilitate a bit of a mess, this chaos, so we can learn from each other rather than looking to the franchisor for everything right now?

They facilitated this thing called Table Topics. We would meet once a month, and the franchisees would take turns with a topic. Sometimes it would be more of a panel, sometimes more of a discussion or presentation. They supported that, and it's carried on today. It's how it's supposed to be now. It's presented from headquarters, which is great. But they let us take a little bit of that load and a little bit of that burden and be in the mix with the developing franchise.

Alan Regala: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I think this is one of the differences for people looking at different brands and what their personality is like. Those who need more stability and more safety in their world should maybe be aligned with more established brands. Whereas for someone like you, you have to create your own SOPs, you have to fix it, you have to ask the franchisor to do more. I think it takes someone who's a little more entrepreneurial, who thrives in that kind of environment and is willing to speak up. If you're willing to figure it out, you can handle it, and you're helping create the systems for everybody, versus getting into a system and waiting.

Jesse Rorvig: I'll jump in on that. I think my number one identity crisis in franchising was, am I a real business owner? Am I an entrepreneur? Or am I just a franchisee? And I don't have that anymore. But I think being in a grittier, emerging environment helped me with that. I had to figure it out. The franchisor is great, and they're no longer a developing brand. I mean, they're developing, but they're developed by now. You don't get that emerging brand experience now. You get something a little more polished.

Alan Regala: Yeah. I think this is just the natural progression for any franchise brand. What's interesting to me is that there are pros and cons with everything. For you, it was a lot more work to get things up and running, a lot more things you had to create yourself. Someone coming in now will have a very different experience, like you said. But at the same time, maybe there aren't quite as many opportunities.

Jesse Rorvig: The early adopters have the advantage.

Alan Regala: Exactly. And congrats, by the way. I believe you got a big award, maybe your first year or something. Can you tell me about that?

Jesse Rorvig: I continue to be in my own category, because here's another early adopter advantage of single territory. I'm like a super single territory. Now the territories are smaller and they cost a little more. I was one of very, very few who only had one territory. I think I got the highest revenue, or the highest growth, the first two years for a single territory person. And now they don't have that category anymore, because almost everybody owns more than one territory. If mine was sold today, I think it would probably be three or four territories. So there's your early adopter advantage.

Alan Regala: Exactly. Congratulations, by the way. That's fantastic. Same situation with me. Year two, or whenever I joined, the territories were twice the size of what they are today.

Jesse Rorvig: That's totally what happens. And now they do the leaderboard. They just do everybody together, and I sit perpetually at eight, nine, or ten every month. But I'm like, you guys have more territories than me.

Alan Regala: Yeah. What are you going to do? What's one thing you got wrong early on that you'd tell a brand-new franchisee to watch out for?

Jesse Rorvig: We're all going to have to learn the hard way how to let people go, how to fire people, how to not tolerate underperformers. But I can still say it: high quality people, a hundred percent, is how you do it. What's that book his son wrote? Who Not How. It's Topgrading. Basically, have great interview processes, hire great people, put a lot of time and effort into it, pay a little more for good people. It's not a value to pay less for a C player. But it's so hard for people to get over that hump. For me, it was scary, firing someone for the first time. And what happens after that? Does the state charge me a bunch of money for unemployment? Turns out it's actually not that scary. They might raise your unemployment rate by half a percent if somebody gets granted unemployment. But just get over that hump. Everyone you're working with, you should be all right spending the day with, and they should be performing. That's the number one thing. It's people first. People eat strategy for lunch. People eat operations for lunch. Good people don't need an SOP, they'll figure it out. Of course SOPs are helpful, but you can't make an SOP for everything. Sometimes situations just need good people to figure it out.

Alan Regala: Yep, absolutely. With good people that you can train and allow to be independent, to think on their own, not just do whatever it says in an SOP, but be able to think about things that come up outside the ordinary. I love that answer. I think that's what every new business owner goes through. It's a scary thing for everyone, like you mentioned, having to fire someone for the first time, or even just looking for people. But you just have to get through it and learn how to do it. And like you said, getting rid of people quicker. I made a mistake on the sales side for years and probably lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars keeping the wrong people on for too long. So what does labor and hiring look like for a business like this? Do you have to find people with your background, like mechanics, or is this pretty specialized?

Jesse Rorvig: What we've found, and I've by no means figured it out, is that somebody who has some tie-in to fitness seems to fit the culture well. Like the guy who's coming back tomorrow. He had a knee injury.

Alan Regala: This is your technician.

Jesse Rorvig: This is my technician. He's like, I'm feeling good. I've been doing my PT every day, twice a day. I'm like, I know you have. You're a bodybuilder. You know how to do PT twice a day. My service manager is a former certified personal trainer. My operations manager likes working out. So that's a good cultural fit. But the skills as far as a technician goes are generalized. It's tool knowledge, it's the ability to solve problems. But it's also scary. I fixed jet engines, and I'm scared of a treadmill. I don't know why, but I'm getting over that.

Alan Regala: That's funny. Let me ask this way. What does your life look like today that wouldn't have been possible in your old career? You mentioned your goals before and the reason you got into this, so I'd love to fast forward from there to now and look back at how far you've come and whether you've achieved your goals.

Jesse Rorvig: Sure. I do want to preface it with this: I have been grinding five days a week for the last two months as a technician, turning wrenches, because I had two technicians injured. So there are points where entrepreneurship is a sprint. Probably like you, it's sprint and rest, sprint and rest. And I've had periods over the last two years, also, coming out of COVID, where I was terrified. I'm like, what's going to happen here? I was burning through cash. I'm remembering my endpoint here, which is how my life is different. But I was terrified, and I was testing out this idea of sacrifice. What can I sacrifice in order to really focus on sales? If I do fail, I can say that I gave it my all. And I quit snowboarding for nearly three years. The thing that I loved. I was hungry. I gave it up for two and a half, almost three years. And I surfed very little, because I was working on the weekends. I was doing whatever I had to.

But for the last two years, for periods of half of the year to three quarters of the year, I was skipping work once a week, Monday through Friday, and I'd either go to the ocean and surf, or go to the mountain and snowboard. In Oregon you can snowboard through August. I went snowboarding twice in June this year. That was my personal KPI, and I kept track of it. For some reason I broke the streak. I kept the streak from January to midsummer. You can only snowboard so much, and surf and fish and golf. Find something you like to do also, and work, because it's fun to do leisure stuff. But that's how my life is different. I can do that, and I can probably do that every single week of the year next year, hopefully. That's my goal.

And my goal is to go spend $1,000 at a surf wave pool within a three-day period next year, which I don't think I would have fathomed financing in the past. I'm obsessed with wave pools, by the way. I think they're the next, have you heard of them?

Alan Regala: Oh my gosh, every time they pop up on my feed, I'm clicking on it. I have not been to one yet, but I'm with you. Let me know when you're going.

Jesse Rorvig: So, a preface for anybody listening to this: wave pools are artificial surfing waves in a man-made lake. You call them a surf lake or a wave pool. And here's my pitch, or here's what's going to happen. It is the chairlift of the surfing industry. Think about that. It's going to go bonkers in the next ten years.

Alan Regala: I don't doubt it. I see that they're building more and more. I really want to try one out. I've been to Palm Springs a number of times and I've gone by the one there. I think they have another one coming up soon, and they just look amazing. For some people trying to picture this, you might see ads for something like this on a cruise ship, where it's just water getting shot up a little incline and someone's riding that as a wave. But these wave pools are not that. They're massive, and they actually generate a legit wave that you can ride and go inside and cut it all up. It's crazy.

Jesse Rorvig: One more tangent on the wave pools. I was down in LA, and this is another thing where a business solves a problem. How many people say, have you ever surfed? No, but I'd love to if there weren't sharks, cold water, waves that are scary, whatever. I was down in LA for a BTS concert. Here's another way my life's different. My wife is obsessed with the most popular band in the world, called BTS. It's a Korean boy band.

Alan Regala: I've got daughters. Yes.

Jesse Rorvig: We've flown twice to go see really expensive concerts that kind of make me nervous about my finances, but it's okay. I brought my surf stuff with me, because I always do. I was there for a day, and I surfed an exploratory session in Malibu. Malibu is an incredible wave, and I'm like, sweet, I'll come back to this tomorrow, let's go have dinner. And it rained in LA, and it rained hard the next day. People probably don't know about this, but when it rains in LA, you can't surf, because there's tuberculosis in the water, hep, it just gets nasty. So I couldn't surf. Five-day trip, a 45-minute session, and that was it. And I looked at Palm Springs wave pool and it was booked out. But the biggest one in the US is about to open its doors. It's in Palm Desert, right next door to Palm Springs, and that's going to be the premier wave pool. So I digress, but I would like my future life to involve something with that. That's a life goal. And again, how my life has changed is my goals are bigger. I'm going to be in the wave pool industry, and I believe it, because I did this.

Alan Regala: That's an interesting thought, actually. I talk with a lot of people who have never owned a business before. Maybe they're in the corporate world doing something else and they're thinking about this. A lot of people are interested in buying an existing business, like you mentioned before, which to me is a sweet thing if you can find the right one for the right price and the right situation. All those things have to line up, and that's what everybody wants at the same time. So it's very hard to find an existing business that meets all the criteria. But with franchising, the beautiful thing, because you have the support in place from the franchisor, is that you can learn to be an owner. You can learn and have support along the way as you're growing the business. By the time you're at the stage you're at, where you've gone through it and figured out how to sell, how to market, how to operate, how to deal with people, hire, manage, train, and fire, you could run any other business. You could start a different business if you wanted to, or get into another industry, because you have such a great foundation of learning with these training wheels through franchising, which is something I love. I sold my business a couple of years ago, and I feel like, wow, I could do anything right now. I have the experience. Which is, I guess, what I'm doing now. This is my own venture here. I love that aspect, and I believe you could make it in whatever you're trying to do, because you've got this experience.

Jesse Rorvig: I a hundred percent agree. We're basically talking about why franchising and how, and the how is, you have support. You have a partner, and you want to keep as much equity as you can in whatever business you have. Technically, you're still 100% the owner. How it's usually set up is you pay a percentage every month off your top-line revenue, and that's not necessarily ownership. So the cool thing is, you own it, you have support, you have a partnership, but you still own it 100%. And you end up with what I call a working man's MBA. You end up with the most practical master's in business you could ever imagine, through hard knocks and reading books. And maybe listening to too much Jordan Peterson, or going down YouTube holes about marketing, or Alex Hormozi, whatever. You figure out how to learn, whether it's from your franchise or from YouTube or from a book, by hook or by crook, how to get it done. And the confidence that comes from that is great.

Alan Regala: It's huge. I love it. All right. What advice do you have for anyone out there considering jumping into franchise ownership? Maybe they're at a corporate job now, or maybe they're a manager at a hotel. Someone who's thinking about this as a potential career move. What advice have you got for them?

Jesse Rorvig: Final question. Are we landing the plane, Alan?

Alan Regala: We're landing the plane.

Jesse Rorvig: Write your skills down on a piece of paper. Write down the skills that you like to use. Write about the skills you wish you had. Write about the skills you think you might be good at. And start there. Figure out how you're going to improve your communication, because most people do need to improve their communication. And what is sales? It's communication. I kind of dabble in different skill set areas, because you do need to be a generalist. But figure out if you're comfortable selling things, because if you own a business, you have to sell a good or a service.

So I guess that's what I would say: write your skills down, an honest, sober assessment, and then figure out where you're at with communication. Can you be a strong enough communicator? You're selling a career path for your employees. You're selling preventative maintenance contracts, widgets, whatever. It's communication. Build upon your current skills. I hear a lot of "double down on your strengths." You kind of have to shore up your weaknesses a little bit, but you can hire for that. So don't get too caught up on your weaknesses or the things you don't like. Focus on your current skills, and plan on improving communication, because you do need to do that.

Alan Regala: Exceptional communication. That's one of my HiPer8 principles, high performance principles. Absolutely. And one thing I want to focus in on a little in what you just said: obviously the skills that you already have are great, and you want to focus a lot on those, but not ignore the weaknesses. One thing you mentioned was what are some of the things you want to learn. You may not be good at them now, but to me, if you have the desire to learn new things, especially things where you want to grow as a person, that's key. And honestly, I think sales is one of those things every single person should have an ability to do, at least when it comes to communication and solving problems. And empathy, putting yourself in someone else's situation, helping solve their problem, and being a good communicator to make that happen. Everybody should want that. If you have the desire, the discipline to learn, and the grit to get through all the failures you're going to make along the way, as well as being okay with being uncomfortable during that process, the sky's the limit.

Jesse Rorvig: So uncomfortable. I didn't think communication was something I needed, because I thought, I'm good. I know how to ask open-ended questions and paraphrase and communicate. But I had to face it head on, and I ended up loving it. You don't know what you're going to love. I joined Toastmasters for a couple of years. I was only there a couple of years, I don't go anymore, but I got about 80% better at something in two years, and I was like, okay, I'm good. It was during the phase when I didn't snowboard, and it became my extreme sport. I presented to hundreds of people at points in time, a lot with multifamily. They still will let me speak at their conferences. It's so much work, and I don't do it much anymore, but I've got that skill in my back pocket. That's the mystery. You don't know what you're going to come out on the other end with, what wild skill you're going to latch on to that becomes, I guess, a superpower.

Alan Regala: Yeah, sure. I had actually meant to ask you about this, and I know we were running short on time, so I wanted to respect your time. You mentioned being competitive with snowboarding, and I wanted to ask how that has helped you in this business venture.

Jesse Rorvig: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Like I said, I caught your Athlete to Owner philosophy. While I was in Minnesota, I was coaching competitive snowboarding as well. It was one of the coolest experiences ever. The owner of the team, Jessica Zalewski, is my hero, a total entrepreneur, badass. She ran a motorcycle racing school the other half of the season. Talk about a lifestyle business. She'd fly me to USAC competitions. I coached extremely talented 12-year-olds who were better than me, and the coaches got to compete with our riders. It was incredible. And I think there's a huge thing about knowing that to be successful at this, I need to put my time in. I need to train, I need to do the reps. That mindset is so cool.

Alan Regala: Having that mindset of an athlete really helps with pushing through when it's hard, or when you lose, and putting the reps in. Absolutely. I think about what you said earlier about discomfort, and knowing that you're going to lose a lot. In these competitions there's often only one winner and everyone else is a loser, right? So you know you're going to take some losses, but you pick yourself back up and keep going. The point isn't necessarily to be number one. It's that you keep getting back up over and over again and put in the work, and that's how you get better and have success, whether that's being number one in your system or number eight or whatever. It doesn't really matter. It's the journey. And I can see that so much of your success comes from your background in sports. I just love it.

Jesse Rorvig: Eventually you realize your only competition is yourself. Of course, if you're a D1 athlete, you're trying to get medals, you're trying to win. But I compete in snowboarding because I want to do the best that I can do, or I want to go with my friends and banter about landing a trick or whatever. I love it. And I've found those same feelings in entrepreneurship. It's the only other place I've found that feeling of winning and losing and losing and losing and then winning and then going back. It's in business ownership, and it's in competition.

Alan Regala: Athlete to Owner. Well, Jesse, thank you so much for joining me today and talking to me about snowboarding and wave pools and Fitness Machine Technicians and all the other good stuff. I appreciate you sharing your nuggets of wisdom, and congratulations on being a Franchise Champion.

Jesse Rorvig: Thanks. It's so much fun chatting with you. Let's go snowboard or surf. You're in Seattle, yeah?

Alan Regala: Yeah, I'm in Seattle. We're going to do it. All right, well, hopefully we'll have you again on the show in the future, and we can talk about our trips to the wave pool and snowboarding and hear how your adventure is progressing.