“I am not an expert in power washing. I'm an expert in franchising and what people… don't understand is that franchising is a completely different business than whatever the business is that's being franchised. When I acquired the brand, I actually created a new business… so it was very important to me to find someone… that knows that trade really well so that I can do the thing that I'm great at, which is building a franchise brand. With founders who have 35 years of knowledge, we can train franchise owners to replicate what they've done.”

“I looked at about two dozen businesses… insulation, roofing, HVAC, plumbing… For me, it was most important that it was in the service space and that, I had kind of a checklist of things I was looking for. Get a checklist together of things you're looking for and let that guide your decision-making process. For me, non-negotiables were a good residential and commercial split, high margins, unskilled labor, and a large addressable market. A nice-to-have was no big franchise competition. Power washing ticked those boxes.”

“You need $250k to $300k in cash or assets… but beyond that, we can’t teach grit. Has the person gone through hard times and pushed through? Do they have an inherent ability to lead? Your ability to grow a business depends on how effective you are at finding and leading people. We look for those who won’t give up and who can bring others along.”

“Franchising costs a lot of money… to the tune of like, millions of dollars. The bread and butter of a franchisor is royalties, but you need to support new franchisees before they pay much. So last year, I knew we’d be at 300 plus, so I built a C-suite—we're a mature company. I’m the biggest investor in the brand… founders wrote big checks… so we weren’t dependent upon franchise fees and could hire the right staff off the bat.”

“I always tell franchisees: imitate before you iterate. Ultimately, what you are paying a royalty for is the model… It makes no sense to buy a franchise if you just want to create your own systems. The best ideas come from franchisees, but we want them to run the business for a while before tweaking. The biggest struggles I’ve seen are when owners try to do their own thing right out of the gate—then they're miserable and wasting their money.”

“All the knowledge about the brand existed in one person’s brain… so last year I had him sit in Notion for months, dumping everything he knows into articles and videos. Now, we’ve uploaded all that into a large language model—so when someone has a question, the AI can answer as if they are Brian Jr. It makes the business more appealing, because they can get the right answer anytime.”

“Get a checklist. It doesn’t need to be sexy… find something high margin, simple, unskilled labor. A business needs to build to a meaningful amount of revenue—otherwise, a job makes more sense. It’s going to take all your time, capital, and energy for at least two to three years. But if you do, you get to build an asset with real wealth-building potential.”