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Have you considered franchising your business? It’s understandable to think that a simple “copy and paste” of your current operations into a new location is all that’s necessary. After all, from an outside perspective, that’s exactly how it appears! But the truth is, there’s so much more than meets the eye when it comes to growing a healthy franchise. A peek behind the curtain should reveal a comprehensive and scalable model that allows others to replicate your success with consistency — a process that requires highly strategic planning, well-defined systems, and a deep understanding of how to empower your franchisees.
Aaron Harper’s journey with Rolling Suds is a prime example of how to navigate this undertaking. In less than two years, Aaron took a traditional power-washing business and turned it into America’s first and largest power-washing franchise, boasting over 200 locations across 27 states. His experience highlights not just the potential in franchising, but the critical considerations and steps necessary to get it right. Whether you’re exploring franchising for the first time or looking to refine your current strategy, these insights will help you set a solid foundation for success.
Recognize that Franchising is a Separate Business
“Most people who franchise their business are good at whatever their business is. They have no idea how to franchise.”
One common pitfall for business owners is underestimating the complexity of franchising. Aaron underscores that running a successful franchise is not the same as running a successful standalone business.
Franchising requires a distinct set of skills, including an understanding of legal contracts, franchisee training, ongoing support, and a focus on building scalable systems. To franchise successfully, you must be prepared to step away from the day-to-day operations of your core business and shift your focus toward developing a replicable, franchise-friendly model.
Systematize for Scalability
“Franchising is systemizing processes and starting a business that starts businesses.”
To scale effectively through franchising, your business model needs to be built on standardized systems that can be easily followed by franchisees. This means creating operational manuals, training programs, and support structures that allow franchisees to learn and implement your business processes time and time again.
Systematizing ensures that every franchise location delivers a consistent customer experience. This consistency is crucial for building a strong brand and establishing trust with customers across all franchise locations. The more refined your systems, the easier it will be for franchisees to replicate and scale your model.
Choose the Right Partners and Franchisees
“I needed someone that knew power washing… better than anyone else.”
Franchising isn’t just about expanding — it’s about finding the right people to carry your vision forward. Aaron’s success hinged on finding experts who complimented his skills. By partnering with the founders of Rolling Suds, Aaron leveraged their decades of industry experience, allowing him to focus on the franchising aspect.
When selecting franchisees, look for individuals who share your growth mindset and are committed to building something substantial. Franchisees should have the ambition to grow their territory and the resilience to face the challenges of entrepreneurship. As Aaron indicates, his goal was to find franchisees who wanted to “build big businesses.”
Establish a Clear Marketing Strategy
“We set the expectation with franchisees that marketing is an investment, it’s not an expense.”
Marketing plays a pivotal role in the success of each franchise location. Aaron ensures that Rolling Suds franchisees have access to proven marketing vendors and strategies.
To help franchisees hit the ground running, Rolling Suds provides a vetted list of approved marketing vendors. These vendors specialize in various marketing channels such as pay-per-click advertising, social media, SEO, and more. This approach allows franchisees to focus on execution rather than starting from scratch. By negotiating favorable deals with vendors and leveraging the power of scale, Aaron’s team ensures that franchisees receive cost-effective marketing support.
Invest in Training and Ongoing Support
“Within those first three to six months, they will add their second truck as part of their development schedule to get their second territory open.”
One of the most critical aspects of franchising is providing thorough training and ongoing support to your franchisees. Aaron’s team at Rolling Suds offers a nine-week training program that covers everything from technical skills to business development.
The training begins with an online learning portal filled with videos, written instructions, and quizzes. Franchisees then transition into a community outreach phase where they learn how to estimate and sell jobs. This program is capped off with in-person training sessions to ensure franchisees understand the operational side of the business. Additionally, each franchisee is assigned a business coach who holds weekly meetings to monitor progress and provide ongoing guidance.
Just Take Action
“Just do it. The only thing you can’t get back is time.”
When asked for his ultimate advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, Aaron emphasizes the importance of taking action. Franchising is not a decision to take lightly, but it’s one of the most rewarding paths to business growth if approached with a clear strategy and the right support systems in place.
…Class Dismissed!
If you believe your business has the potential to be franchised, don’t wait. Take the time to build the necessary systems, find the right partners, and empower others to replicate your success. The rewards of franchising can far exceed what you could achieve with a single location.
Want to hear the full interview with Aaron? Click here!
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Transcript
Aaron: [00:00:00] Most people who franchise their business are good at whatever their business is. They have no idea how to franchise. And as I said earlier, franchising is a different business.
Brien: Welcome to the Millionaire University podcast. I'm your host, Brian Guerin, back in the saddle with you today. And on this edition of the MU pod, I'm joined by Aaron Harper. He's the owner and CEO of Rolling Suds, America's first and largest power washing franchise. He's grown it to nearly 207 locations, guys, 207 locations in 27 states in less than two years, which is insane.
And Aaron, I understand your ultimate goal is to become the 1 800 GOT JUNK of powerwashing. Super ambitious and I love it. Aaron, welcome to the show, my friend.
Aaron: Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be on and chat with you today.
Brien: Yeah, I've been looking forward to this interview for a while now, because I've been following you on LinkedIn.
And ever since I found you there and got a semi intro [00:01:00] from a mutual friend of ours, I've just been eating up your stuff, your content on LinkedIn. I love it. It's super encouraging and super cool to see all the growth happening in real time. It's like every other day, you've got a new franchise popping up and your guys are like landing deals before they're even done with training.
So really cool to see. And today I want to learn all about rolling suds. I want to know how you started it. How you got into it, why powerwashing, and then we're going to do a bit of a deep dive on how franchising can be an incredible opportunity for those who want to get into entrepreneurship. So Aaron, let's kick it off right there.
Where'd you come from? How'd you get into powerwashing?
Aaron: It's so funny. Like I'm. So I'm like the least handy person you'll ever meet. But my niche in the franchise industry is home and residential commercial service companies. But I grew up in Southern California and thought I wanted to be kind of a Hollywood agent, producer kind of type.
So I studied film. I went to Hollywood. I worked for some crazy, insane people in the Hollywood industry, working with, [00:02:00] alongside with Academy award winning actors and writers and directors. And then. After about five years in doing that, I was like, I don't want anything that these people have, and I don't look up to any of my bosses or want any of the outcomes that they have.
And I was like, okay, we need to kind of figure something else out. I had a buddy of mine who I went to college with and I was after that I was in a B2B sales role in the telecommunications space and he's like, Aaron, you need to be making more money. And I'm like, I'm listening. He's, he's like, you should get into franchise development.
And I was like, what's that? Like many of probably your listeners and most people I talk to people hear the word franchise and they think McDonald's or Chick fil A. And they don't, or at least I didn't know that there's this whole world of service businesses that you can buy a franchise for considerably less than a 7 Eleven or a McDonald's or a Wendy's, have higher margins comparatively, have something that's easier to scale and [00:03:00] have the support of a franchisor.
And so I loved the idea of helping people become business owners. Like I thought that was just such a cool thing to be able to say that you did every day. And so I emailed his boss every three weeks for six months until he hired me. And I didn't have any experience in franchising. So his reluctance was, you don't have any experience in selling franchises.
And I convinced him that I could do it. And in, so I started working for a carpet cleaning brand called Chemdry, which has been around a long time. While I was with that company, we added about 200 locations in three years. And, or I added 200 locations in three years. And that business was acquired by a portfolio of service brands, which at the time had three brands.
So that was in 2019, they basically were private equity backed. And they told my leadership team, Hey, like we'll give you unlimited capital basically to go buy other businesses. And they bought a drywall repair brand called the Patch Boys, which was a niche kind of residential [00:04:00] drywall repair company first to market in the franchise space for drywall repair.
But that business was effectively a turnaround. So we bought it from the founder. Founder exited. There was a lot of work to be done. It was the middle of COVID. We hired a brand president and him and I built systems around everything that the franchisees needed. Marketing, training, recruiting, scaling the business, financials, like.
Everything. The first franchisee that we launched was profitable his first month with a 30 percent margin, had a full time skilled laborer, hired prior to going to training, had to hire another guy two weeks in because he was too busy. And so it was awesome. It was a great experience. So I felt we were prepared to grow that company.
And so from October of 2020 to October of 2022. So almost exactly 24 months, I added 223 locations to that business. We were the 13th fastest growing franchise brand in the world, according to Entrepreneur Magazine, and we became the largest drywall repair company. So we had also grown the portfolio of service brands [00:05:00] from three brands to now 12 during that time.
And they said, Hey, Aaron, we're going to buy a 13th business at the end of the year. We love what you've done with these other two brands. We want to actually promote you, double your salary and give you a title with the word president in it. And if you just do what you've done the last X number of years and you could probably make about a million dollars a year doing this and I was like I can do this On my own I could find a business that's non franchised.
I could partner with the founders. I could raise capital I could build that business into becoming the biggest brand in the world in whichever industry I decide So with a wife that was six and a half months pregnant at the time, I turned down what would have been close to a million dollars a year. And I went out across the country to try to find a business that I could franchise.
I looked at roofing and plumbing and electrical and solar and insulation, lawn care, tree care, line striping, epoxy coatings, garages. [00:06:00] And I met the founders of Rolling Suds in September of 2022. I was still a W 2 employee. And I left that job in October of that year. We finalized the transaction for me to acquire the brand in January of last year.
And I raised a significant amount of capital from franchise legends. So not like private equity money, like mentors of mine who could provide. Intellectual capital in addition to actual capital. And we finalized that in January, took the brand to market in February of last year, we've been super selective turning away over 75 people that had the capital and weren't right for our system.
And we've since signed up 57 franchisees who've purchased 207 territories in 27 States. And we've done that since February of 2023 and it's September of 2024. So it's been a wild ride.
Brien: Holy smokes. Well, and I don't want to gloss over the fact that you were offered a job, a cushy job, making a million dollars at something you knew how to do.
You knew what you were [00:07:00] good at. You were going to earn that money easily. And like a super badass, you say, no, thanks. I'm going to go do it myself. Thank you. And now look at you, less than two years, 207 locations. That's incredible.
Aaron: Thank you. I mean, I was always taught that a job was the safe way to the job was the safe way to go get a paycheck, this and that.
I think that COVID taught a lot of people that it's not. I think that was a pretty illuminating experience for a lot of W2 employees. And I think we've seen a surge in entrepreneurship as a result, to be honest with you. I think there's a generational piece to that as well. Just the generation under us is like, we're not going to go work for anyone.
But I do think that even some older folks in Gen X that are like, wait, I just spent 20 years of my life working in software sales. And I was let go three months into COVID because they couldn't afford payroll anymore. Made people really start to think about why don't I go. Either buy a business or start a business.
And [00:08:00] then you've got people like Cody Sanchez who kind of promote this idea of like true ownership. And, and we've seen this shift, I feel like in a way that I hadn't seen before, and it's been great for franchising, but the safe, the idea of a safe W 2 job is, you know, It's not the case. I mean, at any point in time, you're replaceable and owning a business is much different.
There's a lot more risk associated with it because you're putting your money on the line, but your time is more valuable than your money. And if you're giving a business your time, then that business is Mark making a margin on your efforts.
Brien: And I think you and I are very similar to this thought process where, tell me if you agree, it's a bigger risk to me.
To go take the safe route, thrown up air quotes for those listening to us, the safe route, because you have no control over what's going to happen to your livelihood. Even I've had friends, they're the feel the safest in their position and they're like, Oh, just one day they're done. And there's no safety net to me.
That's [00:09:00] riskier than going out and being an entrepreneur, investing in yourself, investing your own funds and getting a little crazy, stepping outside the box. That's to me, a safer, less risky route, even though the traditional level. Thought process and mindset is the complete opposite.
Aaron: Yeah, I would totally agree I mean the other thing that I'll say for those who are working a job currently is like there's only so much Professional development and like that you can get in an organization and really it depends upon the growth of that organization Whereas if you run your company your company depends on your ability to adapt and grow as an individual And like the opportunity to do that has been incredibly rewarding.
The business a year ago needed a different version of me than I am today. And so in order for the business to grow, I've had to grow into that person. And I'm not, that's not something I'm going to get as a W2 employee in a role going from vice president to president, to COO, to CEO. Like [00:10:00] it's just, it's not the same.
Brien: Right. Forces you to stay on your toes. And when you know that your livelihood, your family and the people that Work for you, rely on that from you. It's a heck of a motivator. Right. Yeah, totally. All right. So I want to talk why powerwash? I know you said you kind of canvas the country. You're looking for businesses.
What was it about powerwashing where you're like that, that right there, I got to do this.
Aaron: So I had a checklist. So for anyone who has either bought a business before or is considering buying a business, I would recommend getting a checklist of things that you're looking for. So for me, it was less about the industry and more about how many boxes of the checklist does it check.
And then, cause I can franchise any industry. Franchising, I think for those who, Maybe our, this is the first they're hearing about it. Franchising is a different business than power washing. Franchising is a different business than McDonald's, like the actual business of like franchising is [00:11:00] systemizing processes and starting a business that starts businesses because that's what a franchise is.
And so I needed someone that knew power washing or whatever the widget is, whether it was installation or whatever, better than anyone else. So I needed to find that person so that I could do what I'm good at, which is build a franchise system. And so first and foremost for me, it's always people first.
And so the Suds are incredible humans, just real salt of the earth people. They started this business 34 years ago. Brian Jr. 's dad started it two years later, had his son. He was on the truck for the first 13 years. His wife was in the office with their two kids in like in the office, like answering phones, like.
And they tinkered and tweaked and tried different things and constantly innovated until they figured out a process that was better than any other power washer, equipment, better, all that kind of stuff. And then once I realized that these are the people I wanted [00:12:00] to partner with, at that point it was, okay, how many boxes does it check?
And so I wanted something that had a fragmented industry. So the more fragmented the market is, the easier it is to disrupt. So, what I mean by that, just to be even more explicit, is there's a bunch of local mom and pops, and if there's the more local mom and pops, the easier it is to stand out as a sophisticated organization.
And the power washing industry as a whole is, the majority of it is the person who does the power washing themselves. Knocking on doors, cleaning, cleaning driveways and stuff like that. I wanted something also that had a big total addressable market. So you're always looking at market conditions as well, like, like, how many customers are there in a condensed period, in a condensed area, and what types of customers are there.
And so both the residential and the commercial side. Now Merlin says it's majority commercial, about 60%. Commercial business. I really like that because of the recurring element and the contracts and the [00:13:00] potential Stabilization of cash flow once the business reaches a certain size. I needed something that was niche.
Yeah, you've heard people say the riches are in the niches. The more services that a business offers, the harder that business is to scale. Because training becomes a challenge. It's also harder for the consumer to know you as one thing. Marketing costs more because you can't be super specific. There's a ton of reasons why niche businesses work really well and all we do is residential and commercial power washing and we don't do anything else and we do it better than anyone else.
I wanted something that was recession resistant. We've heard, I'm tired of hearing that we're going through a recession to be honest with you. I've been hearing it since like 2022, maybe even before then. But if a recession were to occur. Is the business going to still exist? And so this business has been around 34 years.
They've been through pandemics, recessions, droughts, whatever it is. And it's continued to grow. What else was on my list? High margins. So, uh, above 25 percent EBITDA [00:14:00] for the franchisee after we've gotten our royalty. So it's both incredibly attractive to the franchisee and then attractive to me as a franchisor.
So everyone can make good amounts of money. There were two. And then I also wanted something that was scalable. So if you own a med spa, it's going to cost a lot of money to build another med spa, right? So scalability is high cash requirements or high debt. Whereas with rolling suds, like you can put a down payment on a truck for 35 grand and your payments around two grand a month.
And now you have another location with that truck with two guys working on the truck. So, like, from a scalability standpoint, you can get to eight trucks, let's just say, with the same cost that it would cost to build out a med spa or a massage envy or whatever it is. One other thing, unskilled labor. The more skilled the, the labor is, the harder it is to scale as well, because you can't train someone to do HVAC, for example.
Like, you have to find a technician who has that experience, and that's hard to find. And so, with us, [00:15:00] like, we can teach someone to do our work within two to three days. Like, Easy, fast. And the two nice to haves on my list that I couldn't find anywhere else other than rolling suds was little to no competition in the franchise space.
So when you think about fragmentation, there are typically in all the other brands that I looked at five to 10 other franchise brands doing the same thing with a different logo. So there had already been established players, which it's. It's fine. I could have captured market share from established players, but it's a lot easier to establish and capture market share from more fragmented markets.
So we are doing now to the power washing industry what 1 800 GOT JUNK did to the junk business in the early 2000s. We're just professionalizing it. One market at a time and inevitably kind of copycat power washers will follow and try to ride the wave of what we've built, but we will have already captured so much market share.
Like I get to give another example, like 1 800 GOT JUNK is a billion dollar system wide sales company and they did that in [00:16:00] 20 years. They paved the way for college hunks, Junk King, Junk Luggers, J Dog Junk. But if you combine the size of all of those brands, 1 800 GOT JUNK is bigger than all of them. And I do believe that it is a first to market thing.
They were able to capture national accounts as a result because there was no one else there. And then the final thing that was like a nice to have but not a need to have was a difference in product offering. So you hear a lot about people talking about a moat. And not every business is going to have a moat.
The moat is just we do, we provide a better experience to the customer. Well, The founders of Rolling Suds have perfected a proprietary truck and a proprietary process and proprietary equipment after 34 years of doing this. So we can do a 3, 000 square foot house in 20 minutes, start to finish.
Brien: Wow.
Aaron: It's wild.
Brien: So 3, 000 square feet, basically can wash the entire exterior in 20 minutes.
Aaron: Set up, tear down everything.
Brien: So this isn't a franchise. This isn't Locations with 15 F1 [00:17:00] fifties with power washers and a couple dudes. This is a legit kind of like, in my mind, I'm thinking like those big stone thrower trucks or like a sewer sucker trucks got a huge tank.
It's got a gun. Explain to our listeners, what does a Rolling Sons truck look like? What's it equipped? I know some of it's proprietary, but what's it look like?
Aaron: Well, no, yeah, so it's a 16 foot box truck, totally fully wrapped, so it's a driving billboard.
Brien: Right.
Aaron: Inside, we've got a thousand gallons of liquid, both chemical and, and just water.
We've got either two or three machines per truck. We can hit four to five stories from the ground. From
Brien: the ground?
Aaron: From the ground. It's insane. Like if we're washing a house and the house next door sets on fire, like we can put that house out. We can put the fire out with our trucks. It's like, it's insane.
And so when you think about like a moat, if you go to a commercial customer, like we just had a franchisee who put Almost a seven figure contract for overpasses in Florida. [00:18:00] And so we're talking like full blown annual cleaning of overpasses, which will require multiple trucks to do these jobs and we can handle that.
And your local guy that has a 300 machine and does 99 driveways, like that's just not even someone we're competing with, like we're operating on a completely different level. And then we have anything above five stories. We have drones that we can send out.
Brien: Of course you do. Why wouldn't you have drones with power washers on them?
Well, so is this different? You said, you mentioned you have chemicals in there. Is this kind of like where, cause you can't get the power of a three inch away power washer, like you would on a driveway, five stories up. Is this kind of like, are you guys loaded up with like a wet and forget product that like removes the dirt or is it, do, is there enough power on that thing to get there?
Aaron: So there is enough power on the thing to get there if we needed to, however, really you don't need a ton of pressure to do most jobs because you're going to [00:19:00] do a version of soft washing, which is using a cleaning solution mixture with water that does a lot of the work for you. And a lot of power washers don't power wash properly.
They do get three inches away from siding and they go like this and kind of, but all they're doing at that point, it's like. It's the difference between like cutting your grass and killing it.
Brien: Kind of a big difference.
Aaron: Yeah. So they're just cutting the grass and it comes back six months later, the algae, the mold, the mildew, whatever it is that's on the side of that building.
And with the right solutions and the right process, you can kill it. So it doesn't come back or at least doesn't for quite some time. And so we're doing a process that is more effective. And faster and more efficient than every other power washer out there.
Brien: Wow. And this, you bought into this or you bought this company.
So this was, I just want to kind of want to paint a picture of. These were things that, correct me if I'm wrong, that you didn't have to go think of [00:20:00] or go brainstorm or go create. The folks at this company had created this over 34 years of experience and it was already done. It was there. It was just waiting for someone like you to blow it up.
Aaron: Correct. Yeah, they had already figured it all out. I just packaged it. And built a team that does the knowledge transfer to franchisees so that they can buy into that 34 years of knowledge, really in a lot of the same way that I did. I mean, I acquired the brand. I wasn't looking to start a power washing company from scratch.
Like I wanted to say, okay, What are you doing? What is the equipment that you use? How much is it going to cost to franchisee? How do we package this up so that we can get franchisees launched? And they have been blown away by this. Like they never, this is beyond their wildest dreams.
Brien: Wow. Okay. So let's dive right in there.
What does it look like to franchise with you? What's it cost to get in and what's the process?
Aaron: Yeah, so first there's an approval process to make sure we're all the right fit for [00:21:00] each other. I think before we talk about cost, we need to talk about what is the right fit. We're looking for franchisees who want to build big businesses.
Like, not 500 to a million dollars annual revenue. Like, the franchisees we're bringing in are like, Aaron, we're going to max out these territories, get as many trucks as possible in them. And then we're going to look to roll up either other power washers or other franchisees. And so they're bigger thinkers.
They want to scale. They have kind of a risk tolerance. That's pretty high. We're newer. So we don't have a ton of data yet. So there's a lot of upside, but there is more risk in the sense that I can't tell someone, Hey, if you buy and then in average three years, you'll make this amount. Like I just don't have it yet.
And so we're bringing in people who are generally more entrepreneurial than like the franchisee number 50 is completely different than franchisee number 150 in terms of their risk tolerance. We're looking for people who are comfortable in their communities developing relationships and being in front of [00:22:00] people.
Our mission statement is this is a relationship because a lot of the commercial work that we do is dependent upon the relationships that you have. In your community because the 20, 000 parking garage, like they're not just typing powerwashing near me into Google and choosing one of them. Like they're asking their friends and their family if they know someone and if they used them before.
And so we've signed up like 13 different former C level executives. We've signed up a professional poker player. Some of our franchisees have had multiple exits. Some of them manage other multimillion dollar businesses and they're bolting this on. We're signing up a guy next week who just got a 300 million line of credit to buy commercial real estate across the company, across the country.
And we, he's bolting this on, like we're bringing in like higher level operators, which is really exciting for the people who do buy in because to be part of that community is incredibly valued. It's almost worth the cost of admission alone because everyone is able to help each other out. So [00:23:00] it's about 300, 000 is what franchisees need to have for kind of two trucks in two territories and then some working capital.
In addition to that, now we have SBA loan options and kind of packages that franchisees can do to seek out additional capital net worth of at least eight or 900, 000. And a lot of our franchisees will exceed that. It just depends upon how big they want to grow. We have a franchisee who's signing up next week and they've had, they had like six or seven planet fitnesses.
They exited those and they bought like four or five car washes. They exited those. So they're putting about a million dollars into this. They're coming in right out the gate with a couple of business development reps, a sale, a door to door person, like. full blown going at it hard. So we're really thinking about those kind of like long term partners, the franchisee who works, you know, 150, 000 job and needs to replace their income year one with their business.
Like that's just not our buyer. It's going to be hard to do that. And if you need to draw 150, 000 out of the business year one, it's going to be really hard to get it [00:24:00] to three or 4 million, which is where a lot of our franchisees are shooting. That's what a lot of them are shooting for. And that, and then some.
Brien: Wow. So I know you guys are young. What are the margins looking like for a typical or your average, your average location?
Aaron: So it largely depends upon how much commercial work they're doing. Commercial work has higher margins. It has a longer accounts receivable cycle than residential. But they're typically operating within the 30 ish percent EBITDA range.
So net margin before taxes and depreciation and that kind of stuff.
Brien: Okay. And can you define, like, I know the difference between commercial and residential, residential, you live in your house and you have someone come powerwash. You say commercial is the higher portion of your business. Is this like, you've mentioned like highway overpasses.
So maybe a department of transportation might be a client or is it office buildings, like what does a commercial client necessarily entail and how often do they need your service?
Aaron: So, some of the different avatars that we service would be parking [00:25:00] garages, tennis courts, office buildings, fast food restaurants, gas stations, warehouses, we've cleaned 135 foot water towers before, overpasses, like, if you think about it, if you really boil it down to like, every surface of an exterior of a structure has to be cleaned at some point and at some cadence.
And there are very few sophisticated operators in this industry that can service those types of jobs at scale. And so we step into these markets and we capture market share very quickly. Some of these, like, like we do a lot of HOA work, for example, like the HOA either has to do it themselves or they require that the homeowners do it.
And if they don't do it, they get fined. Right? So like that is a customer that needs to be serviced X number of times, X number of years, whatever it is. And so as long as we come in and do a good job for those folks, like. They [00:26:00] don't want to ever hire anyone else, which is where you see that consistency in cashflow come from.
But yeah, I mean, every single structure has to be cleaned.
Brien: That's true. Can't get around it. So let's say I put down the 300 K I'm all invested. I'm all in what's the process look like of taking me from investor to franchisee?
Aaron: So there's about a nine week ramp up process. We call it our power launch program.
So it's a combination of like getting your logistics handled and then also learning the business. And so we have an entire online learning portal with videos and recordings and written text and exams that franchisees will take. And in those first four weeks, we teach them everything they need to know about the business.
Estimating, everything like that. Then, the next four weeks, they're out in their community developing relationships and estimating jobs. And we've taught them now at that point how to sell jobs. And we also [00:27:00] have outbound lead generation for franchisees for commercial. So they'll do outbound lead gen to commercial customers, generate warm interest, and then bring the franchisees warm leads.
And these have resulted in multi six figure contracts for franchisees in some cases, like it's been pretty exciting. And I just utilize the same marketing vendors that our founders had utilized that have helped them go from 30 percent commercial to 60 percent commercial in the last five years. And so then they go to a one week in person training and there we're teaching them every element of the truck, how to make sure that the maintenance is handled, how to make sure that these jobs are efficient and profitable, and then some sales training as well.
And then I help lead that with the original founder of Rolling Suds. And then they're on, they're off and running and then they have a business coach that they meet with weekly. And my business coaches meet at five o'clock every night and talk about what's going on with their franchisees and how to help them all grow.
And so I've got a whole infrastructure. [00:28:00] There's 22 people on my team. So I have a full blown executive team. Everything reports up to the brand president of the company. And I spend my time focusing on whatever the constraint of the businesses and then solving for the constraint. And so that's really what it looks like from a franchisee perspective.
Within those first three to six months, they will add their second truck as part of their development schedule to get their second territory. Open and then kind of scale from there. I'll have about five people working for them by the seventh month of business and two trucks on the road, at least. And then kind of scale from there.
Brien: Actually leads into my next question. Is it by the time they hit the ground running, have they added, or they expected to have employees that are working with them and for them, or is it, I mean, I'm at on the fulfillment side, but also on the sales side, or they kind of like, Hey, we're throwing you in the deep end.
We're going to guide you. We're going to help you. But you got to go get this biz dev. You got to go make it happen. And then the employees will be there to help you with the [00:29:00] fulfillment.
Aaron: Yeah. So employees, they have to have two people working for them prior to going to training that are hired those employees, either at least one.
And sometimes both will come with them to training. We teach the franchisee how to do the work at training the first couple of days. Then we oversee the franchisee. Teaching their employees how to do the work. So it's a train the trainer model. The franchisee is doing typically the business development in their community right out the gate.
It's such a big role that if it's done incorrectly or ineffectively, it decreases the, it just makes it so that there's not as positive of a trajectory. We can look at how many estimates a franchisee is giving on a monthly basis on the commercial side and get a pretty clear picture of what their business will look like six to 12 months later as a result of seeing how many commercial estimates they're giving on a monthly basis.
Because a lot of these commercial jobs, they're not booking tomorrow. These are 20, [00:30:00] 30, 000 jobs that are either going to fit into this year's budget or next year's budget. But typically once we've given that estimate six months later, these jobs are a certain percent of them are just going to start falling.
Now, they're going to have like kind of a general manager type person who will be running that first truck and have a junior technician underneath him or her. The idea is that that person gets promoted off the truck within the first three to six months and they hire three new people when they launch that next truck.
So then there will be five people working for them. However, what we're seeing in some markets. Is franchisees are focusing on night work pretty heavily. So like fast food, gas stations, convenience stores, some parking structures, stuff like that, that has to be done in the evening. And so you could have a full time day crew and a part time night crew, and then you're getting more utilization out of that truck.
Brien: Wow. Okay, so what does the average revenue look like per truck then? 422,
Aaron: 000. Per truck with a 30 to 40 percent EBITDA. And that is based [00:31:00] upon our 2024 franchise disclosure document. And it's based upon our founding location, which is operational less days of the year because it's in Philadelphia and New Jersey.
So if it's below 40 degrees, like we can't power wash, we'll be freezing machines and breaking stuff. So they're only operational about 205 days out of the year. So that truck is doing 422 grand in 205 days.
Brien: Wow. And then is there a schedule or maybe you mentioned this, a schedule where. Within a certain amount of time, franchisees are expected to add a second, third, however many extra trucks.
Aaron: Yep. So our minimum deal size is two territories. Most of our franchisees will purchase three and some are approved for four depending on their business acumen and who they are. And what they've accomplished in the past, we have some larger operators who have six, seven, eight, nine territories, but they manage 10 plus [00:32:00] million dollar businesses.
Brien: Wow. I was going to say that, that two or three, you're already a seven figure business, almost right out of the gate.
Aaron: Yeah. I mean, you're going to build to at least, at least one truck per territory. However, like we have a franchisee and he has one customer in one of his territories and that Is a full truck.
And so the opportunity because of how large the total addressable market is, is huge. And the utilization of the trucks largely depends upon the owner and how deep they go and how aggressive they are within their own territories, developing relationships and booking work. The cool thing is it, it has to happen.
Like, it's not a matter of like, do we need to clean this building or do we not? Like, Real estate is typically people's most expensive asset, most valuable asset. And to preserve the life of real estate, it has to be cleaned both internally and externally, and we provide that service. So. Yeah, no, I mean, it's the opportunities are truly endless because those guys are founding location.
Like they work [00:33:00] nine to five. They're not working nights. Typically, they're not working weekends, most of the year, other than like kind of the busy season for residential. And so it just gives, I would say, dependent upon where that Franchisee is located and how they utilize the truck. There's more opportunity there.
Brien: Yeah. Well, and with those numbers, the opportunity to break even, it might not be that long before you get there as just looking at it as an investment.
Aaron: Yeah, I mean there's your people do different models depending upon how big they want to grow and what capital they're willing to invest but it's a pretty reasonable payback period as long as you execute on the model and you Do the development schedule of the trucks and if you buy two territories You're adding the second truck six months in if you buy their three territories You're adding the third truck 18 months in at the latest And we've had franchisees come out the gate and within the first month order their second truck.
Brien: [00:34:00] Wow. Okay. That's pretty awesome. Now you mentioned a little bit earlier, we were talking about marketing as a marketing company owners, myself, a marketing nerd. I'm always curious. I've worked with a few franchises in the past and they're all different, at least for me, they all seem very different in how they operate, what they stipulate for their franchisees, what they can, what they can't do.
What does it look like at rolling suds for your franchisees in terms of marketing, like Who pays for it? Who handles it? How much leeway does a franchisee have or not? What does that look like?
Aaron: So we have approved vendors on the marketing side that franchisees are able to use. We have different marketing vendors for different channels, Facebook, Google, my business, pay per click, SEO.
You know, we have your obvious ones like Thumbtack and Angie's and all that kind of stuff where we've negotiated discounts for franchisees. And then we have marketing plans, and we tell franchisees where they should spend their money. Ultimately, it is their decision as to how much they want [00:35:00] to invest in marketing, other than kind of meeting the bare minimum.
However, we do set the expectation with franchisees that marketing is an investment. It's not an expense. So you are investing in these different vendors to see which ones are working best in their own territory and then figuring out, okay, these four have crushed it, even though these other four haven't, we're going to divert all resources to go to these four.
And I've worked with these vendors in the past, along with my executive leadership team has, and they've helped us scale hundreds of locations for other brands that had no presence and no understanding, no brand presence in the market. Okay. And so, so we've been able to, to tap into that from a commercial standpoint that you can't do PPC and you can't do like, it's just not, it's not going to work the same.
So we have outbound email marketing that we do to potential commercial customers. And when they reply, that is a warm lead for franchisees.
Brien: Okay. Love it. And then is this [00:36:00] where the franchisee, are they paying? So they're working directly with these agencies and this money's coming out of their franchise fee or is this out of their personal investment into the business?
Aaron: Yeah, so this is in their personal investment into the business. I think it's very important for your listeners and just people to understand in general that a franchisor is typically not a marketing company. In fact, you don't want the franchisor to be a marketing company. You want the franchisor to be able to hold marketing vendors accountable.
One of the benefits that you get from joining a franchise is It's a very different call when I call the owner of a marketing company than it is when a local business owner calls the, that marketing company. We are a multi six figure contract or relationship for a marketing vendor. So If I was the marketing company, or if I had one internally, I can't hold any, I mean, I can hold my employees accountable, but like, if they're not doing a good job, like I got to either [00:37:00] close that division of the company or I got to fire people and hire people.
And like, that's just like, not my skillset. My skillset is helping franchisees be successful by putting the right systems in place. And marketing is just one of the systems. Coaching is one of the systems, ongoing support is one of the systems, community that we build internally and creating those, that's one of the systems.
So a, a franchisor is just a grouping of systems that creates a business as a service to help franchisees get to scale much faster than them doing it on their own. And so a lot of people think, okay, well, if I'm going to pay 6 or 8 or 9 or 10 or 12 percent, I need to have all the leads taken care of forever and I don't want to work focus on having to generate anything myself and it's that's just not the case we have vendors that they will do that with and we will hold them accountable and we will negotiate discounts for franchisees on their behalf but ultimately marketing is still an expense that a franchisee has we've just done the legwork on the front end to make it [00:38:00] easier for them
Brien: right and you said basically it sounds like the range of what the franchise or takes off the top of each locations anywhere from.
Five or six to 12%. And that, I mean, that's justified because you are giving them a business in a box, right? Like this is ready to roll that pun intended, and it's good to go. There are expenses that you're going to have to pull in that you're going to have to cover. It is your business, but there's a lot of the legwork that certainly did not need to get done.
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, you're buying, when you're buying a franchise, you're buying, in our case, 34 years of powerwashing trial and errors to get to that exact truck that can powerwash at that speed, that can hit that height. That's 34 years of time on that side. You're also buying into the time that I've had in the franchise industry and the total of 200 years of combined franchise experience on my board and my executive leadership team.
All of that stuff is, again, it's a set of systems that a franchisee gets to buy [00:39:00] into that allows them to skip a bunch of steps. So in return for those systems, they pay an upfront fee. And an ongoing royalty in order to essentially buy the playbook, you're going to either spend time or money and time is one thing you can't get back.
And during that time, you're going to spend more money trying to figure all this stuff out on your own, trying to build your own website, trying to figure out what the copy should be, trying to figure out what kind of. Marketing vendors, you should hire trying to figure out who your payroll provider is going to be like, all that stuff takes time and we've already done all that.
We've got 38 approved suppliers for insurance and trucks and financing. I mean like the whole gambit. And so the franchisees just get to buy in and execute on the model. And yeah, and in return for that, they pay for it because it's valuable.
Brien: Yeah, it's an incredible way to buy back your time and get that business that you want.
It's ready to roll. You know, I think a good way to. I think about this as maybe franchising turns years into weeks and weeks into days. It
Aaron: absolutely does, and [00:40:00] days into hours.
Brien: Yeah, the system is there. It's ready to roll. I love it.
Aaron: Yeah.
Brien: All right. So before we wrap up here, what are some of the pitfalls of franchising?
Are there, you know, like, do you guys have like a ripcord in place? If there's a franchise or franchisee that they can't really go rogue. I mean, this is probably all taken care of at your, the onset when you pick the right people, but is there any recourse in situations like that in terms of franchising?
Aaron: So the pitfalls in franchising, I think franchising gets a bad name in a lot of circles. Yeah. And I actually think it's justified. And I'll tell you why most people who franchise their business. Are good at whatever their businesses, they have no idea how to franchise. And as I said earlier, franchising is a different business.
So if I'm a power washer that knows how to build a two to 3 million power washing business, and now I want to go into a super capital intensive, completely different industry and learn. [00:41:00] Everything new and basically found a startup. I'm learning now that franchisor is learning at the same time that the franchisees are learning.
And so really when you look and you analyze a business, a franchise, you need the experience in whatever the service is in our case, powerwashing. And you need also experience in franchising because those are two separate businesses. And most don't have the second part of that. We're in a very unique situation where I came to a power washing business and franchised it with experience in franchising in the past.
And so that is a lot less risky for a buyer. Then, Oh yeah, I like this wood cleaning business that you have. Like, I think I'll, I'll just buy into it and they have no infrastructure and all that kind of stuff. The other thing is that franchising is very capital intensive. Franchisees need the most amount of support when they produce the least amount of royalties.
So if you scale fast, [00:42:00] you have to have a lot of support with very little royalties and the franchise fees. You make money on the franchise fees, but a lot of it goes back out in the form of commissions or whatever it is. And so you need a lot of money. And most franchisors that I talk to when they reach out asking if they should do it at the first question I ask is how much money do you have?
And eight times out of 10, it's less than a hundred thousand dollars. And I'm like, that is not enough. But if you find the right brand that has the right trajectory. That has the right leadership team in place. I don't think there's a quicker path to wealth generation, but you have to find the right brand because like I talked to a guy right before this and he's buying in, in the Virginia beach area.
And we've added 207 locations in 18 months. So we're on hockey stick level growth. So he gets to buy into a business he knows nothing about and immediately be on hockey stick level growth. He's jumping on a train that's already moving.
Brien: Yeah, he skipped the first 20 steps.
Aaron: First 150 steps. You don't have to start from scratch.
[00:43:00] You're jumping into a train that's already moving.
Brien: Yeah.
Aaron: But you have to have the right person driving the train. And that's so important. And then on the franchisor side, you will always, always have the bottom 20 percent of franchisees. Always. And probably 10 percent of them are going to have to exit the system in one way or another at some point.
They're going to either need to get bought by existing franchisees, they're going to need to close down. And so as a franchisor, you have to have the stomach for no matter how good you are, you're going to have to have, be able to watch people not succeed, which is hard,
Brien: really hard,
Aaron: which really hard. Now, in my mind, it's balanced out by the people who are crushing it and the lives are changed and they're in their community and they built big businesses.
But like, there is no way around having the bottom 20 percent in any brand you start. And those people signed a 10 year contract. It's not like you can just tell them to go away. They invested a lot of money and all their time. And so it is a very [00:44:00] difficult business to get right, franchising, it just is.
But I'm going to say it again. If you find the right brand, there's not a quicker path to wealth generation for your average person.
Brien: It makes it one of the most lucrative possibilities for business ownership. But it It is imperative that it's done correctly. The research is done and that the, the relationship developed is the right one between the franchise, the franchise, or
Aaron: a hundred percent.
Brien: I love it. I love it. Well, I want to respect your time here, and this has been fantastic. I have one last question for you in your years of growing this thing and being an entrepreneur. If you could distill it down to one piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs out there, what would it be in terms of hopping into the entrepreneurship game?
Aaron: Just do it. I see all these people like seeking passive income before they've even learned how to get active income like go all in on building something, build it to be massive, then figure out how to have passive income or [00:45:00] diversification. Diversification is a future problem. If you're working a job and you're making 150, 200 grand a year, business ownership may not be for you because it's going to probably take some time to get back to 200 grand a year in earnings.
You'd be starting a business from scratch, even if it's a franchise, it's still starting from scratch. I mean, it's faster, but you're still getting something off the ground. But if you want to do it. The only thing you can't get back is time. So every day you waste working for someone else, if the goal is to eventually have a business of your own, find a way to do it.
If that means raising capital, if it means getting a loan, if it means bringing in partners, if it means like do whatever you got to do to get what you want. But don't wait.
Brien: I love it. I think that's a common theme on our show this year is action over everything. Just go do the dang thing. The best slogan ever created in the world was by Nike.
Just do it. I love it. Just do it. Just do it. Just go out and freaking [00:46:00] do it. All right. Aaron, this has been so cool. I want to make sure that our listeners have the opportunity to connect with you, get in contact, see what you're up to follow you. If they're interested franchisee at Rolling Suds, what's the best way to do that?
Aaron: So if anyone's interested in becoming a rolling sets franchisee just go to rolling sets franchise calm and then submit and you'll be in touch With my franchise development team I put out content daily about franchise ownership and entrepreneurship and stories about what we're doing and what we're learning Both on LinkedIn and Twitter are probably where I'm most active my Twitter handles Aaron Harper CEO Aron harp er CEO And then on LinkedIn, if you just Google Aaron Harper rolling suds, it'll be the first thing to come up.
And I post every day. I put videos out on YouTube and Instagram as well. So you can find me there, Aaron T. Harper on Instagram or the Aaron Harper on YouTube. So I'm everywhere. Once I get in your feed, I'll, you'll just see me and we'll just talk franchises all day long every day.
Brien: [00:47:00] Yep. You're popping up in my LinkedIn just about every day, but I love it because you, you bring the noise and the valuable information.
It's a lot of fun to follow you. So Folks, you heard it here first, go follow Aaron Harper on whatever social media platform, Twitter, X, whatever it is, LinkedIn, get after it. So Aaron, man, thank you so much for joining us. This was fantastic.
Aaron: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Brien: All right. All right. How about that from Aaron Harper off the top rope, just bring in the noise about franchising.
So cool to be able to chat with him. He's, as we discussed the largest franchise, the only franchise in power washing across the country. And he's grown it to that level in less than two years. It's incredible. And I think there are two major things that stuck out to me. One is the fact that franchising is a completely different business from the actual business that is a franchise.
I've met many, many business owners that are like, I'm, this is awesome. They're doing great. And they are, they're doing a fantastic thing. They want to franchise it, but they've never franchised [00:48:00] before. If they have no connections to it, it is a completely different line of work. And also Aaron mentioned at the end, his advice.
Just go do the thing we say, I feel like we say this almost every show, take that action, go do it, go do that biz dev, go get that LLC, go take action and get your dreams off the ground, start turning them into reality. We get one shot in this life and it's so fun to be able to go out and control it as best as we can.
By taking action. All right, folks, I've got two little requests for you. Actually one request and one tease first request. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, hit the link to share on whatever pod player on, and send this via text message to your best friend, your family, your coworkers, your colleagues, your business partner, whoever it is.
If you think they'll enjoy this episode, I love it. If you'd share it with them as well. And. My tease here. We are at millionaire university. It's in the name. We're a university, right? We're going to start teaching ourselves. So we're building out our first foundational program and it's going to be coming date TBD, but it's [00:49:00] going to be really exciting because this is going to be our first kind of ground level, uh, business level type of course, type of offering.
So I just want to put that on your radar. It's going to be coming. We're working on it now and it's going to be absolute fire. So yeah. Keep that in mind. All right, guys, Brian Geeran signing off for you. Thank you so much for joining me. I cannot wait to catch you on the next episode of the Millionaire University podcast.
I hope you all go out there and crush it today.
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