Jonathan Barnett Shares The Oxi Fresh Story (How to Nail It Then Scale It)

Audio Transcription

Z. On today’s show, we are interviewing the founder and the CEO of oxy fresh carpet cleaning franchises. Now my friend on today’s show, I interviewed the guy whose business has 151,000 Google reviews. Wow. 396 locations. Wow. What could we possibly learn from this man too? A lot.

Can we come back going green? Can your small business profit by turning ecofriendly we’re going to talk with the CEO. One business who says it isn’t working for him, that is added on Fox business, giving you the power to prosper.

Yes, yes, yes. And Dr z guest, who is today’s guests?

Hi, it’s it’s fresh. It’s hot and fresh. It’s hot. It’s, it’s fresh. It’s America a, it’s the fat of America’s greenest carpet cleaning company. It is none other than my brother from another mother, Mr. Jonathan Barnett. Welcome onto the show, sir. How are you?

I’m fantastic. How are you doing brother? You’re doing good down there.

Oh, we are. We are, uh, uh, psychologically and emotionally prepared for this interview. And we’re just going to ask you a ton of tough question. Z. We’re going to paint them into a corner with a hard hitting, hard, hard to eat. All right. So, uh, Jonathan, people who have googled, you know that you’ve had some tremendous success throughout your career. So I want to start, uh, I want to start by asking you about the bottom, uh, and the fireworks stand that started it all. How did you start Oxi fresh? Yeah,

that’s a great, that’s a great question. And I get to tell this story quite a bit nowadays, but when you, when you look back at it, sometimes you would appreciate this story. Your story has to have the hard times you’ve gone through or you’re beginning. So I think all of us have that. And if you don’t have that out there, um, you know, that’s what we’re, that’s why we’re, you’re listening to this show right now. So we’re in the very beginning before I started a carpet cleaning company that was nationwide with 150,000 reviews on the web. There was very humble beginnings. And, um, I grew up with a single mom that always taught me to, you know, work hard in school, work hard scores, uh, get a good job, this and that. And we grew up without a lot of money, but I saw how hard she works.

So my, my Grandpa, my dad’s side of the family gave all of his grandkids and he has a lot of whom most of them, I never met $10,000 for Christmas. So I was reading this book and my dorm rooms at oral Roberts University and clay, I know we both went to school there and, uh, we didn’t know each other that much stem, but we who each other were. Yeah. And I know you’re not, you’re at school as well. And so I think it’s kind of how it knew each other really. But basically reading that, reading that book, Rich Dad, poor dad, it talks about, you know, the guy is, it’s got to had two dads. I got a dad that Stepdad and a real dad, one dad always encouraged them to go get a job, uh, give you a good education, get a good job and keep it safe.

And then the other dad was creating jobs for other people. A little more risky. Right? But, um, and, and he washed his dad’s grow as they got older and the, the Safe Dad, the dad education, and you go to your job. He did well long at the beginning, but over time the other dad blew him away. And so when I was driving down the road after reading this book with this check in my hand, and I saw out there in Tulsa, which is Kinda cool that you’re there, but I’m in Denver now, but as I saw this firework stand, um, and you know, it was wintertime, but I saw it and I was like, how hard is that? Like if someone else can do it, why can’t I do it? So I started looking up fireworks or to buy and post daily vitamin, you know, different states, this and that. So I, I invested that money. I had this in the 10,000 about two or three grand rooms, fireworks, jove over to Kansas, bought wholesale fireworks, drove him back and had to build a stand. Um, that me and my buddy we slept out to for two weeks in the summertime and that, that two or three grand and with fireworks we turned into 20 grand in sales. Now there’s other expenses we had. So I don’t want to get all of the details of this firework story.

What we have a few more detailed questions about this fireworks. How big was it? Cause you were sleeping there, right?

Well, so here’s the thing. I had a pop up camper. I was sleeping in and had a mobile menu that I put the fireworks stand so that people wouldn’t steal them at night. Um, but if I were seeing was actually eight foot those eight foot by four foot planks, I think there are six [inaudible], whatever. There’s two. So 16 foot long, me and my buddy built it. We’re so proud of it. We named it college fund fireworks. We put it right next to the big guys and people would stop by and say, Hey, want to buy from you? I don’t want to buy. You guys want to support the college kids.

Right.

So I loved it. And uh, but the problem, the problem was, was that me and I decide to jump into hotel across the street every night to take my shower because I had to sleep outside and I traded in town. I traded fireworks for food in my market from Firefox four or five to one. So every time I chased someone, $5 for the fireworks, it cost me. Yeah.

I want to marinate on that idea for just a second that he could buy fireworks and then sell them for four or five times more ethical. Well, I would like, I would like to get into the ethics of this with you because this is, this is a question that I think somebody out there is. Okay. So, um, any optometry clinic in the optometry game and the jewelry game and the auto auction game and in the banking game, these are all different industries that we know about. I’ve coached in different businesses and you’ve owned them. And so let’s talk about jewelry. Why, why in the jewelry industry is the markup so much higher than it would be and other industries, how come some industries have more markups than others? I think it’s, uh, it’s a pleasure item. It’s also, you know, it has a distinct feel to it.

I mean, when you’re buying jewelry, you’re, what are you really buying? You know, you’re buying love thinking about the everglades. That is that right? There is a deep, a deep thought for somebody that, a deep thought. Well, I mean, I, I, uh, if I wasn’t married to Vanessa, there’s no way I’d ever buy a diamond. Well, that’s what I’m saying now. I don’t know the back in the day, back in the day when you’d have your little splint hearings in, went back when I had hoops. That’s right. Oops. I had hoped I saw the holes in my ears. They won’t go. Oh, you need a, we need a tag. A picture of you back at your prime on, on the show and show. Oh yeah. You, maybe you’ll stand up and do that. That’d be Kinda Fun. Cause I think the thrive nation would really like to see the old clay Clark.

Here’s what I’ll do before you and I leave today’s a recording session. We will do a show about the oldest. I’ve got some really good audio files that I think he would love it. Perfect. But I think that, you know, jewelry is one of those that it’s a, and then I think also too, um, by marking it up a lot, they, it gives them a lot of opportunities for discount. And so a lot of times you can say, you know, half off price, which means I’m not going to rip your head off completely, just partly so I’m not going to ask you for the specific margins you have on your specific items. But let’s go with like the auto auction. Um, and that in that industry, there’s no way you could have a four and five time mark up on a car and an auto auction.

Cause you know, well the thing about an auto auction and you know, I don’t actually sell the, I just do the service. So let’s look at [inaudible] look at an auto dealership. Okay. Yeah. Their markups are much less, not in a huge car if bought correctly. Sometimes they can buy a car for 10 to $15,000 range, let’s say. And they can add up, you know, three, four, maybe even $5,000 on top of that. So let’s say that somebody goes to your auto auction who was a used car dealer and they buy a truck. I’m picturing a f two 50 and it’s got about 50,000 miles on it and they buy that thing. I don’t even know if that would cost me, let’s just say it was like 25,000 bucks. Okay. 25,000. You’re saying that somebody could then, uh, the used car dealer could take that vehicle back, clean it up, detail it out, and maybe mark it up $5,000?

Yeah, they’d probably be market at 29 99 or something to put it on their lot, I would imagine. And then hopefully try to get, you know, 28, 29 maybe out of it because everybody comes in by a car, no one you’re going to do a little dealing wheeling and dealing on it right. Now what’s interesting is this, if you talked about the auto industry, is that the guys that do the buy here sale here, they mark those up a lot more. A lot. A lot really because they, because they have a very unique client tale that can’t get financing conventionally. And so it’s like the poor, you are the worst. You get beat up financially. It’s interesting. Interesting isn’t it? It’s very interesting too because they, you think about different industries. I see so many people I’ve met at the workshops who are contractors. Yeah.

I’ll think of a good example of a contract and I’m a big fan of is our pool guy right now. Yeah. Our full gut job doing an awesome job. And I’ll say our pool guy, um, he didn’t apologize for the Prophet. He says, you know, this is what it’s gonna cost for Labor and materials and then this is how much I add on is my profit. He did apologize for, he didn’t feel he was transparent. That’s unusual. And he did not feel bad about it. And I think, Whoa, to be done. That’s not normal. It’s not. But every other pool guy was kind of, not every, there’s a covers I think five or six people we were talking to, but there was like three of them that were just squirly. You could, they wouldn’t show you what they were spending on materials. They couldn’t give you a hard cost.

They couldn’t. And so I would just say that, that you don’t need, but there’s, I think there’s more entrepreneurs out there than not who are really underpaying themselves and not marking up their products and services enough to achieve their goals. I think for me, for every five that are gouging, you know, somebody with too high of prices, I would say there’s 50 who are underpaying themselves. It’s a shame and that’s why, you know, and my soon to be released book business pig, oof. Um, you know, you big pig eats first at the trough, you’ve got to pay yourself. You’ve got to, if you’re not paying, you’re not able to pay yourself enough money to live. You’re not charging enough. And if you can’t make it with what if you can’t charge enough. In other words, if you say to yourself, well, I can’t charge that, we’ll try it.

You may lose a few customers, but overall, you know, like when you go up on your, when you went up on your Dj, when you went from like 600 to 650, some crazy move. Yeah. You lose a few, right? Yeah. I know that with the DJ business, I was doing my first shows for $225 to two 25 to 50, a very, very low. And I had this one Argen they got, I had this mental block though. Think I’ll lose all my customers, all of them. And you’re all gonna start talking. If I raise my prices to 500, I’m going to lose all of them. And I stayed there. It that poverty line for a couple of years, just refusing to raise the is thinking I would lose all my customers to shame. Yeah. And I think a lot of people stay there. Why do people stay at that pet, that level where they’re underpaying themselves?

Why did they do it? You know, I don’t know. I think, I think a lot of people just don’t understand all the costs that go into running a business. Okay. So they have just a simple mindset of, okay, um, I wanna I wanna you know, I’ve already, I already own my speakers. Yup. I’ve got gas in the van. I’m got a payment on the van. I mean, if you don’t, you don’t realize all the small stuff that goes into the ear of the taxes and the cable company and, uh, the phone bills and we think about your, your optometry clinic, the one by the mall there. Well then hills mall, right. Um, that, that, that piece of land is it, that’s $1 million piece of real estate right there. You’ll probably am. And I bought it 26, seven years ago. I bought it for I guess how much I bought it for a, how much did you buy for take your guess?

Well, right now we are based on the side, based on the volume of the construction outside, uh, based upon the weather conditions based upon these things. I would say a quarter of an acre right next to the mall and the pad side out in front of the mall. I, you had to bought it for $200,000. It was 300 then I actually pay 310,040. That’s a great story. $310,000 yes. And today it’s gotta be worth at least two or $3 million. Well, the building on it, yes, of course it has to. I think I get, last time I had praise was 1.5. 1.5. Yeah. And then you gotta pay taxes on that day. Oh yeah. Oh, well, you’re, you’re aware of it and you, so therefore when you’re charging someone for the glasses, you’re not just charging for the glasses, you’re charging them for the insurance. You’re charging for the real estate, you’re charging them for electricity, Felicity.

So what you’re going to employ you, because I want to make this actionable for all the listeners out there, I want you to do is I want you to get out a sheet of paper or a and maybe a spreadsheet, and I want you to add an every single cost last month that you’re going to get next month. Every fixed costs by Adam Adam, all up. Yep. Add up every single cost item on item all up. Now on the next column, I want you to add up all of your variable costs. That’s like your, the cost of doing business, the goods, the goods, the glasses that you buy that you have to resell, that kind of thing. Add all those up, get to a total of between the fixed and the fixed expenses and the variable expenses and whatever that number is. Add 20% on top of that, and that’s about the profit margin.

You should be making minimum. I would go a little higher. I do want to end up with 20 and there’s always that, oh, for the month. I mean that’s the minimum though, right? That’s the minimum. I would probably start with 30 and hopefully you can end up with 25 in your pocket. Can we talk about rushing to the bottom for a second? Rushing to the bottom, but it’s almost like work on record to say Russian to the bottom. I go hunt for Red October. I want to talk about this. This is the Russia. There are a lot of business owners that want to bottom feed and be the carp, have that industry. They’re rushing to the bottom, the cheapest price, the cheapest service, the cheapest. Chloe’s cheap, cheap, cheap. Now, if you have that mindset that you want to be the Walmart of your industry, what always, what pretty much always ends up happening unless you’re Walmart.

Um, you have not a very good business. Hey, do you can’t pay really good people. You can’t pay really good people and you can’t use good products and you can’t use good products and you can’t use, you get do good advertising. You forget that. And you end up living in a van down by the river. Tushar, what kind of a profit margin do you think somebody should have? They have a restaurant. If you, if you were coaching, a business owner has a restaurant out there listening today and they have a very, very nice food, right? And you sit down with them and you discover they have a really crappy decor, crappy location, but great food. So you convinced him to move to a new location, new menus, new decor, new ambiance, knew it. The food. The food is good though. Good. What kind of a margin would you sit down if you had a buddy of yours who has a restaurant, would you say, buddy, we gotta be at least a 30% or a 10% or what?

What, what, what, what would you, how would you advise someone to do that? I would shoot any business out there listening. Listen Up. Here we go. Any business out there listening? Unless you’re some unique, uh, nobody else was doing it. You invent the widget. That is unbelievable. You’re handmaking axes. Nobody else can. Medical grass podium. Is that a thing? I don’t know. I don’t even know. I would, I would tell everybody you shoot for that shoot for 30% markup and then try to get 2020 5% of your gross sales in your pocket. Now sometimes the busier you are, you know, sometimes you can, you can give up a little bit of that percentage. It’s not, sometimes it’s not about the percentage is about how much you’re making too. So sometimes some larger companies, in other words like a Walmart, Walmart, they don’t try to make 20% of their gross sales.

They can’t, they can’t. That’s not there. But they do so much volume that they can make four and 5% what about people who kills money and then try to make up for it? People who lose money per transaction, who tried to make up for it with volume, they lose money per transaction. Forbes has a column for these people. Forbes actually has, oh find these people for us Forbes, it’s our business bible. For those of you don’t know, we a comment on a lot cause you know we liked for our staff to be fact checked, right? So we like to go to, we like to go to reliable sources like the Google and the Forbes, it’s called, it’s called Forbes, but if you want to mispronounce it at home you could say f orbs. You could, you could. Okay. Back. Dad have a category for that and that falls into the 80 to 90% category of failed businesses.

Ooh, they call it the FB. Oh the failed business. Now let’s talk about this. This is again, we’ll get, we get back to the interview just a second. Let’s talk about this. A oxi fresh has a great billing system, accounting system. If they’ve thought through all the systems, okay, but there’s a lot of independent carpet guys. They’re out there that are wanting to invoice people. And I know this because I’ve met them and they’ll say, hey, I’m having a cash flow problem. And I’ll say, what kind of property have he said? What? Click cleans up. I cleaned Clay’s carpet. I cleaned doctors east carpet. I cleaned the carpets. I’m cleaning cart, I’m clean, I’m clean. I’ve cleaned [inaudible] record number of car. How many carpets are you cleaning? He said, well, I’m cleaning a lot more than before because a lot, because of your coaching and the mentorship.

I’m getting two times as many carpets as before. I’m going, that’s good. They said, I know it’s bad. I said, how’s it bad? They said, well, what’s going on here? I have been, uh, invoicing my clients and they haven’t paid me yet. Ooh. And now I would say I would submit to the business owner. I would say, don’t invoice for carpet, nor nor should the grocery store. Say, DoctorZ , do you want these Avocados, these seven Avocados in this almond milk? Great. Here’s an invoice pace in the next 30 days. Yeah, we’ll bill you remember back in the good old days when they had the hardwood store? They saw it on the, on the old, oh yeah, western June. Yeah. Put It on me. I need a sack of sugar. What is going on with that? Can I get you, please explain to me why a business owner would delight to once to needs to invoice.

Like plumbers, wire plumbers, invoicing individuals to see if I had a plumber come to my house probably what, three months ago, four months ago he comes to my house and I had a little bit of a little bit of an issue. He was fixing it. Um, and so I don’t remember what it was but he said okay you want a debit card or credit card after he did the work and he was like 80 bucks or something. Right. I don’t want an invoice. No, no, no. Builder Guy Doing the work for me right now. He says hey to get started building the deck, I need a quarter of 25% down to buy the materials and then I do draws each week as we go. I don’t want an invoice from this guy 90 days after he completes the job. I don’t know him like live in like he’s homeless cause he’s trying to finance my deck d exactly.

It’s like, I noticed you, you’ve been wearing the same clothes the last three days and it looks like there’s a, some blankets were here in the corner by the corner of my house. He goes, yeah, just been, you know, want to get here on time. So what makes an entrepreneur want to have death by invoice? I don’t know, but you know what, I’m not sure. Clay, maybe, you know, you’ve done a lot of business coaching as the world’s foremost business coach. What do you think is more challenging for a first or a new entrepreneur and that is to ask for the business or to ask for the payment of the business. I think asking for the payments harder for most people. And that’s, I think so too. And why is that? Just had this mental block in there. Well, I have a, I have a lot of reasons and if I could go quasi political just for a second, I’ll give it to you.

Okay. Here we go. Um, we, there was a study that I was looking at the other day and there’s, they’re talking about who’s going to run for president and the next two years, you know, Democrat and Republican and they were showing that, well over half of the millennials will vote for a socialist if they can choose a socialist off and then the justifications that I was reading this person explaining, they said that once you have enough you need to be paying 70% taxes. This is what this person was saying, this, this candidate. She says once you earn enough and we’ll decide that, right? You think he’s, where have you heard of this story? The for this thing this person is proposing is 70% income tax. Once you’ve made enough and what is enough? That’s my business. These are these ones. This is what I’m saying. I’ve heard, I’ve heard variation.

I think that poverty mentality though of like, okay, just because doctors, he’s making a lot now we should take 70% 70 go to Canada was 17 is way up there. 70 thing about 70% and in fact the vast majority of people are saying that’s, that sounds great. That indicates to me the vast majority of the Americans who are surveyed have a psychological problem that I cannot possibly diagnose. Well no, the average person, the average person, not our listeners never go. Right. Not the thrive nation person out there. Right. They want to live on somebody else’s money. I mean why wouldn’t you? Right. Cause it’s, you’re having no ambition, no drives. It just cause it’s there. They’re in it. So if you want to live on someone else’s dime, it’s because what you want to do is you to do the easy route. What’s your water runs down hill. Yeah. Horse saying it’s easier not to ask you for the money. Sounds good. It’s if somebody else paid for my healthcare, it’s easier to not have to go get a job and work hard. Somebody else buy easier to not have to ask the client, will you pay me? Well it’s easier not to ask. It’s a hazy or you think it’s easier until you’re poor. That’s right. Then it’s harder. That’s right. So life gets

easier when you do hard things. And you know, one of the hard things that Jonathan Barnett has been doing is building the world’s best carpet cleaning franchise. This company is 396 locations and for under $50,000, all of our listeners out there for 50 grand, you could have yourself, your own business. It’s, it’s, it’s incredible. It’s an incredible business. It’s a move I think. I think, uh, some of their oxi fresh is going to say don’t say under 55 for some amount under $60,000. You could buy a business and be financially free as a result of oxi fresh. I could hear him now. I can hear him now with John. Jonathan Barnett. No, no. Say No. I, yeah, no cry was very firm. I could play it back for if you want. He said 50 k no, no, I’m not going to pay 53. I’m not going to pay 54.

Even. So like you said, it was 50. And as of today they have over 150,000 to objective Google reviews. And now that he further du Pech to the interview d this is the rest of the story here. Okay. I don’t know what year it was. I just know that I had a big Dj company at the time I was in college. I had about five or six djs working for me. He was doing three or 400,000 bucks a year of this Dj company. And I get a call from this Jonathan Barnett Guy who I knew of and asks if we can DJ for this college fund fireworks. You know what I mean? And you offered to do trade out. So I try, we did trade out and uh, now I know that you made quite a mark up on that, but here’s the thing is that was the first year that Vanessa and I ever bought fireworks. Now I buy them every single year. But Dude, you, you trade it out like I think $500 a fireworks. I’m like, this guy’s the man. Oh yeah, I’m slaughtering this guy. This guy’s this to taken advantage of this guy, this guy. Just because I was, I think I quoted you like 150 and you’re like, Nah, let’s do $500 of fireworks. And I’m just like, yes. Yes. Which is actually less than a hundred feet. But it was a fun gig.

Yes. I’m sure that you played chess with me and I played

okay. It was a fun, it was a fun of it. It was a fun time and I can vouch for it. You are out there. Uh, you guys were sweaty, you were up there all day. All night. All Day. Every day. And how did you kind of go from the fireworks into the next phase of your career and what role did your, did your grandfather have in, in that, in the transformation from the firework king to the carpet king?

Great question. So check this out. The fireworks and this is all going to lead to the Franchisee, but sleep out there for two weeks. Sleeping out the air. Yeah, I made some money and stuff, but it wasn’t like a ton and it’s seasonal. So the next year I did tent instead of standards and I could rent the temps for way cheaper than I could build the one stand and they were bigger. So I look way bigger. But instead of running the stand myself, I had youth groups do it and they paid, they got paid as a fundraiser so their whole church would buy. So they had all these flyers in my sales doubled and I would go and I had two scenes in different locations. So I swing by picking up the money they were winning. I was, when I learned it was a win win and I had a lot more fun that summer versus sleeping outside all summer.

So I guess looking back it was really hard. You know I was stressed because you do 80% of your sales the last couple of days. So if it rains, if last couple days, man, your major trouble. So, but the, but how all this ledger to what I do now with franchising is I was able to help create an opportunity for a win for that youth group, but also a win for me where I could scale and grow. So franchising isn’t too much different than that is you’re creating opportunity for others to win, but then an opportunity for the brand to win also. And when the brain could win and the Franchisee can win, the franchisees can win more because you get more resources, you get more dots, you get more fine tuning deemed the more franchisees you have, it keeps getting it. They make you get better.

I want to ask you this, this is my attempt to be nonlinear just to, just to mess with you here. I’m going to ask you this. You’ve got some franchisees who are really winning as a result of the Oxi fresh system. Now, I mean, there’s a lot of people that are doing very, very well. Do you have a particular franchisee that you want to brag on that’s been able to utilize the systems and really, really do well with oxi fresh? Yeah,

I mean you go to different categories, right? Um, but I have lots of Franchisees to brag about. One, one particular sticks to mind reminds me of this firework story because he’s 20 years old. He’s a full time student at Lubbock, Texas. And he is setting records in our system for the most jobs done in a, in its first year of business. And I think he has somewhere over like three or 400 Google my business reviews and he’s a full time student and yes, two texts that are full time and he’s making, he’s doing so well and you know, it’s so encouraging to see that if they follow the assistance and they have passion and they don’t wake up the day and in just be lazy, but they, what can I do to work on my business? They make it better and he’s full time student and he’s crushing these guys. Some of these guys that are are uh, have owned businesses before or whatever and we have great franchisees in our systems. But I would like to give a shout out to Leo. John’s out of Lubbock, Texas for being 20 years old and having that same passion I had when I had the fireworks stand, so

that’s awesome.

The one guy that I definitely want him to sell it to. Yup.

It’s Leo. His name’s Leo.

We’ll John’s out of Lubbock, Texas.

Big To

[inaudible]. Andrew, get that light on it.

The room is spinning. Okay, we’ll call back back to the story.

You got an award at our conference this year in that at the word ceremony. Matt was pretty funny. He, he gave him a bottle of milk, you know, he’s 20 and he couldn’t drink at their word,

so we appreciate you buddy. You’re doing great out there. See, does it blow your mind that there is a 20 year old franchise owner in the Oxi fresh system right now who’s killing it? Does it blow your mind that a 20 year old is doing that? Well, it doesn’t blow my mind. I see young people all the time. I mean when I was a young man, you’re the idea that you have that, that that drive in you. I think if you have that drive in you and you know they say they’re 67% of the people listening out there want, are thinking about want to start their own business. And so that means you’ve got that little spark, that little seed. And you know, if you’re, if you’re a, I’m 20 years old and you want to be successful, you might not need a degree at full disclaimer.

If you want to be an optometrist, you’re going to hit you hard to be a dentist. Yup. If you want to be a chiropractor, Yup. Then you will need to go and get that. And in those specific instances where you have a profession or a technical skill, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. No, I hear Ya. Someone up there going, Oh man, I want it to be a denture side. I can’t throw that away. And I couldn’t do that without going to college. And I’m watching a lot of youtube videos. I heard about that long weekend weekend course in Puerto Rico. But, so I think that there’s a, there’s a, there’s the vast majority of people though, don’t need to get a degree. What you need is a system, a proven system. You need a proven process, systems, strategies you need.

See if you could have all of that us, if you could have all of that Z in one place, that would be our business coaching program. If you say, I don’t want that. I just want the system that’s an Oxi fresh that’s on top of John’s, that’s a franchise, that’s a franchise. I totally believe, right. Prices are wonderful. Um, um, I think there’s what, there’s 30, how many different franchise opportunities are there out there? Oh boy. On Boston is Jonathan’s going to tell us in terms, in terms of, of franchises, I will say this. Um, the failure rate for a startup right now, according to Forbes, is nine out of 10. So nine out of 10 startups fail according to Forbes. Do you know what? We need to look up Andrew’s, look Andrew and see if you could Google this through Forbes because see how the number of franchises that start at the number of franchises.

That would be it. Then that would be a sign. Well, this is what I’m thinking. Look at it and I’ve, I’ve sat through and attended many franchise conferences and I will say that the statistics are almost reverse z. So it’s like instead of, instead of, we’ll get the actual stat for you, but instead of 90% of startups failing, uh, in the world of franchising, it’s like 10%. I mean, it’s very little. It’s almost completely reversed. We’ll get the stats here for you, but you know why franchises don’t feel very much because they have a system proven. It’s a proven, you can’t make up things. You have to disclose your financials and they tell you, you don’t even know how much to charge for your sandwich. They’ve got it all figured out. They’d say, they’d say, put her book down. You just hit the button. Let guess how many franchises in 2017 we’re operating in the United States from a how many franchises? I got it right here. Oh, I

don’t even want to, I don’t even know. I mean it could, uh, 740 [inaudible] Tom Brady, I guess 12. What’s the number one? He’s (740) 500-0290 is it the score of the Patriots versus the rams? No. So it could be 291 listening out there. Repeat that number one more time. (740) 500-0290 (740) 500-0290 Oh, shut up. That’s a, that’s a, that’s when you know one of the fastest growing franchises in the world is right now. It is oxi, fresh, Oxi fresh. I mean, do you know what he’s on today’s show. Now, back to our interview with Jb. Oh, it’s awesome. Come on JB. That is great. Now you go. Okay. Okay. Now, now back to our linear story here now. So from the fireworks stand firewall to the Oxi fresh, fresh, how’d it happen? Right?

You know, you to live your passions, right? So if money is your passion, I best to me that’s you’re in danger. So you, but, but you know, money’s important. It’s what makes things work. But my passion at the time was a basketball outreach called crossover. And, um, as you know, Claire Played Basketball, whole Roberts, I was a walk on, so I, I didn’t play a whole lot, but it taught me a lot. But basketball was like my identity and like what I thought, you know, looked at myself and that’s what if money becomes your identity or this or that. It’s very dangerous or anything you do in your life. So I decided to use basketball as a platform to reach youth around the world. We did a traveling team across the world for 10 years, but I w I did a five one c three nonprofit, tried to raise money for multiple years.

Everyone just started, wanted to keep playing basketball. So then I just said, okay, I’m just going to start my own business to fund it. So oxi fresh, the carpet cleaning franchise that uh, you would probably want to hear the most about more than fireworks. But the thing is my why, my why, my why was figured my occupants would start. My why, why life started Oxi fresh was to help fund something I was passionate about, which was crossover. So some people’s way out there might be their family more time cause they’re just there eight to five, they don’t have any time with the kids or they can’t take vacations or they’re stuck. So for me, my why was this crossover thing? So whatever your why is, if you make that very important and it’ll drive you past, you know, certain obstacles that don’t seem better are bigger than yourself. Right.

Did you, did you feel like that your father taught you these lessons because he was an entrepreneur, you know, your grandfather was, is that where you got some of this Mojo? Was it from your mom? Uh, were you checking out a lot of entrepreneur magazines? Where did this entrepreneurial fire come from?

You know, it’s funny cause you can hear, you know, people that are brothers and sisters, they have the same parents growing up. They can have different whatever. For me, what I took is I did take a lot from my grandfather. He was always inventing things, trying it. He always thought outside the box. So he was always never settling, questioning things, seeing there’s a better way. And I thought that’s how it’s supposed to be. I wanted to be like him. So you know, then I’m done with him. My mom was a little bit more opposite, but she was no quit in, they’re just very tenacious. And then my grandmother was like love no matter what. So I was very blessed to have three unique people raise me with their different values that, um, to become. And I also got to probably my coach Sutton it or you was a big, uh, he taught me how to delegate and, and I learned so much playing basketball there that I didn’t even realize it at the time. So that I used today, which I know you like in it and the Patriots and there and you know, sports teaches us so much, right?

Sure does. Hey Jb, I promise you there’s somebody out there listening maybe probably more than 100 that have a successful business, are killing it, doing very well. And they have been, yeah, told over and over and over, you should franchises, you should franchise. You should, you should be holy cow. And for those out there listening going, oh my gosh, he’s read my mail. That’s me. Walked him through the initial steps of when you have a successful business, when you, when you figured it out, what to do next, that process of, because it seems pretty daunting to the average entrepreneur, uh, to the average business owner out there. It’s like, oh my gosh, that’s, there’s no way I can do that. That’s overwhelming. So walked him through the process, the steps, the baby steps to get through for taking a successful business to a franchise because you’ve got well over 400 now working out there.

We’re close to 400 were right.

We dealt with the factory. What am I going to say? Come on. Come on. You gotta cut me a liar for two franchises probably. I mean, come on. You all right? All right. Okay. Walk us through.

Okay, so here’s the main thing with franchising is one is it’s a very big responsibility. You, you, when someone buys a franchise from you, you’re, it could have saved their whole life savings for this. So it’s not something to take lightly, but at the same time as if you’re planning on Franchising your business, you’re almost start looking at your business differently from day one. Right? Um, so because it’s not about the, you can’t rely just about the people. You can have the right people. If you have your own business, you’re not criticizing it. It’s probably is focused just on the people and that’s fine. But when you get to where you’re scaling it and you got to make it bigger and duplicatable, bigger than that one person, you really got to start focusing on your systems and your processes. And sometimes that in such a deep dive that it makes people nauseous or they,

yeah, I’ll do it tomorrow because

down into when you get down into your systems and your processes, sometimes it’s like looking at yourself in the mirror and you’re like, man, I gotta I got a lot to work on here, uh, with myself. So, um, I would say the first thing I would say is if you, if your vision is to franchise at one is you better make sure your business is profitable. And I, I like to say, oh, I always like to say around shooting for 20%, but it can be less, it can be more, depending on how much volume you’re doing. A high volume business can be less percentage in a smaller business, but it definitely needs to be profitable and it needs to be able to be profitable without with, if you could substitute different people in. So not if you, if you don’t go to work for a week or for a year and come back, how has that, how has your business running,

you said three things that you said. What kind of margin? If they want a franchise, do you think is a, is an approximate kind of arrange? Best practice?

Yeah. So if you’re working in your business as an employee, pay yourself what you would pay someone else do that job. Don’t pay yourself in a bigger salary just because you’re the owner. Pay Yourself. That bigger part comes out of the profit, the distributions stuff we’d pay anyone else. Okay. But if you, if you are a, if you’re going to franchise your business, your profitability after you pay all your employees should, you know, you want it to be profitable, but 20% is it like to shoot for, but it’s a higher volume business can be less percentage, right? If you’re doing millions of dollars a year in sales through the APP store, then it can be less. But it’s, if you’re a smaller business and you know, that’s a good goal to shoot for, right? You want to be profitable as you should be. Franchising in the first place

said the business should be able to run without specific people. So let’s talk about how you did that with oxi fresh. Um, I remember this specifically. It was the funniest. I would just remember reconnecting with you and I went to your condo in Denver and he was like you and I think you had like three dudes living with you. Am I making that up? Was it like you three dudes and a dog? Am I making that up?

When I lived in a, in a little townhouse, I had five roommates.

Fiber dog. Okay.

Condo. That was true. That was just wondering.

Okay, so it might’ve been the five dude. So you, and you now had one location in Denver that was doing well and then you live below your means and you opened another one and you live below your means and it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to Franchisee. All the checklists you have to make copyrighting things, trademarking the tread, trademarking things, building the franchise disclosure document. How long did you really, really, really live below your means, like five dudes and a condo with a dog. How long were you doing that before you finally got Oxi fresh to a place where you could start selling other franchises? How long did that take you?

It’s kind of a unique story and I wouldn’t recommend you will do it this way. I Aye I franchise. I had a, I did this first year that started, but the reason why is I had it in my mind that was the model I wanted to go for from the beginning and, and we’re more of a low cost model and so we didn’t have everything figured out. That was my intent. So from the, I was focusing on the systems and the processes versus the right versus just the people because I knew I wanted to franchise it. But to answer your question, I definitely lived below my means because, um, every, every dollar that we made, instead of keeping it, my, my rent was 300 bucks a month after met with my five roommates that you’re talking about hat. So we all pay 300 bucks a month and then a lot of those guys, queen carpet for me and I paid him just percentage of the jobs. They didn’t. So I had just, all my expenses were variable. I had no overhead. And so I was able to, to keep putting it all back in and we’d still 17 franchises is our first year.

Get a spreadsheet right. Yet a spreadsheet, a cold call technology. I mean, how did you sell those first 10 franchises?

Well, um, the first four were friends and family that they’d see me cleaning carpet and doing what I’ve seen when I was doing for a long time. And they were in different spots in their lives where they wanted to own their own thing. One of them happened to be my mom and she was a college professor for for many years. And so somehow she was getting fed up with that and I got her to buy a franchise. And so she’s been a Franchisee and Phoenix.

Good deal. Did you give her a good deal? Come on, JV. Do you give her

first four out to friends and family? They got an extremely deal yet, but every one since it’s been the regular prices.

Well, I mean,

I would love to do deals, but the thing is, it’s a, you know, we can do this another call, but the ethics of not what I wanna do, but what’s right for the other franchisees that have paid. Um, and so that’s why I just don’t, we don’t do that even if we want you to just because it’s just the right thing to do, but I mean

it ethical for it. So I had to ask you. Okay. So JB, your company, now, you guys have over 150,000 reviews as of today. Uh, I believe nearly 400 territories. You’ve got a great support staff. The Call Center in Denver is rock and you have to state of the art technology, a turnkey system where someone can call you today and for around $50,000 be in the game as a self employed person owning their own business. Um, what was the hardest part of building the Oxi fresh franchise to get where it is today?

Um, there’s been different phases of hard. I would say the hardest thing was would be to, um, we, we definitely didn’t have everything figured out. So when we start, like you bragged on a bunch of things, like our call center or technology, all that type stuff and our, our reviews in the beginning we had two products that we cleaned with I, and we booked jobs on excel spreadsheets in the basement of that little help, that condo that you were talking about. Right. And we had four of those foods, green carpet, orange countertops. And so getting someone to come out and buy a franchise when you’re doing your meeting in the hotel lobby area that you’re in out, it’s definitely challenging. Right? But then you sell a bunch of those and they’re doing well. The challenges become different because now that you have, now you’re up to a hundred franchisees, they expect more support and you had the two.

So every year it’s just a different, it’s a different challenge. So what I would encourage the listeners out there, and if you’ve heard read of any of my articles or listen to me, I say this because I mean it, but don’t wait until everything’s perfect to get started. You operate as if you have the green light and so you get the red light and most people wait, they offer it as if they had the red light tool. It turns green. The problem with that is what most people, most people, uh, wait until us forever to get started and they never get started. If I would’ve waited, so we had everything that we have here to start, I wouldn’t be even, which wouldn’t exist. I had to start, even though our products were perfect, I just start when our call center wasn’t perfect, how to start, how to get started, have some core things that were fixed.

The thing has got to be ready to go. Like I knew I would be able to update the products. I need to be able to update the call center. Once we had more franchisees and I told the franchisees that I communicated, hey, we’re not perfect. You’re getting in at the beginning, but here’s our vision, here’s our future. And I had a plan, but you know, so don’t just start it. Start Your Business and franchising just because you don’t have anything figured out. Have a plan and a goal to work towards. But don’t wait till it’s all figured out before you go. Otherwise you’ll never go.

You had the green light in your mind mentally to start Oxi fresh to did you, were you obsessed with carpet as a kid? I mean you just take yourself going, well that carpet looks hot. That is awesome. That’s some good a commercial. The other day where the headache, carpet, shower, there was a shower. Thought about putting a competent, I mean, were you able to carbon as a kid? What made you want to get into the carpet game?

No, and again, I looked at this business as a vehicle to help me achieve my dreams and goals. So I looked at what is something that’s not going to go away. Right? I didn’t want to build, like at the time there’s big yogurt, fat franchise is coming out, this and that. And I’m like, that could change because you know, everything keeps changing, all that stuff. But every flooring and upholstery, everyone’s going to have that forever. I wanted to trade in the section is where people would be like, oh, that’s a cool concept you’re starting. And I had to walk into restaurants or you know, on my dates when I was, I’m very now with five beautiful children, almost almost five. But when I meet people or whatever, what do you do? I’m a carpet cleaner, you know, that’s what I have to say. But you know what, I love saying it made it, made it kind of fun. But uh, no, I didn’t dream to be a carpet cleaner, but what I did dream to do is be able to provide for my family. Like I was just telling you guys before we started, I got to play Pebble Beach Golf this weekend. Just doing traveling and letting the business serve me and serve my goals versus I’d rather have that and say I’m a carpet cleaner. And you know, doing something that sounds all cool, but yeah, I don’t have any of the free time that I want to spend it with the loved ones I want.

You might be a sensei for carpet cleaning. You could say, I could do that. You probably would not be allowed to speak at your next convention. I make your carpet. I don’t know.

There’s a week I was called ignite, so we’re getting everyone excited. You did igniting up until I was 19 and I asked him all, everyone in the room stand up if you’re on the first page of Google for the word carp cleaning and your city. Almost everyone stood up, but then I said, okay, stand up. If you dream of being a carpenter when you were growing up.

My final question is he, as a final question for you, my final question for you is this, how did you go out there and get the first 100 jobs book, but it was just you against the world. You had that green light, you just made a killing, selling fireworks. How did you land your first hundred customers? Did you go door to door, house to house, cold call Ma, what were you doing?

This point right here, kid resonate with anyone in business and I, and I please take thinking about this is really important is this is fundamental for us from the very beginning. So it was some people out there, they call them their marketing guys, but they say to on branding, I like branding, it’s all good and all. But I’m, I, I’m a marketing guy that likes to track the Roi and it’s, and so in the beginning I used to do door to door flyers, right? And I you get to carry it out 500 fires from the post office where the, that was the route that you use 500 buyers on the door. I’d get, could you sense a business for fire pass out? So I knew I could do 500 flyers and five hours. So once I figure that out, it’s just a masking 500 fires.

I get seduced into business by, it’s 250 bucks in five hours. Okay. I could pay somebody 10 bucks an hour to pass it out, 10 bucks an hour as 10 cents a fly yourself, 40% 40 cents a fire margin. So it’s a numbers game. Labor ready had tin man crew that was sitting in my front door every morning, 500 bands, 500 flyers, either Rubbermaid or 500 a flyers to pass out and there’s different code on each flyer so I can track the sales off of each one night and I was getting a very positive Roi. Okay, so you’re probably wondering, wow, that’s great. It sounds amazing. There was a problem when I did it myself, I got 50 cents of business per flyer when I had these guys knew it. I was getting about 20 cents of business for Flyer of business. I started driving around and I was seeing all these flyers hanging out at a barbecue, all sorts of weird stuff, right?

So I would people do what you inspect, not what you expect, but one knowing I wanted to scale this via franchisable. This was in a scalable way, so, right. So I had to do other mocking and scale, but the point of it is how do we get to those first under jobs? I track my Roi and whatever marketing I did and I put the cost of that marketing and I was able to track the sales. Once you know what caught what cost is creating certain what sale, then you can do more of it or less of it, right? Most people just do marketing, they don’t track it, and they don’t think about how, how important that piece is. But once you know and Dr Z, if I told you, hey, if you give me $10 doing this, I’ll give you 500 you’d probably give me a thousand right?

Whoa, whoa.

This is what literally baffles me a lot in business is that people don’t track. The Roi is very much on, you know when you’re answering that phone, when you’re booking that job. We, in our culture, we get a code. Every marketing piece has a code and the online marketing, we create a unique URL that is attached onto or your old that goes to our, our website. So if you put in your zip code, a certain code comes up so we know where that came from. So we tracked where everything comes from and we know what the cost is so that we can tell Francine do more of this or do less of it. But if you’re not tracking it, and that’s the majority of intimate, you know what they say when they can’t track it. Oh, we’re branding.

Right, exactly. Knows these acronyms. Very intelligent. Absolutely. There in Detroit, wanders onto our podcast. He’s not in our thrive nation. I’m just saying. So breakdown Roi for like an eighth grader who’s Roy or like an eight year old. Who Was it? Yeah, but break that down.

Okay. Roi, return on investment. If I spend a dollar on this, how many dollars back is I get me. Okay. Then you can multiply it by a hundred or a thousand or whatever you want later. But if I spend $100 on this means or this part margin, whether it’s valpack or a radio ad or whatever you’re spending it on, you gotta be able to track the sales off of that. Then once you track the sales, if you get $400 back, can you spend 100 you’ve got a four to one you could subtract 100 were 41 however you want to look at it, but you spend a hundred you got 400 back. So now if that is, if your profit with that, then a thousand get 4,000 back. Now at some point there’s some, there’s a lot of marginal utility and the, the, the uh, if you’re not getting the same, you know, you’re not going to get the same return as it was before. But if you’re not tracking that, which is, you know, it’s, it’s bizarre to me. I got into an argument, I don’t know if you guys heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, but we had dinner this past year. We got a little heated argument at table

because creating guy

and I’m a numbers guy and he was trying to tell me how, how I’m a numbers guy and that’s old school and he’s a branding guy. And what’s the Roi on social media? Because he wanted to know what the Roi is. My mom and it was real. It was pretty hilarious. But basically you still, it’s harder to track all that stuff but you still can but at least be trying to, and in a asking that because there is a, branding is important but you know, track. If you can figure out your Roi then you can scale duplicate any business you have. If you can know what to spend to created revenue source back, then you’ll be able to scale it

on your flyers at a different code. I like that. There’s some other ones you can have different landing pages oxi fresh. What is so cool when you buy a franchise, they’re going to have this call center that does all this for you. And if you’re out there listening and you don’t have a call center, you have to do all this yourself. But either way, the phone rings. You guys are very methodical about asking people how they heard about you. You guys use promo codes. Uh, I would say for my businesses, we ask every single person at the point of purchase. Have you heard about us? And we track it every single time we ask and then we have a unique landing pages so we can track. But one of the things, it’s kind of crazy and some people will go to your landing page and then call you a month later. Hey, it’s crazy. Oh, the other thing too, we used to do back old school and this is I’m, I’m old. So this is old school. You and Moses did we, we would have, we’d actually sometimes do different phone numbers. What? Yeah, I know. Come on phone number. No way to see where they’re coming from. Not Possible. You can have,

let me, let me give you, let me, let me just talk on this for a second. Is that okay?

Oh yes, absolutely.

It speak on this, this, this. This is pretty interesting. So you guys talked about the visited your site or a splash page. Word slash stays. Doctor Z. We should use slash. Stages. We don’t do those anymore. We, we put all the paper click content or Google or Facebook. We drive into the city page of that location. But we just add on a different extension on the end and what that can do, doctors, he is going to blow your mind is it can dynamically change the phone number on that website even though the customer doesn’t know the phone number changed, right? Yeah. On top of that, it dynamically as the marketing code at the top of that page on our website, you guys can try it first.com that now, but quick, they’re going through a different like Facebook link or a paper click link. The phone number changes.

Why? Because when it calls our call center, the phone number, it forwards to a phone number in our call center that has a marketing code on the phone screen, seeing the paper click code so that the customer never, they clicked the paper click ad the code’s different and if they clicked our website organically versus a Facebook ad, all of this is going to the same website, but it’s Sanjana quickly changing the code in the backend so that we can track our life properly. So to Gary Vaynerchuk, we can track, we can measure the Roi on social media. Oop.

Oh, I just got me on the side right there. I mean, that’s just fun. Technology. I have a question. What’s the Roi of your mom? I got a question for you. What’s my Roi? Oh, just, I don’t even know that question. I just thought, oh, it’s crazy. Big Swell. Okay. Kill will continue to probably not have. I’m want to have him on the guest for yet another reason. Yeah. Okay. I’ll just get tailored.

And you believe in wasting. He’s passionate and he does more of an individual occasions that if they’re not doing well, they call him, chew him out. So he’s his own brain. So I get it. Need branding and I don’t know how, but we definitely will. We can, we attract our, and we can, but we can’t. We can’t.

Well, there’s a lot of people that every year believed a hopelessly that, uh, you know, the browns would, would win. Right? Correct. But now we have a winner on the team. It’s, it’s, it’s logical to think they’re gonna win. No, they got Baker Mayfield, him, Dan. I don’t know if they won seven games, but I mean people have been like, this is their year, this is their year for what, 20 something years. And I think that’s a lot like saying you don’t need to track your Rli. You can be passionate about it, but you can be passionate wrong. Well what? By tracking what it does is it lets you spend your dollars where you get your biggest bang. Yeah. You get your biggest bang, you don’t. So if this gives you a 100 times return, that gives you a 10 times return, you’re making money on both. Who cares about the bang for your buck when you could just be blowing money, blow up your money. I would’ve made 20 grand, but we blew up Ted k a profit and fireworks j B. Here’s the deal. I think this is, I’m going to call this an in faith part one of the Jonathan Barnett chronicles. Yes. Because I really need to have you on for a second at could you do another show at some point? Can you do another show?

Sure, absolutely.

Okay. This will be part one and we’ll, we’ll reach back out to you in time. We’ve got an interview, Wolfgang puck between now and then. So we’ve got to take the show down a little bit. We’ve got to take down to celebrity status. We’ll do Wolfgang puck and then we’ll come back to you. But, uh, if people want to learn more about buying an Oxi fresh franchise, what’s the best way to get ahold of you guys? What’s the action step for somebody out there who wants to create time and financial freedom by buying an Oxi fresh franchise or at least learning more about buying one?

Yeah, you can just visit our website at [inaudible] dot com or our franchise website occupation, franchise.com and just put in the notes that you heard about us on the thrive time show that will help us out so we can track again, nowhere are

coming

but, but, but again, there’s lots of great key concepts out there. There’s 3,800 different franchise concepts out there, so just be careful of what you’re looking at and make sure it’s the right fit for you. But oxi fresh. Uh, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re really enjoying the time that we have right now and create clay in Dr Z. Thanks for having us on the show was really enjoyed it.

Hey, big shout out to rob, to Erin, to Matt, everybody behind the scenes over there. Kelly at oxi fresh. You guys do a great job to Jordan. We appreciate you guys so much for making Oxi fresh, such a great company to do business with. And Z, we like to end every show with a boom every show. JB, are you prepared to bring a rocky mountain? Boom. I’m prepared. Okay. Z, are you ready? I’m absolutely all ready. Here we go.

Okay.