Beyond the Postcard: Innovative Strategies to Boost Franchise Awareness in Tough Markets
Ever wondered why some franchise brands seem to pop up everywhere at once, while others barely make a ripple—even when they’re using the same marketing playbook. In this episode, you’ll hear why the real game-changer isn’t just about choosing between digital or traditional channels, but how you blend them (and where AI fits in). Plus, there’s an unexpected twist about the power of direct mail that might surprise even the most seasoned marketing pros. Ready to see what most franchisees are missing—and how it could be holding back your next campaign?
My special guest is Karen Wenning
Karen Wenning brings a ton of marketing know-how to the table, especially for franchise brands looking to make the most out of both traditional and digital strategies. With years of experience working at Subtle Strauss in Madison, Karen knows firsthand how the marketing world has shifted—from old-school print and TV ads to today’s blend of AI-driven tools, direct mail, and social media. She’s got a knack for spotting what actually works for franchises, whether it’s tweaking campaigns to different industries or helping new franchisees find their footing with smart, multi-channel marketing. Karen is all about blending fresh tech with tried-and-true methods, and she’s always got her eye on results, brand building, and making sure every marketing move feels authentic and effective.
You have to keep showing up; your face has to still be there, because if you’re not promoting your business, someone else will be top of mind.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Discover how leveraging AI in your marketing strategy can unlock new levels of efficiency and customer insight for your franchise.
- Master the art of crafting direct mail campaigns that cut through the noise and drive real engagement with your local audience.
- Navigate the unique marketing challenges new franchisees face and turn them into opportunities for rapid brand growth.
- Combine social, digital, and traditional marketing channels seamlessly to amplify your franchise’s reach and impact.
- Understand the critical role branding plays in consumer decisions to build loyalty and stand out in a crowded market.
Master Direct Mail Campaigns
Direct mail remains a powerful tool to engage customers through tangible, personalized touchpoints. Combining direct mail with digital and social channels creates a cohesive experience that strengthens brand recall and drives action. Effective direct mail campaigns balance creative design with strategic timing to nurture leads and boost franchise growth.
The resources mentioned in this episode are:
- Visit the Women’s Franchise Network (WFN) Madison chapter to participate in local events and roundtables for women in franchising.
- Attend Franchise Customer Experience events organized by Franchise Update Media and the International Franchise Association (IFA) for industry learning and networking.
- Explore Subtle Strauss’s Connected Mail product for omnichannel marketing campaigns combining direct mail with digital and social media touches.
- Utilize QR codes in marketing materials for tracking and enhancing customer engagement.
- Join the First Friday networking group for franchisees and entrepreneurs to share best practices and build community.
- Tune in to the Free Agent Podcast with Meg Schmitz for real stories of self-employment and business ownership. Contact Meg Schmitz to schedule a free, no-obligation call and get insider insights on franchise opportunities. Use the form at the FREE Agent Podcast if you’d like to be considered as a guest on the Show!
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Click to Take the Leap into the full interview transcript of the Free Agent Podcast, Episode 7.12, with Meg Schmitz and her guest, Karen Wenning
Free Agent Podcast with Meg Schmitz – Guest: Karen M. Wenning, Business Development Manager at Suttle-Straus
Meg
Hello, everyone, and welcome to or. Welcome back to the free agent podcast. My name is Meg Chmitz, and this conversation is all about free agency and taking control over your financial future.
The mission of my show is to share inspiring conversations with real people who took the leap into self employment, business ownership, franchising, and freedom from corporate refugees and executives tired of the desk job. To entrepreneurs and investors looking to share camaraderie and inspiration through their own business journey.
My podcast aims a spotlight on real people who stepped into the unknown, took control over their destiny, and became their own boss. Today we’re going to shift it up just a little bit and invite back one of my favorite participants from my first Friday networking group.
Karen Wenning is with Subtle Strauss out of Madison, Wisconsin. She is a marketing guru. And so we’re going to talk about all things marketing and her point of view and what she’s seeing evolving in the world of franchising. So welcome, Karen.
Karen
Thank you, Meg.
Meg
It’s so good to see you. I miss you from the group. I know that you’re busy. You got a long time ago. You got your CFE. What else is going on? Or what is going on in your world of marketing and what’s new and evolving?
Karen
Oh, gosh. I mean, there’s so many things going on in marketing. It’s constantly evolving. Right? Like when I got into the business, when I got out of college and started in marketing, the marketing channels were TV, print, direct mail, radio.
So, I mean, the way that things have changed over the past 30 years is insane. But it’s interesting to see how some of the traditional marketing channels are really coming back. And we’re seeing that a lot in what we do.
And obviously I do traditional marketing, but you can’t do traditional marketing anymore without incorporating AI and digital and all of the other aspects, because marketing just works better when it’s all together.
Meg
How are you leveraging artificial intelligence? What specifically is working?
Karen
So a lot can be done with AI when it comes to marketing materials and things like that, as far as like generating images, resizing ads, things like that can be done through AI, which can greatly reduce the amount of time that it takes to prepare assets for whatever marketing channel you’re looking at.
Meg
And so I’ve been on the bandwagon lately for it not to be artificial intelligence, but accurate intelligence. I think it’s fascinating from the research standpoint, some of what comes back that’s true, but some of what comes back that is not true.
Do you incorporate, does your firm incorporate AI into, like, written media and like to make that process simpler and shorter?
Karen
We do not. So we have some policies that prevent us from using AI in certain ways just because of who we’re owned by. However, we do have some ability to use AI for communication.
As a traditional, really salesperson, I find that I’ve lost my voice a bit when I’ve used AI, and I prefer to really use my own voice. I’m not saying that I don’t use it, I certainly do.
But there’s a human element to AI, and I don’t think AI will ever replace individuals. I think that having the skills to adopt it properly is going to be pretty critical for the future generations.
Meg
Well, so for you and your firm and the work that you do, your clients count on you to come up with disruptive, unique approaches and angles. Otherwise, you’d be like every other firm out there.
Karen
I mean, true, right. But a lot of what we do, too, is providing assets for use in different marketing channels. So there are ways that AI can be used to, for example, resize ads or to provide images or enhance imagery, for example, which can save time and costs.
Meg
So what are some of your favorite programs to put together for your clients? What are strategies that really get your juices flowing?
Karen
I think the most exciting thing for us right now is what we’re calling our connected mail product, and that combines social and digital with a traditional direct mail piece to get a much greater response.
So when we’re sending out a connected mail program, we are looking to get 8 to 10 touches per individual on the mailing list.
What does that look like? In the past, when you would mail a direct mail piece, it would arrive in the homes one time and you would have one touch on the consumer. And hopefully with a postcard or a letter, somebody’s going to hang on to that, so it will enjoy a long shelf life in the home.
When we combine social and digital with the people that are on the mailing list, and we can touch that person eight to 10 times, what we’re doing is we’re moving them along in the customer journey much more quickly.
So in addition to pumping the prime before that direct mail piece ever hits the homes, we are sending them ads in Instagram and Facebook. By the time that they receive that direct mail piece, they’ve already heard of you or your franchise three or four times already or maybe more.
Then when they go to do a Google search and it comes up again, then it’s another reminder and it’s another touch in that customer journey.
When you’re going into a new market, especially if you’re a new franchisee and there’s not a huge brand awareness of that company already, you know it’s not going to take 10 touches to get somebody to make a buying decision. It might take 40, 50 or 60.
And when I say to make a move, that move might just be going to your website. And we know that nobody’s going to come into your location until they first check out your website.
So those types of marketing where we’re taking a more omnichannel approach and we’re combining the social and digital is getting the customer a lot more further along in that customer journey.
Meg
That’s so smart. I don’t know that you would even know this, but my ex husband was a marketing guy way back. My mom used to say all he does is kill trees putting out hundreds of thousand millions of printed pieces.
But that’s the way we consumed back then.
I think what you’re just talking about now, man, I wish I had that approach when I opened my last business. And it’s interesting to look at the consumer behavior and differences in consumer behavior, say between a Milwaukee or Madison, Wisconsin where they’re not early adopters.
They’re kind of the “show me” mentality. To your point, I don’t want to see it once or twice or 10 times. I want to know that other people are doing it too or that this is truly legitimate.
So I wish I’d had that strategy when I opened my last business a year ago. That name recognition piece is really necessary for markets that are not pioneering and don’t just believe every little thing you have to say.
Karen
Right. And you said the key word there was legitimate. It’s legitimate, it’s trustworthy. People believe that direct mail is trustworthy. If they’re getting something in their homes, they still believe that it’s a real thing.
They didn’t just see it on the Internet. They didn’t just see it on a TikTok or an Instagram.
Now don’t get me wrong, I would never recommend to anybody that they abandon their digital or social strategy for direct mail. If it was one versus the other and you could only afford one, I would stick with my digital and social strategy.
But if you have the ability to add in that direct mail, and what you really need to do is move that customer along in the customer journey, then that’s what you should do.
So when I look at going into a new market, sometimes it’s really hard for a franchisee to want to do a direct mail program. And the reason for that is because direct mail is always going to be a brand play. Right. And so a brand awareness.
A lot of franchisees feel that that’s the responsibility of the franchisor. Brand awareness is the responsibility of everyone. Because all it does is it strengthens the entire system. And so direct mail can be hard to swallow for a lot of different reasons.
Meg
Right.
Karen
I mean, postage is really expensive. We’re having a postage increase again in a couple of weeks. Here, July 13, we have another postage increase and it’s going to be a fairly large one.
So if you’re looking at doing a direct mail piece and maybe 35 cents of that is just postage, that’s going to the United States Post Office, that’s a hard pill to swallow.
So there’s a lot of things to consider when looking at a direct mail campaign to figure out if it’s the right strategy for your brand.
Meg
And so do you have different strategies for different industries?
Karen
Definitely, absolutely. So membership-based franchises do very well with a connected mail program combining that social and digital. Because what they need to do is they need to have a lot of different touches to bring in a new member.
And what’s great about that is once the campaign is finished, we can take the existing customers and we can compare it back to the mailing list and we can see exactly how many conversions we made.
So if it’s a low-priced item, like a gym membership — $150 a month or $125 a month — it’s really easy to calculate that ROI and it’s really easy to know exactly how many conversions we need to make in order to make that a worthwhile investment.
When you look at other types of industries, it can still be super beneficial. So let’s just take child care.
Child care — you know, if you’re looking at child care and you want to do a connected mail campaign, it’s going to take Mrs. Consumer a really long time to make a decision about where she’s going to send her child to child care. Especially if it’s a first child, right?
Meg
Yeah.
Karen
Yeah and it’s a really big investment. Maybe it’s going to be $15,000 or $20,000 a year. So it’s going to take a lot longer to make that conversion. But how many conversions do you need to make to make that campaign worthwhile?
So a lot of times we’ll see conversions taking a lot longer — maybe 90 days to get a conversion — whereas for a less expensive brand, it might just take 30 days to get some conversions. And then we see more over that 90 days. So we run that again at 30 and 90 days.
But other industries, a connected mail campaign doesn’t work. If we’re going to B2B, we’re not going to that individual household. So if we’re looking at brands like a cleaning service, for example, that would go and do cleaning for other companies, then you would look at a different type of campaign entirely.
You would look at targeting businesses or schools or this or that. And all of those can be targeted individually. So if we wanted to target real estate agents, for whatever reason, we can target just real estate agents.
But that connected mail campaign can’t work with that. So you have to look at different tactics. What URL are we sending them to and can we track that QR code, for example?
Meg
So you’ve got a lot of KPIs available in house to help. Do you work with both franchisors and franchisees? Individual franchisees?
Karen
We do. Typically, we work with the franchisor and then they will indicate, “We’d like to have a campaign.” We kind of talk through what that campaign would look like, figure out the strategy, and then they offer it to their franchisees.
And then we work with the franchisees to develop their individual local store marketing. Because it’s all customized for that local franchisee.
Meg
Yeah. And so I imagine then you’re getting a lot of feedback on, okay, this program worked in Southern California, but it didn’t work so well in Spearhead, South Dakota.
So then you can help your franchisees, or is it still more with a franchisor, to figure out what the backup plan is going to be to get that efficiency?
Karen
Typically both. Right. So it’s really important to be connected with that franchisor to know what their goals are and then have that work down to the franchisee.
We know that when we’re following that system that the franchisor has put in place, that we’re going to have better results, and that franchisee is going to have better results as well.
Meg
Good, good. What are some of your favorite brands or industries to work with, you yourself?
Karen
I love fitness. Personally, I just think that’s really a great space. I’ve learned a ton recently working with service brands, so that’s been new to me.
But they do a lot of — they need a lot of printed materials. Think about yard signs and door hangers and things like that that are still driving business for them. Flyers, a lot of events that they go to and they need materials.
And those are oftentimes, you know not only business-to-consumer focused materials, but also business-to-business focused materials.
There’s really no industry that I don’t like. We work with several restaurant brands, so QSRs, dine-in. That’s been really fun and an education as well.
We provide a software package that allows us to keep all of the location-specific information in what we call Location Manager and automatically pull it into the templates so the franchisees can literally come in and customize whatever marketing that they need.
They can download social media memes and upload them to their marketing channels, or they can do direct mail, or do their menus and have it go into an automatic print workflow and then ship directly to them.
Meg
So you’re really soup to nuts.
Karen
Truly we are. In fact, that was one of the reasons why I really wanted to come and work for Settle Strauss. That was 17 years ago.
But I worked for an advertising agency and what we did there is we did all the front end — all the creative, all the strategy. But then you kind of throw it over the fence and hope that everything goes well when you send it to the printer at that time.
And so coming to work at Settle Strauss gave me the ability to kind of do everything from start to finish. We do have seven full-time graphic designers that are agency trained that can do that work.
Most of our franchisors have their own in-house marketing. So we’re just taking what they have and seeing it through for them and for their franchisees.
Meg
So any big shifts, say in spending on marketing that you see as trends that indicate market shifts — like, is there a coming recession? So how are they spending their money? You’re laughing, Karen.
Karen
Isn’t that the question that we’re all asking ourselves? I mean, who knows, right? I mean, lots of interesting things.
So a couple things: during COVID things changed dramatically and people pulled back their dollars. But some interesting things came out of that. We got QR codes again.
All of a sudden, people started using QR codes. Now, can you imagine marketing without QR codes? We use them all the time — for menus, for store hours, for a lot of different things.
So I have no predictions about what’s going to happen with a recession or not, but I’ll tell you that all the brands that stayed vigilant during the last downturn have all come out on top.
The ones that didn’t pull all their marketing dollars are still around. And the ones that said, “Oh, gosh, I don’t have any money for marketing,” struggled and continue to struggle as they try to dig out of not doing any marketing and not taking some of the market share during a time when it was there.
Meg
Yeah, it’s so true. And it’s true in some of my networking groups as well — that “oh, I can’t make it this month” and, “oh, I didn’t make it now for two months.”
And also, if you’re not promoting your business, someone else is going to get in there and you’re not going to be top of mind anymore. And that’s the whole point of marketing: to be top of mind so that when that consumer needs to execute a buy decision, you’re in there. You’re in the mix, if not number one, top of mind.
So it’s so important not to back off your marketing dollars at a time when it’s absolutely vital — or you will lose out.
Karen
Exactly. I mean, you have to keep showing up. Your face has to still be there.
Meg
Yeah.
Karen
Your company has to still be there. And, but not only that. What about all the things that you’re learning when you’re just showing up?
Forget about the marketing aspect of it. Forget about that, look at everything that you’re learning from all those other people that are showing up and how they’re navigating and how they’re changing and how they’re executing a plan for the future.
I just think there’s so much to be said for that. And when you have any type of a networking group, you might think you’re in a networking group for the business connections, but there’s so much to be gained just from listening and learning what everyone else is doing and contributing to that conversation, which lifts all the ships.
Meg
Yeah, I’m just thinking back to when I was married to my ex-husband. They would conduct focus groups and solicit the consumer opinion about how does this piece, how did the piece work? Did it match then your actual consumer experience?
Does your firm also engage in events like focus groups where consumers can give you their direct feedback?
Karen
Not so much us, because we don’t do a lot on the strategy side anymore as far as the creative strategy. Usually our franchisors are doing all of that at headquarters. So they are typically doing their focus groups with their agencies and with PR.
Meg
Okay, so by the time it comes to you, they’re already educated consumers as the franchisor as to what sort of marketing and branding.
Karen
Correct. So they’re coming to us and they’re saying, this is what our avatar looks like. These are what our customer avatars look like. How do you help us find these people that meet this criteria that we’re looking for in this particular market?
And then we’re taking that information from that they’ve collected and we’re trying to match that consumer.
Meg
Got it. Branding is so important to that point of knowing exactly who your ideal customer is and where to find them. And as you said earlier, how many touch points does that person need before they’ll actually make their buying decision?
So the branding. I’ve spent so much money on my own personal branding so that, that way when my marketing goes out it’s like, oh no, who she is. She’s the franchise guru or the franchise fashionista, whatever I might be.
But that branding piece of it and I was just talking to somebody about this the other day, you have to be able to convey to the consumer in such short order who you are, what you do, what your value proposition is. Because the consumer’s got the attention span of, how many seconds is it now? It’s like seven seconds. Not even — it’s first impression.
Karen
I mean, that’s not scary though. That, I mean that’s every interaction you have, right?
I mean when I think of Meg, I think of the badass lady with the chainsaw.
Meg
Thank you. I work really hard. Over the weekend — I got a story for you. Over the weekend my husband was out yesterday, I was getting some office work done yesterday morning and did a Pilates class, virtual Pilates class. I was looking out the window.
I thought this is a perfect day to go out in my kayak. And my husband was going to come back and pick me up for lunch. But he got back at around 10:30. I thought it was kind of early for him to be back. Turns out working with chainsaws, a branch got under his sunglasses and he had a thorn that went into his eyeball.
Yesterday we spent a few hours in the urgent care facility. He took it out on his own. Yeah. So we are badass chainsaw-throwing people.
Isn’t that fun? I love looking at your posts on LinkedIn and to see where you’re going and the different events that you’re going to. It says so much about how active you are in the industry.
What are some of your favorite events to go to? Where do you learn the most?
Karen
Oh gosh, no matter where I’m going, I’m learning.
I was at Franchise Customer Experience last week and that is Franchise Update Media and then the IFA. So I definitely learned a ton. When I go to any IFA events, last week I will tell you that I was most focused on watching deliveries.
So becoming a better speaker. I was watching moderators. There were some incredible moderators that really took command of the room, really took command of the speakers, and were very capable of keeping people on track.
So you get out of it what you put into it. I was there definitely to learn, always there to learn. Never miss a keynote speaker if possible.
But I would say I’m always watching people to see what I can learn from them — other salespeople, other tactics. There’s some really great people in franchising.
There are a lot of women leaders in franchising that truly lift other women up. That’s pretty remarkable to see. I’ve recently started a local chapter here with a co-chair for the WFN, the Women’s Franchise Network of the IFA.
And just meeting a lot of franchisees, the women franchisees that are opening locations here in Madison and they’ve never been in a community where women are interested in helping other women. And I think that’s really sad. And gosh, I’m so glad I live here because you can’t go to a franchise event and have women not helping each other and offering to lift them up and helping them improve their business.
So that is something that I just absolutely love about franchising and that’s probably one of the reasons why I can’t ever see myself leaving franchising.
Meg
You’re touching on a key point and this was not scripted at all. But one of my favorite things about franchising is just what you’re talking about. It’s equal opportunity for women in business. And we are so much nicer to each other in franchising than in the corporate world.
Obviously it’s a different kind of competition out there. You’re vying for a paycheck, you’re vying for a promotion. Well, here in franchising, you own the business. There’s no discrimination. There’s no glass ceiling. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful view from up here Isn’t it?
Karen
My sister recently became a franchisee. And she has the typical story. She came from corporate America, she was doing excellent at her job and became a franchisee. And her life is just — guess what — it’s her life again.
Meg
That’s my favorite group of people to work with is people who want to get out of the corporate silo, because they’re in a silo.
In fact, I’m working with a gentleman who purposefully, at age 39, quit his $350,000 a year job. Today is his last day and he does not have a parachute yet. We’re going to find a parachute.
I’ve got a couple of women I worked with recently who one woman out in Boston, another gal who was making a ton of money. If you look at it that way, that’s really good money, $350,000 to $500,000 a year. And she also purposefully quit in order to buy a franchise because she was sick of being told what to do.
When you’re on this side of the fence, you get to call the shots every day. Yes, it’s scary sometimes. By the way, how long has your sister been in and is she open and operating yet?
Karen
Oh yes, she’s open and operating. Her ribbon cutting was in November out in Washington, D.C. I was up there for that. And she’s doing extremely well. I mean It’s been truly life changing.
And if you know yourself, if you know that you’re a hard worker, you can’t really go wrong. If your work ethic is such that you’re making a salary of $350,000 to $500,000, you have a work ethic — you’re going to succeed.
You’re not going to buy into something and then not make it work, right?
Meg
No, no. And it’s interesting to me how many women, particularly in Wisconsin, I don’t know why it is with the places where I draw my leads from. I only work with referrals really.
But how many women in Wisconsin are the breadwinner, and they’re more decisive in their franchise acquisition than some of the men I’m working with in other states.
So there’s something about Wisconsin women. We’re a very strong group of people. Tell me more about the Women’s Franchise Network, the WFN. How does that work?
Karen
Yeah, the Women’s Franchise so the IFA has the Women’s Franchise Committee — and they’re encouraging the building of different Women’s Franchise Networks across the country.
So many of them are totally established — Philadelphia, Atlanta, there’s a lot of them that are very much established. And then there are some, like Madison, which are just starting out.
Each chapter really can operate in its own way. But the purpose is to have at least three meetings a year where we are coming together to learn from each other, explore different franchise opportunities, and talk about what’s going on.
So Madison is going to be more based around the franchisees, versus some of the other cities that are more focused on franchisors because there’s more franchisors in that area. Wisconsin doesn’t have a ton of franchisors here. We have some.
And so we’re going to do things like having a meeting where we basically have marketing roundtables and operations roundtables and each person comes with a challenge that they’re working on.
So imagine you’re a franchisee, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, home services, membership-based, whatever and you bring what your current marketing challenge is. When you’re sitting at a table with 10 other people, they’re going to give you their suggestion of how they’ve overcome that challenge or what they’re working on or an idea.
So you’re going to walk away from a meeting and you’re going to have 10 ideas how to solve a problem that you walked in with.
Same thing — then we’re going to switch and go to an operations roundtable. What are the challenges you’re having on the operations side and what does that look like? And then there’ll be a moderator at each table to help keep the conversation moving and make sure everyone gets an opportunity to speak.
We’re really looking to provide value to women in franchising in any way that we can. Connecting them with the right people, connecting them with somebody that can help with a challenge, connecting them with other women entrepreneurs so they have somebody to bounce ideas off of. That’s really the whole purpose of at least the Madison chapter for now.
Meg
And so are you part of the leadership of that group?
Karen
I’m a co-chair.
Meg
Well, no wonder you were paying so much attention last week to moderators and keynote speakers. That’s your future — that’s what you’ll be doing. I would love to get more information from you about participating in that group.
Karen
There may be like a small charge if we had to rent a venue or something. We’ve done one event so far which was making a meal at the Ronald McDonald House in Madison just to kind of kick things off, get to know each other a little bit.
And that’s part of what the IFA and franchising does too, i mean we’re always giving back to our community. Most brands have some sort of give-back, some sort of charity. So that was our way of giving back and saying what was important to us.
Meg
Well, I agree with you about the importance in the state of focusing on the franchisee. For whatever reason, we’re not a hotbed of franchisor activity like Minneapolis. What in the world is going on in the water up there?
So many companies started there. And there are pockets around the country. But in the end, the franchisor is successful if the franchisee is.
And that’s really why I started my own networking group, that First Friday group. I had come up from the Chicago area as a Great Clips franchisee and then was working with people in Milwaukee and Madison.
Well, the density or the number of franchisees is never going to be as great as, say, a Great Clips. In Chicago we had 37 franchisees and everybody was looking to build three to 10 units. So we were all waving the same banner, we were all pulling on the same rope, solving the same problem.
But when I spent more time here in Wisconsin, you’re just not going to get that density of owners and that brain trust and the ability to share best practices.
To your point, rising tides lift all boats. We don’t need to be in competition with each other. Let’s share. We’re all in business together, so let’s figure out how to survive and thrive. And we do that by sharing best practices, for sure.
Karen
And even the women that I’ve just connected with recently that two of them are just opening, actually I think their grand opening is today and they’re like, well, we know so-and-so and we could ask them to join and we could do this or that.
And the other thing is, what about co-branding with them? What about co-branding with similar-type businesses?
I’m in fitness, but I’m wellness over here, and I have childcare over there, and these moms are going and working out. It’s all connected, right? It’s all connected.
And these are all businesses that are doing good things for the Madison community. They’re hiring, they’re hiring our kids, they’re hiring our high school students, they’re creating jobs, they are giving back to the community, they’re supporting our kids’ athletics.
It actually gives me goosebumps right now, all the good they’re bringing to our community and how they can help one another.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re a Mosquito Joe’s or if you’re a Hydrolog right, there are still ways to cross market between two totally different types of franchises.
Meg
And those are two totally different types of franchises. One of my favorite placements was, I don’t even know how many years ago now, Kean— with Mosquito Joe in Madison.
Talk about scrappy. Talk about unrelenting. So the whole story with her, Kean — when I first met Kean, she had come through an executive displacement program. She knew she did not want to go back.
She was not going to get saddled with the responsibility and reviews that were unfair and limited opportunity. She was absolutely dogged that she was going to own a franchise.
We started down the path of figuring out who she is and what she wants and what would really utilize her skill sets and interests. And mosquitoes is not where we started at all.
After realizing that her first choice was financially out of reach at that time, we brought Seth, her guy, into the conversation. He’s the one with the license. Started to look at Mosquito Joe.
And then she was Rookie of the Year, Rookie of the Year for the entire system of Mosquito Joe when she first got started.
Karen
Yeah, but that doesn’t surprise me at all because again, you have this really hard-working woman.
Meg
Yeah, right.
Karen
Who knows how to run a business, who knows how to rally people, who knows how to do things right. I can get so excited about it and it just brings me joy.
Meg
Absolutely
Karen
Blowing it out of the water with what they’re doing.
Meg
Well, I would love to be part of the WFN. And because I know Kean I know you, Karen, I know a lot of my placements who have joined the First Friday group too. Again, they’re women who are not going to fail. It’s just not a word that’s in their vocabulary.
So many people get so stuck in their heads about what could go wrong, where what you really want to do is talk to the universe about the universal energy of “bring me the best people, what does my first placement look like?” And that’s what I see more women really tapping into is that vision of success right out of the gates.
And I think that’s why they’re reaching it faster. Strong women.
Well, this has been unexpectedly exciting here. Once we hit on a topic that we had not discussed previously, I can see it in your smile and hear it in your voice how excited you are about leading this.
So yeah — take more views of who’s moderating what, who’s speaking. You’re already a dynamic personality with that 100-megawatt smile. You’re going to crush it with the involvement in that group.
Thank you so much for spending the time today talking about marketing and different strategies. What’s working and what has changed has been eye-opening for me. And I really appreciate that you were able to make the time this week and share your insights. So thank you.
Karen
Oh, my gosh. It’s my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me, Meg.
Free Agent Podcast with Meg Schmitz – Guest: Karen M. Wenning, Business Development Manager at Suttle-Straus
Meg
Hello, everyone, and welcome to or. Welcome back to the free agent podcast. My name is Meg Chmitz, and this conversation is all about free agency and taking control over your financial future.
The mission of my show is to share inspiring conversations with real people who took the leap into self employment, business ownership, franchising, and freedom from corporate refugees and executives tired of the desk job. To entrepreneurs and investors looking to share camaraderie and inspiration through their own business journey.
My podcast aims a spotlight on real people who stepped into the unknown, took control over their destiny, and became their own boss. Today we’re going to shift it up just a little bit and invite back one of my favorite participants from my first Friday networking group.
Karen Wenning is with Subtle Strauss out of Madison, Wisconsin. She is a marketing guru. And so we’re going to talk about all things marketing and her point of view and what she’s seeing evolving in the world of franchising. So welcome, Karen.
Karen
Thank you, Meg.
Meg
It’s so good to see you. I miss you from the group. I know that you’re busy. You got a long time ago. You got your CFE. What else is going on? Or what is going on in your world of marketing and what’s new and evolving?
Karen
Oh, gosh. I mean, there’s so many things going on in marketing. It’s constantly evolving. Right? Like when I got into the business, when I got out of college and started in marketing, the marketing channels were TV, print, direct mail, radio.
So, I mean, the way that things have changed over the past 30 years is insane. But it’s interesting to see how some of the traditional marketing channels are really coming back. And we’re seeing that a lot in what we do.
And obviously I do traditional marketing, but you can’t do traditional marketing anymore without incorporating AI and digital and all of the other aspects, because marketing just works better when it’s all together.
Meg
How are you leveraging artificial intelligence? What specifically is working?
Karen
So a lot can be done with AI when it comes to marketing materials and things like that, as far as like generating images, resizing ads, things like that can be done through AI, which can greatly reduce the amount of time that it takes to prepare assets for whatever marketing channel you’re looking at.
Meg
And so I’ve been on the bandwagon lately for it not to be artificial intelligence, but accurate intelligence. I think it’s fascinating from the research standpoint, some of what comes back that’s true, but some of what comes back that is not true.
Do you incorporate, does your firm incorporate AI into, like, written media and like to make that process simpler and shorter?
Karen
We do not. So we have some policies that prevent us from using AI in certain ways just because of who we’re owned by. However, we do have some ability to use AI for communication.
As a traditional, really salesperson, I find that I’ve lost my voice a bit when I’ve used AI, and I prefer to really use my own voice. I’m not saying that I don’t use it, I certainly do.
But there’s a human element to AI, and I don’t think AI will ever replace individuals. I think that having the skills to adopt it properly is going to be pretty critical for the future generations.
Meg
Well, so for you and your firm and the work that you do, your clients count on you to come up with disruptive, unique approaches and angles. Otherwise, you’d be like every other firm out there.
Karen
I mean, true, right. But a lot of what we do, too, is providing assets for use in different marketing channels. So there are ways that AI can be used to, for example, resize ads or to provide images or enhance imagery, for example, which can save time and costs.
Meg
So what are some of your favorite programs to put together for your clients? What are strategies that really get your juices flowing?
Karen
I think the most exciting thing for us right now is what we’re calling our connected mail product, and that combines social and digital with a traditional direct mail piece to get a much greater response.
So when we’re sending out a connected mail program, we are looking to get 8 to 10 touches per individual on the mailing list.
What does that look like? In the past, when you would mail a direct mail piece, it would arrive in the homes one time and you would have one touch on the consumer. And hopefully with a postcard or a letter, somebody’s going to hang on to that, so it will enjoy a long shelf life in the home.
When we combine social and digital with the people that are on the mailing list, and we can touch that person eight to 10 times, what we’re doing is we’re moving them along in the customer journey much more quickly.
So in addition to pumping the prime before that direct mail piece ever hits the homes, we are sending them ads in Instagram and Facebook. By the time that they receive that direct mail piece, they’ve already heard of you or your franchise three or four times already or maybe more.
Then when they go to do a Google search and it comes up again, then it’s another reminder and it’s another touch in that customer journey.
When you’re going into a new market, especially if you’re a new franchisee and there’s not a huge brand awareness of that company already, you know it’s not going to take 10 touches to get somebody to make a buying decision. It might take 40, 50 or 60.
And when I say to make a move, that move might just be going to your website. And we know that nobody’s going to come into your location until they first check out your website.
So those types of marketing where we’re taking a more omnichannel approach and we’re combining the social and digital is getting the customer a lot more further along in that customer journey.
Meg
That’s so smart. I don’t know that you would even know this, but my ex husband was a marketing guy way back. My mom used to say all he does is kill trees putting out hundreds of thousand millions of printed pieces.
But that’s the way we consumed back then.
I think what you’re just talking about now, man, I wish I had that approach when I opened my last business. And it’s interesting to look at the consumer behavior and differences in consumer behavior, say between a Milwaukee or Madison, Wisconsin where they’re not early adopters.
They’re kind of the “show me” mentality. To your point, I don’t want to see it once or twice or 10 times. I want to know that other people are doing it too or that this is truly legitimate.
So I wish I’d had that strategy when I opened my last business a year ago. That name recognition piece is really necessary for markets that are not pioneering and don’t just believe every little thing you have to say.
Karen
Right. And you said the key word there was legitimate. It’s legitimate, it’s trustworthy. People believe that direct mail is trustworthy. If they’re getting something in their homes, they still believe that it’s a real thing.
They didn’t just see it on the Internet. They didn’t just see it on a TikTok or an Instagram.
Now don’t get me wrong, I would never recommend to anybody that they abandon their digital or social strategy for direct mail. If it was one versus the other and you could only afford one, I would stick with my digital and social strategy.
But if you have the ability to add in that direct mail, and what you really need to do is move that customer along in the customer journey, then that’s what you should do.
So when I look at going into a new market, sometimes it’s really hard for a franchisee to want to do a direct mail program. And the reason for that is because direct mail is always going to be a brand play. Right. And so a brand awareness.
A lot of franchisees feel that that’s the responsibility of the franchisor. Brand awareness is the responsibility of everyone. Because all it does is it strengthens the entire system. And so direct mail can be hard to swallow for a lot of different reasons.
Meg
Right.
Karen
I mean, postage is really expensive. We’re having a postage increase again in a couple of weeks. Here, July 13, we have another postage increase and it’s going to be a fairly large one.
So if you’re looking at doing a direct mail piece and maybe 35 cents of that is just postage, that’s going to the United States Post Office, that’s a hard pill to swallow.
So there’s a lot of things to consider when looking at a direct mail campaign to figure out if it’s the right strategy for your brand.
Meg
And so do you have different strategies for different industries?
Karen
Definitely, absolutely. So membership-based franchises do very well with a connected mail program combining that social and digital. Because what they need to do is they need to have a lot of different touches to bring in a new member.
And what’s great about that is once the campaign is finished, we can take the existing customers and we can compare it back to the mailing list and we can see exactly how many conversions we made.
So if it’s a low-priced item, like a gym membership — $150 a month or $125 a month — it’s really easy to calculate that ROI and it’s really easy to know exactly how many conversions we need to make in order to make that a worthwhile investment.
When you look at other types of industries, it can still be super beneficial. So let’s just take child care.
Child care — you know, if you’re looking at child care and you want to do a connected mail campaign, it’s going to take Mrs. Consumer a really long time to make a decision about where she’s going to send her child to child care. Especially if it’s a first child, right?
Meg
Yeah.
Karen
Yeah and it’s a really big investment. Maybe it’s going to be $15,000 or $20,000 a year. So it’s going to take a lot longer to make that conversion. But how many conversions do you need to make to make that campaign worthwhile?
So a lot of times we’ll see conversions taking a lot longer — maybe 90 days to get a conversion — whereas for a less expensive brand, it might just take 30 days to get some conversions. And then we see more over that 90 days. So we run that again at 30 and 90 days.
But other industries, a connected mail campaign doesn’t work. If we’re going to B2B, we’re not going to that individual household. So if we’re looking at brands like a cleaning service, for example, that would go and do cleaning for other companies, then you would look at a different type of campaign entirely.
You would look at targeting businesses or schools or this or that. And all of those can be targeted individually. So if we wanted to target real estate agents, for whatever reason, we can target just real estate agents.
But that connected mail campaign can’t work with that. So you have to look at different tactics. What URL are we sending them to and can we track that QR code, for example?
Meg
So you’ve got a lot of KPIs available in house to help. Do you work with both franchisors and franchisees? Individual franchisees?
Karen
We do. Typically, we work with the franchisor and then they will indicate, “We’d like to have a campaign.” We kind of talk through what that campaign would look like, figure out the strategy, and then they offer it to their franchisees.
And then we work with the franchisees to develop their individual local store marketing. Because it’s all customized for that local franchisee.
Meg
Yeah. And so I imagine then you’re getting a lot of feedback on, okay, this program worked in Southern California, but it didn’t work so well in Spearhead, South Dakota.
So then you can help your franchisees, or is it still more with a franchisor, to figure out what the backup plan is going to be to get that efficiency?
Karen
Typically both. Right. So it’s really important to be connected with that franchisor to know what their goals are and then have that work down to the franchisee.
We know that when we’re following that system that the franchisor has put in place, that we’re going to have better results, and that franchisee is going to have better results as well.
Meg
Good, good. What are some of your favorite brands or industries to work with, you yourself?
Karen
I love fitness. Personally, I just think that’s really a great space. I’ve learned a ton recently working with service brands, so that’s been new to me.
But they do a lot of — they need a lot of printed materials. Think about yard signs and door hangers and things like that that are still driving business for them. Flyers, a lot of events that they go to and they need materials.
And those are oftentimes, you know not only business-to-consumer focused materials, but also business-to-business focused materials.
There’s really no industry that I don’t like. We work with several restaurant brands, so QSRs, dine-in. That’s been really fun and an education as well.
We provide a software package that allows us to keep all of the location-specific information in what we call Location Manager and automatically pull it into the templates so the franchisees can literally come in and customize whatever marketing that they need.
They can download social media memes and upload them to their marketing channels, or they can do direct mail, or do their menus and have it go into an automatic print workflow and then ship directly to them.
Meg
So you’re really soup to nuts.
Karen
Truly we are. In fact, that was one of the reasons why I really wanted to come and work for Settle Strauss. That was 17 years ago.
But I worked for an advertising agency and what we did there is we did all the front end — all the creative, all the strategy. But then you kind of throw it over the fence and hope that everything goes well when you send it to the printer at that time.
And so coming to work at Settle Strauss gave me the ability to kind of do everything from start to finish. We do have seven full-time graphic designers that are agency trained that can do that work.
Most of our franchisors have their own in-house marketing. So we’re just taking what they have and seeing it through for them and for their franchisees.
Meg
So any big shifts, say in spending on marketing that you see as trends that indicate market shifts — like, is there a coming recession? So how are they spending their money? You’re laughing, Karen.
Karen
Isn’t that the question that we’re all asking ourselves? I mean, who knows, right? I mean, lots of interesting things.
So a couple things: during COVID things changed dramatically and people pulled back their dollars. But some interesting things came out of that. We got QR codes again.
All of a sudden, people started using QR codes. Now, can you imagine marketing without QR codes? We use them all the time — for menus, for store hours, for a lot of different things.
So I have no predictions about what’s going to happen with a recession or not, but I’ll tell you that all the brands that stayed vigilant during the last downturn have all come out on top.
The ones that didn’t pull all their marketing dollars are still around. And the ones that said, “Oh, gosh, I don’t have any money for marketing,” struggled and continue to struggle as they try to dig out of not doing any marketing and not taking some of the market share during a time when it was there.
Meg
Yeah, it’s so true. And it’s true in some of my networking groups as well — that “oh, I can’t make it this month” and, “oh, I didn’t make it now for two months.”
And also, if you’re not promoting your business, someone else is going to get in there and you’re not going to be top of mind anymore. And that’s the whole point of marketing: to be top of mind so that when that consumer needs to execute a buy decision, you’re in there. You’re in the mix, if not number one, top of mind.
So it’s so important not to back off your marketing dollars at a time when it’s absolutely vital — or you will lose out.
Karen
Exactly. I mean, you have to keep showing up. Your face has to still be there.
Meg
Yeah.
Karen
Your company has to still be there. And, but not only that. What about all the things that you’re learning when you’re just showing up?
Forget about the marketing aspect of it. Forget about that, look at everything that you’re learning from all those other people that are showing up and how they’re navigating and how they’re changing and how they’re executing a plan for the future.
I just think there’s so much to be said for that. And when you have any type of a networking group, you might think you’re in a networking group for the business connections, but there’s so much to be gained just from listening and learning what everyone else is doing and contributing to that conversation, which lifts all the ships.
Meg
Yeah, I’m just thinking back to when I was married to my ex-husband. They would conduct focus groups and solicit the consumer opinion about how does this piece, how did the piece work? Did it match then your actual consumer experience?
Does your firm also engage in events like focus groups where consumers can give you their direct feedback?
Karen
Not so much us, because we don’t do a lot on the strategy side anymore as far as the creative strategy. Usually our franchisors are doing all of that at headquarters. So they are typically doing their focus groups with their agencies and with PR.
Meg
Okay, so by the time it comes to you, they’re already educated consumers as the franchisor as to what sort of marketing and branding.
Karen
Correct. So they’re coming to us and they’re saying, this is what our avatar looks like. These are what our customer avatars look like. How do you help us find these people that meet this criteria that we’re looking for in this particular market?
And then we’re taking that information from that they’ve collected and we’re trying to match that consumer.
Meg
Got it. Branding is so important to that point of knowing exactly who your ideal customer is and where to find them. And as you said earlier, how many touch points does that person need before they’ll actually make their buying decision?
So the branding. I’ve spent so much money on my own personal branding so that, that way when my marketing goes out it’s like, oh no, who she is. She’s the franchise guru or the franchise fashionista, whatever I might be.
But that branding piece of it and I was just talking to somebody about this the other day, you have to be able to convey to the consumer in such short order who you are, what you do, what your value proposition is. Because the consumer’s got the attention span of, how many seconds is it now? It’s like seven seconds. Not even — it’s first impression.
Karen
I mean, that’s not scary though. That, I mean that’s every interaction you have, right?
I mean when I think of Meg, I think of the badass lady with the chainsaw.
Meg
Thank you. I work really hard. Over the weekend — I got a story for you. Over the weekend my husband was out yesterday, I was getting some office work done yesterday morning and did a Pilates class, virtual Pilates class. I was looking out the window.
I thought this is a perfect day to go out in my kayak. And my husband was going to come back and pick me up for lunch. But he got back at around 10:30. I thought it was kind of early for him to be back. Turns out working with chainsaws, a branch got under his sunglasses and he had a thorn that went into his eyeball.
Yesterday we spent a few hours in the urgent care facility. He took it out on his own. Yeah. So we are badass chainsaw-throwing people.
Isn’t that fun? I love looking at your posts on LinkedIn and to see where you’re going and the different events that you’re going to. It says so much about how active you are in the industry.
What are some of your favorite events to go to? Where do you learn the most?
Karen
Oh gosh, no matter where I’m going, I’m learning.
I was at Franchise Customer Experience last week and that is Franchise Update Media and then the IFA. So I definitely learned a ton. When I go to any IFA events, last week I will tell you that I was most focused on watching deliveries.
So becoming a better speaker. I was watching moderators. There were some incredible moderators that really took command of the room, really took command of the speakers, and were very capable of keeping people on track.
So you get out of it what you put into it. I was there definitely to learn, always there to learn. Never miss a keynote speaker if possible.
But I would say I’m always watching people to see what I can learn from them — other salespeople, other tactics. There’s some really great people in franchising.
There are a lot of women leaders in franchising that truly lift other women up. That’s pretty remarkable to see. I’ve recently started a local chapter here with a co-chair for the WFN, the Women’s Franchise Network of the IFA.
And just meeting a lot of franchisees, the women franchisees that are opening locations here in Madison and they’ve never been in a community where women are interested in helping other women. And I think that’s really sad. And gosh, I’m so glad I live here because you can’t go to a franchise event and have women not helping each other and offering to lift them up and helping them improve their business.
So that is something that I just absolutely love about franchising and that’s probably one of the reasons why I can’t ever see myself leaving franchising.
Meg
You’re touching on a key point and this was not scripted at all. But one of my favorite things about franchising is just what you’re talking about. It’s equal opportunity for women in business. And we are so much nicer to each other in franchising than in the corporate world.
Obviously it’s a different kind of competition out there. You’re vying for a paycheck, you’re vying for a promotion. Well, here in franchising, you own the business. There’s no discrimination. There’s no glass ceiling. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful view from up here Isn’t it?
Karen
My sister recently became a franchisee. And she has the typical story. She came from corporate America, she was doing excellent at her job and became a franchisee. And her life is just — guess what — it’s her life again.
Meg
That’s my favorite group of people to work with is people who want to get out of the corporate silo, because they’re in a silo.
In fact, I’m working with a gentleman who purposefully, at age 39, quit his $350,000 a year job. Today is his last day and he does not have a parachute yet. We’re going to find a parachute.
I’ve got a couple of women I worked with recently who one woman out in Boston, another gal who was making a ton of money. If you look at it that way, that’s really good money, $350,000 to $500,000 a year. And she also purposefully quit in order to buy a franchise because she was sick of being told what to do.
When you’re on this side of the fence, you get to call the shots every day. Yes, it’s scary sometimes. By the way, how long has your sister been in and is she open and operating yet?
Karen
Oh yes, she’s open and operating. Her ribbon cutting was in November out in Washington, D.C. I was up there for that. And she’s doing extremely well. I mean It’s been truly life changing.
And if you know yourself, if you know that you’re a hard worker, you can’t really go wrong. If your work ethic is such that you’re making a salary of $350,000 to $500,000, you have a work ethic — you’re going to succeed.
You’re not going to buy into something and then not make it work, right?
Meg
No, no. And it’s interesting to me how many women, particularly in Wisconsin, I don’t know why it is with the places where I draw my leads from. I only work with referrals really.
But how many women in Wisconsin are the breadwinner, and they’re more decisive in their franchise acquisition than some of the men I’m working with in other states.
So there’s something about Wisconsin women. We’re a very strong group of people. Tell me more about the Women’s Franchise Network, the WFN. How does that work?
Karen
Yeah, the Women’s Franchise so the IFA has the Women’s Franchise Committee — and they’re encouraging the building of different Women’s Franchise Networks across the country.
So many of them are totally established — Philadelphia, Atlanta, there’s a lot of them that are very much established. And then there are some, like Madison, which are just starting out.
Each chapter really can operate in its own way. But the purpose is to have at least three meetings a year where we are coming together to learn from each other, explore different franchise opportunities, and talk about what’s going on.
So Madison is going to be more based around the franchisees, versus some of the other cities that are more focused on franchisors because there’s more franchisors in that area. Wisconsin doesn’t have a ton of franchisors here. We have some.
And so we’re going to do things like having a meeting where we basically have marketing roundtables and operations roundtables and each person comes with a challenge that they’re working on.
So imagine you’re a franchisee, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, home services, membership-based, whatever and you bring what your current marketing challenge is. When you’re sitting at a table with 10 other people, they’re going to give you their suggestion of how they’ve overcome that challenge or what they’re working on or an idea.
So you’re going to walk away from a meeting and you’re going to have 10 ideas how to solve a problem that you walked in with.
Same thing — then we’re going to switch and go to an operations roundtable. What are the challenges you’re having on the operations side and what does that look like? And then there’ll be a moderator at each table to help keep the conversation moving and make sure everyone gets an opportunity to speak.
We’re really looking to provide value to women in franchising in any way that we can. Connecting them with the right people, connecting them with somebody that can help with a challenge, connecting them with other women entrepreneurs so they have somebody to bounce ideas off of. That’s really the whole purpose of at least the Madison chapter for now.
Meg
And so are you part of the leadership of that group?
Karen
I’m a co-chair.
Meg
Well, no wonder you were paying so much attention last week to moderators and keynote speakers. That’s your future — that’s what you’ll be doing. I would love to get more information from you about participating in that group.
Karen
There may be like a small charge if we had to rent a venue or something. We’ve done one event so far which was making a meal at the Ronald McDonald House in Madison just to kind of kick things off, get to know each other a little bit.
And that’s part of what the IFA and franchising does too, i mean we’re always giving back to our community. Most brands have some sort of give-back, some sort of charity. So that was our way of giving back and saying what was important to us.
Meg
Well, I agree with you about the importance in the state of focusing on the franchisee. For whatever reason, we’re not a hotbed of franchisor activity like Minneapolis. What in the world is going on in the water up there?
So many companies started there. And there are pockets around the country. But in the end, the franchisor is successful if the franchisee is.
And that’s really why I started my own networking group, that First Friday group. I had come up from the Chicago area as a Great Clips franchisee and then was working with people in Milwaukee and Madison.
Well, the density or the number of franchisees is never going to be as great as, say, a Great Clips. In Chicago we had 37 franchisees and everybody was looking to build three to 10 units. So we were all waving the same banner, we were all pulling on the same rope, solving the same problem.
But when I spent more time here in Wisconsin, you’re just not going to get that density of owners and that brain trust and the ability to share best practices.
To your point, rising tides lift all boats. We don’t need to be in competition with each other. Let’s share. We’re all in business together, so let’s figure out how to survive and thrive. And we do that by sharing best practices, for sure.
Karen
And even the women that I’ve just connected with recently that two of them are just opening, actually I think their grand opening is today and they’re like, well, we know so-and-so and we could ask them to join and we could do this or that.
And the other thing is, what about co-branding with them? What about co-branding with similar-type businesses?
I’m in fitness, but I’m wellness over here, and I have childcare over there, and these moms are going and working out. It’s all connected, right? It’s all connected.
And these are all businesses that are doing good things for the Madison community. They’re hiring, they’re hiring our kids, they’re hiring our high school students, they’re creating jobs, they are giving back to the community, they’re supporting our kids’ athletics.
It actually gives me goosebumps right now, all the good they’re bringing to our community and how they can help one another.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re a Mosquito Joe’s or if you’re a Hydrolog right, there are still ways to cross market between two totally different types of franchises.
Meg
And those are two totally different types of franchises. One of my favorite placements was, I don’t even know how many years ago now, Kean— with Mosquito Joe in Madison.
Talk about scrappy. Talk about unrelenting. So the whole story with her, Kean — when I first met Kean, she had come through an executive displacement program. She knew she did not want to go back.
She was not going to get saddled with the responsibility and reviews that were unfair and limited opportunity. She was absolutely dogged that she was going to own a franchise.
We started down the path of figuring out who she is and what she wants and what would really utilize her skill sets and interests. And mosquitoes is not where we started at all.
After realizing that her first choice was financially out of reach at that time, we brought Seth, her guy, into the conversation. He’s the one with the license. Started to look at Mosquito Joe.
And then she was Rookie of the Year, Rookie of the Year for the entire system of Mosquito Joe when she first got started.
Karen
Yeah, but that doesn’t surprise me at all because again, you have this really hard-working woman.
Meg
Yeah, right.
Karen
Who knows how to run a business, who knows how to rally people, who knows how to do things right. I can get so excited about it and it just brings me joy.
Meg
Absolutely
Karen
Blowing it out of the water with what they’re doing.
Meg
Well, I would love to be part of the WFN. And because I know Kean I know you, Karen, I know a lot of my placements who have joined the First Friday group too. Again, they’re women who are not going to fail. It’s just not a word that’s in their vocabulary.
So many people get so stuck in their heads about what could go wrong, where what you really want to do is talk to the universe about the universal energy of “bring me the best people, what does my first placement look like?” And that’s what I see more women really tapping into is that vision of success right out of the gates.
And I think that’s why they’re reaching it faster. Strong women.
Well, this has been unexpectedly exciting here. Once we hit on a topic that we had not discussed previously, I can see it in your smile and hear it in your voice how excited you are about leading this.
So yeah — take more views of who’s moderating what, who’s speaking. You’re already a dynamic personality with that 100-megawatt smile. You’re going to crush it with the involvement in that group.
Thank you so much for spending the time today talking about marketing and different strategies. What’s working and what has changed has been eye-opening for me. And I really appreciate that you were able to make the time this week and share your insights. So thank you.
Karen
Oh, my gosh. It’s my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me, Meg.
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