Why I Chose Franchising Over Real Estate Investing (And How I Built a Business Around Family)

Free Agent Podcast with Meg Schmitz – Guest: John Glazier, Multi-Unit Franchisee and VP of Franchise Growth at Hello Sugar

Meg Schmitz:
All right, great. Well, hello everybody and welcome to or welcome back to my podcast, the Free Agent. We are in our sixth season and if you’ve been following along, then you know that the discussion 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. And today I have a really interesting interview that I’m excited to do. John Glazier is joining me from Boise, Idaho. Newly moved to Boise, but the interesting story here is his franchise investment and then the trajectory that has now led him to franchise development with the brand.

Always great to hear about somebody who gets in and loves it enough that they’re going to be a brand ambassador. So welcome to the show and let’s just dive in, John, and get your story out.

John Glazier:
Yeah, thanks for having me on. So I am open to any questions you have and can speak to anything. So excited to be here.

Meg:
Well, one of the premises of this show is, and we’re in our sixth season, is that people want to hear the real story of why did you choose that brand and what you, amazingly, in three plus years have eight locations open, which is a huge bite of the apple to get that many open in that period of time. So I’m going to guess it in there. You’ve had some crash and burns, some unexpected left turns, some surprise and delight moments, I would, I would think as well. So just start at the beginning of your journey into franchising. Where were you and what brought you to look at franchising as an option?

John:
Yeah, totally. So traditionally my path was going to be real estate. We got into real estate like four or five. Anyways, since I’ve been married, I’ve been married about eight years. We owned our own town home and this and that.

Our plan originally, before finding out about franchising, was to buy a home every two years you know, and then just either sell that home and then move on to the next one and have more capital because you don’t pay taxes on that home after two years if it’s your primary residence or, or just buy and hold. So anyways, have an interesting past that way. We, I say we. My wife and I have dived into various different entrepreneurial ventures. Random stuff, greeting card companies.

I bought and sold mobile homes at a time during paternity leave for my previous company. I had a travel agency for a bit. So just, just kind of random odds and ends things. Sold iPhone cases. And we found out about franchising through my friend who was actually my professor in school.

He’s only five years older than me. During college I met him. I graduated entrepreneurship in college and he was my professor and I remember him saying that he lived in Phoenix, Arizona and the company I was working for at the time was a tech company. This is, this is about five years ago, six years ago I was working for a company out of San Francisco and they were opening an office in Phoenix. So I knew after school I’d be moving down to Arizona to just kind of join the office.

So anyways, I moved down there. We become friends. I knew that he had this waxing salon concept which is now, you know, like business. I’m a franchise owner of, called hello Sugar. We were having dinner about four years ago and he was just, you know, we were just shooting the breeze.

And he brought up how he wanted to start franchising this concept. He had, I want to say only nine locations at the time in Phoenix area, nine or ten. And he was looking to just find his first franchise owner. So that ended up, ended up being me. So talked about it with my wife and just the, I, I loved the, you know, because we’re younger and we had one daughter at the time.

Now we have two kids and we’re pregnant with twins. So we’ll have four under five years old, which would be madness. But, but we’re excited for it. But I liked the business model. I’ll explain in a second.

But just it really mitigated risk. We had the capital to be able to do it upfront without getting into a loan situation. So I like the upside versus the risk involved. So we join, we grew our first location in Idaho in July 2021. That was the kind of official first out of state franchise location, within Arizona there were two others that had started by his estheticians that had moved to Flagstaff and then one that moved to Tucson, Arizona. Those were doing well. And we only had. He only had five months of data to give me to tell me what the franchise model looked like before I opened my own. 

And so, I mean, it’s was a risk, you know, I mean, I really. I knew him well at this point. We were good friends, and I just kind of saw what he was building even in other businesses outside of Hellishry at the time. And I kind of just. You talk about the, you know, leap of faith.

I mean, it’s exactly what we did. So it was. It was. It was a lot, you know, but we. We learned, and we’ve kind of refined the process since then.

Meg:
So how many franchisees are there now?

John:
There’s about 20.

Meg:
Okay. 

John:

Yeah. 

Meg:

All right. So you’re the guinea pig. You’re. Well, not the guinea pig. That’s a nice thing about having multiple corporate locations open, it sounds like, because those other two assets competitions open further away. This is what I’m looking for in a concept, is that they’re not all clustered together. You have to stretch a little bit and start opening in other markets. He must have been very persuasive.

John:
Yeah, he is. He is. He’s a marketer by nature. So, yeah, he’s very persuasive.

Meg:
So what was the attraction to open in Idaho?

John:
So my wife’s from here, and this is actually where we met. So I’m from California, but we met each other in high school. I lived here for my last year in a half to graduate high school, so. So we had family up here, figured that we’d be flying up here often, even though we lived in Arizona at the time. So. Yeah, so that the main reason why. And also Boise, although a smaller city, is a. Is a growing area and just kind of, you know, somewhere that we felt you could open more than just one and multiple, so yeah.

Meg:
Well, people don’t think of Boise as being a beauty city. 

John:

Yeah, 

Meg:

It’s not Southern California. Arizona. Totally makes sense. So there was a leap of faith, too, going into a marketplace. You’ve got maybe more religious undertones there as well.

John:
Yeah, totally.

Meg:
Yeah, so this is fascinating. How long until you then open the second location?

John:
So we decide. So, okay, so here’s the history. So we started in July of 2021. Again, Brigham’s very convincing, great guy. He wanted to test out opening two at the same time. So instead of just saying, hey, let’s do one, let’s do two, so we did two.

We opened One in Boise and in a suburb of Meridian, which are only about 15 to 18 minutes apart, found out after, you know, three or four months that they’re probably a little too close when starting out in a market. And so just due to the population that we have in Boise. 

Meg:
Yeah.

John:

And so we actually decided to close down our Boise location and merge that with our Meridian location. So you might ask, well, how do you do that? Hello, Sugar operates in suites first.

So when I talk about risk mitigation, you don’t operate. It’s not like we commit to this 10 year lease in a storefront first. So we say, hey, let’s put down X amount. Let’s start off in this little 10 by 10 room inside of like a solo salon Studios or Phoenix Salon Suites. Right, sure.

And so what we did was we started off with one room in a Phoenix salon suites, the only two Phoenix salon suites in the area. And then we decided to close down Boise and then merge that room. So all the furniture and everything, it was only like, I don’t know, maybe $1,000 to move over. And so we merged that with our Meridian location and then had two rooms in that one location.

Meg:
Totally makes sense. So I’m an Image Studios franchisee.

John:
Oh, awesome.

Meg:
Yes. You know exactly.

John:
Yeah, I know exactly.

Meg:
It’s interesting at the last conference, Franchoice conference, how many concepts the CEO of Image Studios was interested to talk to for this very reason. Okay. So now it makes sense. You weren’t in the whole build out and lease and huge losses that you would have had if they were build ups.

John:
Exactly.

Meg:
Is that how you continue to expand is to first do suites?

John:
Yeah, yeah. So that’s kind of, that’s, that’s baked into our model. So we started off in a suite, we did two rooms in Idaho. And then we get that to a certain revenue mark and profitability and when, you know, we felt comfortable to move that into a storefront. So we moved it into a storefront September of last year. So now we have a 1200 square foot area. It’s four service rooms, you know, right in Meridian. So it was only maybe half a mile from where we were.

So brought in all of our clients out, pretty much break even from day one on the storefront and just kind of grown from there. So yeah, that’s, that’s the model. You go suite, you could add one room or two rooms and then from there you build up your clients and then you move into a storefront. When it makes sense based off of, you know, your marketing spend and what’s your cost for booking, cost for deployment as marketing perspective and also just the population and density where you are. So.

Meg:
Yeah, brilliant. Okay. I love this. Now my brain is going in a different direction. I need to focus on, I got to focus on the podcast. Good.

John:
You’re good.

Meg:
So, so you now have seven, look, eight locations open.

John:
Yeah.

Meg:
And how many of them are brick and mortar? How many of them converted?

John:
Yeah, so. So we open up in Idaho July 2021 and then we moved to or we didn’t move. We expanded to Colorado to Denver in March of 2022. Reason being, Meg, is because we knew we were going to have kids. We knew we wanted it to be on the west coast because that’s kind of our west, because that’s where we’re going to be.

I didn’t want to be flying all the time to Miami or to Chicago, so I wanted to be close, you know, maybe a day or two business trip at a time. And then I didn’t really want to work on the coastal markets and then Phoenix was taken. Utah at the time was kind of reserved because for different reasons anyways. And then Colorado just seemed like a great market for us. So that’s why we decided to go there.

I learned, I mean we were the type where we didn’t just want one, one and done one or two locations and calling it type of situation. We knew we wanted growth. This in a lot of ways, whether it leads to like full on retirement, so to say or you know, like some type of big sale in the end of it, that that is our end goal. But you know, whether this concept gets us to like complete kind of financial freedom, so to say or not, I don’t know. But that’s our goal.

And so I knew that two to three locations wasn’t really going to do that. And so we wanted a bigger market chew off of. And I also realized at the time selfishly that the brand would grow pretty quickly and if we didn’t hop into another market and start expanding, then territory would be swallowed up. So that’s kind of some of the reasoning there. Yeah.

And we’ve been really happy with it. So we have four in Denver, one in Boulder and two in Colorado Springs. And those are all.

Meg:
Wow. Okay, so for what is that seven then?

John:
Yes. And then three of those, four of those now have two rooms.

Meg:
Okay. And the long term plan, you’re a real estate guy, is to move into brick and mortar.

John:
Yep, absolutely.

Meg:
I would think that from a revenue and profitability standpoint, you’ve got to get to that brick and mortar.

John:
Yeah.

Meg:
Due to size and number of clients that you want to service, you’re pretty restricted on seven days a week in a suite. You can, you do have the opportunity to do 24 hours a day probably you could get people.

John:
Yeah, but we’re typically open 8:00am to 8:00pm.

Meg:
Okay.

John:
And so someone will work from 8 to 2 and then 2 to 8 and then it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating though in these suites, I mean you could see 25 people in a room in a day. And so you know, we do typically 20 minute appointments for a Brazilian membership and then anywhere between 20 to 25 if it’s a first time promo, you know, someone coming in for the first time. So, so you fit a lot of people in there. So you could do, in a one room location, you could do over 20,000 in revenue easy per month.

So. And then two rooms. So it’s, it’s, I mean you can do that. And then, and then obviously when you move to a flagship, like there’s more, the benefits of a flagship are one, you have more enterprise value. And so if you ever do want to sell in the future, most people, although cash flow is extremely important, number one, you do want longevity.

And so people are going to want to know that you’re there for the long haul and that you have a lease in place and that you can’t just get kicked out tomorrow type of thing. So that, that’s one big piece of it. But another one is just, you know, reputation recognition, hiring and organic leads. I mean all those come very naturally if you have a brick and mortar. So but our, our digital advertising is good enough and our, our, you know, ads team is good enough to where we can operate in suites for multiple years.

Just fine and very healthy as we’re looking for these long term leases.

Meg:
Interesting. I didn’t realize the brevity of the appointment and how many people. And it’s a nice price point too. And it’s waxing sugar and electrolysis.

John:
Yeah, waxing sugar and we are just getting into the laser hair removal side of things. So I again, I’m a guinea pig for that too. So there’s about four, I’ve been a guinea pig for a lot of things, but there’s about four of us that operate lasers. I have one in Denver and one in Idaho and then there’s Kansas City, Vegas, just added it. Arizona and then they’re working on Texas.

Meg:
So what’s nice about a franchise is that they tend to be who they are. You know what your revenue streams are, carefully adjusting as you go. This totally makes sense that you pivot into laser. Now you’ve got different equipment. Was there any pushback from franchisees or was there law of attraction by franchisees that this made sense?

John:
Yeah, Meg super good question. Yeah. The only reason we Brigham felt comfortable moving forward or Hello Sugar felt comfortable moving forward with adding a service, you need to be very, very thoughtful with that. Right. But the only reason is because it fell into that hair removal category. And so now we’re kind of the only brand that does full hair removal services. So if you, you know, if you’re better off with wax, stick with wax. We have hard, soft, hard and soft wax.

If you’re better with sugar, that’s an organic method to do it. Like some hair types receive sugar better. If you just want to get rid of all of it and you’ve been waxing and sugar for a year, just transition to laser. Right. It’s a very natural path. So that’s where it made sense. Now, as far as introducing it to franchise owners, most people are very excited about it, but just kind of waiting on the sidelines to see how it goes with this first group. So so far for us, it’s gone extremely well. But there’s some that in their states, they have a lot of restrictions, and so they just, they’re working through all of that and just the type of person they’ll need to hire, what the overhead looks like, regulations before they move into it.

So. But there are some owners who, you know, apprehensive. I mean, newer ones that have maybe gotten in April, May, that are just kind of getting used to our current system and then all the lasers being thrown at them, like it’s a lot, you know, so. And they have their doubts about it, and they—because they’re not used to how the brand thinks and operates, it could be kind of a red flag or appears a red flag to like, hey, I’ve been in this business for five months and you guys are already changing the services on me. This is a big deal. You know, this is kind of a pause moment for me to just kind of see how this goes, you know. Totally understand that too. There’s not many of those, but there’s a couple for sure.

Meg:
Yeah. And state by state, there are different regulations for different types of services. So it’s nice that it’s appearing as an option right now. When did you step into the role of franchise development?

John:
Yeah, July of 2023. So, yeah, I’ve been working a W2 this whole time. The main reason being I—like, in my mind there’s two different thought processes. There’s one, dedicate all your time to the business, have that be your main source of income and you know, just be the manager slash owner until you can afford somebody and also pay yourself, which is great. I mean, that’s awesome. That’s—that’s how in a lot of ways you should do it.

With mine, I have such aggressive growth goals that I wanted to be able to hire a manager, have that in place and also be able to have leftover capital to grow. We didn’t take on investment like I said. I mean, we’re bootstrapped. So because of that, you know, I mean, if I was taking out an income and paying a full time manager and, you know—or maybe if I just took out income, I’m not there locally in Colorado. So even if I were to be the primary manager, I think it’s best to have someone local.

Meg:
Right, I agree.

John:
And someone with that experience. So even if I wanted to pay myself the full salary and just do it, I don’t think I would do as good of a job, frankly, as someone out there locally. So. And I think you know, anyway, so that’s why I decided to just kind of, you know, just keep with the job. It’s also frankly, easier to get home loans, things like that. We just bought a home here in Idaho, so there’s different reasons for it.

And I just love the brand so much that, you know, I’m working with my friends every day. There’s about nine of us on the team and seven of us are franchise owners. And so that speaks.

Meg:
Oh really?

John:
Kind of the reputation.

Meg:
Yeah, yeah.

John:
I mean everybody, for the most part, everybody in Hello Sugar is a multi-unit owner or wants to be if they’re brand new. So a lot of champions in the brand and everybody on the team has a different skill set, but they just wanted to join and help grow this thing. So it’s just been really fun to be part of it.

I love startups, love kind of the, the tech scene as well. We’re a very tech savvy group, so it’s fun to just kind of grow that side. So. 

Meg:
And it’s great testimony it’s a great testimony to a brand when you’ve got that many franchisees, then jumping over to the franchise development standpoint, you know what the hard crashes are, you know what the..

John:
Yeah.

Meg:

Because there, there are always going to be surprises. And then as a guinea pig, you’ve probably stumbled and gotten back up again right along with the other.

No one here, no one in that group has a ton of longevity in that role. So that’s a real testimony to the power of the brand working for each of you. And you’ve got two kids with another set of twins on the way. So, yeah, to the listener, this is not your average bear. You’ve got some pretty interesting DNA in there to be hardwired to take on this many, I won’t say there are challenges, there are opportunities.

Expanding your family, expanding your business, and then taking on the role of franchise development. Are you going to be at our conference in January?

John:
I want to. In Houston?

Meg:
Yeah.

John:
Yeah. It’d be awesome. Yeah, I’d love to go. So I haven’t talked to the team about it, but I would love it. They’ve expressed it would be great if I went, but yeah.

Meg:
It would be, it would be great. Especially because with Front Street Partners now behind you, I was supposed to interview Bobby Brennan earlier this week. We had to postpone it to next week. So. Bobby Brennan, one of the three founders of Front Street Partners, I’m excited to talk to him about the parameters that they put in place about aligning with brands.

What parameters did Hello Sugar have in place about taking on, maybe you know, and maybe you don’t know, but having a partner like Front Street is. It’s a. It’s a challenge and an opportunity. So do you know any of the inner workings of that decision to align?

John:
Yeah, I mean, we knew that we wanted someone who would help us grow sustainably. So I think that there’s a lot of franchise sales organizations that just kind of, they sell to, I hate to say this, but just kind of whoever, you know, or don’t have as robust of a filter, I guess, when it comes to leads coming in.

And then also help someone who would have connections to help us fill some seats on the corporate side and has a good..

Meg:
Oh, yeah.

John:
Kind of on in the, you know, the, the job market to be able to attract some talent towards our brand when it comes out time. So those are two big things. And then also someone who, it was attractive to have kind of a, at least right now there stays like a boutique type of, you know, FSO to where they would put a lot of time and attention into us. And we weren’t just one of 15 to 20 brands that they had. So there’s a lot of attractive things and then just the reputation.

I mean, I, again, I wasn’t the main one making the decision, but I did have some say in it. Just giving my opinion and things. I’ve listened to Eric’s podcast for, Eric Van Horn, Franchise Secrets, for over three years. You know, he’s amazing. And then Bobby, you know, I’ve seen him all over LinkedIn before I even knew that he was part of the Front Street team. So he’s just, you know, incredible reputation and just credibility. So, I mean, those are some of the reasons.

Meg:
The three guys who started Front Street, I’ve known each of them individually for a long time, the amount of experience that they bring to the table. And so FSO is a franchise sales organization. There are a lot of them out there. And it does seem questionable some of the brands that come in. And I’m thinking mostly about the leadership of the company, the CEO, founder, visionary, and whether they align with the development that a franchise sales organization is going to insist on.

So there’s that balance, like you’re saying, between you get a whole bunch of leads, but maybe they’re not the right people.

John:
Yeah.

Meg:
So you get more exposure. And it is a sales organization. So like any sales organization, they’re looking for quotas and butts in seats and getting more locations open.

So as one of the franchise development people, do you have an avatar of the type of franchisee that you’re looking for so that you can maintain the standards that Hello Sugar has set forth?

John:
Yeah. So I guess one thing to clarify with my role, franchise development in a different sense. So I’m not on the sales side of the team.

Meg:
Okay.

John:
So I’m on the franchise development, almost like development internally.

Meg:
Oh, oh.

John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I know our avatar, but I mean culturally anyway. So maybe I can answer that culturally. But I help owners when someone actually signs on. And don’t get me wrong, I get brought into conversations all the time before they get brought on and like just they almost like unofficial franchise validation kind of thing, but more so to just kind of, hey, who’s this guy that’s going to help me open my location when I actually sign? What’s the process like?

Meg:
Right.

John:
What, what level of support? So I answer a lot of those questions, but when someone officially signs, I oversee the process of them actually, you know, heck, setting up their entity. Right.

Most people, it’s their first business. So how do I set up an entity? How do I set up taxes to air—sorry, taxes. What are the right licenses? What insurance do I need? How to select the right location? We have a mapping software I use. Setting up territories, those agreements. What does that look like? And then just how to hire staff, understand the tech stack, all that type of stuff.

And then after they actually open, which in a suite takes about two to three months, it’s like very quick. Then I coach them. I’m kind of their, I’m their business coach. I talk with them once a week for the first three to four months. And then from there I hand them off to our chief growth officer who works with them to work towards, you know, higher profitability, you know, looking at your P&Ls more in depth, things like that. So, yeah.

But I mean as far as a culture and our avatar, we I mean, I feel like I mean we have 20-something owners. We have about opened officially our 100th location last week.

Meg:
Really? I had no idea.

John:
Yeah. So we hit our 100th location last week. We’re kind of, we’re out of the just champion phase where you just need kind of gritty entrepreneurs that are just okay with whatever. We’re more systematized. I mean, there’s just definitely more expectations around where we’re at right now. We have more predictable growth paths and things like that.

But traditionally our avatar is someone who’s very good at working with people. So they have some type of, you know, manager experience and a job or just whatever that looks like. They’re usually pretty empathetic people because you are working a lot with people. They’re usually very fun. So like fun. And they don’t have to be extremely outgoing or anything, but just, just fun people.

You know, that, that fits the culture very well. Every year we do a franchise kind of retreat where we’re going to some crazy part of the world. So we’ve done Iceland, Tahiti and Belize. So we just do these fun trips.

So if you like that and you’re kind of tech driven, people-oriented. 

Meg:
Sign me up.

John:
Yeah, yeah, right. So then that’s kind of, that’s kind of our group. So very, you know, we’re still at the stage where we’re looking for people to come in who can help improve our brand.

So it’s not this closed-off mentality type of corporate team where it’s like, hey, this is, this is what we do and that’s it. You know, I mean, we have a proven model and it works. But heck, if you have good suggestions from previous experience, like, by all means, that’s always welcome. So we have a WhatsApp. Slack, or a WhatsApp group thread that we always use to just kind of, you know, help each other find our skills and be better owners. So just growth minded, you know, and just kind of fun savvy tech people. I would say like tech savvy or just kind of savvy people or just anyone who has worked with people in the past. You don’t have to be tech savvy, but just we’re a tech-savvy business. We could teach you how to use that. But if you like working with people, then it’s a great business for you.

Meg:
Yeah, people, people. I was in Iceland a year ago October for 10 days.

John:
Beautiful, huh?

Meg:
If someone said, “Meg, you need to go to the airport right now.” And I, no questions asked, I’d grab my hiking boots and go. We were so drenched. We were there at a period of time that was really at the end of the season.

John:
Okay. Yeah.

Meg:
Lucky we didn’t get drenched every single day, but. And some. Some places really know how to take advantage of the great outdoors. And that’s true of Iceland. I. I’ve never been to more hot springs in a week in my life. I mean, I think we visited nine hot springs because it was kind of we went the end of June, which is supposed to be the best time of the year. It was kind of cloudy, you know, hit or miss. And so I felt like I got maybe 70 to 75% of the actual experience. So I need to go back. But as far as the hot spring scene, top notch. It was awesome. So very yeah, it was super fun. We just had RVs and we were just going around the whole island, so.

Meg:
Oh, that was excellent. Well, so in your ownership experience, bringing it back to the podcast and what people really want to know about, you’re busy, you’ve got a full life, you’re an adventurer, and you’re entrepreneurial minded. What are some of the most positive outcomes that you and your wife have experienced since starting this particular journey? Because there was a lot of uncertainty there. And I should preface the question. I’m thinking about your wife. The three things that I talk about in my candidate’s journey, if they’re working already, your wife, your life, and your money, then I need to protect that. So talk a bit about how you and your wife have gone through this experience and what are the some of the most positive outcomes that the two of you have experienced.

John:
Yeah, that’s a great question. Do we have four hours? 

Meg:

Yeah.

John:
I think, I mean, I’ll start off like, I know I just to explain my personality a little bit. I know there’s some entrepreneurs that go so hard that they kind of neglect other things. And I try my hardest not to do that. I. I try not to work over 40 hours a week. I try to, you know, make sure that I’m always present with my kids at least an hour to hour and a half before I start work in the morning. I try to give my wife as much like time that she needs as possible. And she in return helps me on a million other ways. So she, I think keeping that in mind, we’ve tried to grow the business in a way where it’s not like, you know, breaking any part of our life apart and to where, like, I don’t look back in five years and feel like I’ve neglected my kids and to where it’s like I need to rekindle some type of relationship with my wife.

So right now, I mean, we always keep that the focus. Business is great, business is super fun, but if it all went away tomorrow, I have her and I have my family, and that’s like, what actually matters. So money comes and goes, you know, so I think that keeping that the focus, you know, we’re willing to take risks and stuff, but, you know, only a certain level of risk because if we over leverage or get to the point where we’re uncertain about, you know, any type of financial future outlook, then that doesn’t make us feel good, you know, and that affects our daily life. And so we’ve grown, but tried to do it at a decent pace. Now it’s been quick, but we tried to do a decent pace.

There have been some ups and downs, you know, as far as the positive things. You know, I think that it’s grown my wife and I closer, I would say. You know, I mean, anytime you go through something and for context, like I didn’t explain this our first year and a half, she was the manager. You know, I wasn’t the manager. She managed our businesses. For the first year and a half we had our daughter and then she was pregnant with our son. And you know, this was what, November of 22. She came up and said, hey, you know, when Jackson’s born, like, I don’t want to manage the business anymore. Like, I’m going to give you four or five months, but you’re going to run this thing. I was like, okay, cool.

So, you know, so, I mean, we made that transition stuff, but I just respected that and since then she’s been focused on being a mom, which I think she should be. So it’s brought us closer. It’s kind of challenged us in a way that I mean, tons of nights where just uncertainty, you know, crying, you know, you really have to like, set things aside to not let it affect, like, how you’re going about even hanging out with friends. So there’s those types of things.

But on a positive side, like, it also gives you this, like if I got fired tomorrow, I could live off of our business, right. That is something that most people in this country cannot say and the fact that we’re taking the future into our own hands. I think that to anyone listening to this, like you talk about being financially free and building a future for yourself, it does not come with cuts and bruises, but it is the most rewarding thing that anyone can feel and can really do for themselves. So if anyone on here is in a type of career that they’re not extremely passionate about or foresee being a quote unquote career, if it’s a job to you, then I think there’s nothing more empowering than, you know, starting something to build your own financial future and you being the one in charge of that.

And I think that’s what this has given me. And so because of that, keeping that as a North Star, I don’t care what the shortcomings are. I don’t care what, you know, I don’t care what, like tomorrow’s revenue is if there’s a snow day in Colorado, which there is, which sucks, right? I have to call off 100 clients. And I was just about to send a Slack to our team like before I hopped on this podcast, right? Like it doesn’t matter. I have my five year vision, I have my ten year vision. And then beyond that, I’ll conquer that later. But keeping the North Star, the North Star, like, this is my future. And until it looks like it’s not my future. I’ll adjust it then. But you know, this is my future and that to me is very empowering. So.

Meg:
And there for anybody who’s listening, you can take it from the two of us, there’s going to be a roadblock. There is going to be a sucker punch that you never saw. There are going to be, as my mother says, the awfulizing that happens in the middle of the night, you wake up and go, oh my God, everything is awful.

And I’m one of those people that can wake up in the morning, shake that off and say, I’m on here. I got things to do, places to go. I have people who are counting on me. Is there a facade? Absolutely.

Does it suck? Absolutely.

John:

Yeah. 

Meg:

And they say the what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And sometimes you do wish that it would just kill you because it seems so insurmountable.

But this is what we do as business owners. We’re accountable to our families and to our employees and to our clients. And in the end, the buck stops with you. So pull your big boy, big girl britches on and get out there.

John:
Yeah. And if I could say something, I think that like if the Simon Sinek book Start with Why, you know, like if you—I mean if anyone is even listening to this part, like that’s like that you have a desire. Right. If you’re even listening right now, like you have a desire.

And if you, you know, can really wake up every day and go to your why and just kind of anchor yourself on that day to your why right then and just kind of break things into two bite sized pieces and just focus on today, focus on the morning, focus on your planning session, whatever that is. Then time goes by and you start building confidence and your why starts to become who you are and how you operate every day. And that just helps you go to the next level and the next level, you know.

So a decent book that I’m, well actually it’s a great book, I’m reading right now is 10x is Easier than 2x and so.

Meg:
Oh. Yep

John:
So that’s a really good one for your listeners. But just kind of talks about these natural evolutions if you’re pushing yourself and just kind of you continuing to challenge yourself.

But to take that first step, it really does start with why and I think that, you know, it takes a lot of introspection to realize what that is, but once someone does realize what that is, it makes waking up in the morning excited a lot easier and more natural.

Meg:
Yeah. I couldn’t have asked you for a better way to wrap up this segment. This is what I talk to everybody about is and Simon Sinek and why it is such a great way to close this out.

Let’s have a conversation. Whoever is still listening, we’ll get to the bottom of why. Usually it starts at a very high level, but as we peel the layers back. This is the counselor in me. Peeling the layers back and getting down to the bottom of, people ask me if I’m a marriage counselor, therapist. The answer is yes. But knowing your why and getting like you said to your North Star, why are you going to do this? What is the ultimate benefit? And we’ll keep breaking that down into bite sized pieces until we really get to the heart of the matter.

And I’m so glad you brought up the title of that book, 10x is Easier than 2x. So I applaud your growth efforts and trajectory. You’ve done an amazing job there building your own empire. Do you have plans to continue opening more, by the way?

John:
Yep. Yeah

Meg:
Okay.

John:
Yeah, we’re growing another eight or so in Denver over the next four or five years and then another two or three in Boise because I think that’s all I could handle. Probably like three or four max.

Meg:
Fabulous. Well, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. This has been very eye opening and helpful for me to learn more about Hello Sugar. I’m excited on a personal level. Now I need to get some franchisees in Milwaukee so that they’ll come and open.

John:
Yeah, there you go.

Meg:
Come and open in my Image Studios. So thank you, John. I appreciate your time today and we will talk again soon.

John:
Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me on.

Meg:
You bet.