How Franchising Business Works | Allan Alarcon, COO ResiBrands (Podcast 360)

Franchisees to go through the natural evolution, you know, of buying a franchise and being super happy, but a year later being pissed off they're paying royalties. And then, you know, it's like, like, like humans. Every teenager hates their parents. As soon as we have our own kids, we realize our parents weren't as screwed up as we thought they were. Right? It's like, well, I guess they tried their best. All right, we've got a great episode for you today. You're going to love it. Listening or watching to this one. We have Alan Alarcon, who is the chief growth officer and co founder of Resi Brands. They are one of the fastest growing franchisors in North America. They own three franchise companies already. That one painter, Garage up and Pinks. Fantastic growth model, fantastic focus on leadership. Some crazy similarities between what they're doing and what we did back at 1-800-got-JUNK, their obsession with the book the E Myth, some of the lessons from John Maxwell on leadership. And then Alan's real focus around being a true mentor and coach and growing of people. Session of bringing great people into the company and a really strong focus on branding and marketing as well. You're going to love this episode. We will see you on the inside. So, Alan, welcome to the Second In Command podcast.

Hey, thanks so much for having me, brother. I appreciate it.

I'm really looking forward to this. I mean, not only did you guys get your start in the painting world, I started in the house painting world as well. We know some of the similar people from that industry. But I was in Austin, Texas, where you're based, two weeks ago, and I heard your CEO Stephen, on the My First Million podcast reached out to your company that day and said, I need to get you guys on here to learn a little bit more about Resi Brands and what you're doing in the franchising space. And you're based in Austin, so we got a couple of little ties in there right away.

Yeah. Thank God you were here for some good weather, brother.

That was actually. Well, I got the. I got the tail end of a little bit of rain, but it was nice. So let's start. Start off by telling us what you're doing because you're doing a couple of things in the franchising space that is unique. You're also doing it very quickly because you've got a few brands up and running right out of the gate, or at least it feels like out of the gate. Has it been a long time to get to the night before the overnight success?

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny, right? The overnight success story, right? No, but yeah, it's been wild. So basically Stephen and I started that one painter. Well, he founded it. He, him and I are cousins back when actually we were roommates in Austin, Texas. He founded the company, started building it, just basically hiring buddies of ours. And it was very much like a solo, you know, solopreneur, you know, solo entrepreneur type endeavor of his. And I got my start in home services, actually in pest control and was hired to do services and then quickly realized that sales paid more. So I started doing door knocking and really got my leg that way and getting going and it's been a heck of a journey. Then I grew my own companies. I was one of the youngest GMs at Massey Services. They're one of the largest in that entire space. Anyways, kind of built a whole career there. And then about five years ago now chose to come on board with Stephen full time. And our original goal was to become the largest paint company in Austin. And then we wanted to grow it kind of from there. Happy to say that. I joined the team. We started doubling revenue, Steven and I, every year from there in the Austin location. And it was just an amazing, you know, two, three year trajectory of growth. And really we were like, okay, well how do we grow from here? We were contemplating doing like a corporate model where we would open maybe a location in like San Antonio, Houston, Dallas and expanding that way, maybe OKC and a few other areas that we felt like could be ripe for the picking. But we hired a business coach and kind of looked at different models. We even looked at profit sharing models and just different things. Just looking at like, hey, what are the different ways you can grow? And really fell into franchising because a business coach introduced us to a gentleman named Gary Okio Grosso with Franchise Growth Solutions. He's an amazing guy. He was part of Dunkin Donuts, five guys, a bunch of other big franchise brands. He's kind of an old New York sage of franchising and really sold us on the idea, helped us understand what it was, how it was basically giving people the opportunity for the American dream and how it really required of us as franchisors to be great mentors, coaches and developers of leaders. And how it really enabled us to be more involved in that side of the business and not so much like this top down hierarchical hierarchy structure. So that really resonated with both of us. And we read a book called E Myth by Michael Gerber and then 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. And I think that all cemented it. Steven read them first and was like, hey dude, you gotta read these. We read E Myth fully fell in love with the true product of business is business itself. And we really became hyper obsessed with building out processes. Which is funny because I went from this boots on the ground sales guy to like all of a sudden doing what I always thought I never would do, which is sitting on a computer and writing everything out. But anyways, so that kind of led us down that path and then got into franchising. Honestly, I would say a little naive. We didn't know the world at all. We just looked at our phones and everyone was a potential whole franchise candidate. And we just knew we were going to like pave a path of success for anybody who believed in us. And our original goal, we started franchising. We were like, man, if we can sell 20 units, if we get to 20 units, that we're going to be good. Well, we must add something good, a really good branding, really good marketing. Because I think within just the first couple of months, we had already sold seven. And so Steven and I looked at each other and we were like, man, okay, this is going pretty well. We had actually started reading seller be sold and getting into Grant Cardone sales training at that time too. So Stephen and I were like, we need a 10x our goals. So we went to 200 and started telling everybody that our goal for franchising of that one painter was 200 units. Yeah, here we are. We're probably approaching the 130 unit mark. Yeah. Rapidly growing. I think we're going to be approaching 200 units probably by the summer of this upcoming year. At the rate that we're growing currently, for like the last three to four months, we've been selling between 20 and 30 units every month. And our pipeline's never been more full. In that time. We also realized we're pretty good at this and we've always wanted to start a couple other home service concepts. The idea was always for us to diversify and we saw an opportunity to build out Resi Brands, which is just short for residential, but it's a portfolio company. Our plan is to kind of shake up this space. Home Services is kind of in this weird bot where you have a lot of old timers who got into it a long time ago and never really kept up with the times. Then you have a lot of unsophisticated younger guys who are getting into it, but don't actually fully understand the complexities of running a Large company and the branding efforts that it takes, the marketing efforts that it takes, like all that stuff, the level of perfection of your systems and processes and how heavily they're going to get tested. So, anyways, so we now have two other concepts. Garage up, which is the first ever total garage renovation franchise. We just started franchising that one about six months ago. We launched the corporate office the beginning of this year. So we're very excited about that one. We basically do everything from garage doors, garage door repair, epoxy floors, basically anything you can think of in the garage, we do all of it. Some of them were like a kitchen renovation company. We realized that the garage space was very fragmented. There was a lot of companies that would do pieces of it, but nobody claimed all of it. So we built a concept that does everything in the garage and we absolutely love it. And the branding is really, really cool. And then we also partnered with Brandon and Carter, which I think is how you've heard about us, with our other concept called Pink's Window Services, which they're a very awesome local brand here in the Austin area, founded by two young guys, Brandon and Carter. They're just phenomenal. They both came from complete different background to home services, but got into it and have shaken it up. And I think they have one of the coolest window cleaning companies I've ever seen. And it's really fun and a very young brand, very vibrant. Vibrant. They're kind of, you know, bringing sexy back to blue collar, if you will. It's cool.

You're touching on so many really interesting points. That one thing is super crazy funny. Brian at 1-800-GOTJUNK where I was the CEO. His favorite and first business book he ever read was the E Myth. And I tell you, if you haven't read that book, people have to read that book.

I agree.

So many foundational aspects of that that are powerful. When Michael Gerber came into our offices in Vancouver and looked around, he was just like, wow, you guys really did what I said. And we're like, we were so scared of failing. Of course we did what you said. Like you kind of have to. But then the other thing you talked about and a couple one, one is that that so many businesses in the franchising space are kind of. I've been doing it forever. And that nothing's really changed. It's so true. It's the same players from. From. It's the first service group. It's a service master group. It's the Dwyer Group with Dina and her brothers. Like, it's the same people for 20, 30 years. No one has coming in and decided to shake it up and do things a little differently. But your focus around developing leaders and being good mentors, that was always my approach as well. I always believe that our job is to grow people. I think it's very easy for franchises to sell the first seven units. Most franchisors never get past seven. I don't know if you knew that number, but most franchisors never get past seven units because then they start having to deliver on their promises. They start having to actually help the franchise partners. What's your approach on developing the leaders and mentoring and growing the franchisees? Because it's not just the internal staff. Right. You're talking about helping them and growing them too.

Absolutely. So number one, I would say the other book I mentioned, 21 irrefutable laws of leadership by John Maxwell. Re first law of that book is the law of the lid. And he talks about how basically your capacity to lead others is determined on your leadership lid. Like wherever your lid is, is how is your capacity to lead. And so the, you know, he talks about being a lid lifter for other people. Right. And how it is his job. He views it as a. He's a lid lifter for others. And so Stephen and I have personally, just as you know, the founders and those that started this whole thing have basically just been in this process of like how can we increase in our leadership every single day? How can we pour into ourselves and. And it is rewarding to see that investing in yourself is really how you actually end up investing into others. And so it. That's been number one. Number two is you have to do it alone. You got to bring on other great people. And so for how young we are, we could have profited more money, but we didn't. We went and we are the first franchisor that I'm aware of. We secured John Maxwell as our mentor for resi. You know, it was a door that Steven was able to open. And Sean Maxwell himself jumps on a personalized, you know, group call with all of our owners and fields questions and gives a lesson that's tailored just to reside came oak at our convention like for a two and a half year old company and especially this is a guy who gets paid a lot of money to speak at Chick Fil A and these huge bread, you know, because he saw Stephen and I and he loved our story. He. We actually go over one of the laws of that book and we're actually now doing the Laws of Communication, which is another book that he did. But every single staff meeting, we review one of the laws and we, we, it's, it's ingrained in part of our culture. And so we, we tell every staff member at Rezd Corporate that everyone's a leader, even if today they're just leading themselves.

Oh, and, and John Maxwell, if you haven't heard of him, his speaking fees in around 150, $200,000 per event. So when you guys have got him as a personal mentor, I think his Zoom speaking fees around 50,000. Now he's 5x what mine is. So you, you got business coaches early on. You've got really solid mentors early on. You're bringing those mentors and coaching into the franchising world. How many of your 200 locations that you sold are open now?

Open today? Well, we haven't sold 200. We're on our way to selling.

I'm sorry, 140.

Yeah, it's about 13140. That's exactly right. But yeah, it's launched right now. I think we're approaching like 70, 72, something like that that are open today. So we have the rest of those because we've signed so many in the last 60 days. A bunch of those are going to launch probably February, you know, late January, February, time frame, some around there.

What do you think makes a franchisee successful in their first year? What is it? What are the common three things that they all do or five things that they all do?

Yeah, that's a great question. I have thought about that one long and long and hard. And you know, in franchising, everyone tells you, well, follow the system. Follow the system. You know, if you follow the system, you'll be successful. I think the piece that is not glamorized or maybe highlighted enough is you have to be emotionally very strong and you have to have very strong character because anytime you start anything, your character will be tested. And the ones who can, like, go through the bad days and not be moved tend to, like, stay like the ability to focus. It's just a weird thing that some people either have it or they don't because you say, follow the system. Follow the system. The problem is that we're human beings and everyone has a crappy day, then they get discouraged, and then it translates to a crappy week. But then you talk to the franchisee and they still want to follow the system, but something's happened in their heart and in their head where they've gotten off track. It has nothing to do with rationale. Like it's. It's no longer rational. It's completely emotional. And that's the piece that I would say. The emotional fortitude and the focus, I think is when I look at my most successful franchisees, they had that. Day in, day out, they had that.

It's interesting, we call that at college pro painters, they called it the fundamental ability of. The ability to regulate your emotions. And it was to handle short term pain for long term gain. Right. The ability to go through the ups and downs and regulate and. Yeah, and a lot of people just don't have that. A lot of people lose their shit when it gets hard and. And I get it. It's hard. Right. Have you ever come across any of Greg Nathan's work? Greg Nathan wrote about the six stages of franchising.

I've heard of him. Yes. In franchising, but I have not. I won't. Yeah. I'm not gonna. I haven't read anything of his.

Just find. It's a. It's a. It's a two or three page article called the Six of Franchising. Well worth you and Stephen reading and sharing with your franchisees. I've taught so many franchisors, just that one simple concept. And it talks about the ability of franchisees to go through the natural evolution, you know, of buying a franchise and being super happy, but a year later being pissed off they're paying royalties. And then, you know, they. It's like, like humans. Every teenager hates their parents. As soon as we have our own kids, we realize our parents weren't as screwed up as we thought they were. Right. It's like, well, I guess they tried their best.

That's true. I think that's a good comparison. I mean, oftentimes we make jokes about how our franchisees feel like they're our kids. But I mean, to a degree it does feel that way. I think one thing that we've done well too is that, like, I do think there's a little bit of an overusage in franchising of like this concept of like the franchise family we're creating a family is like. No, we're not. No, we A partnership. Like, we view our royalty as a partnership with our franchisee and we actually want to have. You know, sometimes when it's family, you don't say what needs to be said or you.

There's some pretty dysfunctional families out there.

Yeah. And you end up giving concessions maybe that you shouldn't. Right. And stuff like that. And so we view it more as like a business partnership. And we are the most motivated and most, you know, partner you can have because we're, we're aligned with the franchisee completely.

So that's why at 1000 got junk we called them our franchise partners. Not disease is because we believed in that exact same thing. Talk about how did you fund this? I mean you and Steven weren't just like independently rich and throwing all your own cash at it. Have you growing off cash flow? Are you growing off off royalty revenues or franchise fees or invest?

Yeah, I think maybe that's possibly one of the most sh. If we ever get to a point where we grow enough where people want to hear a book or a story. I think that, I think the most fascinating piece is that we've self funded all of it and still have almost everyone that has gotten to our size has had to turn to private equity or something like that. The truth is that Ste, Steven and I have just continued to reinvest any sort of gain. We've made a very conscious decision to play a long term win here and it's been a lot of sacrifice, thank God. Like I said, our Austin location was doing multi millions and so we had good profits there and we're able to save up and have a nest egg to get started. But franchising takes a while to build and it's an expensive business model for the franchisor in the beginning. Now the long term payoff is great but those first few years are definitely very expensive. And really we've just been very good at like we have increased our corporate location presence as we've been increasing our franchise locations and it's helped offset some of the cost. I think that together with we've just been able to make some wise decisions and avoid some costly mistakes.

How many corporate locations do you have? Of the 130 locations, how many are corporate locations?

Today it's by territories and I believe we're up to like 14 territories that are corporate owned.

Awesome. I think that is massively smart. I've always been a huge fan of that. I've been fundamentally against franchisors who don't own and operate their own locations. I think gives you great test markets. I love it when franchisees get together and they're like well you could never operate in Chicago. We're like okay, let's take the south side of Chicago and the worst demographic. We'll kick ass there. And then you go in and you do it. They're like well okay, but you can't do like you couldn't do Quebec because they speak French there. So we open up. Like, I just. Great. Because you can't, you can do it, right? It isn't. It's the people and it is the systems and it is the ability to regulate. But you mentioned something about people can be a little bit naive around franchising in the early year. Where did you wake up and go, this is way harder than we thought or tougher? Like, were there any moments where you were just going, wow, this is. We didn't expect this?

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think to be fair, when you grow this fast, I feel like I have those moments regularly. But to be fair, at the same time, we've been able to build a pretty kick ass team and that, that builds a lot of my confidence is just knowing that, that we're not. Stephen and I are definitely no longer doing it ourselves and we have a great around us. But I think the things that maybe, you know, to answer your question, you were like, hey, what are the things that have kind of where you were shocked you or that you were maybe naive on? I think what I didn't maybe realize, and probably Steven either, was that most people aren't as driven as you think they would be. And there's this weird complacency bug that sets with people and you don't know where it is. People will talk a big game and then they start. You know, it's strange because you almost have to like encourage people to like push to the next level. I think Stephen and I, because we're natural entrepreneurs, we always are driven and we, you know, we always say we're race car drivers. Like, we like going fast, we like the next challenge. Like, I don't even, you know, we rarely celebrate yesterday's wins. It's really about like, how what can we do today, right? This kind of obsession with building. But when you're in that mindset, sometimes you have to realize that like what success looks like for different people might not be what you think it is. And you have to learn to be okay with that, you know, and that's kind of an interesting one.

Dinner. So I remember in the movie Boiler Room, they tried to get all the salespeople to go buy bigger houses and fancier cars and get them more in debt so they'd work harder. It's like, so you're running three businesses right now or three distinct brands. And I heard a saying years ago by the founder of Boston Markets, and George said that a, a man can only sit on one toilet at a Time when you sit on more than one toilet, it gets kind of messy. How are you sitting on these different toilets so successfully and what are you doing to, you know, allow yourself to manage these different businesses that are so different without distracting and blowing up one?

Yeah, I think that's kind of comes back to the unique skill sets and where Steven and I are very different. And so one thing that I think that I've always been good at is I have an extremely high tolerance to change. In fact, I almost enjoy it. I'm the kind of personality type that if we're in a vehicle having a conversation and we get in a damn near the horrible accident, my heart rate will barely rise and I can continue the conversation like nothing happened. And I used to think that those people were like that. And then I realized, no, you're just strange. Like that's like a weird like thing. Right. Your capacity to like, you know, just prioritize stuff in such a quick way. And I, and I love moving from one thing to the next. And so Stephen and I have done a great job where he will go sit somewhere, cast Vision, lay it out, and then I kind of sit with that portion of it until the leadership structure is there, the systems are stronger, the support is better. So we definitely work in a one, two, really well. He's definitely more of the enterpriser. I'm more of an innovator. And to see it kind of like once that concept is there, how do I innovate it and make it good and long lasting. And so we've done a really good job balancing that out even till today. So right now he kind of sits as CEO of Resi and he's sitting still as brand president of T1P, which are the areas that he needs to be still leading the ship and casting Vision and myself, I'm kind of leading up, you know, innovating, researching the new brands, developing those with Garage, up and Pinks. And then as cgo, I also kind of oversee all of our vendor partnerships and kind of the forward thinking stuff of resi.

So I talk about it in my new book, the Second Command that you, you two are the yin and yang, right? Yeah.

There you go.

Yeah, counterpart. Now I know that your cousins, you mentioned to me earlier that you're both cousins and, and you've got that. So I imagine the, the trust in that family unit is so strong that it holds you together, but I can't imagine that it's always easy. So you, can you speak to how you get through some of the tough times as CEO. CEO. How do you work through that together?

Yeah, that's fun. First off, just because we're cousins is not the reason we really got into business together. I think that honestly, genuine, and I mean this completely. I love Stephen. Like, I don't love hardly anybody else in this world other than maybe my wife and my kids. And. And that's because he's such an integrity person, and I've watched him in his life, and I just like the man he is. And so, like, being around him is. Is fun for me because I think we challenge each other in ways that I think are healthy for both of us. We have a deep mutual respect that I think is actually only grown over time, which I can't say hardly about hardly any other relationship in my life. And so I definitely feel like he's been placed there, you know, by God or whatever you want to believe. But so in that regard, I really have a deep app. Appreciation and admiration. But, yeah, things are tough. I mean, we've certainly said things to each other in hot moments that we later regretted, and, you know, we've jumped to conclusions at times that we've had to come at each other with humility later and say, hey, we were wrong, or, I was wrong, or, hey, Ben, I apologize, or. But I think the one thing that's kept it really good is that we just have such a deep loyalty to each other. And one thing we both said from the jump was that it's not about money. It's about the journey. And at the end of the day, like, I want to. I'll leave it all if it means I lose, you know, my best friend in the world. Like, I don't care.

That was exactly how it was for Brian and I at 1-800-got junk. He was my best man at my wedding three months before I started working with him. Yeah, we were going to scale it together, but we weren't going to screw up our, you know, our marriage, our relationship.

There you go.

You mentioned something about the investor model in franchising. What did you mean by that? And what does that. What is it that you're working on?

Yeah, so this is something that we recently really started to build because we saw that there was kind of a hole in home service. Franchising, home services in general is kind of. It was kind of the redheaded stepchild of franchising for a long time, because, you know, you say the word franchise to most people, they immediately think, you know, McDonald's or food brands. Right. Typically. And then you think maybe retail and maybe like, you know, Midas or like other type of stuff, you know, you don't really jump to home services then. Home services has really increased a lot in the last, I would say probably, you know, 10 years, but really a lot in the last, like five years, especially far as the interest level. And there's a lot of reasons to that. But most franchisors that got into home services and a lot of the established brands and even the ones that are being developed today, they sort of build the business for an owner operator. So the kind of the E myth, it's kind of a model built more for like a mechanic, if you.

Sure, the mechanic.

Yeah, model works well, but it works well if you're the one actually doing a lot of the labor or the work or whatever else. And there's not a lot of scalability kind of designed or in the process of the business model. And so you end up having a lot of franchisees that, you know, don't really ever get to become the GM or long term. What you want to be is an investor who's just developing out these, these, these companies, these brands. Right. And so we had become that. So remember that you asked earlier, how do we fund all this? We ran our corporate locations and we basically were able to build this entire franchise company while still running our corporate locations simultaneously. And that's because we built it so well. We were only giving the corporate locations maybe three to five hours a week of attention. Right. So we essentially become the investors of our corporations. And so having done that, having built that and knowing what it takes, we decided to build a model that was for somebody who had enough capital, like someone might be looking to invest into.

A. Wendy, know where you're going this. The lawyers and the doctors and the engineers and the professionals, they don't. They don't want to run a house painting business, but they want to own.

Exactly. You got it right. And so the thing is, there's a huge hole though, because even if they got another painting franchise, not going to name names, the model's not built for them. And if they force it to work, it doesn't work. Because the model was more of an owner operator that graduates to manager. Right. Is sort of what you see out there. And so as Steven and I saw that, we were like, huh, there's something to this. And we doubled down on it, built it all a lot this year simultaneously to building out resi. We were kind of building out these models and we must have been onto something because we are. I mean, the investor model. We have a lot of people who are buying into it currently. They were super excited about what that'll look like because we're basically. And we're doing it differently. There are some other home service franchises that do the investor model, but it doesn't seem like it's based on any form of reality. And it scares me a bit. Our model is real. It's something that we've actually ran and we ran it for a long time now and we know how to do it, how to build it and the exact things that you're looking for to make a successful.

I saw the investor model work really well years ago. Now. This is probably going back 20 years with a group out of Australia called Cobbs Bread. And they were this artisan bread, you know, bakeries, and they opened up hundreds and hundreds of locations. But there's these lawyers and doctors and engineers and professionals that owned them all. But they never went into the bakery once it was run by. I think you're onto something very big there.

To be clear. We love our owner operators too.

Of course.

I think if I was a franchisee, I would want a franchisor that had that model because that's long term. If you're an owner operator, that's where you want to get eventually. Right?

Right.

You're with a brand that never has had that or no one's even built that out. Well, then you're still going to have to spearhead that and do a lot of the hard lessons along the way. Whereas with our brands, I mean, we're spearheading and modeling that ahead of time so that people coming in know that this is a model that's tried and proven and will work.

Yeah, I like it a lot. Yeah. Most of your independent franchise partners are going to eventually, hopefully become multiple unit operators Right where they're operating and somebody else is running.

We would definitely love that.

You mentioned a little bit to me just before we were starting or right at the very beginning, that in many ways the CEO is kind of the sidekick. And you, you know, you carry a lot of the burden of the business, but you don't get a lot of the limelight of the business. Can you speak about how you manage that or does that just come naturally to you?

Definitely doesn't come naturally. I think it's also something that life's taught me over time. I told you. Yeah, I think I am kind of. I would call myself maybe the ultimate sidekick. And that's weird, right? Everyone wants to be Batman. Nobody wants to be, you know, weak old Robin over there. Right. Or whatever it is. Right. And I think it takes a level of humility to recognize that maybe you aren't the main guy, and that's okay. Like, everybody has their place. And I think I have realized over time that I actually operate better when I don't have all the limelight on me, because I'm able to take some more calculated risks. I'm able to level with people. They're more open with me than they are with, you know, the big figure, if you will. That kind of allows me to be my superpower, because I can kind of get to that second level with people that they won't get to necessarily. With Steven, for example. Right. Where it feels like there's this, like, level of disconnect. And also, I've just realized that, like, I'm genuinely not as big of a vision caster. And you absolutely have to be. I am more of an innovator. I like hearing the visions, believing in them wholeheartedly and having that loyalty that nobody has. Right. But then going in and innovating and making that vision come to fruition. And so that's the piece where I, like, I think I really am most happy. And it takes time to learn that, though, because there is ego. Right. And let's be real, like, the human condition wants recognition and wants limelight and wants, you know, to say, hey, I. I did that too. Right. Or I was part of that, you know, whatever else. But I think that that's also just a lot of lies. And you have to kind of. You and I talked about. It's kind of about where you're going to measure your wins. Like, what are you measuring as a win? Right.

You're also having to really carry a lot of the burden of, you know, the organization in the early stages as well. You're having to make a lot of the tough decisions. Can you talk us through some of how you handle that? Or does Steven kind of play good cop to your bad cop and kind of shine the limelight on you internally when you're running the company? Or how do you.

Yeah, so that's great. Yeah. I think, obviously, there's different relationship dynamics out there for Steven and I. We're extremely collaborative. I actually really appreciate that about Steven because he could be more of a, you know, dictator type CEO or whatever, if you will, and that wouldn't jive very well. Me, I do work best in a collaborative environment. And another thing that I'll have to give props to, Stephen, is as a CEO, I've seen people who marry themselves toward their ideas almost to a fault will come up with an idea and be passionately all about it one day and the next day be all on board about completely, you know, dismantling it and building up the next thing. And so that's also a unique quality that Steven has that I know that not every visionary has is to be able to not only create a vision, but also rapidly change it. That's actually a unique dynamic that I don't feel like all visionaries have. And so that's a really big thing that I appreciate. But yeah, as far as our interpersonal relationship, I think it's very collaborative. And yeah, everything that we build out like we typically want to always be in mutual agreement on and we usually won't move forward on something if we don't both agree.

I love that. So I'll read a quick quote and I'll ask you one final question. This is part of a quote that was on my first book, Double Double. And Simon Sinek, from the author of Start with why on my cover, said Walt Disney had Roy Disney, Herb Kelleher had Roland King. And he goes on to speak a little bit about me. I think in this way we've got Stephen, has got Alan. You guys are definitely a solid pair, a solid partner. I'd like you to go back and give yourself some advice. If you were to give the 21 year old Alan Ollercon some advice, what advice would you give the younger you?

A little more patience with people. And I wish that I could understand that I don't have to be the person out front to be part of a winning team. And that took me a long time to understand. You know, I was kind of climbed the corporate ladder and tried to do a lot of my own things and even ran some businesses before coming here with Steven. And I think it a long time to realize that like I can be, have just as big of an impact, you know, being like behind the scenes or being kind of that. Right. Or the sidekick, if you will, as leading something of my own. I always knew I wanted to be a business owner. I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I guess I just didn't realize that I didn't have to do that by myself for a long time and that I could do that and be a great partner. And that's what I've become and I'm actually happier, I'm more fulfilled and I'm enjoying the heck out of the journey.

You are speaking to everybody who listens to the Second Command podcast.

So that's good to know that there's more of us out there.

Lots of us. Lots of us. Alan Alercon, the coo, or Chief Growth Officer and co Founder of Resi Brands. Thanks so much for sharing with us on the Second Command podcast.

I really appreciate your time.

I'm already happy. My grandfather had said to my dad when I was two years old, with a name like Cameron Gardner, harold, he's going to be something someday. And I heard that saying so many times that it became very stressful for me. I didn't like it. And then, I don't know when it was about 10 years ago, I realized I was already there. I didn't have to keep chasing anything to be successful.