The World of Strategic Selling w/ Roger Martin

But I was also making a lot of other people a lot more money than I was making myself. And up to a certain point that's okay because you're learning on their dime. Substitute. But what gets frustrating is when you know you can actually do it on your own. Maybe even do it better, do it faster.

Welcome everybody. This is Jeff Duden and we are on the Homefront. As always, this podcast is brought to you by Homefront Brands. Simply building the world's most responsible franchise platform. Encouraging entrepreneurs to take action and transform their lives, impact communities and enhance the lives of those they care most about. All the while delivering enterprise level solutions to the local business owners out there on the home front. So if this sounds like you, check us out@homefrontbrands.com today and start your next chapter of greatness, building your dynasty on the homefront. I will be right here looking for you. And today we are excited to have Roger Martin, CEO of Thrive More Brands, a couple of great franchise brands there on the podcast. Welcome Roger.

Thank you, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Ah yeah, it's going to be great. I'm so excited about today. We're going to have a good time. Roger is the co founder and managing member of the industry leading health and wellness franchises Rockbox Fitness and Beam Light Sauna. Prior to Rockbox Fitness and Beam Sauna, Roger Martin was the chief operating officer of an industry leading pharmaceutical development and manufacturing organization. His his prior experience includes serving in the role of president of a large topical semi solid, whatever that means and liquid cdmo. As a national sales director and senior Vice president. Roger has extensive expertise in pharmaceutical sales management leadership, salesforce deployment, business development, strategic selling, contract negotiations, business to business, service contracting, licensing and contracted service marketing. And I will say that Roger is an excellent brand guy and an excellent marketer because I've experienced that firsthand. Roger holds a Bachelor's degree in business from the number one party school in the country, Arizona State University, is ranked by Sports Illustrated so many times and earned his Master's of Business Administration from Kennesaw State University. Welcome Roger Martin.

Thank you. Wow, that's. That's a mouthful. That's an absolute mouthful. I'm going to retire now. I think I've done it.

Well, you've done a lot and you've been a lot of places. So just for all the listeners out there, Roger and I met each other first in 2018 I believe and got to know each other through some early stage franchising, got introduced by a mutual friend. Roger and I have lived in the same town and our kids kind of grew up in the same circles with some of the same people. So I've had the, the, the, the absolute pleasure to work with Roger on, on a few projects and, and some of these businesses over the last few years and just super excited for him to expand on. Really one of the best marketing minds that I've ever been around. Really a top shelf executive when it comes to building accountable teams and getting really down to the outcomes that matter and getting talented people to focus on them. So we're all going to learn a lot today. Roger, would you care to start a little bit as we do on the home front is how to start as early as you're comfortable going back with your journey. We like to try to inform people and, and that may be at an inflection point in their life or thinking about entrepreneurship with other people who have made that transition and, and how it happened for them.

Yeah, I'd be glad to. And by the way, thanks for the intro. I, I'm going to call you every morning at 6am to just get my day started. That was fantastic. Wow. Yeah. So I, I grew up in, in the Northwest in Spokane, Washington. And you know, I think everybody who's ever interviewed said I grew up middle class, you know, or I think I was like middle class, you know, I literally was. And my dad had his own little car care chemical company. So like think of, you know, brake fluids and, and tire mounting lubricants and all that stuff. And he bought it from a manufacturer and then would re repackage it and rebrand it as his own. But it's funny because I look back and I never thought about my dad being an entrepreneur. Had no idea. I just thought, well, my dad's in business for himself. That's, that's what he does. That's what dad's always done. And I had always had, you know, dreams of, of actually becoming a professional musician and being a rock star and all that. So I never really thought about going into business for myself until I went to, to college and went to school at Arizona State, as he said, decided, okay, I need to get serious about life. I was playing in bands and doing that and thinking about moving to California, but in Hollywood, but said, you know, I don't want to be a starving musician. I love the musician part. I'm not a big fan of the starving part. So I got really serious about business in college, but always had my sights set on corporate America and climbing the ladder in corporate America. Never thought really about Entrepreneurship or doing my own thing, which now I've been doing that for the last seven years. I would never look back. And we can get into that. Yeah, I ended up graduating Arizona State and going to work for Eli Lilly, which is a pharmaceutical company. And was, was the guy that was dressed in the nice suit that would come in and, and walk past the receptionist and you know, kind of anger all of the, the people waiting patiently to see the doctor because I'd walk right past, you know, with a few little ethical bribes of a pin or pads or whatever for the, for the front desk to get back and, and meet with the doctors and, and promote the products and sell them on the fact they should write our products versus the competitors. And ended up building my career in that industry in the branded side of the pharmaceutical industry for 15, 16 years. Worked for three different companies. And I think you'd mentioned that at the apex of my career in the branded side of the business, had a span of control of over 500 people. And literally, you know, we were just building armies of sales reps to try to influence the physicians to write the product. So that's kind of a short story from growing up in Spokane, Washington, you know, to what I did for about 15 years before moving on to like working for private equity and some other things. Things.

So what kind of products, Roger, did you rep? Were they statins or you know, what was it, what was the product offerings that you.

Yeah, you know, it's, I, it's, it's part of our, our nomenclature now. But believe it or not, my, my first products, one of my first products was Prozac. And so I was in early, in the early 90s, depression, mental health wasn't talked about like it just like our job was to educate the physicians on how to recognize depression because now it's common, you know, common knowledge and they put it in the water. But back then it was a touchy subject. And so we not only had to sell the product, we had to first sell the doctor that, yeah, you're actually seeing this in your patients, you're just not recognizing it in your patients. And you know, maybe they have back pain, but maybe they're, that pain is masking something, you know, physically masking something that is mentally occurring. So it was a, it was a great product but, but, but, but a great disease state I think, to, to sell in because it really taught me how to do solution based selling. You talk about marketing and sale. It really taught me how to help somebody identify a need that they didn't even know they had. And so I'm very grateful for that.

You were doing exceptionally well in this career. Yes. You had an early exposure to entrepreneurship, even though it didn't manifest in your brain that way with your father. And, and then was there a point in your career where you just said, you know, enough is enough of this corporate life and I want to do something and have a little bit more control and some freedom and maybe serve my creation desire to build and to create, build a team. Was there a moment that you realized that you were going to take this leap?

Yeah, yeah, there was a specific moment. In fact, throughout my whole career. It's a 25 year run in pharma, be it branded or be it working for private equity that, that owned manufacturer cdmo, which is really a fancy word for an acronym for contract development and manufacturing organization. So we made the products for other companies that either didn't have the capability or they were out of capacity. And so I really honed my leadership skills and those chops in running these large, large sales organizations. I developed my business, you know, my strategic and business development chops, you know, selling to other companies at, you know, we're talking like 12, $15 million contracts I would sign. And then of course, the sales and marketing side of it, especially the marketing side of it is, which is really human psychology and we can dive into that in a little bit. I had built all these skill sets, but I was, I found that I was, I was making a great living and live very comfortably, but I was also making a lot of other people a lot more money than I was making myself. I, you know, and up to a certain point that's okay because you're learning on their dime, so to speak. But what gets frustrating is when you know you can actually do it on your own, maybe even do it better, do it faster, do it without some of the red tape that you find in other companies. And so I was in Barcelona, Spain. I was in Barcelona, Spain, on a full expense account, you know, making a ton of money should have felt great at this conference. And I looked over this sea of nameless faces and had disdain for these people. Had actual disdain for these people. I realized it's not them, it's me. It's me. The issue here is not them, it's me. I'm unhappy with my own situation and I'm blaming them and I'm putting it on them. So for 2 milliseconds I dislike them and then immediately realized, no, I need to make a change in my life. I've kind of climbed to the top of the mountain, climbed to the top of the ladder if you will. But that ladder was leaned up against someone else's building, not my own building. I knew it was time for a change. And within four months of being in Barcelona and having that epiphany, I had met another gentleman who became a business partner in opening up and co founding Rockbox Fitness. So for me it wasn't this long drawn out process. It was of course a lot of time with my own thoughts, like every person has and wondering if I should, you know, should I, should I not? There's a lot of risk I'd be leaving, you know, a great multi six figure salary and, and, and health benefits and stock options and all that stuff. But then, you know, what do I get on the other side? To me it was, it was kind of this epiphany of man, I got to get busy living or get busy dying. Like I have got to go. And so within about four months I had formed this partnership, founded a company, gave notice to my previous employer, worked out a severance package and kind of a workout plan so I could get a successor ready and make sure that they were successful. I wanted to finish impeccably. You know, big part of my, my journey is always trying to finish impeccably and, and did that and then it was off to the races. Yeah.

I have had the pleasure of observing you and watching you during this journey. I can say your curiosity, you voraciously reading everything that could possibly help you. I mean you have really embraced this search for knowledge and search for things that are going to help you grow this business. It's really been a joy to watch you go through this. Now every business has humble beginnings. I did, you know, when I started my restoration business, I know I was on at least a thousand water damages in the middle of the night doing whatever I needed to do to do that. I know that Stacy's Madison with Stacy's pita chips, I mean she started in a pita cart and she had stale pitas and she took them and baked them and put some, you know, tried to just not lose a few bucks and, and that turned into $250 million business. So when you started rockbox with Steve, what, what's the kind of like you were at the ground floor from a franchise perspective. You had to rebrand the business. Tell us a little bit about that time and, and what you learned.

Yeah, you have to do whatever it takes and everybody says that, but it's strategy doesn't bring you to your knees. Whiteboarding sessions don't break your spirit. Actually doing the work and having life hit you in the face time after time after time, that's when we start to question ourselves as entrepreneurs. And, and I can tell you the first time I said, what in the hell have I done? It was 6am in the morning. I was building the, the first flagship store in, in Huntersville, this rock box in Huntersville. And of course we have to hang boxing bags. It's a boxing for fitness concept for, for the listeners that aren't familiar with Rockbox, it's a boxing for fitness concept. So you've got these two rows of boxing bags to suspend that. We now have a rig and it's all professionally done. But back then, you know, however, we had to hang those bags. We, we hung those bags and what we do is we buy raw steel beams and then heft those up into the ceiling joint. The, you know, the kind of the joints across the ceiling of the, this big 3,700 square foot studio and then put chain around it and then dra. You know, drop that chain. You know, we rented scaffolding and bought these, these steel beams that weighed God knows how much. And there were three of us, three guys putting these beams up. So I was on the bottom, on the floor. Guy named Tommy, who's still with the company today, was in the middle on the scaffold and then the middle scal. And then on the top scaffolding was Steve. And we are literally shoving these steel beams up into the ceiling to, to get them up there. And this thing's heavy and I'm at the bottom and at any time I, you know, once I let go of it, like I've got no control and I'm looking at the, you know, the, the ass into this thing looking at me and I'm like, if either one of those guys lets go, I'm dead. I'm dead. And then immediately after that, Steve starts cutting chain with a grinder. You know, no safety equipment, no goggles, nothing. He just goes away and starts cutting the chain. And there's sparks going everywhere. In 6am there's spark everywhere and there's stuff flying around. And I literally think to myself, what, what in the hell have I done, man? I used to get off a plane and there'd be somebody there waiting for me with a, with a sign to get my luggage, take me to the air, to the hotel and check me in. What in the hell am I doing here? And, and, and it's those Times when you realize, like, the only way out is through. Like, there's no, there's no wait, timeout, you know, wait, let me just step back and assess. No, you gotta go. You just have to keep going. But I think it's, the takeaway for me is I don't care if you were the CEO or the king of a country, if you start your own business, put the gloves on, roll up your sleeves, because it's time to get to work, no matter what form or shape that work takes. And too many people are like, well, you know, I was an executive and I'm an executive and that's kind of beneath me. No such thing when you're an entrepreneur. No such thing.

Yeah. I mean, you might see it in a franchisee, you know, there's a certain thing that needs to get done. Well, well, I've been a consultant for billion dollar companies before and. Well, that's great, but that's not, that's not helping you get customers right now. That's, you know, nobody. It's, it's a really, it's a gut check for, for a lot of people, entrepreneurship and a great fulfilling thing, you know, that it just your, your accomplishments, the way that they make you feel about what you've done, knowing you went through, those are badges of honor. Now, you don't want to, you know, you don't want to make decisions that are going to put you on a ladder under a grinder every single day.

No, no.

But sometimes things just need to get done. And that could be at 6 in the morning, it could be at 4 in the morning, it could be At 11 o' clock at night. Things just need to get done when they need to get done. And the faster that you can, if you can get latency out of the time between a decision and an action. That's one thing I've learned and relearned here lately in my mid-50s. Okay. Don't go to a meeting and then come out of it with a list of things to do that. Okay, I'll have that for you by next Tuesday's meeting. When you could have taken five minutes at the end of the meeting, made a call, sent a text, sent an email, did something to get things going. Because the number of things that you get done quicker that are on target is, you know, it's really about if you get 100 tests done or 200 tests done over the course of a week. You know, we learned that in the fitness business.

Yep.

Right. If, I mean, if, if you can look at the Franchise owners across it and see how many tasks they got done a day. And it's, it absolutely is related directly to, you know, the performance of the studio. So, yeah, it's related to results. So, yeah, I mean, it's doing the right things and making sure, as you said, the ladder's up against the right building. But it's also, you know, I mean, it used to be like, well, I'm going to work. I'm going to work smart but not hard. No, it's. I'm going to work smart and hard.

Yep.

I mean, when you see Mark Cuban say, you know, how why are you so successful? He goes, well, because nobody's going to outwork me. I mean, that's a guy. When, like, at what point was he making more than, you know, $75,000 a year and had his, had his bills paid? You know, he's, he's still getting after it and all of that. So, you know, before we leave this time of transition for you, I'd be interested to know, from your corporate life to your entrepreneurial success, what things transl. You brought with you, what types of things did you need to leave behind?

That's a great question, Jeff. Certainly the inspirational leadership, the sales marketing acumen, financial acuity, like, those are skills I'm forever grateful to corporate America for. So people talk a lot of crap about corporate America, including me. But it's, I'm very grateful for what they did for me. You know, like, I, I have to be honest, you know, as much stuff as I talk, they, I, they invested a lot in me. I went, you know, I, I was very fortunate to have a lot of money and resources poured into me as a young leader and. But I'm also proud that I gave back, you know, gave a 10, 20, 50x return on their investment on that. So I brought that with me. What I left specifically, I left behind the secrecy that is so prevalent in corporate America and the hierarchical culture. Now, every company needs a hierarchy. It'd be chaos without a hierarchy. Somebody has to be in charge, and everybody needs to know who they report to, who their performance, who's going to do the performance appraisal, you know, what their responsibilities are. That's important. You need a hierarchy, but a hierarchical culture is not what you need. And that is, that is how all corporate America is built. So what I found in is the farther I went up the ladder in corporate America, the bigger my office got and the further away from my team I got, and certainly the further away from my customers I got. And it Was this rite of passage that, you know, damn it, I had to go through the gauntlet. And so social, you, young Roger Martin, you'll have to do the same thing, but you'll be rewarded with, you know, a bigger office and we'll move you farther away and give you more isolation and you know, and a big oak door that nobody can see through. And I hate it. And by the way, and nobody will be able to get to you if they don't first go through your direct reports. I hated that. And so corporate America taught me what to do really, really well. And it also taught me exactly what not to do. So when we built our new offices for Thrive More, which, you know, Thrive More Brands is the, the umbrella company over Rockbox Fitness and then Beamlight Sauna. Beamlight Sauna is an infrared sauna studio concept that's just taken off like a rocket. So those two brands, and then another Nutrition brand we have called Leverage Nutrition that sits under that same same umbrella. We relocated our offices to this, another place in Huntersville, North Carolina. And we had a very generous upfit allowance from the, from the REIT that owns this company or owns this building. And so we were able to demo the entire inside of it and rebuild all of our offices here. And I had two, two non negotiables. One, every wall and office was going to be floor to ceiling glass, including the doors, so that it was fully transparent. You could not hide. There was nowhere to hide. And also every office was exactly the same size, including mine. And the offices are all exactly the same size with the exception of there's some are a little deeper just because the windows bow out. But every office is designed to be the same width and every office is floor to ceiling glass and the doors are too. So there is literally no place to hide here. And I purposely located my office right in the middle of the office in the hallway with all the other executives and the whole team so that I wasn't in the corner because I think that sends a message of we have a hierarchy, but we don't have a hierarchical, that's a word culture. And that anybody can walk into anybody's office anytime, anybody can see into anybody's office at any time. So, you know, the work will get done because there's nowhere to hide, so to speak. And so. Great question. I think I, I was very intentional on bringing a lot of the, the skills and the traits and all of the knowledge and experience that I was afforded to learn in corporate America, but absolutely stiff armed and shunned. The stuff that makes corporate America get the bad name that it rightly deserves in those two areas.

I want to move us into an area of your expertise because I know how much you have to share. And I'll do it with a really broad question. What makes good branding and marketing?

What makes good branding and marketing is that you've got a presence about your brand, your product that is uniquely positioned and differentiated in the consumer's eyes. What makes great branding and marketing is a product or service that is so differentiated that it is looked upon as a new way to get that product or service, not a better way. And so many of us are trying to in business to say, yeah, we're better than xyz, we're better than abc, and here's why. People are used to better and they expect better. The evolution of business, I expect better, but what they appreciate and what they'll pay a premium for is new. The reason I, you know, go into a consumer's mind, the reason I haven't been successful at losing weight or the reason I haven't, I don't know, been able to run because of, you know, because these shoes are decent. But when I say yes, but the. This is a new technology. This is a new way to lose weight. This is a new way to improve your skin. This is a new way. That's why I haven't been successful in the past, because I didn't have this. I didn't, you know, it's never been this. And so you have to position your brand, your service as a new vehicle to bridge that gap versus a better vehicle. People won't pay a premium for better, they'll pay a premium for new.

That is a subtle but significant differentiation and what a great answer that was. Getting down to the tactics now of marketing and lead generation. There's so much in marketing that people get into that I think takes them off the target of the actual outcome. If you look at a franchise platform, and I did this in a meeting on Friday, I had a company wide meeting for three hours and I really wrote down the seven outcomes that matter. Five of them were what the franchisee is going to feel and what they're going to see. And the other two were, you know, making sure that we were, you know, profitable and that we had a great net promoter score. So it's like here's, you know, five of the seven are, you know, you know, having to do with what the franchisee is getting out of the deal and them, you know, being thankful and happy to be affiliated with the brand and getting good value and those types of things. So how do you keep your marketing teams focused on those few outcomes that really matter? Because anytime you get a new vendor, there's going to be ideas and there's lots of things that you can do and you can burn a lot of calories and a lot of payroll doing things that aren't directly attributed to the outcomes that matter. Have you, you know, what do you think about that?

Yeah, great question. So I'm gonna quote Gary Vaynerchuk and I am gonna swear, so if you have kids listening, go ahead and just put the earmuffs on. But you know, my, my favorite saying from him, his ideas are execution is everything because everyone's got an idea, you know, me included. It's the execution of those ideas. And in marketing especially, it's failing fast and failing quickly so that you can learn and get better and iterate over and over and over again. Let me just back up one track here. So many people and so many, you know, marketing executives confuse marketing with branding. Branding is what Coca Cola is afforded because they've been around for a hundred years and they just need to remind us that they're there. They need to remind us why we already love their product. Small companies, and I mean any company less than maybe a hundred million dollars in revenue, maybe maybe a half a billion in revenue, really can't afford to brand. They need to market and market means. I am going to identify a pain point that you have or I'm going to accentuate a pain point that I know you have. And then I'm going to show you that we have a solution to that pain point. And then I'm going to, this is the most important thing. I'm going to ask you to take an action. I'm going to ask you to fill out a lead form, buy a product, schedule a call, whatever it may be. But there's going to be a pain point, a solution, and here's how you get access to that solution. At least the first step in that, that's direct response marketing. That's really marketing in its essence. And so many people confuse that and so many, especially small business owners. I don't want to advertise, I don't want to spend money on that because, you know, I can't measure it. You're right. You can't measure branding. It's almost impossible to know the effectiveness of your branding unless you're looking at a 10 year horizon. But direct response marketing, you'll know within 10 minutes once you launch those Ads, whether they're working or not. And, and digital marketing has made a market, it's made marketing a marketer's dream because you get instant access. So like infomercials of years past, they were way ahead of the game. Yeah, they were cheesy, but they were way ahead of the game because they would A, B, C, D test so many different promo clips and they just have a different1,800 number at the end. So they would know which ad was working depending on which 1-800number was called. Well, we've, you know, taken that to the, to the, to the 10th iteration through digital marketing where we can know which created which piece of creative content, which, you know, headline, which copy works and which combination. And so the real key to leading a great marketing team is to push them to test things again and again and again and measure it with a real outcome. Meaning, what is my cost per lead? What is my roas, which is a acronym for return on ad spend? So if I invest $1,000 in ad spend, do I get $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 of revenue out of that? You can even have a ROAS of 0.5 if you know you'll make it up on the long term lifetime value of the customer. That's not how we operate, but that's, that's still a viable strategy. But all of these can be measured granularly. So marketing is not fluff. Branding can feel like fluff. And any company that's, you know, less than half a billion probably shouldn't be spending money on branding. But marketing itself is, it's an art, but it's much more a science now. Much, much more a science. And you, you measure it and you lead people the same way you would operations. How, what's our throughput and operations? What's our, our defect rate in operations? You know, what is our cost of good? You know, our cost of creating the good? You can do the same thing with marketing now. But I think people have this outdated mindset of branding being the same and it's, it's, it's apples and oranges. Did that answer, did that answer your question?

I'm sorry, it was a brilliant, it was, it was brilliant. I would like to follow up on that and say, okay, you're, you're running these ads. Direct response. One of the things that I've seen you do, and you mentioned infomercials and it brought it back to my mind. So I go to an infomercial. I want, I, I now want the shamwow Because I, you know, I've just spilled something and I'm, I'm out of paper towels. And these will be here tomorrow because they're, they're on prime, so they might even be here tonight. So I want, I want the shamwow. But on that shamwow infomercial, you're gonna, you're gonna see just, just justific. Like you can't not want these things, right? It's, it's like, it's new. Like you said, it's a new technology. It's so much better than anything else. You can wash your car, you can wash your dog, you can, you know, clean up everything. They're going to last forever. You hang them out to dry. And oh, by the way, here's an irresistible offer. The irresistible, irresistible offer is we're going to send these to you. You can make four payments of $2 or if you don't like them, return them back, just pay one small shipping and handling charge which probably is three times what it cost them to make anyway, and she'll come back to us and we'll give you a full refund. So how can you possibly lose? And you just call this number right now. But oh, by the way, if you don't call today, then that offer is no good. So I've seen you construct irresistible offers that are really good for the consumer and it's, you're putting themselves saying, okay, how can I de. Risk this transaction for the consumer? What's the irresistible offer that I can put together? And how did you come to that, that thinking about offers? Because really in my career we knew what we did, we knew what the competition was, but we, we weren't as sophisticated in offers as I think we could have or should have been. We didn't think about it in as deeply as you do in these really consumer retail type businesses. What can you share with the audience about irresistible offers and how they might be able to think about that?

Yeah, so again, I'm grateful because I was afforded the opportunity to get a deep look into the infomercial world between 2007 and 2016 when I worked for this topical semi solid manufacturer. Because we supplied many of these companies that had proactive actually, you know, you know, as a, an acne medication. So Rodan and Fields, we supplied them. And so I got a bird's eye look into how they would create their offers and I could see what they would charge and what we were charging. And so I knew what their cost of goods was and just how they, they set these offers. Up, which was great because I was able to bring that to Rockbox and Beam. It's really built on two principles. And if, if as a consumer, we're all consumers of, of many things, it's fun to watch how you're being marketed to. If you kind of can see behind the curtain. Two things drive our behavior, scarcity and urgency. And it goes back to the caveman days. I, I just recently gave a talk at a conference out in Las Vegas on this. And it was funny. When I got off stage, so many people came up to me and said, gosh, this has been happening to me my whole life. And I didn't realize it was happening to me. You know, I was being marketed to this way. But I can see it so clearly now, scarcity and urgency. When, if you go back to cavemen days and we were all, you know, in a clan, in a cave, there was true scarcity. If, if, you know, not to be sexist here, but, you know, back then, the men would go do the hunting and the women would go do the gathering. And if the women didn't gather berries and roots and come back with something, or the men didn't kill either a small animal or if they had, you know, more risk tolerance, a big animal and bring it back, you would starve to death. And so the, the, our ancestors who understood scarcity, like, we have got to take action now because there's only a limited amount of food available. If we don't, we're going to die. And the people who, the ancestors who understood that, they propagated and there are ancestors and we're here because of that, right? They truly understood scarcity. So it's completely hardwired in our DNA. It's not something you choose to believe in or not. It is in our DNA and forever will be. Case in point. Why did toilet paper go on a, on a run? And, and you know, there was this whole, you know, run on toilet paper during COVID because it started to happen. And then that scarcity mindset came in and that hardwiring came in and man, we cleared the shelves out because God forbid we were the odd man out without that, because, you know, and there's many other things we could have used for toilet paper but didn't matter. It, we needed the toilet paper because there was a scarcity, potential for scarcity of toilet paper. So it's, it's still alive and well today. And then urgency is, you've got to take action now because it's a perishable offer. It's a perishable item, be it a concert ticket, because once that concert happens, it's over and forever gone. Be it a sale on something. I'm actually in the middle of writing a book right now and I use as an example, because I'm trying not to use franchising for every example. So I use an example for, for urgency. Car sales. There's always a car sales event for Toyota, Ford, whatever on Memorial Day. I mean, just take it to the bank. There's going to be a Memorial Day sale for special deal on that pickup truck that you had your eye on. But if you don't take action by Monday, that's, that price is gone and it's back to regular prices. So you feel compelled to take action, go to the lot and take advantage of that special deal, even though, you know, July 4th, there's going to be an Independence Day sale, only to be followed by a Labor Day sale. Right? We know those are coming and we know that we have that opportunity. But because we have this urgency from the caveman days, I have to go out and hunt now. I have to hunt because there's scarcity. I'm starving to death, but I have to go now because if I don't go now, then my window to find food before I truly starve to death is over and I die, right? And it's, it goes back to that hardwiring. So that same type of reptilian brain makes us go to the car lot on Memorial Day when we damn well know Independence Day is right around the corner with the same deal. So marketers use that, I use that to our advantage to get people to take action. Now the great thing about our businesses with Rockbox Fitness and Beamlight Sauna is we're, we're selling things that help people live a better, healthier life, a happier life, a life with, you know, lower end anxiety, better health, you know, more confidence. We're not selling cigarettes to kids, so I don't feel any, you know, any reservations about using the principles of scarcity and urgency to my best ability and to my team's best ability to drive behavior because we're doing the right thing. But people, consumers should be aware that that is what drives their behavior. And that's okay. Amazon prime, they literally made up a holiday to get you to take action because of urgency, right? It's Amazon Prime's two days. You know, there's damn good deals, but it's only two days. It's a completely made up holiday. But we still fall into that trap and buy More than we probably should because of urgency.

Roger, you've mentioned beam light Sauna several times. I am a huge fan of infrared sauna. I started going four times a week about seven months ago. And I also paid attention to my diet and worked out as you should. But I'm down £25. And I do think that the sauna has had a definite impact in the way that my body metabolizes food, the way that my body, my body's working in general. I feel good about it. I feel great getting out of it. It's a pleasurable experience. It's a reward to go into the sauna after a workout. And Beam light Sauna is a franchise offering and it is just sweeping the country right now in every major market. Tell us a little bit about, number one, what's new with beam sauna, because what is new with infrared? I would love for you to just talk a little bit about the science of it. Anything that you care to share. Because every time that I hear you talk about it, I'm just blown away by, you know, really like what a great modality this is for people and their health.

100% agreed. So again, through fortuitous events, ended up meeting a woman named Cynthia Wagner who had a pilot. I called a pilot. It was her studio. I called a pilot because it was our first studio. But they had a, had a studio here in the local area that was a private infrared sauna studio. Meaning you went in, you have your own private room with its own infrared sauna cabin in there. So you can enjoy a 40 minute session in that session for 40 minutes. Because the saunas that we feature are full spectrum, meaning they're near mid and far infrared rays. Those are all the safe, healthy wavelengths that the sun puts off. But none of the bad, no UVA or uvb. You're not going to get tan when you go in there. So it's only the healthy, safe light. And we need light, of course, that are, that are emitted from the, from, from the sauna. And so each wavelength kind of operates on a different spectrum. And that what that means is like the near infrared when you go in there. And by the way, it's, it's a lot lower temperature. So it's not like a. Right. Most of us on this podcast have been in a regular sauna, which, you know, they're hotter than hell. It's 190 degrees. You can't wait to get out. You know, if you survive 10 minutes, it's like you won't. And, and it's not enjoyable, but, you know, you get benefits from it, but it's not enjoyable. An infrared sauna is, is around 135 degrees. We offer people, you know, free use of an iPad to go in there to watch their favorite show or listen to their favorite music. And it's just a much more enjoyable experience. And we. And Beam Lights on is kind of, it is an elevated brand. It's a premium experience. We provide all the towel service and cool mint towel afterwards and very elevated, you know, beautiful studio. So it's kind of a treat when you go in there, but you're getting a ton of health benefits from it. So, yes, it's some self care and it feels a little indulgent, but you're doing great things for yourself. The near infrared is going to penetrate just your dermis or epidermis, and so it's going to cause healthy cell turnover in your skin. The reason a baby looks so, you know, beautiful and has the most beautiful skin is because their, their cells are turning over at, you know, infinitesimally faster than a guy my age or a guy your age. And that's why we start to age and have wrinkles and don't look like we did when we were really young. So the near infrared is going to cause healthy cell turnover and boost collagen, which, you know, collagen is kind of the word of the, of the year. But it's important because that's going to make our skin look more robust and glow and feel great. And of course, you know, most women have a very expensive skincare routine, so this can help boost the results of that or even, you know, they can use less of those products. The mid and far infrared are going to go deeper into your body and they actually warm you up from your core, from the inside out. So instead of a regular sauna that is just super hot air that makes you hot and then you start to sweat, infrared actually penetrates into your body, warms your core, and then push, literally pushes the toxins out in your sweat. So the heavy metals, the impurities, all the junk that's in our food supply and our water supply, it pushes that out at a rate seven times more detoxifying than a regular sauna. And that's going to help with pain relief. It's going to help with weight loss. You know, sitting in there watching Netflix on an iPad, you're going to burn up to 600 calories, which is a whole lot more fun than running on a treadmill for 40 minutes, right? So you'll burn calories you're going to relieve pain, you're going to boost your immunity because it's going to raise your core temperature 3 degrees. So that fires off your immunity system in a great way and it just reduces stress. When you're in there for 40 minutes without the world beating you up, you really find time to breathe and relax and kind of recalibrate. So we found that the members of Beam, the individual studios, it's changing their life. Just like we found Rockbox Fitness to, to, you know, people come up and hug us and cry and say, I've lost 30 pounds, I feel amazing. We're starting to see that same response from the members at Beam. And it's a technology that's been around since, you know, the 60s and 70s. That's when, when a baby is born prematurely, they have to go into the nicu, the neonatal intensive care unit, just to make sure they're safe and that, and that they can recover and, and start to flourish and grow. They are warmed in those little beds by infrared light. Light. That's how, that, that's how safe infrared is. They warm, you know, neonatal premature babies. So it's been around for, you know, decades and decades. It's just now coming into the consumer use and you have The Kardashians and LeBron James and Steph Curry posting about it. So it's not a fad. It's an absolute movement that will be a, a permanent movement as a, an additional way to augment your health.

My body has become accustomed and trained so that when I get into the sauna, within three minutes, I am letting loose on. I'm creating a small reservoir on the floor of the sauna and of course, it's all properly cleaned and, you know, sprayed down. Proper dwell time, proper, everything's gone down. But, and then really after, you know, after 20 minutes or 30 minutes or so, I feel like I'm kind of, I'm tapped out a little bit.

Yeah.

So it doesn't have to take 45 minutes to do. I, I, sometimes I'll stay in there the full 40 or 45, just, just because it, it's, I want to finish and I have high goal orientation and I'm like, I'm going to get 38 minutes in the, you know, under, under the lights or whatever. But truth be known, I mean, I've, I've accomplished what I needed to accomplish in that probably first 20 or 25 minutes. I know that it's made a positive impact in mentally and physically, and it's really been an important part of my health regimen. So, yeah, congratulations to you on really having the vision. And you talk about an elevated experience. So you walk into a beam and I know that we've been in all different flavors of these types of studios because there's a couple other ones out there. Beam, head and shoulders, it's not even close. The customer experience is so much higher than anything else that I've been in. In terms of these studio, in terms of these types of studios, what kinds of things have you done when you walk into a beam that people might notice?

Yeah, and I have to give 100% credit to Cynthia the, the, the original founder of Beam. It was called something different back then, but I have to give her 100% credit because of her esthetic eye and just the way she, she comes from kind of a high end salon. Again, elevated experience type retail environment. And when you walk in, you know, think clean white Apple store. You know, it's we, we shunned the dark waterfall, you know, spa, where it's just kind of that weird vibe. This is very modern, very accommodating. And when you come in, you know, it, it is absolutely, I don't want to say sterile because that sounds cold, but it's clean and simple to the point of being almost austere. So that, that when you come in, you know, everything has been perfectly sanitized, perfectly clean. Because we want to set the customer, the member's mind at ease to know that we've got it like we've got. You just show up, we'll take care of the rest. And you know, I know I get really passionate. I talk about being, when it's about Rockbox, but I, you know, if we just juxtapose that against the beginning of this conversation. Remember I've been, I spent 25, built 25 years in a career where I was, you know, in one way or another selling pills that treated people but never cured them. You never wanted to cure them because then they wouldn't buy the medicine anymore. And you know, as I pivoted in life in my mid-40s into entrepreneurship, there's two lessons. One, you're never too old. You are never too old. And you talk about me, you know, continual learning. I'm learning at a faster rate at 53 years of age than I definitely did in my 20s or 30s or 40s. Like it. Don't ever let anybody, you know, whoever's listening, don't let anybody talk you out of making a massive pivot in your life at any age. Because you will find that wealth is built in the latter parts of your life. Learning accelerates in the latter parts of your life. And honestly, the joy in your life will accelerate as you embrace this. Because you have wisdom, right? You have wisdom, and it allows you to enjoy it. But, you know, I built my career selling pills that treated people who never cured them. And so now I've pivoted into preventative care, health and fitness. You know, boxing for fitness with Rockbox, preventative care with self care with sauna, infrared sauna. And, you know, a man who is healthy has a thousand wishes. I want this, I want that, I want to achieve this, I want to do that. The man without his health has one wish. One wish. And if so many more people can start to get on the bandwagon of, I need to take care of myself now, not when I get sick. You know, invest in your health now, invest a little bit in your health now, or spend a whole lot on it, you know, later when you're sick. Yeah.

So well said. Let's double click on one thing on the marketing and branding and really, your leadership and Cynthia's leadership in that way was interesting. It had come up and said, what is the word in this marketplace that we want to own? Is it sweaty or is it perspiration or what? You know, whatever. You know, all of that. And it was clear that the word was light. If you think about it, man, everything inside of the beam lights on a has to do with light. When you wake up in the morning and you go outside and the sun's coming up, you're basking in the light. When you want to feel, you know, if you're a dog, you want to feel good, you go. You go lay in the light. And so that, that warmth and that light, I think that was a brilliant piece of brand positioning and has proven to be a. A really good differentiator. Something that's, that's new and exciting, and I just wanted to compliment you for that. Any comments on that?

Yeah, thank you. If you're trying to be everything to everybody, you're nothing to nobody. Right. So you have to. You have to pick the corner of the world that you're going to own. And you're right, so many other brands talk about sweating and, and, you know, just perspiration, which is kind of nasty. Yeah, light. Light is pure and. And we're going to go beyond. We already have gone beyond just the infrared sauna into dedicated red light therapy rooms. Blue light is another that helps with acne and Other and rosacea, other skin conditions. And we're getting into these other light modalities. So we wanted to own light, everything around light, and go going beyond that, come hell or high water. We will turn beam into a verb, meaning, you know, when, when a woman's going to go to the sauna, she's not going to tell her husband or, you know, her friend, hey, I'm going to go sauna. She's going to say, I'm going to go beam. And once you turn your brand name, your company name into a verb, you've won. We don't search things. We Google it, right? We don't make a copy. We Xerox something. And when your brand name becomes a verb, the competitive moat is so wide and so deep that you can focus on, on, you know, building many, many other other things. And, and beam will be the verb people use when they refer to infrared. Sauna.

That is so brilliant. And in my household, my, my wife and I are both members and we will say that we are going beaming. There you go. And so. You got it. It's, it starts with a movement, right? Somebody has to start the movement.

Love it.

That's great. Roger, you mentioned you're, you're in the process of writing a book. I don't mean to pry, but sure. Do you have a working title?

I don't. It's funny, that's, gosh, as late as yesterday. So I'm, I'm about, I don't know, 40, 000 words. And that's, I think it's 160, 70 pages at that point. And I just, yesterday I was asking my wife and I was bouncing some things off of her and she, she's a great sounding board because she'll just, she'll just go, no, no, no. She just gives me the straight dope. So I don't have a title yet, but it's all around business. And you know, a lot of people write books on leadership. They'll write books on marketing, you know, which certainly I could have done. But what I've, what I've done is, and what I'm really focused on doing is almost taking, you know, all the stuff they don't teach in business school. And again, you mentioned earlier, I have an mba, you know, that in a quarter today will get you a cup of coffee. Actually, that in five bucks will get you a cup of coffee today. But.

Right.

Yeah, but it, I've just found in business that in entrepreneurship, the learning curve is a right angle and, you know, you pay the Dummy tax. You pay the dummy tax by not knowing what to do. And my goal is for finance, for leadership, for sales. Sales independently of marketing, marketing operations. I broke it down into chapters and my goal is that anybody could pick up this book. Whether you're an experienced business person and doing great, you'll take nuggets from it, you'll take learnings from it. Or if you're that, that person that is looking to make the jump and get into entrepreneurship and are wondering about business ownership, it will be, I don't want to say, a roadmap. It will be a companion guide for you as you go through because you're going to have to do it again. Ideas are great, executions, everything. You got to jump into the deep end of the pool. I can't jump into the deep end of the pool for you, nor can you. Each individual has to do it themselves. But what I want to have for them is this companion book that when they're working through a financial issue or they're working through a marketing issue, they could go back to this book and say, let me read what he wrote about branding versus marketing, or about direct response, or about scarce and urgency, or about operations and how to measure through, you know, what are the good KPIs for that. And, and all the other. What I've tried to do is filter out all the other crap, for better lack of a better word, that academia talks about and all these ex McKinsey consultants write their books about because they never did it. And the one thing I'll say is, you know, it ain't bragging if you done done it. And I've done it. So I, I feel confident I can speak to it from, and speak the language of the person that doesn't want to get bogged down in academia and, and all the theories that are out there. Here's what you actually just need to know. Here's the real stuff you need to know the rest of it. It's nice to know, but you don't need to know it. Here's what you need to know.

Yeah, I can't wait to read it. I think it's going to help a lot of people. I think it's going to be a wild success because I know the way you operate. You're going to go right at the outcomes and there's not going to be, there will not be wasted words in there. And I'm sure there will be people that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear and it'll be the Roger Martin book on Getting things done. So very excited to see that come out. So that's fantastic. So, Roger, this has been amazing. One last question, and I will ask you if you had one piece of advice to share that you could impact somebody's life with, what might that be today?

It's never too late to start. It's never too late to start, and you will never regret making that decision. So if there's anybody listening who is on the verge of becoming an entrepreneur, if there's anybody who's an entrepreneur and is trying to level their business up to the next and no, they have to take some risk. They have to take action to do that. Doesn't matter if you're 65, 35, whatever. It is never too late to start. So just go, jump, jump into the deep end.

I'm in. I'm inspired.

Awesome, awesome.

Fantastic. Roger, thanks for being on. How can people get in touch with you, with you if they want to learn more about what you're doing with Thrive More brands or anything else you've got going on?

Yeah, yeah. So thrivemorebrands.com you can go there. It shows all of our brands. If you have a business that you're looking to franchise, that may have potential, we'd love to talk to you about that. If you're looking to become a franchisee of one of our brands, that's the place to start. And if you just want to learn a little bit more about us and what we're doing. Thrivemorebrands.com and then of course, there's rockboxfitness.com and beam lights on a beam is spelled with two E's. Those URLs, of course, will show you what we're doing for those independent companies.

Fantastic. Roger, always a pleasure. I always learn something from you and I know that our audience will as well. Thank you so much for being on.

Hey, thanks for having me, Jeff.

Outstanding. And as always, I am Jeff Duden, and we are on the home front, simply building the world's most responsible franchise platforms and Homefront Brands and Thrive More brands, encouraging entrepreneurs to take action to transform lives, impact communities, and enhance the lives of those they care the most about. So if this sounds like you today, check us out at homefrontbrands.com or thrivemorebrands.com today and start your next chapter of greatness, building your dynasty on the home front. Roger and I will be sitting right here looking at our inbox waiting for you. Take care, Roger.

Take care. See you.