Matt and Alicia explain why they picked franchises with Homefront Brands and Top Rail instead of starting their own businesses. They got to market faster, inherited tested systems, and had the company handle marketing and websites. Both saw franchising as a way to build wealth and leave something behind.
Chapters
This life like swinging vines Swing my heart across the line in my face is flashing signs Seek it out and you shall find hold but not there.
Hey, we're at swing of a jig. It's Sparkman's Wharf, Tampa, getting ready to have fries with franchisees Matt and Alicia.
Heck, I feel something so right Doing the wrong thing.
Hey, well, there's some fries for you.
Oh, my goodness.
Cheers. Cheers.
Oh, does that put in your mouth? Okay. Little segment fries with franchisees. And just really appreciate the time that we've been able to spend with you here in Tampa. It's been incredible, and we're so proud of the work that you're doing for the local community. Is there anything that you wish you would have known before you got into this that could help advise somebody who might be considering franchise ownership for their next season of life?
Yeah, I'd say just there's a lot of franchise opportunities out there. Just find the one that makes the most sense for you and your family. Do your due diligence, you know, interview other franchise owners. We really enjoyed being able to talk to other owners and be able to go to meet the team day. And after doing all those things, we knew this opportunity with home front and top rail was the best fit for us.
What have you realized or what have you learned about the overall organization and how the franchise business model can really help somebody get into business faster, accelerate the time, the speed to first dollar, and really help you identify the things that you need to learn and be good at early on?
Well, for us, this is our livelihood. So we knew we wanted to have our business, but we couldn't take six months or a year or several years to figure it out. So when we were, you know, the franchise made a lot of sense for us because it's kind of like they've done a lot of that testing and trying and knowing, like, this, this works. Well, this doesn't. And so that's one thing that really appealed to both of us, was we could get. We could build this business very, very quickly because all the things were pretty, you know, the main things you need to build a business, like a good website, all those things are done for you. Getting started from day one.
And we really felt like Homefront Brands had put so much into it already. Us coming into it, even though fairly new, we really didn't feel like that. We didn't feel like a number. We felt like it was really us coming into being a part of an organization that was truly there to help us. And with talking with Brad And Jacob and Todd, I mean, we call them up and they're right there to help us with anything that we need help with. And there's a lot of things to learn. Yes, yes. With owning a new company and obviously doing fencing and trying to work different mindsets together to make it work for.
Us, franchising is really kind of a leverage play, you know, and if everybody does their job, look, everything's no business, everything's smooth all the time. But if everybody's working towards those right things, you get those leaps in efficiency, you get those leaps in customer acquisition, you get those leaps and insights. And, you know, that's where if you're focused on the things that you do locally in the marketplace and a lot of the things are centralized, they can be centralized. It really builds a powerful growth opportunity for everybody involved. How do you think about business building inside of a franchise as part of your legacy, as part of your ability to have a diverse portfolio of assets?
We thought a lot about it early on what we wanted to do next. And I think for Alicia and I, we wanted something where we were in control of our own destiny. You know, we didn't want to, you know, hitch a ride to someone that was trying to start a company or go find a job. We wanted something that we knew we have a partner that we can trust in Homefront and top rail. But ultimately we're kind of in control of what, you know, our success, you know, and that really appealed to us. I think it's a great point about diversifying because, you know, with real estate can go up and down, stock market as well. We've gone up and down with all those things. I definitely think this is a tool that we can use to diversify things. We thought a lot of. We're in the thick of things right now, so we don't think about it daily, but that's definitely something we thought about.
I think it's something to definitely consider when you're looking at what you want to do and how you want your life to be and how you want your legacy to be for even your kids and for the rest of your family for decades. And it's something that we involve our kids in our discussions about, you know, fences in general. It's not necessarily the funnest thing for a six year old to talk about, but he definitely has been a part of conversations and talking with our neighbors and about our new business venture. He's definitely learning more, just as we are.
People that have an early entrepreneurial experience generally are more likely to have success as an entrepreneur later in life. So you're giving them something, a vision of something that they could never have been exposed to otherwise. We didn't do a very good job on these fries. We talked a lot, but we can take them with us. Thank you for being a part of fries with franchisees. We hope to use this to help other people be educated and maybe even inspired by you, to follow in your footsteps and change your life through business ownership, with franchising and maybe even with home front brands.
