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Steven Placey
Hey, Steven Placey here with another edition of the rock, your business podcast. And I have a great treat for you today. We are going to be talking with a gentleman named Mike handy. He is a serial entrepreneur of many different things from franchises, the restaurants, the software companies. So Mike, how are you doing today? All

Mike Handy
right, good day.

Steven Placey
It’s a good day. All right, we’re alive and awake and feeling great. All that good stuff. So, um, Mike, I mean, you’re, we’ve just briefly talked about some of your stories already. Fascinating. So please just give us a background about you and kind of what you’ve done and what you’re doing. Yeah,

Mike Handy
I mean, like a lot of entrepreneurs. You know, I kind of knew early on that I was, I wanted to be in business for myself, my family, my dad was military. My family for generations has been military. I grew up on military bases. I love the structure, the security, the respect, all of that of the military, but I knew I was just definitely on a different path. I mean, I worked a couple jobs, I lied on my application when I was 12, to be able to get a job to work in the cornfields of Nebraska. So, you know, I never lacked a work ethic. And then as I grew, you know, in my jobs, I realized I wasn’t like everyone. You know, people would say, calm down, slow down, you’re making us look bad. But I was an overachiever. You know, I was one one term I, I heard later on in life, that made a lot of sense, because I didn’t really fit in. You know, and I’ve heard people say, Well, sometimes if you don’t fit in, you fit in front. Oh, alumni, you know, real early, you know, I became the manager at a front desk, or I became the manager at a restaurant, you know, 16 17, 18 years old. But as soon as I had an opportunity to start my own business, it’s funny, my, my first real venture, had a girlfriend, hot girl, you know, I could I can pull him in. And she was a singer, in a band that played every Wednesday at this Holiday Inn. And I think they paid him like $350. And they all got like, 50 bucks for the people in the band. And, and they said, they would pay me 50 bucks. If I because I was like, This is amazing. And after they were done, a new band came in. And they actually had a manager. And I sat there and listen him talk to the manager, and booked them, and he wanted part of the door and they had to pay at the door. And he wanted part of that it was going to make them pay for marketing and this and that. And I was like, that’s the way to do it. So I asked the manager if I can have a copy of his contract. And then I did a photoshoot with the band. And I just copied what he said. And I went to like 20 Holiday Inns and a three state area and booked this band. And I got a percentage of the door. And I got out I was it was my first year in college, and I was making 1000 a week of a PSA. All I did was copy what they did. So, you know, that was kind of my first experience. And that’s all I’ve done. You know, I think a lot of people think they have to be this creative genius, and they have to come up with the next best thing to be an entrepreneur. But honestly, I don’t think I’ve had an original idea in my head. Hmm. It’s always you know, I believe in if you see someone and you want what they have, you do what they do. You know, and and so I would just copy and outwork people, you know, I definitely had to have thick skin and be willing to fail and fail forward, you know, you fail. But you’re going to keep going. That was a lesson. It’s not a stopper. It’s a speed bump. And, you know, so I got a job in Dallas, Texas. My sister had me moved there. She got in a car accident, she was fine, a little banged up. But she had me go there to kind of take care of her for a minute. And I got a job at a catering company. And eventually, I worked up to General Manager really quickly. And they were doing a couple million. It was pretty good. They took care of me, but I wanted my own catering company. So I did a business plan everything or to actually get a percentage of this. So I actually created a new revenue stream for us having retail stores where people could pick up their catering. They said No, only family can own. So my parents retired in Dallas, and I was going back and forth to cnm. And I said I’ll start in Dallas. I don’t want to mess with them. I appreciate what they did for me. They basically let me run their company. I learned logistics. I learned the accounting side of it the p&l. I learned to manage 30 employees. They really let me run with it.

Mike Handy
You know, they were they were semi passive at the time. And so I gave him a notice and told him I was coming to, to Orlando, I got a warehouse with an office, and it had a warehouse upstairs in the warehouse and me and my dad built an apartment there. I had a bathroom and everything but no shower. So I went to the gym every day to take a shower. All my initial food products, I, I, you know, I had a business plan, I plan this thing out for a year, I got the food purveyors to all come in and pitch me and they all bring in, you know, thing of Turkey and a thing of this and all their samples. And that was my initial inventory. Wow. And I hustled I went over to Maitland center, I created a drop off catering menu for box lunches and sandwiches and stuff like that catering to offices. And I go out and I canned the menus out in the morning. And then I go back. And we could we built a kitchen in the warehouse. And I’d make all the box lunches in the sandwiches. And it’s pretty much everything is pre bought from like Costco or whatever. And I just scoop it into the two ounce containers or put it in a box and drop off 10 box lunches here. 20 here 20 here. Eventually I had to get my brother to help deliveries. Eventually, I had to give somebody help in the kitchen before I knew it. Within three years, I had three locations. Three corporate kitchens, I was catering to Marriott timeshare resorts. I was doing a luau every Wednesday for 600 people. It’s pretty big. Oh,

Steven Placey
wow. Hey, I’m gonna stop you there for one second, if we did this, you already spit out like so many killer value bombs. I mean, this steel brick is awesome. And I can’t wait to hear more of it. But I want to make sure we go back and hit a couple things you said real quick. And that. I mean, just you don’t have to recreate the wheel. You don’t have to create the next iPad. You know, and I just love what you said about look just Okay, see what other people are doing? You know, can you copy it? Sure. And where you’ll make a difference? Is you out hustle them. You know, I just love what you said there, man. I don’t know if you have anything else to add to that. But man, I mean, that is just, that’s such a great idea. Because I think people get stuck. They’re like, okay, there’s so much of everything in the world already. You know, I got a How am I gonna stand out? You know, they think they got to have millions of dollars or whatever. It’s got to be something completely different where it’s just not.

Mike Handy
It’s just not true. You take whoever’s doing it the best. You do it that? You know, you gotta have thick skin. I mean, there’s key key things, you have to be ready to outwork everybody.

Steven Placey
Yeah,

Mike Handy
you know, but it’s not all about risk. I’ve never closed a business in my life. I don’t take risks. I do not take risk. And I hate. You know, that’s for rich people. You know, most of us aren’t rich, right? You know, we’ve got we’re scraping together 5000 $10,000. And that’s why I built an apartment in my warehouse. I knew I had enough for that 1200 rent. But I didn’t know how long and I was actually living in there for two years before I got an apartment. I drove the delivery van for three years until I got a nice Mitsubishi Eclipse. You know, but you sacrifice and you grind. And you work harder than everybody else. And you do what works. And when you come across, you minimize your mistakes. You know, Brady just won the Superbowl. And was he the most talented quarterback on the field? Nope,

Steven Placey
nope, nope.

Mike Handy
But he does not make big mistakes. He does not make big mistakes. And in business, it’s the same thing. You don’t make big mistakes. And it also it really comes down to basics. You bring in more sales than you spend. Now a lot of people think they’re they’re gonna spend their way to success. Well, Mike, you got to you got to spend money to make money. Yeah, that’s kind of true. But you have to spend less than you bring in period.

Steven Placey
I think that’s another huge point, man. I mean, I can’t tell you I’ve heard a couple times, people are having cashflow issues. And they’ll say, Well, I just got to go sell more. Well, yes. But what happens is, is that y’all can’t see my hands. But it usually when that happens if someone already has a cash lower or money problem as the sales go up, so do they spend more money to so it doesn’t ever fix the problem?

Mike Handy
Right, right. Yeah, that they’ve got to understand that so they got to be a grinder. Now, I learned when I we were stationed in Nebraska out in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing else to do but wrestled that was the only indoor sport and I didn’t want to take up tap dancing. So it was wrestling. And I tell you what I learned real quick number one, I didn’t want to get one ass handed to me, that was no fun at all. But the main differentiator, you know, we all knew the same moves. It was who worked harder, who was stronger out there, and who was willing to just grind it out. And I think that gave me a good base. You know, for for, you know what I do now, but also math, I mean, it is math. Like you were saying, if you have a business, let’s talk about the restaurant industry. Typically, 30% is your food costs, you manage that? If you’re doing $10,000 a week in sales, you spend 3000, not a dime more, you manage that 30% labor 10% back of the house, 10%, front of the house 10%, management 30% labor, you don’t spend more than $3,000. When you’re doing your schedule, you figure out is this $3,000 or not? period, and then 30%, overhead, your rent, utilities, all that stuff broken down to that week in for your monthly bills, and a quarter and you budget and you manage that and on a daily basis, you check it? And guess what you make 10% and you do you do a million, that’s 100. But like you said, if your food cost is 40%, cuz you’re not watching your perishables, and there’s some waste and there’s some problems and there’s some death, or your labor’s too high, and you’re not looking at it, and you got 40% labor, and 40% food cost and 30% you’re losing 10%. Like you said, it doesn’t matter. If you do a million dollars, you lost 100,000. Yeah, that’s right, he lost 10%, you know, so you’ve got to manage. And this is the biggest thing I learned you manage by the percents. And then you know, it, it’s those percents, and pretty much every business has their business model. Like I said, restaurants are 30 3030, you make 10%. If you work in it more, you could not add up to 15% you have your family working, you could get all the way up, you know, but that those are the numbers. So you got to manage towards the numbers. Or it doesn’t matter. More sales is more loss. Yeah.

Steven Placey
Right. I love that

Mike Handy
your business model has to be strong.

Steven Placey
So just love that. So I’d love to hear continue with your story, man. So you know, with your with your journey, we’d love to hear more. Hi,

Mike Handy
I was very successful. We’re growing. Finally got an apartment, got my own car and everything. I hired both of my brothers, their wives, my sister. My dad actually retired from the military wanted to be involved. So he put himself through college airy art school to manage my kitchen. Family owned, operated. I’m doing 2 million now. And really, really a lot of hustle. I was making Okay, money, maybe 100 grand. But I was paying everybody 45,000 everybody I was sharing, I’m very sharing and caring. And I don’t, I don’t need to be super rich. I’m pretty simple. I mean, 100 grand, you know, and but I had investments and things too. But anyways, the lady came in one day and, and my brother’s wives were all went right. And mike got a new car and this and that. And, you know, I still was the was the nucleus of this thing. I was still every day I had to get everybody going. I had to, okay, we’ve got 600 here, you order this so that I kept everything going. And all of a sudden I had really a big amount of because I started like actually showing that I was the owner and I was making money. People started getting jealous. So a lady came in one day and said, Hey, this is amazing. She was picking up some catering. She goes I’ve always wanted one of these. You ever think about franchising? And I said, I don’t even know what,

Steven Placey
right

Mike Handy
where to start with that. But I thought about selling this. She said, Yeah, I would. You’d sell this and I said, Yeah, I got three Look, I got a retail store in Longwood. I’ve got another corporate kitchen down by the timeshare resorts that I cater every day. I have this one. Yeah, I sell. And the next week she flew in her accountant and her brother and we sat down and pounded out a deal. And I sold the company and put you know some good change and I had a meeting with my family and I was like yeah, you guys you got to work for her now. And like I said, it was just getting a tone that was very jealous and and I started the thing, sleeping in the warehouse delivering sandwiches, all that stuff. So, but I there I kind of got the, the feeling is when you really, you don’t really cash out. You don’t really enjoy this until you cash out. Or as I’ve learned later on, you’re able to build yourself into it. The passive situation. So I cashed out put all this money. I’m in my 20s. I’m like, Yes, I have a great place. I bought a house by then. Great car. I was like, This is what you do. You You build, and you sell you build, you sell. So I took like a year or two off. just messed around, I get some food service consulting, I helped. There’s a Kiwis, that’s a very, they have four or five locations. I remember when he bought his very first one. And I helped him set up and design the kitchen. Because I you know, although I’ve worked with some amazing chefs, and I’ll tell you right now, guys, if you’re thinking about opening up a restaurant, it’s hard. There’s, there’s 20 other concepts that are easier the restaurants, it’s very rewarding if you like, you know, there’s always owners benefit. There’s there’s owners benefit, and financial is just one part of it. You know, being able to be a leader in your community, you’re able to employ my kids, restaurants, there’s a lot of owners benefit, because there’s an acknowledgement people, oh, my God, I love your pizza. But you know, I go to the grocery store, there’s eight people that want to talk to me, it’s pretty neat like that. But it’s a hassle. It is a pain. There’s so much to manage. I mean, I have investments that I bought, you know, dumpsters, and it makes me money, a software company makes me money when I sleep, I do nothing except once a year and talk to a very introverted programmer. It just makes sure it’s alive. But yeah, it’s not the greatest. So I wouldn’t say that restaurants are the main thing. But what that did is teach me that I can build and sell and, and stuff like that. And I got into other things when the Hurricanes came through Florida. You know, I’m an opportunist. I talked to a guy had had dinner with my girlfriend and her friend and a guy, and he did screaming and aluminum. And he was telling me how he did everything for the company. You know, he went did the quote, when sent in what he needed, picked it up and put it together. And I said, so why don’t you do this yourself? You know, you you do everything for your boss. And he said, I don’t know how, like, I’ll do, I’ll set up the company. I’ll do everything. I’ll even help you in sales and everything. I went out and helped him with some screening aluminum, but we crushed it. I mean, we made money when the Hurricanes come came through on scrapping the metal. And then we made money setting it up. So but I did learn some things there. That I was very trusting. And we were making a lot of money. And he got a drug problem. You know, he was making tons of money. He, I mean, most people just can’t fathom that next level of business ownership. You put them into it. They’re like I kid, you know, making themselves sick in a candy store. Right. And he got his you know, we were all over Florida. He just got a terrible drug problem. And blew it and it’ll kill

Steven Placey
it. How many times have we heard that story? You know, I

Mike Handy
mean, yeah, really? partners. It’s tough. I mean, it’s honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had a partner that really did their share and came through here.

Steven Placey
That’s a whole nother podcast mic. Trust me, brother. We’ll do a whole nother podcast. I’ve got those tattoos myself, my friend. Yeah, that’d be a whole nother fun.

Mike Handy
Yeah. So the order up concept. So I started order up calm. And it was kind of my first I really worked on the business plan. I really put a lot into the detail. I really worked on pitching it to try to get some investment. I wanted to go to the next level instead of a small business that I built up. I wanted to start with some money make a salary in a in an industry where I knew I couldn’t grow. So we did the I was converting the takeout taxi kind of food delivery model onto online so we call it order up calm. hired some programmers, all that stuff. I got a investor that was not really a qualified investor. He’s a construction guy. And you know, started building houses and then he got in with garden started building gardens. So he made a couple million a year. And it wasn’t a big deal for him to invest two to $400,000 a year and things that may or may not succeed because he was going to pay taxes on those anyways. Yeah. The only problem though, and I’ll come back to him when I talk about selling was he was not a qualified investor. He anyways, so food delivery, technology, order up.com crushed it I when everybody is talking about just clicks clicks, click Don’t worry about making money, I still felt like I had to make money. Still, I still provided built a business model, where we about 60% went to the restaurant of the of the order, we picked up a delivery fee, we got a commission of 30%. From the restaurant, we charge the marketing for being in our dining guide. My technology was, I had programmers at a call center, it worked out and we actually made money. So we were.com that made money and was growing and went up to $2 million, our first year in revenue in the Orlando area. So food calm, former owner of PetSmart Ford Smith, worth 400 million. Now own food calm, contacted me now I did position myself in front of him to be acquired. And that’s kind of what you do. If you are in an industry and you’re, you’re, you’re wanting to be acquired, you build yourself number one, all your books and everything have to be in a to where if they do come in and look at you. It’s everything’s like you don’t want to be junk and trash and you got money going here and your you know, so we positioned it to sell. So all the books were right, everything was in line. And also a big key was making it look like it could run without me. That was important. It could run anywhere with anybody. So we built that up. And Fort Smith actually sent me out to Dallas. And he raised 20 million 40 million, whatever. And he said my while I was there, he said to people to look one to look at my books and one to look at my technology. And Fort Smith said Mike, you got it. You did it. You figured it out. This is what we need to do. And I want to buy your company. I’m gonna have those guys come back and we’re gonna have a meeting buddy wine me and dine me check me out. I learned not to drink too much wine because I I couldn’t focus during dinner. But I didn’t blow it up or anything.

Steven Placey
I’ll give it to you for 50 bucks, right? Like, yeah, you’re such a nice guy. Right, right. Yeah,

Mike Handy
we didn’t do any negotiating. But I just remember being about three glasses of wine in you know, it is the most amazing surf and turf I’ve ever tasted. And I was just overwhelmed with who I was with her. You know? At a certain point, I was just like, I hope he doesn’t ask me anything. I’m too tipsy. I came back to Orlando. And he called me. And I talked to my investor, which had a good chunk of the company. And that was a mistake. And I said that he’s going to make an offer. He freakin loves me. He you know, and he said, Well, we need to, we need to hold out for 10 million. And I said, buddy, you put you put 80 grand in you put 140 grand and I’ve already paid you back you only have you’re only out 80 grand? Yeah, right? You want me to stand hard for 10 million 10 million. These things are going for multiples of 40 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, Listen, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think we see what he has to offer. And we consider he said nope, I’m not taking less than 10 million. And I am in charge. You know, he had control. And so Ford Smith calls me, first of all, the trip over what I wasn’t feeling good. There was some flu going around that plane or something. And I was not feeling good. So I woke up. And he said, Mike, I just wanted to thank you for coming out here. He goes, buddy, whatever it is, you have it and I want you. He goes up, I’m gonna offer you 6 million for your company. And I sat there for a second and I just didn’t want to say this. But I said, Well, I talked to my partner and we’d really only he said no, he said, I’d like you to be on my team. I want you to come out here, start right away. I want you to in the office next to me. We’re going to build this thing together. And and you know, blah, blah, blah. And I said, you know I hate to say this, but I talked to my partner he really thinks this is is worth 10 million. There’s dead silence. They were talking about somebody that’s worth 400 million. And he had already wined me and dined me and took care of me and showed me all the respect and gave me all the kudos. And also I heard him again and he said Mike and this most polite, nice guy. He said I don’t know who the EFF you think I am. He said Listen, I looked at your company. Your company is not worth $6 million. It’s in Listen, I’ve done the math, it takes $2 million to put you out of business there $2 million and put you out of business. Usually I’d offer you $2 million. But the other 4 million is because I like you. And I think you’re great. And, and I offered you a position here. I think my wife told me, she was like, we can’t move. You know, we have kids here. And I think I might have said something like that. And I’d like to travel back and forth or something. But he was like, I don’t know what kind of education you you have. And I dropped out of college. And he said, I got people with master’s degrees, wanting to be on the same floor as me. And you’re telling me, you’re not going to take an office right next to me. He said, Listen, I have to get back to you click. So it was horrible is I just felt sick. I don’t know why I didn’t throw up. But now later on, you know, days later, somebody about four levels down. You know, the him CEO role. VP, somebody about four levels down, contacted me and said he’s got a final offer if you want it, but, you know, he said, we’ll give you this much money. I think it’s 1.5 million or something. And you know, you can be a consultant, they still paid me $125,000 a year to to help them if they needed me. They hardly ever called me. I mean, hardly ever. The first time somebody contacted me is like, Listen, I’ve run 40 restaurants, some of the top in steak houses, I don’t really need your help. And I was like, did they do delivery? It’s got nothing to do with delivery is funny. Of course, they crashed and burned within two years, too. But um, yeah, it was it was a learning experience.

Steven Placey
Yeah, these days smack that whoever that investor was around every once in a while, but like

Mike Handy
I was discussing. Now he took that, you know, we took that and made some good money off of it. Not, you know, not that big money than it should have been? With just saying yes. Or just at least thinking through it. But

Steven Placey
yeah, you know, six,

Mike Handy
when you’re dealing with somebody at that level, it does have a lot to do with their ego. And you have to be very careful with with how you how you do with the money, you don’t insult them. And you know, put yours Yeah, it was just it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t really me. But I should have worked harder. With my partner and my wife, explaining, we got to do what we got to do. This is my next level thing.

Steven Placey
Hey, I’m gonna get a little drink of water. And I’ll be back right after this brief message. Hey, Steven here and how are your results so far in 2021? are you kicking some profit goal but like we are we have record months in January and February? Or are you just having so so or you like, man not doing well? Well, let me tell you something, you deserve to have a great business that’s going out there and having record months, the key is not waiting any longer to make it happen. You don’t have to have all the answers yourself, you can get help. So there’s two things I have for you right now you can do if you’re a more of a Type B personality, you kind of just want to look over some stuff, go download my unconventional strategies for 2021 that will help you go make some marketing moves that most people aren’t doing but they should be doing it’ll help you rock your profits go get that free download, check that out great stuff. If you’re more of a type A personality realized, Steve, I don’t want to read any more stuff. I don’t want to listen any more stuff. I just need someone to help me find out what I’m doing wrong, or what I should be doing. And give me some solutions that are particular to my business. So if that’s you go set a discovery call for you and I can talk we’ll look inside your business uncover things, again that you might be doing that you shouldn’t be or that you’re not doing that you should be. And we’ll uncover profit centers to help you go kick some profit goal but you deserve it. The worst thing you can do is keep waiting and getting just average results isn’t a time to go kick some profit goal but go set your discovery call now. I love to innovate some ideas for you. Again, you can do that right on the Steve Placey comm website that’s STV PLACY I look forward to talking with you

Mike Handy
did some real estate investing did some business brokering taught me a lot I got my you know with your real estate less license. You could become a business broker. So I I really learned how to analyze a current business. Understand its valuation position at for sale, and help help small businesses sell. But that wasn’t really my thing. helped me a lot. But then, since they crashed and burned with the food delivery, I really thought it would work as a franchise. So I took the concept and a package the software, started selling that doing well with that. In the industry, they could use their own name, whatever it was just the software, good residual income, great model had a great programmer, programmers. And then I started packaging in 2000 to 2000 for the How to restaurant delivery. So it’s like, here’s some marketing material I used. Here’s a CD with all the documents the contract for the restaurant, here’s some spreadsheets you should use. I just put it all in a package. This is what I did hope hope you can do it. And I sold it, you know, 500 bucks. Because that was like business opportunity. You got to be like under 500 bucks. I think it’s sold for 99. Or it like shows up on the radar door of franchises. Gotcha. So I sold like three or four of those a week I put I started learning SEO, and anybody searching for restaurant delivery, food delivery software, how to start whatever those phrases came to my site. And I sold it and they were just $500 boom, boom, boom, I’m making 1500 2000 a week in my underwear doing nothing. I just thought we got another one put a CD and everything, you know, $5 worth of material. But then people got this, I had zero complaints. But they were like, Hey, this is pretty amazing. But I’m having trouble. Like when I go out to sign up restaurants, they’re, you know, it’s harder. You know, I know you haven’t laid out here and you have a presentation everything, but can you come out and help me? You know, I’ve got money. I was like, okay, you know, finances Give me five grand. Okay, so come out there. And then they call back, hey, you know, I’m getting ready to open I’m scared to death, you know, my opening week? And, you know, can you come out here during that? Like, okay, I’m grant, you know, and then, you know, they were like, you know, I need help with my accounting, setting up my accounting, my my chart of accounts, I need help with, you know, training my drivers, you know, all this stuff. So, you know, I just at a certain point, I was like the guys that are very successful, use me for all these things, I might as well package it together in a big package with everything. So I charge 30 grand, and it was everything. A to Z, me training you me coming out there. I’m going to sign up a certain amount of restaurants, I’m going to be there for opening and blah, blah, blah. And it worked out really well. The only time it didn’t work is when people didn’t work it, you know? So, and I didn’t want to put my name on them, you know, and be a franchise if they weren’t going to be great. So I actually set up about 80 locations, including UK, New Zealand, Canada, Guam, other places before Kuwait. Before I franchised, I didn’t want to franchise when I knew the model would work. I wanted a franchise when I knew it couldn’t fail. Wow. So that’s a big point. Yeah, and at a certain point, I knew it. And I knew I could charge for it. There was people making a crap ton of money doing even better than I was doing. I when we started we had 800 megahertz radios that we paid 40 bucks each one and

Mike Handy
you know there was so in our marketing was so expensive. Eventually our cost got lower, like our call center was a huge expense. Eventually, we didn’t need a call center. People go online. You know, social media is cheaper than all these mail outs and printing. Yes. And all our drivers use their own phone. We don’t even have to supply that it got cheaper and more. were more valuable. What much more profitable. I got to grow right now that owns one of my franchises. She started she had about 30 grand. She’s getting the shoes in a bad relationship and abusive relationship trying to get out of it. And she had some money tucked away and I set her up in a business there. She probably invested a total of about 50 grand. Today she makes about 180 grand a year. And she’s the queen of that place. She doesn’t work her business. She is the queen of Bowling Green. She beats up Uber Eats doordash all those because she’s local owner Operator, she works out deals with them. She has local drivers that she communicates with the big guys aren’t like that. So, you know, franchising, I’m, I love franchising. Now I’m big into it, I consult with emerging franchises, I have a team of brokers that helps people find perfect franchises. So, you know, very much like the real estate industry, you know, you want to house but you don’t have access to the MLS, you’re not, you don’t want to talk directly to the buyer, the seller, because they’re just going to sell you. So you use a realtor that’s gonna say, this is this school district, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So now within the franchise industry, brokering is something the franchise ORS like, because they’re bringing you a candidate in, they’re only paying you if they actually by the broker, pre educates the person on, you know, I tell my people, I’m only going to introduce you to great franchises, they work as long as you work, so that the only factor in success is you. Can you follow the model? Are you going to hustle the area? Are you going to dominate your territory, you know, and it’ll work, I can introduce you to their top franchisees. And if you do what they do, you’ll get what they get.

Steven Placey
Isn’t that amazing? It can be just that simple. You know, again, so many value bombs. I mean, I’m just sitting here like just so many, like, I want to be like 10 more podcasts with you, man is that they go into deeper with this. And and you just have so much to share. You know a couple things. I mean, yeah. Look, again, you don’t have to recreate the wheel, look and see what other people are doing. If this guy owns this McDonald’s and he’s doing 5 million, and you’re struggling to get to, to tap a million, what is he doing that you’re not? You know, basically, there’s either one of two things happening. You’re either doing things you shouldn’t be doing, or you’re not doing the things you should be doing. I mean, it’s basic, there’s only two answers. Right? So I mean, I couldn’t agree with you more. And then the other thing that you said, I think is is huge. And this goes into the whole franchising thing is Can, can this business you’re creating, run without you. And again, that’s such a, it’s, it’s, you know, because if it can’t run without you, there’s really no way to franchise it, or expand it, you know, and honestly, you really can’t even sell it if it can’t run without you. Because if you’re you know doctors and dentists and chiropractors and things they deal with this a lot because their clientele is because of the doctor. their clientele is because of the chiropractic, you know, so you don’t want to be put into that position unless you know hey, unless you make enough money and you just retire, but selling it is usually not an option. true true. You know, so, so now what are you doing nowadays? What do you what do you got? What do you do?

Mike Handy
I do own franchise called takeout waiter. So I started go waiter franchised it 35 locations in 36 months, and ended up selling it, you know, learned the lesson there. Geez. I had an investor there too, that he thought we should go a different direction. He talked to my other two partners that were very small partners. But since me and him were equal. These other two guys only had like 2% it balanced everything on their side. And he, he thought the company should go to a different way. And it just started creating an atmosphere that I didn’t like. And I knew I could do this again 100 times, and if they really feel and then I kind of took the temperature of the franchisees and I said, Hey, guys, you know, I’d like to keep going the direction we’re going it works, you know, we’re dominating his way. And I had a good 25% of them and they were all in a list of sales. They were all down here. You know, really jumping on the bandwagon because they thought a different way would be a better way. The guys up here, my two top franchisees one, dropped out of high school in 10th grade, had a felony became a bartender ended up saving money and buying half the bar ended up eventually buying the entire bar ended up flipping houses and buying bars. And he bought into my franchise. He’s got a chip on his shoulder because he knows he can never get a job job. He has to own his stuff. And he did like twice what everybody else did in sales because he hustled he worked hard, and he believed in me. I’ll tell you one reason why he believed in me. He actually started his franchise with We we do do about 60%, residential 40 30%, corporate drop off food and 10% Hotel. He said, Mike in my market, I think I’m going to focus on the hotels. And I said, Well, I’m just going to tell you my theory 10% of the sales across the board should be 10% of your effort and 10% of your investment. I wouldn’t go at it. Like you’re talking about going at it. It’s risky. I don’t do risk. The here’s the business model. But it’s your money, buddy. If you want to try that I’m, I’m good enough to know I’m not always the smartest guy in the room. So if you want to try that it’s your money. But if you don’t succeed, you do exactly like I tell you from now on. He blew 20 30,000 trying to prove the hotels were the thing. I noticed one thing, you got a business traveler doesn’t tip a bunch. You know, the ticket isn’t very big. When your average home is like 40 $50. Corporate is nice. But again, he was going after a market. And once he failed, he came at me like I can’t lose 30 more grants. I was like, Yeah, well, you ready to do the model? A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D, it’s pretty boring. But this is exactly what we do each quarter, each thing, this is exactly what you do. And he did it. And he never felt where a lot of guys, once they become successful, they start falling off. Are these smart guys. Remember, people call me go Mike. I’m just man, I’m beating my head up against the wall, trying to figure out what kind of marketing I can do. I’m like, dude, there’s only three things that work for us. How about you just do those over? And over? And

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