Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hey, what's up, you guys? Michael here from the proper forum podcast. I've got a good buddy friend and a colleague here that I'm in a networking group with, Matthew McReynolds, man. There's a lot we're going to cover. I'm going to try not to get ahead of myself, but, dude, I really appreciate you coming on. We are getting the launch of this podcast going. You've had a birthday, and, man, I just, I appreciate you being here. Thanks so much, man.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Appreciate you for having me, man.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Of course. Let's do this.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Excited.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: I'm excited, too. And, well, man, the space, obviously, I've shared in a couple other episodes. Michael, behind the cameras has been a huge help in setting this up and just making it look beautiful. Really excited to have this space, but I want to dive into a few things that you sent me. I ask every guest to come on to send me is you have kind of given yourself some, some overviews here of a man of faith, a family man. I'm excited to hear about the family entrepreneurial. Correct me if I'm wrong here, serial mentee cereal mentee. Hang tight. We'll get there. Hustler, teacher, slash coach. So, man, I would love to hear a little bit about your story, your faith, your family, and what brought you here to, you guys reside here in McKinney, Texas, right?
[00:01:25] Speaker B: We're actually in Murphy, Texas.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Really?
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow. Okay. Shout out. Murphy. Murphy is basically east Plano. Yeah. But, you know.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah, kind of. Kind of between, like, Lucas Wiley. Am I wrong?
[00:01:38] Speaker B: South of Lucas, west of Wylie. My shop is in Wylie, so I drive the seven minute drive to the shop every day.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: I don't know why I thought you were in McKinney.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: I'm in McKinney a solid two days a week.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: I'll come to our group on Thursday, and I'll just post up the whole day. So I do all my one to one. Yep. On Thursdays in McKinney. Yeah.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: So everyone understands that. What is that group? Cause we could definitely give a shout.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Out to MD and G.
McKinney, downtown networking group.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Yes. The best independent networking group I joined April of 2023. So I'm coming up in almost a full year.
And, man, I've learned so much. My eyes have been opened so much to the power of networking. I knew about it, of course, but didn't really understand the ripple of just connection and synergy and like mindedness. I'm sure you've been with it longer. What, what value have you gained and seen from maybe not necessarily just that group, but other groups that you're a part of.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Man, that's a great question. So I've been networking for just about as long as I've been in business and started with master networks back in 2017. And it was in master networks of Rock wall that I met Savannah Dunn.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Chapter five, done deal, done right.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Done deal, done right. Yeah, there you go. Love the plug. And, yeah, and just the value add from that group and the intentionality, the intentionality that they have in maintaining the integrity. Outstanding. And not a lot of groups are about that life of actually adding value to every single one of the members, protecting the integrity. So, yeah, shout out McKinney downtown network, for sure.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: And if for real, if you are a specialist, not a generalist, and you have a really great niche that you add value in within your work. Like, come check out the McKinney downside networking group. We only have individuals that hold a specific seat within industries. So, like, I hold the personal training.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Seat, you hold the franchise consulting. Okay.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: And then, so every type of seat. So we want specialists to be a part of that so we can really build an amazing network. And we share every week the amount of referrals, face to face, one on one meetings. And then we actually share collectively as a group the revenue that has been shared within the group. And last year, we reached just over a million dollars, which was insane.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: We're way, way ahead of that this year when it comes to tracking. You know, the thing that people don't understand about networking is it's not an immediate return on investment. You're not seeing that ROI immediately. You might have to network for months, if not years, but I've personally had businesses created off of interactions that I've had with other people in that group. And that group specifically. I maintained my membership when I truly didn't even have a seat to sit in because I saw the value of the group and it's been amazing. Yep.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: For sure. I've enjoyed it just where I'm kind of at right now. I've respectfully, like, had to tell myself no to other networking groups or just to just go out more, because I've just focusing out a lot on the plate, as we'll probably discuss a little bit of, but just. I've been so grateful to be a part of that group. But, man, dude. Yeah. So shout out MD and G. Come check it out. Love you guys. That wasn't a part of this, but, man, I'm glad we give it. So you're in, Murphy, you've got a family, beautiful bride and some crazy little kiddos. Tell me about them.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah, so I met my wife in Illinois a little closer. I went to Wheaton College just outside of Chicago. I was a fifth year senior. My wife was a freshman. We met on the track team. Yeah, Rob, I was 1ft out the door and she was barely in there. And, yeah, you know what? We've made it work. And she's amazing. And I give. She caught me in a very special time of my life where I was going down a direction that I had basically gotten punched in the gut. And if I continued to live down this path, I was going to be in some serious trouble. And it was right after that that I met Brooke. And it was almost God's way of giving me grace that I needed in that moment. Like, you know what? I see you low.
You're gonna have to do the work to make this comeback. But I got you. Yeah, I got you. And yeah, so that was 2013 when we met. We now have three beautiful children. My oldest is six, my middle is three. And then my youngest is almost two.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Do they all have your curly, crazy hair?
[00:06:12] Speaker B: They all have their own version of my curly, crazy hair. So I'm mixed. My mom is african american. My dad is white. My wife is also mixed, but her dad is african american and her mom is white. So the opposite. Wow. And so I am very proud to say that I got some second generation, little beautiful mixed babies at the house right now. Yeah, they all have curly, crazy hair. They know they're cute. Yeah, they know.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: And they use that with you.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: God made them cute for a reason, because, golly, they are difficult, but I love them to death.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: And it looks like they got a lot of energy just from, you know, being able to interact with you through social media. Like, they're just. They're all over. How do you keep yourself kind of just in shape, energetic, present to sustain all of that energy, especially with just the other 5000 things you're juggling as a dad in a business.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: No, that's a great question, man. It's all about compartmentalizing your, like, the priorities. I heard something a while back, like, you always have time for the things that are the most important to you. Off top, it's whether or not you're prioritizing them accurately. And so for me, it's I need. I need my time. I need to be able to stay fit. I need to be able to have my quiet time to meditate, to exercise and work out. And I also read something. It was a parenting book or article, you know, you don't necessarily have to give them 24 hours out of the day, but you need to make sure if you only have 60 or 24 minutes out of the day, be 100% in those 24 minutes or 60 minutes. And so if I can strategically think about my week, how can I plug into, add value to my wife, add value to my kids, be present strategically in specific moments where they can look back and say, oh, dad was around, because. And they have the proof of concept over a long enough time horizon. And so I've really had to be good about doing that. You think about the analogy of, you know, if you ran a mile a day, how long does it take you to walk a mile? I mean, 20 minutes to walk a mile. Average person can probably jog a mile in twelve to 15. You might have better stats on this just because you're fresher in the industry. Yeah, I'm getting. I'm getting closer, you know, I'm getting a little faster myself, but if I just do a mile a day, it's 365 miles a year, it compounds on itself. My level of fitness comes up, and it's the same with, same with the family, same with the business, same with anything that you're willing to feed, for better or for worse. So I have to be super intentional with that, you know? Cause I got the wife, the kids, the multiple businesses, and the community that I'm trying to build and be a part of, too. Yeah, so that's.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Yeah, just that intentionality within those compartmentalizations of work, Brooke, kiddos, your personal time, all of that, just being intentional with it, being consistent, it's huge. And then, like you said, over time, it compounds. You look back and we just said before we got onto this episode, just the last time that I was actually interviewed on your podcast. And just what has changed so much since then? And, you know, we could all say we have successes and failures. We learn a lot from both, but it's just how we really interpret those and help those past things add value to our present and allow, hopefully to gain wisdom for the future of the decisions and the things we're doing.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: 100%. So 100% pain leads us to our purpose, man.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Dude, for sure. So I would love to dive into, gosh, the entrepreneurial journey. You have quite the resume, the record, the background. Could you share some of that as a franchise consultant, franchisee?
The difference between those, I mean, probably speaking your wheelhouse now.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Oh, man, I don't even know where to start. I mean, I've always been I've always been a hustler, hustler minded. When I was a kid, I used to get in trouble because I'd go to school and come back with toys.
Mom would, how do you get these toys? But if you remember little fruit roll up wrappers, used to have little coupons on them. You just used to get coupons off the back of cereal boxes.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: What do they call, like, the box stamps or boxes. You know, talk about ones that you could cut.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Box, stop. That's a good. Those. I don't remember what they're called, but, yeah, those, yeah. And I would barter and trade, and I was just, you know, would always do what I had to do.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: That's where the hustle came from.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: In fifth grade, I used to make homemade footballs. I would have brown paper bags. I'd fill them up with sand and rocks, gravel, leaves, duct tape, them little Nerf knockoff. Nerf football, fifth grade, selling them for three to $5. You get one drop, and it's busted over the concrete, and then you gotta make sure there's no money back over the face.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: And it's a busted one to the.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: Face and a busted lip. But those, you could rocket those things. Yeah. So I've always had that in me. I allowed that to get me into some trouble in college. You know, I was going the wrong way. Always a hustler, always saw an opportunity and wanted to take advantage of it, and didn't always have the best mentors, didn't always have the right mindset. I did not always have a vision for where I was going. And now, as a consultant for franchising, but also in business in general, I can speak into the dangers in not having a vision with what you're trying to build and the direction that you're going. As we said earlier, whatever you put effort towards is gonna compound, and it's gonna grow exponentially. And if your vision's not right and mine wasn't, so that goes back to meeting my wife, and grace to God, was able to pivot. Turn around.
My background is in urban education, criminal justice. When I was in college, my favorite book was gang leader for a day, and it was written by a sociologist who was working on his dissertation at the University of Chicago. Infiltrated a gang in the south side of Chicago. I lived on the west side. And what he did and how he was able to infiltrate and learn the business side of gang activity, I was so inspired, and I just. I loved it, and I wanted to be that. So I spent the first two years after graduating from Wheaton College on the west side at a school, pretty rough area, you know, and then initially, eventually moved to south Dallas, where I did the same thing. And it was around that time that my dad worked at Apple Computer for 22 years, was looking into retirement.
Never did anything entrepreneurial that I know of in the last, probably 2030 years. I'm sure he had things when he was younger that he worked on, but, you know, he was living that corporate life, that nine to five had built up a pretty good little nest egg for himself. But he saw the people that he came in with and the people that were around him, and especially the people that came in before him, looked around one day, they're all gone, and he's starting to see change happening that he doesn't like. And for the first time in a long time, the quote unquote security that he was seeing from having a nine to five was starting to evaporate. And so he decided he wanted to take fate into his own hands, and he started looking into franchising. He didn't have a guide. He didn't have anybody kind of showing him the way, but he came upon a couple different concepts, and he's a smart guy. He did a lot of his own research, found mosquito Joe, and they had territory available in Waco, Texas, and a few territories available in DFW. I was living in Carrollton at the time, working in south Dallas, but I was building up my own.
My business was hero athletics, and so teach, train, build. So it was, I would come in and help kids of all ages, specifically high school kids, do personal training. I would do sat act tutoring, and I would do life coaching. That was my hustle at the time. Hero athletics, teach, train, build. And he had saw that created Hero Unlimited, LLC, bought in a mosquito Joe and said, hey, do you want to. You wanna join me in this thing?
[00:14:36] Speaker A: He did that without asking you?
[00:14:38] Speaker B: He did it. He did not ask me about if I want. He was gonna go down this path when he was probably 40% to 60% launched. That's when he brought me in. And just for context, that's cool. I marry Brooke. March 12, 2016.
He flies the two of us to Virginia beach for corporate mosquito juice training. March 13, 2016. And we spend the next week at corporate training, and then we come back and our business is launched. So we're recently married, and now we're business partners, and my dad, business partners with my dad, but working the day to day of the business with my wife in a brand new business, and we had no. My dad put a hundred thousand marriage, brand new marriage. He put $100,000 in a bank account and said, go. What?
[00:15:27] Speaker A: So I knew what I'm doing. I knew your story from when you shared your spotlight at our networking group about you guys getting married and then flying out. But I didn't know all of that behind, behind it. That's wild. How did she feel about that?
[00:15:40] Speaker B: She at the time was.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Until death threw us apart.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Right. Gung ho was motivated, really a little scared, but she knew what she was getting into whenever she married me, because even as I was working at those schools, I always had side hustles. When I initially moved to Dallas, I didn't have the job set up yet. So I took a job in sales at a call center where it was my job to make 200 dials a day. Just on the phone, 200 dials a day. I loved the team, still have friends that were from that chapter of my life, hated that job. It was the typical, like, you dread Sunday because you know, you gotta. I would have dreams of cold calling and then wake up and then go, have to go cold call and was just in a very bad mental place. I left that after seven months, and that's when I did. I did the site management for a kid sports company. I worked for an organization that did sat act tutoring. I coached track and football at Prestonwood Christian Academy, and I worked at a gym. Like all of these hustles that I was doing, which then I spun into. So she knew what she was getting into. So to have something that was stable and set and a blueprint that we could just go down.
Initially, she was excited about it.
That's changed and evolved over the course of our going on year nine in entrepreneurship.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: That's crazy. I'd love to touch more.
I want to pause there for a little bit, so I know there's going to be a lot more to share. I do want to go back to one thing that you said that kind of stuck with me was the hustle, the drive you always had, but it wasn't always steered in the right way. You shared some of your previous experience through school, and whatever those may or may not have been, that maybe weren't the best route, best path to choose. But then you also just shared, I mean, what you get you did through kids. I mean, you're pouring into those young students, being a coach and a mentor, probably maybe seeing your younger self through them a little bit and trying to share a lot of your past with them to choose a better path. 100% you had the fork in the road. You chose to go and be a hero for these younger kids. So how could you add value to, like, share someone that's at a fork or is down a path that they may not? They, maybe one isn't a passion that they truly have, and they're doing the cold calling like you were, or two, they just know it's not going to feed their soul.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Well, long term, yeah, that's a phenomenal question. I think for me, it was coming to terms with, if it is to be, it's up to me. And I either can or I can't reach what I desire, what I truly want for myself.
And it's all based on what I believe and what my self beliefs are. And I had to make a decision to put in the work own up to.
And I talk about this on my podcast. We all have the ability to achieve what we want, or we have the ability to level up with the resources that we have around us. It doesn't matter where we start. Acknowledging that we all start in different places, but if I want to get better, if I want the 1%, every day, I have to take advantage of what I have. And I realized I was in too good of a situation. I had been blessed in too many areas. I had people that I had come up with that there was no difference between me and them.
I just got lucky. You know how many times I almost got arrested, and I just didn't like more than one hand. I won't give you the second, but more than one. Like, there were some times, and I couldn't attest that to anything but the grace of God and the blessings that I did have to my benefit, the education that I had. A lot of stuff that happens in these inner cities with, especially younger kids, is they don't have that guiding force, that guiding direction with me, I chose which path to go down, and it was more of an identity thing for me, being mixed and growing up in a very diverse area. My white friends, I was the black guy. My black friends, I was the white guy that messed with me at twelve. Wow, at 15.
So by the time I'm 22, I'm living, and it's become a habit to make this choice instead of the right one. And I was reading a book recently, God is my CEO.
What is the easiest, wrong decision that you can make in any given trial? What is the easiest wrong decision? And you think about it, it's like, I know I got to talk to this employee, and I gotta be. I gotta confront them and be confrontational and kill them with kindness in this moment. Cause I can't just be a nice. What's the easiest wrong thing to do? Not talk to them and let it go on. And when that compounds over time, you lead yourself in a bad spot. And me at 22, 23 was given a very clear ultimatum, either figure this out or don't, and it's gonna be on you either way. And so for me, after that moment, it was a no brainer that I have the opportunity to add value.
And I'm not right now. I'm always gonna be an influential person. How am I leading people?
And that was what I had to be honest about with myself. And that was super convicting. And there's been. The one area I'll give myself credit is there's been very strong key areas and key moments in my life where I've had these hard ultimatums. And so far, I've chosen all right. And I can see the value of that and how it plays into what I'm trying to build now.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good, dude. That is. That's really good. The easy. You said the easiest wrong decision.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: I think that's how he says it in the book. Yeah. God is my CEO.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Well, I mean, yeah, there's things every day in that sense, like, you know, even just practicality practically for us, like knowing I shouldn't grab the leftover food on my kids plate.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: I don't need to eat that. I don't eat those. Those carbs. Yeah.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: It could be small, innocent decisions like that. But all of those, like you said, go back to what we just discussed, compound over time, where that could be grabbing another drink that I don't need a drink, or staying out another hour that I really don't need to be out, or staying up and watching another episode of a show when really I know I need to go to bed because I want to get good quality sleep so I can be efficient for the duties I need to be upheld.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: To tomorrow, spending that extra 50 minutes with your coworkers after hours when maybe you don't need to, you gotta go home and hang out with those kids.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, man. That is very, very good. I think it adds a different perspective on just being intentional with the things that we really know we wanna do and what we wanna be and where we wanna go. But just like, oh, I'll just get to it tomorrow, or, man, it's all right if I don't do. Right now, the only person that's holding accountable is me. But even just on a deeper level with that, like, just the self, the self respect maybe if that's the right word of, like, man, I want to be the best me for me first and really uphold myself to a standard and respect myself and my decisions. In my mind, if I'm constantly letting myself down and I'm being this negative person in my own head, that's not gonna really probably come out very fruitful either, right?
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Oh, 100%. 100%. And I speak on this, on a lot of the content that I put out specifically within my, like, my context in helping people become entrepreneurs. Just because you have a bad boss does not make it, you know, 100% that you're gonna be a better boss to yourself than your previous boss was. A lot of people become entrepreneurs or they look at franchising because they wanna escape a bad boss. But what they find out is they're very poor bosses to themselves. And it becomes, it feeds into their lack of vision, their lack of discipline. But what you're talking about, their lack of self, like, positive affirmation and self belief and the ability to hold themselves accountable. It's so easy to tell ourselves those lies. Yes. And to tell us, oh, it's not that big video.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: 100%. That's so good. I mean, I know you. You have mosquito Joe's. You guys just go all in there, shout out to pops for just that one.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Shout out pops. Oh, grumps, man. Yeah, shout out grumps.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Tell me a little bit about that journey with Mosquito Joe's. Did you end up acquiring or getting some more franchises and then when you made the switch to then also becoming a franchise consultant? Because again, I shared this in an earlier episode with Jonathan, is that, like, you could have just stayed in your lane, you know, like, you didn't have to add additional value. You don't have to start street wise, your podcasts as well and all these other things. So what led you to continue to elevate and level up in that way?
[00:24:49] Speaker B: I'll say life would be way easier and I would be making more today in the immediate if I would have stayed in my lane 100%. There's a lot of extra obstacles that I am putting myself through, but it's all for the level up. I mean, just to answer it simply, it's all for the level up in mosquito Joe.
You know, I had a college degree when we started. I was working in my field that I was passionate about. And then now here I am. It's 105 degrees outside, and I just got off the phone with a customer who was upset about me. And now I got to go spray another house, and then I got to finish the route and then go respond to emails and then go to the networking group. What am I doing? But there was a turning point in realizing like, oh, wait, no, I am truly building this business. I read the e myth and it was like, okay, technician, manager, true entrepreneur, looks like this, I gotta build a team. And my mindset shifted. And we built the team. We expanded territory. We've sold some territory, and we're looking to mold that business and mold that franchise into something that truly benefits us and our household and our legacy. And I speak on this, too. It's not about the widget, it's how the widget plays into your vision. Right? And so we made that shift in the summer of 22.
My daughter was born and I took about six weeks off. And it was during that time that I was hustling in the day to day. We had a team, we were running and gunning. I was leading the charge, and I was introduced to, during my time off, eos and Rocket fuel traction, Gina Wickman, all that stuff. And learned about the difference between integrator and visionary, and how I'm a visionary sitting in the integrator role, and I'm consistently making the business about me.
I was also learning about franchising at a higher level and becoming a consultant was again all about the level up. Because if I can go from being a single brand, multi unit franchisee to now placing people in franchises, now, that's the extra stage. Like, God put me here for a reason. Let's go. If I have an opportunity, let's go. So there's a lot of research. It took me probably from that moment, I mean, it took me over a year to actually maybe a year and a half to become a franchise consultant, going through different broker networks and figuring out what worked for me while at the same time adding a second brand, and that was, that's been a wild journey. And a kiddo and a third. Yeah. And it's all been wild. And there's a mix of, I can look back, hindsight 2020, I would have ordered things much differently. But as I'm talking to my candidates now, people that are looking for businesses, I can speak into them at a level that I couldn't have if I hadn't walked down this path. And again, I know I'm almost being redundant at this point, but in adding the second brand, I had a very clear goal, but the goal in solving the goal and adding the second brand yes, it could potentially do this, but what is it going to do for me down a longer time horizon?
Am I creating additional problems, or am I putting myself? Am I not seeing the blind spots? Am I adding additional struggles in adding these things? And so, you know, we're building the team, and it's. It's a fight right now every single day. But we have a really solid team that believes in what we're doing. Because when you build a team, it's all about, you gotta have a vision, and you gotta make sure the individuals on your team understand they don't have to, like, fully get it, but they gotta rock with it, they gotta be able to run with it. And so we've been really good at that, and that's helped us during this time. Cause it is a fight right now.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: That's crazy. That's super cool. I know you said maybe if you could go back and orchestrate it a little differently, that might change, but, like, praise God for the way that he's orchestrated it, I think you would probably agree to that. And you've been able to attest and add relatable value to people you're having conversations with as you consult and add coaching and add discernment.
Could you share a little bit more kind of what that process looks like? You know, if I'm coming to you, I'm sure you're probably, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong here, getting people that are almost going through, like, maybe a quote, like, midlife crisis or just like a, I need a change, or like you said, I'm going to leave this job, and I've got this.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Vision, some sort of transition.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: They're probably coming to you with some. Some sort of energy and just, like, excitement. And not to say that you're gonna, like, buzzkill them, but you are gonna offer some sobriety in reality. Could you share a little bit of that?
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Man, now you hit that right on the head. When somebody comes and talks to me, I'm not going to try to talk them into it. I'm not gonna try to talk them out of it. I'm gonna show them the fire that they're about to walk into, and I can speak into the benefits of what's on the other side of that fire. And what happens if you just turn around right now? This is what you can expect in your life, and it'll probably be very similar to what you just came from, because you're going right back to it. If you choose to go down this path, you better be ready. You better buckle up. I got a bunch of resources. Extreme ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Man, get ready. Read that. Then read their second book, dichotomy of leadership. And if you notice, like, I didn't have this background in business, but I'm a student. I'm a student of the game. I'm a teacher. That's the serial mentee. I'm always looking to be mentored and to learn, and it doesn't stop. So I have those resources, not just on paper, in the form of handing somebody a book, but I've lived it. And today, you know, my birthday, March 5, shout out. 34 years old. But I've been in the game for, you know, nine years in franchising. Right. This is season number nine. But I've been doing the hustle thing for a while, and since fifth grade.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Or when you were five, a while.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: Back, it's been a while. So being able to show people, because in franchising, this is a thing that I don't like. It's really the Wild, Wild west. If I pulled at random ten franchisees in our local community, probably six or seven of them are upset with their life, their decision, the brand. A lot of it's, you know, specifically.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: This is the person that has purchased.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: A franchise, somebody that's already purchased a franchise, that is currently a franchisee. Yeah. Thank you. They're the franchisee. They're the franchise business owner. The majority of these guys are not happy, and I don't want that. I don't. I hate. I love this industry. It's helped me become who I am today. I believe in it now. I've also experienced the negatives of it. I've seen it.
We shouldn't have bought what we bought at the time and the scale that we bought it. We would have been so much better sticking into elaine. Right. That's where I come in. I can advise. I can break down what's your mindset? But also, what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What type of team do you want to run? What do you want your day to day to look like? Oh, you want to run a gym because you love fitness. Do you know what it's like to manage trainers? Do you know what it's like to, when somebody calls in? Do you know the hours that actually go into running a gym successfully? The type of marketing, you know, to speak into those things, and not that I have the answers, but I'll direct them.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: I might have a couple of those.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
Help them ask the right questions.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: And it's all based on my experience. Okay.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: So I've got a. I got this picture that kind of just came to my mind, like a picture of almost a pie chart. If I broke it up into three pieces, these pieces might be bigger or smaller based off of where some of the, let's call it blame or lack thereof, could go. So if I got the franchisee, the franchisor, who's, who's. If I'm buying the franchise, it's that brand, that identity, the parent company.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: Yeah. The business that was franchised.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: And then maybe the third piece of that pie is a consultant, or the lack of a consultant. So where would you say, like, that, you know, if it's split into thirds? And really, maybe it's the franchisees 60% fault, because they never knew they could even hire a franchise consultant. And then they just kind of took their franchisor's word for everything he said and then actually realized when he got in, like, wow, this is not what he told me it was going to be like. How would you say the people that are very successful within franchising, how does their pie look? Someone that is struggling, how does their pie look?
[00:33:55] Speaker B: Man, it always. I'll say this because that is. That is a tough question to answer, but I'll say this, it always starts at the top. And that's why I like the book, extreme ownership, because no matter what, you got two thumbs, they come back to yourself. And everybody involved in the situation when it goes bad can acknowledge that there was probably something done wrong, because not everybody is built for franchising.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Not everybody should be a franchise owner. It takes a very specific avatar to be successful. But the problem is, you've got franchisees that don't want to take ownership when it goes bad. They don't want to do the extra work when they're not. When they don't own a brand yet, they don't do the validation. They don't ask the right questions. They get really excited, and they also max out their financial input level, so they use every dollar that they have so they don't have working capital to sustain the launch. That's them. The consultant, man. It does not take but a job title on LinkedIn to say that you're a franchise consultant. There is no true certification. There's no true validation. That's why it's so important that you work with somebody that you know, like and trust.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:35:07] Speaker B: When you decide on a consultant, you know, I work for free. I get paid a commission. If I'm working with you and I point you in the direction of a brand, the brand will pay me a commission. When you spend your money on the franchise fee, the consultant gets a commission of that. So I don't get paid anything from you directly. But the problem is certain brands offer different levels of commissions. Right? So if I don't have my stuff in check and integrity is not important to me, I could very easily spend somebody to, you know, and so that's on the consultant, the parent company.
There's a lot. There's a lot. You got the development reps that if they're not on point and turning people away, they'll bring somebody in, that maybe they got the money, but they're not the right culture fit. I'll say this, there are some brands that do it really well and they turn more people away than they quote unquote, award franchising. That's the term you get awarded. You're not sold a franchise, you're awarded franchise. And when that's not done with integrity and not done intentionally, that's where things go south on the francheur side. Now, do some brands have false, you know, setups and structures? That can definitely happen. But again, you got to make sure that you're doing your validation. Talk to as many franchisees in a system as possible. Look at more than one.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:35] Speaker B: Work with somebody that you can trust and go all into the process. And that's what I, that's how I walk people through it now.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: That's cool. So do you, I mean, also, in a way, maybe create your portfolio of known brands and. Yes. And then are you connecting with them to say, hey, I'm a franchise consultant. Like, I would love to get to know more about your brand. Here's. Do you kind of have a contractual agreement on commission structures? Obviously, they're, they might have the final say.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: So that's a great.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: Make you more polished and kind of, you know, known in the sense of like, if you just have a niche and someone comes, you're like, oh, I don't. I don't do that specific type.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Sure. No, that's a good question. So I work under, and most franchise consultants are going to fall under some sort of a broker network. And there's some pretty well known broker networks across, you know, the country. I'm a part of Franchoice.
Franchoice, man. I picked franchise because they were referred to me as one of the best. And I have not seen anything to counter that belief. The people at FranChoice are awesome. It took me almost eight months to get in. I got denied so many times because I didn't have experience as a consultant. I didn't have experience in development. I was told, go work for neighborly, go work for empower brands, go work for Fran Devco, get experience as a developer, then come over here because that's what most people do. I'm the second youngest consultant by a couple months in franchise. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: How many are there?
[00:38:05] Speaker B: About 80 of us. Sweet. Maybe 90.
Other groups have a couple hundred, couple thousand. But I was just at my first convention a couple months ago and these brands will come in and say 40%, 50% of our lead flow comes from franchise.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Franchise is a legit organization. Look it up.
But franchise has the contracts with the franchise companies to make sure that I never have to worry about if I directed a candidate. That candidate is going to get taken care of because I am with franchise. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Super cool.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: So there's maybe 4000 franchise brands that are out there. We work with the, and there's 300 come in every year. 300 go out every year. It is a definitely a rotating industry. We work with about three to 400 on a rolling basis. And the directors and the people on staff at franchise have told us in training, like, we, we hurt brands if they're not ready. Because once it gets turned on, once the flip gets switched and you have the franchise consultants going out and directing candidates in a direction, your system better be prepared to handle our lead flow. What happens is a franchise brand, and this is where franchisors go wrong. They will sell it out the wazoo, but it's not about sold locations. It's about open locations, happy and profitable franchisees. You'll hear terms like semi absentee. This is a fast selling brand. You know, they got a lot of support. New tech, broken industry sells out across the country.
A year goes by, two years go by. How many of those are actually open? Right. And so those are things that you gotta really look out for.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Wow, that's very interesting. I love that you're a part of that bigger group, a lot of that kind of bigger picture. Maybe the commission, contractual things are kind of assisted with the bigger party of the group you're a part of and also shows just the value to you of wanting to be part of not reinventing the wheel, not saying that you know it all, but being a part of a team that I'm sure you're probably learning from and connecting with, you know, a lot of those other consultants within your game.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: I've had four consultants on my podcast. These are guys that have been in the game for 20 plus years and some of the best. I had Kim Daley on the daily coach. Look her up on YouTube. She is one of the top performing franchise consultants in the country. And she was on my podcast, and I was asked, why do you want, you know, they're going to. To take your thunder? It's like, no, that's not the point. The point of me interviewing them and creating content with them is it's validating for me that they would spend their time with somebody like me. And I am leveling up 100% every single time you think, I'm not listening to this episode as I edit it and cut it up, like, I'm taking notes on this thing and it's absolutely amazing. So Franchoice gave me the opportunity to be the serial mentee that I know myself because I know myself now. And that was a thing, too, in my development. And I speak on know thyself. Assessments are huge. I'm big on that. And they let me build out my own, my own brand streetwise. Okay. A part of, in my pitch to get myself in was, listen, I already have already. I already have a platform that I'm going to be building. I already know what it's going to look like. Yeah, it's not polished. Yeah, it's fresh, but it's going to work. And it was just refining that over the eight to nine months before I finally got the green light to come.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: It's funny. So I was actually going to ask you just kind of, as you pursue next chapters of life, kids getting older, settled into a home, sitting back, doing nothing. I know that's definitely not you, but how do you foresee these next chapters, these next three to 510 years being, do you see yourself really diving deeper into your franchise consultant role? Do you see yourself continuing to be an investor? I don't know if that's right. Word into franchises and kind of. But taking maybe a not as, you know, day to day in, like, how, what does that look like for you?
[00:42:17] Speaker B: That's a good question. And it could change. Let me. Let me just preface, because my wife will watch this, and so it will change. It could change. She's like, matthew, you said on this podcast, I have it time stamped now. The plan for what we're doing now is to add brands through vertical integration. I want to build a team that is super successful at operating different franchise brands. The reason I went with Groovy Hughes, the pain and power wash concept was because it was in home services. And at the time, I truly believed in what the parent company was building. I loved their passion behind Empire Builders, and it just fit. And they had eos kind of involved in their training, so that's why I picked that brand. But if I can have an operating team, it doesn't matter what brand we are operating under, but with the franchise system, if my team is, if I've got my integrator, if I've got. If you think about the accountability chart in EOS, if I have every seat filled, and then for my operations, brand managers, for every single brand that I run, or regional directors, whatever you want to title it, that's where the business side is going. I think when I realized that I am the visionary, I tested pretty good. If you're familiar with EOS, they have the crystallizer assessment and it tells you, are you a visionary or integrator or neither? Or are you both? Which is super rare. I tested like 91 as visionary and like 78 as integrator. So I'm okay. If you can do over a 70, you can technically fill the role. I could be a good integrator for you if you need it. If you had a good vision and I could hop on and run through a wall for you, I could integrate for you. You wouldn't want me because we're also visionaries and so it would have to be like pure integrator. But, yeah, as soon as I identified as the visionary, it was all right. How do I replace myself and build the most amazing team possible? The dream is, from my day to day, to be in streetwise and everything that is streetwise. The brand of streetwise, which right now the big push is franchise consulting. I love it. I love it. I love the idea of it. I love that I can add my. I feel like I laugh about this. I feel like I'm the. What's the Sean Evans? The hot wings guy, okay? I'm like a mix of Sean Evans, post Malone, and there's a girl named Bobbie, maybe voice edit. So I say her name, right. That those three avatars is like what I'm doing to what I'm doing to franchising and what I'm doing with my content. And I love it. I think eventually it could spin to a much bigger media platform. It could spin to trainings. Who knows? But that's where a lot of what I. I'm not the best integrator. I'm not the best manager. I could do it. I've done it. I've been doing it for years. But if I'm going to truly build my vision, I need people who are better than me at those things so we can actually build it to be bigger than me, and that's everything.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: So to make sure I got this right. Cause a vision that I feel like God gave me about a year ago was kind of like a root system of, I want to build a brand, but I want to build brands within that brand. And that's roles, regionals, that could all be a similar analogy for you. So as a street, street wise franchising is gonna have. Is gonna have franchises. As the years continue to grow and have directors within those franchises, I've got.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: I mean, to be specific, I have streetwise property heroes that will be over any home service brand. I have streetwise holdings that's over the top of that. I have a couple other llcs that we could strategically put brands in depending on what they are. My wife and I have a really big passion, mainly my wife, but I am fully behind it because we lost our daughter in 2019. My wife was 38 weeks pregnant, lost her. Still don't really know how or why that happened. And it put us in a dark place. But through that process, my wife has completely revolutionized and changed the way that she eats, the way that she lives, and her mindset on the value that she can add. I said this early. Pain leads us to our passion. Pain leads us to our purpose.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: Pain leads us to our purpose. Passion is like what gets us riled up, like what lights the fire inside of us. Purpose is what comes out of that. And pain leads us to purpose. And so through that, my wife has some passion, ideas and things that she wants to build and walk down that path. So we have a couple other locs.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: That can facilitate that. Yeah. And making sure that those obviously in line with the purpose.
[00:47:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's got to be in line with the purpose.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: Super cool. Well, man, that's, that's exciting. I'm excited to just continue to be an audience to see it and see you continue to grow.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: We're either going to build it huge or burn all the way out, man. But trying to fight every single day, for sure.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: No plan b, only plan a. Yeah.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: And I love how you're continuing to grow. I mean, it just goes back to what you said, that the teacher versus the coach or the student and the teacher, you should. And you are a walking representation of being both. I mean, you are have to be in the battlefield, learning, running franchise and starting new franchises, not just being comfortable with ones that you already know and even ones that are in completely different fields, which is also a testament. And then you're also taking a lot of that value and wisdom and trials, tribulations, successes, and then adding so much value for up and coming franchisers. Franchisees.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: Both. But, yes, I work more directly with the franchisees now. But, yeah, you're right. Yeah.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: And helping consult that process for them. And again, adding a lot of sobriety and reality to just what that process looks like, what walking through the fire looks like. And. And that's just. That's super cool. I know you briefly touched on a little bit of the cereal. Minty.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: Can you share a little bit more on that?
[00:48:25] Speaker B: So, I mean, it is what it. You know, what it sounds like. You know, you've got mentees, you've got mentors. I want to be a serial mentee. And again, the term serial, you know, serial entrepreneur, like, I'm always adding, buying, selling businesses. I want to always be leveraging the people and the resources that I have around me to level up the whole concept of streetwise is I'm going to use what I got in this room right here. How do I play it to my advantage? Well, you know, I've also read.
I'm gonna forget the name of the title now, but a lot of books about the importance of giving and being somebody who adds value to others. So that right there just puts a. Raises the elevation of the room that I'm in. Right. How can I gain value in this room? And how can I get into better rooms? And then when I'm in the better rooms, do I open the door and bring more people with me? Or how can I gain influence in this room with this platform? And that's what being a serial mentee is, is all about to me, man. How can I always learn? How can I always give? I mean, it's a biblical principle of having, you know, Barnabas, Paul, Timothy. Right. Like being the Paul in the middle where I'm being mentored to, but I'm turning around and giving that value to somebody else. One of the things I learned as a teacher is you don't truly know a subject until you can teach it to somebody else. I wish I knew that as a student. I would have been a better student. Yeah.
[00:49:56] Speaker A: I wrote down, I loved kind of what you said and added a little bit to it. Gain value by giving value.
[00:50:01] Speaker B: Yeah. The go giver. That's the name of the book.
[00:50:04] Speaker A: The go giver.
[00:50:05] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:50:05] Speaker A: There you go. Well, man, I really like the cereal mentee and just, you know, that can be connoted in so many different ways. But again, then just going back to your story and kind of your fork in the road of choosing, you know, just better for yourself and better for your future family and your kids. I mean, it's just. It's super cool. If you could go back to that young Matthew, what are like. And that's just in that hustle, that's in the grind that's kind of making some interesting decisions. What would you tell them?
[00:50:35] Speaker B: Man, I would ask a lot of questions. I think, like, where are you going?
What do you think is going to happen if you do that? Or what do you think could happen if you stop doing that and put that same amount of time over here? Why are you so mad?
Why does it matter what they think or how you're presenting yourself to them? Why?
I think you can always tell the caliber of somebody's potential by the level of questions that they ask. Right. And there's this whole thing of, like, I mean, I'm a big, like, marvel anime fan, this whole time travel thing, and, you know, the butterfly effect. And I don't know if I would want to give too much to young Matthew, but I think if I could have directed his vision a little bit better. I had every opportunity in the world, but I had no vision.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: The fact that I'm 34 years old right now, I used to joke about not knowing if I'd make it past 33. Even when I turned 33, it was like, man, this is my Jesus year. Like, I'm going all in this year. Let's go do it big. WWJD.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: That's hilarious.
[00:51:51] Speaker B: And it's just crazy. Like, I truly didn't have a vision at 1826 of what life would look like at 45.
And because I didn't, it's such an uphill battle at 34, that, man, I could have everything. Hockey sticks. I could have been so much higher on the hockey stick if I would have started this earlier. So I couldn't have told 22 year old Matthew nothing. 22 year old Matthew needed to get punched in the gut. Needed it.
[00:52:22] Speaker A: Dang.
[00:52:22] Speaker B: Needed it. I wouldn't have met my family, would've met my wife, wouldn't have the beautiful kids that I have now if that didn't happen. So do I want it to change? Nah. But maybe I could have put the accelerator on a little bit faster. Maybe I couldn't have lingered as long as I did. I could have chosen. Just went with it. Yeah, I might have, like, six kids, if I did that, those. I don't know.
[00:52:42] Speaker A: Yeah, who knows, man? Dude, I think for us, I think we align in our beliefs, and I think that's. That's honestly just like the story of the gospel.
And it's. It's a. It's a choice that we have to make to want to have the relationship, and that goes also into just our day to day with the decisions that we choose to do. And you, you know, know, God wants us to align with him, of course, but, like, he's also going to let us fail and let us take some punches to realize how much we need his path rather than ours. And, yeah, we can. We can look back and, yeah, even as I get older, it's. I try to not use the word regret as much as just, you know, lesson or just a milestone or, like, man, praise God, it wasn't worse, you know, where. Where there may not be a Michael or a Matthew here, because I'm sure there's prior situations we could share even more in depth on that. But, man, it's.
It's very interesting just to see how chapters and leveling and just life decisions get us to where we are now. And even as you shared what 45 might look like, like, I think you and I could probably both create maybe a little bit more of a clear idea of what that might be, but it's. It's still so unknown. I mean, think of what has happened over the past five years of you adding three little minions to your crew and how much that's rocked your world in so many amazing ways. Like, what's five or ten more gonna look like with those little monsters? And same for me. And so super excited for it. Also nervous, but just trusting and just the passion and the purposes that we have, pursuing those passions with the purpose and putting in the work and just believing that, like, God's gonna do the rest.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: Amen, brother.
[00:54:32] Speaker A: So, man, I wanna wrap this up, and I know we've gone through a lot and some questions that we went over. One last thing I wanted to ask you is, based off of who you are, what you've become, and where you're going, what are a few key points or takeaways that you feel could add value to the listeners? I know, hopefully they got a lot of out of this already, but, yeah.
[00:54:54] Speaker B: You have what you need, where you are right now, you already got it. You just got to take advantage of it. You got it. Maybe you don't see it. You got to look close. Mouths don't get fed. So as soon as you see it and acknowledge it, take it and do not wait. Do not give yourself any excuse. Second, I'll say you're either getting better or you're getting worse. So as soon as you see it, if you don't take the step, you need to acknowledge that you're choosing to miss out exponentially on the potential that you have and what's accessible to you. And lastly, and seek just to add. Seek to add value to others because you truly get so much more when you can give. And that's a zig zig concept. That's a biblical concept. Successful speakers speak on that all the time. If you can give more, seek to give. Even as practically as going to networking groups, stop selling. When you go to networking groups, look to add value to folks, and, man, it's gonna pay off. It's gonna pay off. You're one relationship away, man.
[00:56:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:01] Speaker B: Just one relationship away from changing the game. Yeah, changing the game.
[00:56:05] Speaker A: That's so good.
[00:56:06] Speaker B: If you could write that down, man. Write that. Write that down.
[00:56:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Like you said, I'm gonna listen back to this and just relisten to this whole thing so I can listen to this.
[00:56:14] Speaker B: It's fun being on this side, man. Yeah, you did a good, good job. This job was fun. I appreciate this.
[00:56:19] Speaker A: Seriously, thank you for coming on to wrap up here. Where can. Where can people find you, man?
[00:56:24] Speaker B: We got the streetwise podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, all the. All the places. Hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm very intentional on LinkedIn with putting out Matthew McReynolds content every day. Just trying to, again, add value and just be real. There's so much fake imposturing out there, man. I'm gonna talk about my failures way more than I'm gonna talk about my success. You'll see my success. Trust me, you'll see it. But I'm gonna talk about and be real about the failures and what it took to get there. So, yeah, holler.
[00:56:56] Speaker A: Awesome. That's great, dude. Well, hey, check him out on LinkedIn. Check him out on the Streetwise podcast. See him on streetwise franchising. Continue to see his growth as he consults. I'm excited to watch the journey, see you grow, see your family grow. Y'all look out for this. Episode number four coming out soon. Thank you guys for joining us on the proper form podcast.
[00:57:15] Speaker B: Let's go.
