Building Wealth Through Authentic Leadership (w/ Roger Martin)

Roger Martin's journey from a 25-year career in the pharmaceutical industry to becoming the CEO of Rockbox Fitness is nothing short of inspiring. In our latest episode, Roger shares his motivations for leaving corporate America to pursue entrepreneurship, focusing on creating generational wealth and owning his destiny. Explore the strategic expansion of Rockbox Fitness, a rapidly growing national franchise, and the introduction of Beam Light Sauna, a wellness franchise offering private infrared sauna suites. Roger's story is a testament to the power of balancing authenticity with strategic business growth.

Discover the intricacies of franchising with insights from Roger, who successfully navigated the complexities of expanding a business model. Learn about the critical aspects of franchise development, from competitive royalty rates and regulatory compliance to the importance of detailed standard operating procedures. With personal anecdotes and experiences, Roger reveals how leveraging external expertise and understanding key business functions can drive growth and secure a successful exit strategy. His practical advice is invaluable for aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned business leaders alike.

Leadership challenges and the importance of effective partnerships are at the heart of this episode. Roger discusses how diverse skill sets and networks can enhance business collaborations, while self-reliance and strategic hiring can be more rewarding than sharing equity. He also touches on the significance of mental health initiatives, drawing from his journey and personal projects. Join us as we express our appreciation for Roger's insights, leaving you motivated by his winning mindset and commitment to continuous growth.

Roger's book:
"AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO BUSINESS: SECRETS FROM AN ENTREPRENEUR'S PLAYBOOK"

CONNECT WITH ROGER!
Thrive More with Roger Martin (Podcast)
instagram.com/realrogermartin
thrivemorebrands.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 Balancing Authenticity and Business Strategy
• 8:44 Strategic Steps in Franchising Expansion
• 15:30 Business Exit Strategies and Learning
• 25:40 Unreasonable Hospitality
• 35:49 Navigating Leadership Challenges and Mistakes
• 41:33 Navigating Partnerships in Business
• 46:47 Brotherly Appreciation and Well Wishes

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:28

This is Wealthy AF your ultimate guide to understand what it truly means to be Wealthy AF. Today's guest is Roger Martin, and Roger has led teams as large as 500 people yes, I said 500. And he has mastered the art of communication that actually gets results. Throughout his career, he's gone deep into the science of human behavior, persuasion and influence. He's trained thousands to communicate more effectively, with purpose, helping them inspire others and drive change. He's also the host of Thrive More with Roger Martin podcast and has recently launched his book, An Insider Guide to Business Secrets from an Entrepreneur's Playbook. And lastly, he's a CEO of Rockbox Fitness, which him and I were actually laughing about this off air a little bit, as he's actually in the field getting his scars. Roger, welcome to the podcast. Really appreciate you being here, brother.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Oh, my gosh, my pleasure man. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:26

So today's topic we're going to be talking about balancing authenticity and business strategy. So why don't we start with you telling us a little bit about yourself? I know you run, you're the CEO of this national franchise, the Rockbox Fitness. Tell us a little bit about that and how you got started in that field. Sure, roger.

Speaker 2: 1:46

Yeah, so really, in the abbreviated version I spent the first 25 years of my career in the pharmaceutical industry. I worked for four or five different companies over that 25-year span. I started as a sales rep, continued to work my way up to manager, director, vp, president, and then ended up in a chief operating officer role. I was the COO of a company when I finally decided to exit corporate America, and that was not an easy decision. But after 25 years and moving my family eight times in those literally eight times in 14 years and then we finally settled in the Charlotte area, north Carolina I had just decided that I had had enough of building wealth for other people and I had done well for myself and financially was very comfortable. But, um, but it's another thing. When you're building, you know you're, you're making millions or tens of billions of dollars for, uh, another, you know a third party, if you will, or your employer, versus doing it for yourself. So in 2016, I, you know, I finished impeccably. I made sure there was a succession plan. I made myself available to my employer at the time, after I left, to help with anything that they needed. But I left. I was the guy. I was very fortunate. I had never been unemployed a day in my life. I'm very grateful for that. I feel I also earned that by contributing extraordinary value to my employers value to my employers. But on a Friday I finished my 25 year career in pharma and on Monday I woke up with no salary, you know, and I had a multi, multi, six figure salary no salary, no benefits, no health insurance. No, you know nothing. No 401k, no stock options. It was all gone and self chosen. But I just realized I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny and I wanted to really start creating generational wealth, and the best way to do that is to own your own businesses business or businesses in my case and in 2016, 17, it was really early 17, made that decision and then I ended up finding a business partner who had two boxing for fitness studios, so nobody gets punched, we only hit bags, not each other. But it's boxing and kickboxing plus functional strength training, meaning you're pushing, pulling, building lean muscles, so you burn calories boxing and then you kickboxing and then you build lean muscle. In place of that Very exciting workout Color changing, color, adaptive lighting it feels like a nightclub when you're in there. We renamed the company, renamed the brand Rockbox Fitness. I built the first flagship location in 2017. We ended up franchising in 2018.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Franchising sounds like this road paid with gold for the franchisor. I can tell you it's not. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and just because of all the regulations to ensure that your systems are set up and your franchise disclosure document is correct in accordance with the regulations, and so I invested heavily into that. He brought his expertise. I put in the capital. We both put in a whole lot of hard work and later we brought in a third partner who had a lot of franchising expertise as well. But we have built that company. I have since bought my two partners out, so I'm the sole owner of Rockbox Fitness, the franchise. I've owned a couple of locations myself, ended up selling those to multi-unit owners, but now I am the sole owner of that, the ceo of rockbox fitness, which has 55 locations nationwide, all franchised. Wow, amazing.

Speaker 2: 5:18

And then we yeah, then we started a second brand in 2021 called beam light sauna um, b with or beam with two e's b, e, m. Beam light sauna, um. And that business is a concept that is around individual private infrared sauna suites that people can come in and do their sauna session privately. It's infrared, so it's not as hot as a traditional sauna. It's actually more effective. It's seven times more detoxifying. We also feature rooms with red light therapy. We have a new modality called a viridescent, which is a green light therapy that helps with weight loss, which is a green light therapy that helps with weight loss. And so that we now have we started franchising.

Speaker 2: 5:54

I built a flagship location of that. My own money, no corporate money Built a brick and mortar location in 2022, early 22. Still own that location, by the way, and we've since franchised. We've awarded 300 licenses. We have 26 open. We have another 20 opening between now and the end of the year and then by the end of next year, it'll be well over a hundred units that'll be storefronts that'll be open across the nation. So got that another. And I have an outbound sales company I'm the CEO of that does pre-launch sales for recurring revenue membership models. So I think you know beam or rock box massage concepts, self-care concepts, you know those kind of things, um, and then then a few other ventures as well, but those those that's my main bailiwick. That was a mouthful, but that's kind of me in a nutshell.

Speaker 1: 6:43

So, roger, how does a franchise owner make?

Speaker 2: 6:48

money. Yep. So like any business, right um? Their revenue is less expenses, leaves money at the at the end of the day, so it's not too different. But a franchisee. So I'll tell you about a franchisor versus franchisee. I'm a franchisor, meaning I own the brand, the operating model, the trademark, that that's what I meant to ask.

Speaker 1: 7:09

Okay, guy like yep, yep, how's that I got?

Speaker 2: 7:11

one. We um, we make, uh, some money when we award a license, meaning we sell a license to operate our business model with our trademarks, with our proprietary approach, our proprietary tech stack, all of that, um, but really the the value of a franchisor is created in the royalty stream that you earn monthly from gross sales of all your franchise fees. So, to make it very simple, if, if the network does two million dollars of gross sales network wide, we would earn seven percent of that as a royalty, or $140,000 for that month. In addition to we sell the boxing gloves to the franchisees that they're allowed to resell and the boxing, the hand wraps that keep people's wrists safe, apparel. I have a nutrition line called Leverage Nutrition that is an independent company but it's sold exclusively through rock boxes.

Speaker 2: 8:11

So there's other ways that we're able to monetize the model. But most importantly, we want to ensure that the franchisee is profitable, making money and growing, because then we continue to earn 7% of that as a royalty to help them grow and there's a ton of support that we offer and we're out in the field with them. I go out in the field and work with the franchisees and help train their new people and all that, but it's really that. The summary is we earn a royalty on all gross sales, and so the better we can have our franchisees perform, the better we perform. Got it.

Speaker 1: 8:46

How did you create your model right? So did you bring someone from the outside? So if someone's listening and entrepreneurs listening and saying, hey, I want to, I was thinking about franchising my business Do you actually bring someone from the outside, roger, to come and do your create your model for you? Like you said, 7%, or are you modeling a Subways, a McDonald's, or are you just kind of using those guys models and then just kind of copy and pasting it? How did you do it?

Speaker 2: 9:18

yeah, that's a good question, um. So there is a standard approach and royalty rates are usually between six and nine percent um in. In our industry, around seven is pretty normal, pretty normal. So you want to be competitive because there's different options for franchisees that are looking or prospects that are looking to become franchisees. So you want to be competitive in that range. But yes, to answer your question, we hired an outside consultant paid a fair bit of money for that to tell us how to explain how to operationalize a location into becoming something that can be franchised nationwide. Because you have to have your own location to show proof of concept, which we did. And then you have to have standard operating procedures and an operations manual. It's required, it's regulation required. You have an operations manual so that a franchisee can follow it. I do a, then b, then c, then b, you know um. So all of that has to be built out and we had somebody help us build all that out, um. And then you have to go out and figure out how to sell these franchises and get in front of these prospects, because it's hyper competitive, like any industry where you can make money, there's 100 people lined up behind you to steal your lunch money. So we have.

Speaker 2: 10:34

We ended up bringing in this third partner that was for a minority share at first. That was an expert at franchising. He had built another 240 units franchise and had a very successful exit with that and he came in as an equity holder but also really as a senior advisor to us. And then we've paid a lot of money to lawyers on helping to ensure that our documents are appropriate, that our compliance is appropriate, and then I paid additional honey like tens and tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars to consultants on our actual business in the fitness industry. So there's the franchising expenses and making sure that that is all together and tight and compliant. There's the go-to-market how do you go? Find prospects in what's called FranDev franchise development, which is a fancy term for sales. And then there's the okay, your actual business and the vertical. You're in the industry.

Speaker 2: 11:33

And so I am a guy that will always pay money to shorten my learning curve, to get there faster. What I don't like to do is outsource a core competency. So a lesson for your listeners if you want to get wealthy, af, don't outsource something that is core to your business. So digital advertising digital advertising and finding members for our franchisees. Finding prospective members for our franchisees is core to our business. So I paid a consultant to teach me not to do it for me, to teach me how to run traffic really effectively on on facebook, on instagram, on google, um, and now on youtube, um, and and did that endless hours. I have my 10 000 hours of practice and now I've built two agencies. One is an internal agency in rockbox, another is a separate internal agency in in beam, white sonic, because they're two separate companies even though they're in our same 11,000 square foot headquarters here, because that is core to our business.

Speaker 2: 12:39

Now, something that you're only going to do one time yeah, outsource that. Just pay somebody to do it for you, because why learn it if you're going to do it one time? But if it's an ongoing process, you want to ensure that you create that core competency in your organization. I believe the leaders should know just enough to be dangerous around any of those core competencies so that they can look over the shoulder of their team and just double check and make sure it's being done at the most efficient level. If you don't understand how to do it, you hire somebody to come in and do it for you, but you really don't understand the nuts and bolts of it. How do you know if you're getting the best optimal results? You can't.

Speaker 2: 13:16

But if you do understand whatever that given discipline is, if you really know it, you don't have to be the absolute expert. Hopefully your team surpasses your level of expertise and continues to grow and can teach you things. But you really need to have a command over so many different aspects of your business if you want to become wealthy, because then you can trust but verify. Right, and we want to trust, but we want to verify. And uh, and that's so to answer your question again, long-winded answer.

Speaker 2: 13:48

But I've paid a lot of consultants that are, I found, the best in whatever given aspect. It is to not just do it for me but to train me or teach me or my team on how to do it, so that we have the capability and the expertise after that. But don't, I would tell people, unless you're just completely bootstrapped, don't. Don't waste a lot of time, because you're going to waste the money anyway. Don't waste a lot of time trying to figure something out that you know you could go hire somebody to teach you how to do. Spend the money, spend the money, get the expertise, and now you're an expert and your business will grow so much faster.

Speaker 1: 14:27

That's such wise, really, really, really wise advice, Really wise counsel on that. So someone and I know we've kind of veered off into this franchising thing, but I really like the topic.

Speaker 1: 14:41

Someone is looking to start a franchise or franchise their business. Do you think, roger, do you recommend should they be franchising? Because you said something in this conversation. You said you hired, you had to go get your own. You have to have your own location. So if I'm starting a business and I have my location let's say a gym I'll just use that for this example Should I be thinking about it from the beginning? So should that person be saying I'm going to get, I'm going to, I'm going to, my goal is to franchise this. So I'm going to hire someone right from Jump Street, right from the beginning, as I start the business? Or should they do that later on, a year, two or three down, once they're in?

Speaker 2: 15:27

Man, great question and this I could answer this. Even that'll serve more of your audience if they're not thinking about franchising, everyone should be at some point thinking about an exit, even if it's 30 years from now. Even if your exit is giving your business to your kids, it's still an exit. Even if it's 30 years from now, even if your exit is giving your business to your kids, it's still an exit, because somebody new has to take it over. So the real advice is, if you're starting a business, documents and create SOPs and an operations manual that a six-year-old could follow a six-year-old.

Speaker 2: 16:01

So many entrepreneurs I mean, I'm guilty as hell about this have so much information in their head and they have tribal knowledge and then their team grows and has tribal knowledge, but there's nothing that is systematized down in the procedure, down to you know, turn on the computer type in in your password, open this app, because you need that. Because then when? Two things if you want to franchise now you already have your operations manual built, and after you have a year to two to three years of proof of concept and I would always argue for any kind of franchise concept, whether it's a service business or brick and mortar or whatever it is you need at least two locations or two different um, you know more business, uh thing. Because just because you did it once doesn't mean you can repeat it, and franchising is about repeatability. So we've always opened like rockbox we had three locations before we franchised, and beam white sauna, we had two locations, uh, before we franchised. But regardless whether you're in a franchise or you, just at some point you want to exit, guys, let's.

Speaker 2: 17:06

Let's be honest you know you create wealth. You build some wealth along the way. You create generational wealth at an exit, that's. That's whenever you hear these people that are, you know, that are worth 50, 100, 200 million dollars. They didn't earn that over a lifetime. That was a significant event. They may have been worth a couple million dollars, but it was a significant event where they exited the business, they sold the business or they merged and they got options at another company and those options vested and then they could sell those later. But it's about exit.

Speaker 2: 17:38

And if you don't have a tight operating system, if you don't have written procedures, if you don't have something that a six-year-old could come into your business and kind of figure out okay, this is how this thing runs you don't really have something to sell. Because when you walk out the front door, if it's the last day you're there, all that knowledge walks out the front door with you and people aren't going to be willing to pay a lot for that. And so I would just say if you're starting a business, just know there's always going to be an exit at the end. You want that, even if it's 30 years from now. Start planning it from day one.

Speaker 2: 18:12

If you decide to franchise, you're great. If you decide to sell it, you're great. If you decide to give it to somebody that you love or care about, or bring a partner in it's already built, or bring a partner in it's already built, and too often, 99% of the time, none of that exists. And then they need it and they start having to scramble and put it all together and things have been lost in translation and some of the great knowledge has already walked out the door. So yeah, early on, great question, because it has nothing to do with franchising. It has everything to do with build a business that has value beyond you Strategy.

Speaker 1: 18:45

Yeah, strategy Question for you where do you learn all of this stuff? Right? So you are a corporate guy, you was a corporate guy for many years and here you are, man speaking like a true entrepreneur. Now, granted, you was an executive as well, so I think you should. I don't know, I'm not a corporate guy. I've never, never, really been in corporate. I've been entrepreneur for 25 plus years now. Um, but how, where did you learn this? Right, did, did. Did you pick this up along the way in corporate America? I'm not sure if they teach this stuff to you or it was just. You're just a really smart guy. That's like hey, I just learned all this stuff. Where, where do you, where do you learn all this stuff? I?

Speaker 2: 19:22

just learned all this stuff. Where do you? What do you learn all this stuff? Yeah, um, so you know I'll share with the audience. You know I have my undergraduate in marketing and then I went to work uh, for in a pharma company and then, about six years after I'd started working, I went back in the evenings to get my MBA. I will tell you that an MBA is great and it will teach you how to run a Fortune 500 company. What it doesn't teach you a damn thing about is how to start a business, scale a business, hire people, performance manage.

Speaker 2: 19:53

Formal education is missing so much. One of my kids are grown now because I'm getting older. Thus the gray hair. My kids are grown now. And one went to Chapel Thus the gray hair, my kids are grown now. One went to Chapel Hill UNC it's like an Ivy League public school. She got her four-year degree. She got a full ride, super smart and crushed it. She went and got a job at a CPG company a German CPG company and is doing well.

Speaker 2: 20:21

My son is like Dad I don't want to go to college. College isn't for me. I have no desire to go into business. I don't have any desire to be an engineer. I want to be a musician. I want to be a music producer. You know it's all done on the computer now, but I want to be a music producer, which means I need to go to this music production school. That's a year long program out in Los Angeles. Then I'm going to stay in Los Angeles, then I'm going to stay in Los Angeles, I'm going to chase the dream, and so that was a better path for him and I share that. Because and I share that specifically is there's nothing wrong with formal education.

Speaker 2: 20:58

I certainly got some education around running a bigger company. I learned a lot about leader. I learned a ton about leadership in corporate America and I was given a lot of opportunities to hone that skill Persuasion and influence human psychology. I started studying that extensively because I was managing large sales forces. I was as large as 500. At one point I had a responsibility for one of the divisions I managed was like $400 million, so I needed to level up my game. But your real question is how did I learn this? I learned this in the second half of the time I've been on this planet by doing self-study reading 40 to 50, sometimes as many as 60, sometimes 70. I think one year was 70 books and again you can read all the books you want, but then it was changing behavior based on that book. Okay, I'm going to take two things out of this book and I'm actually going to change the way I go about business.

Speaker 2: 21:53

So many people read a book. They feel proud of themselves. They put it down like, all right, I read a book, don't even bother if you're not going to change your behavior. So I've read a ridiculous amount of books.

Speaker 2: 22:04

I love business biographies. I cannot recommend that enough to your listeners. A business biography is an exciting story. If it's written well, it's a cool story. It's a whole hero's journey with a thousand business lessons in there for you to take. What's your favorite business biography? Give us a recommendation. I would tell you that I think it's underrated.

Speaker 2: 22:25

Is michael dell of dell computers his business biography I learned so much from. There's another one called ah. Is it the amazon way? No, it's no. It's not the amazon, it's no. It came out. I'll tell you this. It was published in 2020 and it is on amazon. It's it's not a biography of jeff bezos, uh, but it 2020 and it is on Amazon. It's not a biography of Jeff Bezos, but it is basically a biography of Amazon and Jeff Bezos. It took it from the time of 2012 to 2020. That was an MBA itself. I'm sorry, I can't. What's the name of it? Amazon, it's about Amazon and it was published in 2020. I should know it, but I'll email it to you after this and that way you can put it on the show notes.

Speaker 1: 23:16

We'll look it up as well for the listeners. We'll have it in the show notes. My team will find it and we'll put it on the show notes. What have been your two biggest? You said you read. I love that strategy. By the way, I'm running with that one, roger for sure I do something a little not exactly like that, but similar. I take a lot of notes just so that I retain it when I read a book. I like to do a lot of audio books. But what have been your two biggest? You said you take two things out of every book. Give us two things that have impacted, two takeaways that you've taken away from any book it could be mixed books that have impacted your business the most.

Speaker 2: 25:18

Yeah, and from what books did they come from? Yep, um, yeah, you know, a lot of times it's recency. Right, like we we are, it's always primacy and recency. What did we read a long time ago? What do we most recently read? And you forget some of the lessons you've learned along the way and you've applied those lessons. So I'm going to be guilty of a little bit of recency here, just because it's fresh in my mind. But, um, two things.

Speaker 2: 25:41

One I'll take from michael dell's book is he was able to infinitely scale, infinitely as fast as the company could grow. He could grow and, as you know, usually cash constraints are what kill you and you can only grow as fast as the cash coming in. And it's cash flow that kills a business, not many other things that people think it is. And a lot of times cash flow is killed because of inventory. You have to buy inventory so far in advance before you can then sell it, and so you've got a 120-day or 180-day carrying period and as your business scales, that 180 days of inventory grows to such an enormous amount that you can't fund the inventory. And try to go get loans or bring in or sell equity or whatever. But it's all dilutive in an aspect Even if you get loans, you're going to be paying interest on that, and then now somebody has a claim against your business if you miss one of those payments.

Speaker 2: 26:34

The way he engineered his business was so brilliant and he went back when he saw he was growing too fast and renegotiated his contracts with his suppliers chip makers, keyboard suppliers, lcd screens, all that stuff with his suppliers, chip makers, keyboard suppliers, lcd screens, all that stuff with his laptops so that he would collect the cash from the consumer or the business if a business was buying it whatever. He would collect the $2,000 for the laptop and then he would get the parts that were on terms and be able to build that laptop and ship it before he ever had to even pay for the parts, which means he got the cash, made the product and shipped it and then later paid for the parts. He had to pay for the labor, of course, but the parts later, which means that he was always getting more cash than his inventory needs required, because he could always pay for that on terms and the cash had already come in. In other words, you could scale infinitely. There's no cash constraint in that business model and not every business model can follow that, but there's lessons from that. There's lessons to controlling your days of sales outstanding so that your AR is as low as possible and your AP is as large as possible, so that you always have a positive cash delta.

Speaker 2: 28:00

What's that now? Thank you, that's right. Yeah, yeah, um, and, and michael just thought.

Speaker 1: 28:04

michael dildas writes about just so many other business approach and business strategy negotiation, customer service.

Speaker 2: 28:19

And I just read um. You know there's a show on hulu now my wife loves it called the bear. It's about a guy running a restaurant, but it was really based on Will Gudara's story. He's the guy who ended up taking over 11 Madison Madison Avenue, 11 Madison Park I forgot the name of the restaurant, but it became the number one restaurant in the world. Think about all the hundreds of thousands of restaurants in the world. It became the number one restaurant in the world. He did that through what's called unreasonable hospitality and the name of his book is called unreasonable hospitality. And if you're an entrepreneur listening to this podcast right now, go on Amazon, search for that book and buy that book and you will not regret it. It's it's great storytelling. But the attention, the detail that he puts into customer service is why they became the best restaurant in the world.

Speaker 2: 29:12

And I now, in my, my beam light sauna studio that I own, every night I get a report, an email report, from my general manager or the last person who closes out the shift with all of the day's activity. You know how many outbounds we nurture, calls, texts that they send, how many uh new prospects did we book? How many prospects actually came in that day? How many of those prospects did we sell and what did we sell them? And then, at the very bottom is how did we display? What evidence did we show of unreasonable hospitality? And it will be things like a woman lost her parking ticket because we validated the free parking thing. So we gave her $12 cash to pay for her parking and she was far away. She's like why, it's not your fault. We're like we know that doesn't matter, we want you to have a great day and a great night. And, by the way, this woman had already spent $1,200 on her business. So $12, what is that? 0.1% or 1%, I guess percent, I guess. So it, you know it. It was a very small gesture on our part but a huge, you know, impact on her.

Speaker 2: 30:14

Um, we will, you know, if somebody you know forget something or somebody you know need something, we will actually go out and get it for them. Or if they call from their in their private sauna, you know, oh, my gosh, I forgot to put change in the meter. Uh, because I parked on the street today. What's your license plate? Don't worry about it, we got it. You know. 50 cents. It's nothing yes, no, we do but huge for customer retention and it slows customer churn. Because now you're in relationship with a customer versus the transaction, and it's easy for a member you know a client, a customer to quit a membership. It's really hard for them to quit a relationship, that's right. It's hard, you know. And so we want to enter into relationship with our clients.

Speaker 2: 30:57

And so I've again anybody listening and God, don't take as long to learn this as I did. Take one thing from a book you read, one thing from this podcast, one thing from a YouTube video you watch whatever it is and put it into action and don't make it flavor of the week. Make it. This is the way we do things from here on out for this particular situation. And when you do that because if you do flavor the week, your teams will be like, oh God, he read a book and you know we'll do this for a week and then I'll read another book, yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:28

But when you just make it specific, nope, this is what we're doing and this is, this is our culture you will see your team rise to that occasion, especially when you're consistent about it. But, man, it's about changing behavior and most human beings will read a book, listen to a podcast, listen to your podcast, listen to this one today, and then go right back to sleep, right, yeah, they just are sleepwalking through life versus man. Take one thing that you said or I said even if you want to change it, modify it, but put it into action and watch how those little one percent incremental things change your life and you start to build well yeah, I I love that you mentioned will.

Speaker 1: 32:05

So I I met will gadara at a key. He did a keynote at an event I was in last month and last year I went to the same event and he was there and he shared one story and I don't know. I read his book last year as well. I don't know if you remember if this I don't remember if this story was in the book or I heard him say it on the stage a story, and please remind me if it was in the book, about the couple he said there was a couple so he had a closet in his restaurant where it was like the making his guests feel special, closet and everyone had freedom to bring something out of there and make their guests feel special. But this one day he shared this story there was a couple that eloped. I don't know, do you remember that story from the book? It wasn't, it wasn't. Was in the book or not. Okay, go ahead, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1: 32:50

So this couple eloped, right, this couple eloped and they didn't invite their wedding because of the family drama. They didn't invite their family because of the drama and all that stuff. So he said they were having dinner at his restaurant that just came from the court. And so they had this elaborate wedding plan, but they decided to just do their own thing and get married. And so they had this elaborate wedding plan, but they decided to just do their own thing and get married.

Speaker 1: 33:10

And so the waitress that was serving them overheard this and started engaging them and found out what their wedding song would have been. I mean, talk about going the extra mile, right, yeah, talk about going the extra mile, found out what their wedding song would have been. And then he ran across the street because because I think it was Saks Fifth, not Saks, one of those fancy stores across the street he went and he got two champagne glasses from Saks Fifth Avenue or whatever that store is, and they served them their champagne in that. And then they went upstairs to their second floor and they started playing their song and they said, hey, we have a gift for you upstairs, we want to show you something upstairs. And they had their first dance in his restaurant with the song they would have had in the second. I mean, talk about, like, doing going the extra mile. What did it mean? These guys got countless stories, a hot dog, countless stories, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 2: 34:10

I mean, no wonder this guy was number one restaurant in the world it happened by chance, right like that's all culturally driven and the expectations of the leader were set and you know damn well he was the first guy down scrubbing the floor. He was the first guy down scrubbing the floor, he was the first guy polishing the silver, like you know. Yeah, it's a cultural approach for your business and so easy to separate from everybody else in the marketplace because nobody wants to do that work. That's hard work.

Speaker 1: 34:40

Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you brought up that book, because, first of all, I needed to hear that again. I'm glad you shared that again. So I want to go to, because we kind of went sideways. I love the way the conversation went, though, but we originally were supposed to talk about business strategy, which is business strategy, and you've led over 500 people, right, and at a time I mean you said you led a department that had 400, you were responsible for $400 million. That is a lot of money, that's a lot of responsibility, a lot of people. How does one stay sane managing that many personalities? Right, I have a small team. I mean, sometimes it's, you know, managing all the, you know, leading all the different personalities could be tough. Especially. You have expectations, you have standards, you want things done, you know, to a certain standard. How do you manage that? How did you manage it?

Speaker 2: 35:39

Yeah, really insightful question and I would say that managing that team of 500, that was easier for me than managing a team of probably 60 or so. When I was over a pharmaceutical plant, a manufacturing plant, I was a president and I was mainly in charge of a fancy term for drive revenue, go find us new clients, but I still had a span of control. And when I had to manage people that were not all salespeople or had that sales mentality and were, you know, engineers, were quality control people, were formulators, you know scientists that formulate products, and I had account managers, which was pretty easy for me to do. Finance, you know, managing finance like when you're managing such different types of people that gravitate to those roles because of their personality. Now you're managing many, many, many different personality types and I found that more challenging and and uh, and a better job, more more fun challenge too, because it made me grow because I couldn't manage in one style because they weren't all sales people.

Speaker 2: 36:45

Um, you know, the sanity part comes from active listening and too often as leaders we think we're supposed to have all the answers. If we have all the answers, why do we need a team? So you really want your team to be able to give you almost have your team, be advisors and listen, and I found I got better at leadership. I got better at inspirational leadership and listen, and I found I got better at leadership. I got better at inspirational leadership, at committed action for my team, getting committed action when I would pause and ask and say, well, before I answer, what do you think the solution is, how did we end up here in the first place? What could we have done different so this didn't happen and doesn't happen again? Okay, what's the best path forward? And so this I think keeping your sanity is around, not trying to be this omniscient, all present, I've got every answer just come to me and I'm the wizard you know behind the curtain. No man like. Okay, so we got a situation here.

Speaker 2: 37:47

So, first and foremost, what do you think we should? What do your peers think we should do? What do your direct reports think that should happen? Why is that? Have you game theory? That? What, if? What, if this happens after we make that decision? And one, you're developing leadership skills in that person, but you're also saving your sanity by not feeling like you have to have all the answers, fix everything. Yeah, and too many times, especially as entrepreneurs with a smaller team, we feel like we have to have all the answers and there's nothing wrong. In fact, your team respects you and you say I don't know, I've never experienced this before, so first time I've encountered it. Let's both do some research. Do you have any thoughts? If not, let's both break, do some research. I'm going to call some people I know. Get some advice. You call some people you know. Let's come back and solve this together. One, it's more collaborative, it's a better work environment and two, it's a lot less stress on you as the entrepreneur and the owner of the business.

Speaker 1: 38:43

Yeah, I'll share this no-transcript because I was feeling that having to fix everything, what you just said, it's an entrepreneur, right, we're growing and a lot of questions, and I've created systems and strategies around that now and I said you know, it was just completely honest, honest with them. I said it feels like to me that I don't have a business. It feels like I have a bunch of helpers that's when you're feeling burnt out, like I have a bunch of helpers. That's when you're feeling burnt out. That's what it feels like on the other side of not having a franchise, not having systems, not having processes, everything you mentioned earlier.

Speaker 1: 39:35

I have been there 25 years in business. I have been there, right, having everything in my brain. Everything is here, so everyone's coming to me and I'm just shelling out the information, not having it in place where it's in the system. And it's so important because some of us are just not wired that way. I can speak for myself. We're just not wired that way to know how to.

Speaker 1: 39:56

I'm a visionary, so it's challenging for me to know how to put things down on paper and I do it this way, like that just drains my energy. But I know that about myself. I know that about myself. So I had to bring someone on to take it out of my head and then put it on paper for me so that it's all systemized and that the team has something to follow. But that's a struggle for many of us, right? Especially me too. I struggled with that man. I'll be completely transparent with you and my audience man. I have struggled with that for many years and I'm not saying I have it all figured out, but I'm I'm working on it. Right, I'm working on it, I have. I have another question for you, roger what's one business mistake you've made that taught you the most valuable lesson?

Speaker 2: 40:47

Boy, there's been so many, let me choose just one. Let me choose just one. I will tell you partnerships. So I've been in one, two, three, four companies, five, five companies in partnerships, and partnerships can be really powerful, and there's a reason that we gravitate towards a partnership or a couple of partners. One is it diversifies the risk. It can lower your capital injection requirements at the start as you go and you're building the company, and so there's a little safety in numbers. There you can also get some best thinking.

Speaker 2: 41:33

I've also seen partnerships and I've experienced partnerships where it can slow down the decision-making process and slow down the decision-making process. You're navigating the politics of the partnership and who's really in charge, and then your team's looking at the partners like, well, who's really in charge here? Because there should only be one boss. The other day there's one boss, and my mistake is I allowed the politics of a partnership and the dynamics of a partnership to negatively impact the business and and I allowed that to happen for too long. Um, I don't want to, you know, say that partnerships are not good, because they are and I've benefited from partnerships.

Speaker 2: 42:20

But you really should only get in a partnership, only get in a partnership if the two people getting into it or the three people getting into it have very different skill sets. And oftentimes we'll get in a partnership with someone that's like us, right, we get along with, we have a lot in common, we can jive Well. They may have the same skill sets you have, which means now you're just splitting the profits 50-50 for no reason because there's not an incremental value. So first lesson I would say is make sure that your partnerships that you get into there's unique, different skill sets that are held by and traits that are held by each partner and hopefully a different network on which each partner could lean to get additional help and advice, and not the same network. And then, secondarily, I would just say that you know partnerships are going to complicate things at some point At some point.

Speaker 2: 43:16

Just know if you're in a partnership, it's going to. You know who's really in charge, who's doing, who's driving the majority of the revenue, who's really in charge, who's driving the majority of the revenue, who wants to exit now, who wants to hang on, who wants to go this direction, who wants to go that direction. And so I'm very grateful for the partners I've had in the business I've been in, but I also feel I'm at a point in my career where I'll probably be going about it on my own from here on out as I start additional companies, just because I've learned the lessons I needed to learn from other partners and I'm grateful for those. But I have the capital now to where I don't need to pool capital I can. I can self fund, you-fund a really large startup now.

Speaker 2: 44:06

I think that we get into businesses with a partner because it feels safe. We got somebody we can lean into because it's hard Business is hard. We want to make sure that somebody's there to help us when it gets really hard. At some point you have to graduate from that and just say I got this and I'll hire the people that I need to get those opinions from, versus give them half or a third of the equity in the business.

Speaker 1: 44:29

Thank you so much, roger. I learned a ton from you today, thank you for and you know what. Sometimes we have conversations with people and it's like, hey, god puts people in our path. Because it's the thing you needed to hear. I'm going to speak for me personally, selfishly, here in our path, because it's the thing you needed to hear. I'm going to speak for me personally, selfishly, here, and hopefully this is hopefully the audience is uh, got that too, but for me, as uh, some of those things I needed to hear, I needed to be reminded of, and so thank you for that. Thank you for being here today, roger, if folks wanted to connect with you, they wanted to find you, they wanted to wanted to, um, you know, maybe talk to you about a franchise, or how do they find you? What do they connect with you? Yeah, too thank you.

Speaker 2: 45:08

Thank you the two easiest ways. Um, I, I think you mentioned during the intro that I have a book I published in january of 2024. It's called an insider's guide to business secrets from hot careers playbook. Um, all the proceeds, every red cent this book has ever made, goes to a charity called to write love on her arms, which is a, a charity that helps prevent self-harm and and suicide. Um, it's, it's very. I think mental health is not talked about enough in today's society, and so that's rockbox fitness's national charity charity partner, and also this book that I wrote. Every cent I'll never make a dime off this book every cent that Amazon doesn't take goes to this charity.

Speaker 2: 45:46

Um, so if you want to learn about the book, if you want to learn about, um, rock box fitness or beam light sauna, um, for my podcast, right More with Roger Martin, um, you can go to thrive more brandscom. So T? H R I V? E brands. Uh, uh, thrive more brands, thrive More. So Thrive the word, thrive, the word More, the word brandscom. And on, there will be a link to the book. It'll be a link on just information on franchising. Even if you're not interested in Beam or Rockbox Fitness, you can at least learn about franchising on there and what it means and what's involved and what the capital commitments are and whatnot. And then if you want to follow me on social media, you can just follow me at real Roger Martin, r-o-g-e-r and Instagram and YouTube and other things. And the Thrive More podcast is on YouTube, spotify, apple, that stuff. So if they just the easiest way, if they go to thrivemorebrandscom that's kind of anything and everything about our brands and about me, if they wanted to connect.

Speaker 1: 46:47

Thank you so much, brother. Really appreciate you coming on and sharing, sharing those wonderful insights. Again learned a ton from you. It was my pleasure having you here coming on and best of luck to you. Man, seems like you're, it seems like to you, man Seems like you're winning. Roger, and blessings man. I hope you continue to win, sir.

Speaker 2: 47:04

Thank you Well the day's not over, but it's of course good today. I appreciate you having me on. Thanks a lot. You're welcome brother.

Speaker 1: 47:14

See ya.