Ready to transform your business strategy with insights from a true industry titan? Join us in this episode with John T. Hewitt! Tune in now and learn how to leverage franchising for scalable success, set visionary goals, and create a winning business culture. Packed with actionable advice and inspiring stories, this episode is your ticket to achieving financial freedom.
Key takeaways to listen for
- [09:53] Why you need to set big, audacious goals and have a clear, convincing vision
- [12:37] Importance of implementing systems for repetitive tasks to ensure efficiency and scalability in business
- [16:26] What is crucial for maintaining a successful and cohesive team?
- [33:03] How to achieve the key to a successful franchise
- [41:22] Significance of listening to your team and customers
Resources mentioned in this episode
Claim your FREE copy of John’s book, “iCompete” by visiting https://loyaltybrands.com/free-icompete-book/.
About John T. Hewitt
John is an American entrepreneur, co-founder of Jackson Hewitt, sole founder of Liberty Tax Service, and current CEO of ATAX. As of late 2006, Hewitt served as CEO, chairman of the board, and president of Liberty Tax Service. These companies account for over 10,000 tax preparation offices in the United States and Canada. Additionally, John pioneered developing and using specialized tax-preparation software, which has become the industry standard.
Connect with John
- Website: Loyalty Brands
- LinkedIn: John T Hewitt
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Transcript
You have to have the ability to have a fairly accurate vision of the future and then to be able to convince everyone to buy into that.
John Hewitt:So you have to convince your investors, your employees, your customers.
John Hewitt:You have to convince the world that you're going in the right direction.
Neil Henderson:Welcome to truly passive income.
Neil Henderson:I'm Neil Henderson.
Clint Harris:And I'm Clint Harris.
Neil Henderson:So our guest today is Mister John Hewitt.
Neil Henderson:John is the founder of two, not one, but two major tax preparation companies, Jackson Hewitt and Liberty tax.
Neil Henderson:And he now leads loyalty brands, a conglomerate of various franchises.
Neil Henderson:Hewitt emphasized the importance of having a system in business and highlights the success rate of franchises compared to independent businesses.
Neil Henderson:And we're going to talk to him about franchises and tax preparation.
Neil Henderson:And I'm pleased as punched to have you with us.
Neil Henderson:John, thanks for joining us.
John Hewitt:My pleasure.
John Hewitt:Thank you.
Neil Henderson:So like I said, we were chatting just before we got on the call that the podcast is called truly passive income.
Neil Henderson:And so it's a little unusual we're having somebody in here who specializes in franchises.
Neil Henderson:But you've had a remarkable journey from your early days at h and our block to founding Jackson Hewitt and Liberty.
Neil Henderson:Can you share with us what initially sparked your interest in the tax preparation industry and entrepreneurship in general?
John Hewitt:Sure.
John Hewitt:I got blessed when I was in college.
John Hewitt:My dad had been a wannabe entrepreneur his whole life, but I was born when he was at Michigan State and he was a freshman and he had three more children before he graduated and so we were poor and he never had a chance to become an entrepreneur early in life because he had so many children and he was the sole breadwinner.
John Hewitt:And long about the time I was in college, he became a CFO of a public company.
John Hewitt:Now he had more money.
John Hewitt:The kids were grown where most of the kids were grown, at least up into high school.
John Hewitt:And he decided that he wanted to buy an H and R Wok franchise.
John Hewitt:So we lived in a suburb of Buffalo called Hamburg and they didn't have an office.
John Hewitt:HR block didn't have an office.
John Hewitt:So he called him up and said he'd like to buy a franchise.
John Hewitt:And they said, well, as a matter of fact, we're going to open a company store there this year.
John Hewitt:Maybe your son could take our course and work for us.
John Hewitt:So I took the H and R block text course and so blessed that 20 years old, I found out what I wanted to be the rest of my life and I started working for h and R block.
John Hewitt:Twelve years later, I was a regional director managing 250 offices.
John Hewitt:My dad, still burning to be an entrepreneur, bought one of the first apples by mail.
John Hewitt:And he likes it better than the mainframe that was running his public company.
John Hewitt:So he convinced me to leave my job and join him and build the first tax off for an Apple computer.
John Hewitt:So my dad got me into taxes and my dad got me into leaving HR block, the Fortune 500 company and becoming an entrepreneur.
Clint Harris:Wow, a lot to unpack there.
Clint Harris:So you actually started ground up building the system, like literally building the computer system and the software itself.
Clint Harris:And then you built the rest of the business outside of that.
Clint Harris:And then from there took it on and started franchising and opening up offices.
Clint Harris:Tell us a little bit about that growth trajectory and what were some of the major challenges that you faced and how you navigated them.
John Hewitt:Sure, I started.
John Hewitt:I got again blessed.
John Hewitt:And no one wanted our software.
John Hewitt:You guys aren't old enough to remember a world without computers.
John Hewitt:on PCs in the country back in:John Hewitt:And we looked around for a place to use it.
John Hewitt:We tried to sell it to block.
John Hewitt:People asked us why we don't computerize.
John Hewitt:We say, why should we?
John Hewitt:Customers don't care, doesn't save us any money.
John Hewitt:We're never going to computerize.
John Hewitt:So no one in the world had a storefront tax preparation at a computer.
John Hewitt:So we got blessed and found Mel Jackson tax service here in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
John Hewitt:And the biggest blessing was the weather here.
John Hewitt:So much nicer than Buffalo.
John Hewitt:ilt a company which today has:John Hewitt:And it's a billion dollar company.
John Hewitt:So I'm one of less than 10,000 people to build in the United States ever to build the billion dollar company.
Neil Henderson:You know, John, as I have become an entrepreneur myself, I beat my head up against the wall trying to come up with ideas for businesses for years.
Neil Henderson:And finally I settled on real estate just because it was a sort of a repeatable.
Neil Henderson:There was a lot of roadmap, a lot of people who've done real estate.
Neil Henderson:There's a roadmap to follow.
Neil Henderson:In many respects, that's what franchising is, is someone has already built the business and they've built a roadmap for you.
Neil Henderson:And one of the things that has hit me over the head over the last year or so we're at Nomad Capital.
Neil Henderson:We run on the entrepreneurial operating system through traction.
Neil Henderson:And I've worked at other companies before that really had no systems and if you don't have assets and you don't have systems and processes, you don't really have a business.
Neil Henderson:You have a job and maybe you own some assets, you don't have a business.
Neil Henderson:And what's so powerful to me about the franchising and first of all, just getting a business to run correctly is now it becomes something that someday you could maybe sell to someone else and exit it or grow or whatever.
Neil Henderson:Is that correct?
John Hewitt:That's exactly right.
John Hewitt:As a matter of fact, along the way in after 15 years, we sold Jackson it for $500 million and started over with Liberty tax with a new system.
John Hewitt:And I had a not compete that covered most of the United States, but it didn't cover Canada because Jackson Hewitt never went to Canada.
John Hewitt:And having grown up in Buffalo, we started Liberty tax in Canada.
John Hewitt:over in twelve years grew to:John Hewitt:Beating up on my own company, beating up on Jackson Hewitt and HR block.
John Hewitt:We grew faster than both of them combined.
John Hewitt:rowing franchise or ever with:John Hewitt:But again, I sold that for 500.
John Hewitt:It was worth $500 million.
John Hewitt:So I built two large franchise chains with 10,000 locations that yes, you're building net worth you're building and talking about that royalty stream that you receive as a franchisor.
John Hewitt:That's not passive income, but in a way it's a recurring revenue that's incredibly important.
Clint Harris:There's a couple different directions I want to go here.
Clint Harris:I have a feeling we're going to run out of time before.
Clint Harris:I've got a long list of questions that I'm very interested in.
Clint Harris:But I want to talk a little bit about your trajectory with what you did.
Clint Harris:And then I'd also like to ask some questions about why maybe a franchise is something that an individual operator may want to think about.
Clint Harris:But this seems very intentional, the way that you did everything, the way that you package it together and you literally built it from the ground up, starting with the computer system and then building the business systems around that.
Clint Harris:And I have a feeling that wasn't by accident.
Clint Harris:And you seem very intentional with everything that you've done.
Clint Harris:And in your bio you talk about the importance of having a visionary mindset.
Clint Harris:And I'm a fan of Jim Collins.
Clint Harris:So I love the fact that you've got the big hairy audacious goals section as well.
Clint Harris:But you clearly have a knack for setting high goals and then being driven to accomplish that.
Clint Harris:So talk to me just in general about goal setting mindset and taking that to a billion dollar valuation.
John Hewitt:Yeah, we said you have to be almost on the tightrope of crazy to do something spectacular.
John Hewitt:l Jackson, H and R, Block had:John Hewitt:Now no one had ever been able to compete with them.
John Hewitt:The largest competitor had 200 and yet I set about to be bigger than block.
John Hewitt:We never got to:John Hewitt:So I think it's incredibly one of the, I do a mentoring hour a week myself and on one of them about two months ago I answered the question what are the attributes to being a spectacular huge growth company?
John Hewitt:And I've been asked, the number one question I've ever been asked in my career is how did you do it?
John Hewitt:I mean what was the secret?
John Hewitt:What was the one thing that set you apart?
John Hewitt:And I realized I had a couple months ago and said it's not just one thing.
John Hewitt:I said and I love, love top ten lists starting with the Ten Commandments.
John Hewitt:So I have top ten for ten most important things to do at liberty tax, top most Tim Boson things to do at our zoom and grooming franchise where everyone has a top ten list.
John Hewitt:So I said I'm going to come up with a top ten list of what are the ten most important things to grow in exponentially.
John Hewitt:And I sat down the next day and I thought I could only come up with five or six.
John Hewitt:I came up with ten and then by the next week before I did my presentation I thought of two more.
John Hewitt:So my top ten is actually top twelve.
John Hewitt:And I figure it's okay to have top twelve out of ten because the Big Ten football has 14 or 15 teams.
John Hewitt:So if they can do it, I can do it.
John Hewitt:So I spent an hour on the most important things to do.
John Hewitt:But one of the most important things to do top ten for sure is set big hairy audacious goal.
John Hewitt:You can't if you set a small goal like I'm going to buy six offices and grow to 30.
John Hewitt:to:John Hewitt:Right.
John Hewitt:So you set the goal very high and you adjust your behavior to do that.
John Hewitt:And a second part of the top ten was systematic.
John Hewitt:You have to have systems for things that are going to happen often.
John Hewitt:You have to have systems so that you're not your people are continually addressing the same problem over and over again.
John Hewitt:They need to have a problem solution in advance of.
John Hewitt:And so everything is set up for a system.
John Hewitt:And last week I did an episode on why you should be a franchisee versus a mom and pop, and I spent a whole hour on that.
John Hewitt:There are 30 reasons that you should be a franchisee versus a mom and pop.
John Hewitt:Number one reason by far is the system of doing business.
John Hewitt:To be successful, you have to have people and you have to have systems.
John Hewitt:Those are the two key attributes of success.
Neil Henderson:Man, you're speaking our language.
Neil Henderson:Clint and I are.
Neil Henderson:We're in the self storage business.
Neil Henderson:We own and operate about.
Clint Harris:We're at about twelve dozen facilities.
Neil Henderson:About a dozen facilities.
Neil Henderson:And the self storage industry, it's a very fragmented industry.
Neil Henderson:There are a ton of mom and pop self storage facilities spread all across the country.
Neil Henderson:You know, they're maybe owned by one, where somebody owns one or two facilities and anybody you've ever been to a self storage field, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Neil Henderson:They're not.
Neil Henderson:They're kind of dilapidated.
Neil Henderson:They're often not great areas.
Neil Henderson:They don't pick up the phone.
Neil Henderson:There's maybe somebody living on site above one of the units.
Neil Henderson:Basically what you encounter is it's not a business.
Neil Henderson:Someone built that at some point.
Neil Henderson:They probably a lot of times their own or operated.
Neil Henderson:They've built themselves a very lucrative job.
Neil Henderson:But it's just a job.
Neil Henderson:It's not a business.
Neil Henderson:They do so much of the work themselves, and so much so that sometimes when you go to buy them and they decide, all right, now it's time to sell their records, like their expenses will have all these things that aren't included.
Neil Henderson:Landscaping, all that stuff where it's like they just did it themselves and then they try and sell it and they're going to somebody.
Neil Henderson:Well, you know, where's the expenses for landscaping?
Neil Henderson:Well, I do that myself.
Neil Henderson:Okay, well, I'm gonna have to hire someone to do that now.
Neil Henderson:And so it's.
Neil Henderson:You're speaking my language, you know, and especially, we have our quarterly meeting tomorrow.
Neil Henderson:And so much of our focus over the last six months has just been process, process, process, document, document, document.
John Hewitt:Absolutely.
John Hewitt:There's no other solution.
John Hewitt:If you want to grow to be large, you can't have, essentially, if you don't have systems, you're just a handful, a dozen bottom box.
Clint Harris:So I want to talk about the other side of growth there.
Clint Harris:Obviously, the business systems, you clearly have a knack for that.
Clint Harris:You built it from the ground up.
Clint Harris:When you have that much rapid growth.
Clint Harris:I'm curious to know about the human component, creating a culture and handling rapid growth that is so fast that I'm sure that it could potentially get reckless, not under the right leadership and with the right boundaries and right guidelines.
Clint Harris:So talk to me about the human component, the culture you created, your belief in how to treat people, things like that.
John Hewitt:You know, I've been a student of business my whole career, and I didn't learn about culture until I was about 40 years old.
John Hewitt:But fast growth, rapid growth, exponential growth is chaotic.
John Hewitt:No matter what.
John Hewitt:It's chaotic.
John Hewitt:The people you get.
John Hewitt:Wall Street Journal in about:John Hewitt:They had about 70% market share.
John Hewitt:So I took my two top people to.
John Hewitt:And we went and spent 2 hours in a Wegmans store in a morning in Rochester, New York.
John Hewitt:And actually, I got the answer, because, you know, if you guys.
John Hewitt:If we were looking at the executives of Kmart and the executives of Walmart, and what's the difference?
John Hewitt:Are they smarter at Walmart?
John Hewitt:Are they more experienced?
John Hewitt:Are they more educated?
John Hewitt:And I said, no, no, no.
John Hewitt:You could hire the smartest person in that world.
John Hewitt:You could hire the most experienced person in the world.
John Hewitt:You could hire the most educated person in the world.
John Hewitt:So why is Walmart Walmart and Kmart Kmart?
John Hewitt:What's different about those two groups of people?
John Hewitt:And by the way, this has been going on.
John Hewitt:e, Jackson, you had went into:John Hewitt:So I've been negotiating with Walmart for over 30 years.
John Hewitt:But Kmart, in the meantime, has gone down the toilet.
John Hewitt:when I started negotiating in:John Hewitt:They both had:John Hewitt:And I realized in that trip, it struck me, the key is culture.
John Hewitt:The key is attitude.
John Hewitt:And Tom Watson Sr.
John Hewitt:The founder of IBM, said, give me 100 great engineers.
John Hewitt:Give me 100 great engineers, or give me 100 people with great attitude.
John Hewitt:He says, I'll take the 100 people with great attitude.
John Hewitt:You can teach engineering.
John Hewitt:And one of the top, biggest mistakes I've ever made is trying to cheat or trying to change people's attitude.
John Hewitt:I've been totally unsuccessful.
John Hewitt:Over 100.
John Hewitt:I've never been able to do it.
John Hewitt:So it starts with attitude, which leads to culture.
John Hewitt:And so first, when we hire, we look for the attitude of the person, not the skill set of the person.
John Hewitt:And then they have to fit into our culture.
John Hewitt:And the culture is so important that both of my last two companies, we have a culture committee that's totally responsible for keeping and maintaining and improving our culture.
Clint Harris:It's funny you mentioned that.
Clint Harris:So Neil and I, our business model is that we buy old vacant Kmart buildings and convert them into climate controlled storage facilities.
Clint Harris:There was a couple thousand of them in the country, and that lack of culture has caused all of them to have disappeared.
Clint Harris:We're buying them for less than $20 a square foot right now and converting them into storage.
Neil Henderson:So created an opportunity for us.
Clint Harris:Yeah, it's amazing how that rolled out a lot of different directions we could go.
Clint Harris:And again, I'm really grateful for your time.
Clint Harris:I want to touch on this from the listener standpoint.
Clint Harris:Someone thinking about.
Clint Harris:We typically talk a lot about real estate because that's what we do and that's what we're also real estate investors.
Clint Harris:And, you know, there's so many different ways that you can go.
Clint Harris:And for us, the important thing is to focus on not just the financial implications, but the time and the location and implications as well, and what it means for whatever you're trying to accomplish in the goals that you have for your own life in terms of from the franchising side of things and the opportunity to build up franchise.
Clint Harris:To me, it jumps out of something that also seems very scalable.
Clint Harris:Like you can go in it with the intention of, I'm going to buy five locations of this franchise or whatever it may be, and it's a rubber stamp.
Clint Harris:I'm sure there's a lot of challenges there, but from someone thinking about it and looking at using franchising as part of their business strategy, what's some of the advice that you have for people that are looking for franchise today?
Clint Harris:Should you be looking for someone that's very seasoned, or should you be looking for an emerging franchise?
Clint Harris:Or kind of what's the thought process for someone thinking about going down that road?
John Hewitt:You have to be very careful because I think the average american thinks franchising is a great vehicle.
John Hewitt:And in fact, when it's done right, it is a great vehicle.
John Hewitt:But so many people try to get into it that fail.
John Hewitt:Most franchiseors fail.
John Hewitt:So you got to be real careful about emerging brand.
John Hewitt:Over the last ten years, every year four or 500 new franchisors have started.
John Hewitt:And every year four or 500 existing franchisors have failed to be in the top 50% of the largest.
John Hewitt:Of all the:John Hewitt:So most are failures so you got to be real, real careful.
John Hewitt:But when you strike gold and get that franchise system like an h and r block, like a Jackson unit, like a Liberty or like an Atax, you can do multiple locations.
John Hewitt:The average franchisee at those chains has six or seven locations.
John Hewitt:We have two types of franchise and one is almost like a passive income franchise.
John Hewitt:The first location is, as you might expect, they go in and they get a location and they roll up their sleeves and they run that location.
John Hewitt:And then typically they want two and three and four and five and six and seven.
John Hewitt:And they'll, every couple years they'll add one and they'll grow, and as other people leave, they'll acquire those that have left.
John Hewitt:So that's one of the great things about franchising.
John Hewitt:You have ready made buyers, but that's the unit on the ground franchise.
John Hewitt:So let's say in Virginia beach area, there are 50 of those types of franchise.
John Hewitt:So you can be acquire one or two or three or four or five.
John Hewitt:Or we have a, we call it an area representative that buys the whole area and they buy all 50 and they pay a reduced fee.
John Hewitt:And every time a franchise is sold underneath them, they get half of that and they get half of the royalty, which is almost passive income, mailbox money type of revenue.
John Hewitt:And if they don't want to work full time in the job, we have people available in the system, unit franchisees and former, former employees.
John Hewitt:I brought in over:John Hewitt:I can give you an employee who can very inexpensively run your area and support your area, the support you do for those 50 territories.
John Hewitt:And it's very inexpensive.
John Hewitt:And now if you do that, you have virtually passive income.
John Hewitt:So we have, many of our area representatives have gone to a passive investment.
John Hewitt:Our unit franchises tend to be hands on their own, boots on the ground.
John Hewitt:But again, it's only a few months a year.
John Hewitt:So they're, in a way, eight months a year, they're not working.
John Hewitt:They're not working very much.
John Hewitt:So in a way it's a passive income in the sense that from May to December they don't work very much at all.
John Hewitt:So actually in the tax industry, there's only four busy weeks.
John Hewitt:You might think of it as three and a half months, from January 1 to April 15, but we do more than half our revenue in just four weeks.
John Hewitt:So it's really a four week industry.
John Hewitt:And so it's somewhat passive.
John Hewitt:It's halfway passive in the sense that in the vast majority year you're not working.
Neil Henderson:You talked about a huge number of franchisees and franchisors fail.
Neil Henderson:What are the primary reasons that cause them to fail?
John Hewitt:Well, you guys might be a great case study.
Neil Henderson:I hope on the success side, we're gonna stop being friends here real quick.
John Hewitt:Well, I'll tell you what happened, right?
John Hewitt:I get guys like you, and you love your industry, and you see all kinds of opportunity, and there's no national brand.
John Hewitt:And we have a system partner.
John Hewitt:I mean, we have a system where we bill that others can replicate.
John Hewitt:Why don't we franchise this?
John Hewitt:And so what people do is they're very successful.
John Hewitt:They're successful in their mom and pop business.
John Hewitt:You're successful in your twelve different units, right down now, you think, well, we have a system that's replicatable.
John Hewitt:Let's sell it to other people, and we will make money from other people.
John Hewitt:I mean, what a great source of revenue.
John Hewitt:We can go coast to coast.
John Hewitt:There's no one doing it.
John Hewitt:And so what happens is, as you get success in your mom and pop twelve locations, you say, I can do this.
John Hewitt:I can go national.
John Hewitt:And so you pay the money to become a franchisor, and it costs about $300,000.
John Hewitt:Most of that is advertising.
John Hewitt:About a third of it is administrative and legal.
John Hewitt:Two thirds of it is advertising.
John Hewitt:Just to begin to say that we have this rental business for sale, right?
John Hewitt:Storage units for franchise.
John Hewitt:Now, you still need the income from your mom and pop to live on.
John Hewitt:So you have two jobs.
John Hewitt:One is running the franchise system, which you know nothing about.
John Hewitt:You've never been in the franchise industry.
John Hewitt:You don't know how to treat franchisees.
John Hewitt:And believe me, when you have a system of independent, maverick owners, entrepreneurs that are working for you, it's way different than the dozens of employees that you have.
John Hewitt:You know, you guys have a dozen employees, or 20.
John Hewitt:I didn't ask.
John Hewitt:But you have all these employees, and that's one management responsibility.
John Hewitt:But now you bring in this new franchisee who's in Raleigh, and he's independent, and he's a maverick.
John Hewitt:He wants to seize the american dream.
John Hewitt:And handling him is not the same as handling an employee.
John Hewitt:And it's like herding cats.
John Hewitt:So you have no skill in that.
John Hewitt:And even if you had skill in that, which almost none of them do, that's why they fail.
John Hewitt:They've never led a franchise system.
John Hewitt:And so if you have franchise skill, you have foot in both camps.
John Hewitt:You're running your mom and pop, and you're running your franchise.
John Hewitt:Someone needs to run that franchise.
John Hewitt:If you want to be a large majority successful franchise system.
John Hewitt:You have someone dedicated 100% to it.
John Hewitt:So you're not dedicated, you're not skilled at it.
John Hewitt:You have a foot in each camp and those one, two, three strengths, you're out failure.
Clint Harris:I find it a little bit.
Clint Harris:There's something to unpack here.
Clint Harris:The irony of you want them to come in and follow the system and do this.
Clint Harris:Like you talk about the difficulty of dealing with somebody that's a maverick, that's an independent thinker, but that's exactly how you built the company, by being way ahead of your time.
Clint Harris:Frankly, your dad sounds like he was a visionary.
Clint Harris:And obviously you had vision on what you guys were trying to accomplish as well.
Clint Harris:But you're also clearly a strong operator.
Clint Harris:And to not only be an operator to build your system out, but to package it in such a way that it has value to other people that can grow to be, you know, two of the largest tax companies in the world.
Clint Harris:This is a level of operation.
Clint Harris:But to do it back then when you literally built out the computer program, that takes innovative thinking and it takes a vision and it takes leadership.
Clint Harris:So it's kind of funny to me that that's not the traditional franchise person that I think of.
Clint Harris:Right.
Clint Harris:The person operating in a franchisor is like, here's the guidebook, follow it.
Clint Harris:But talk to me about the leadership and the innovative thinking that it takes to take an idea like that that nobody's done before.
Clint Harris:That was so early.
Clint Harris:And to walk all the way through the process of completion with that.
John Hewitt:That's a couple more of the top ten things on what you have to have to grow exponentially.
John Hewitt:Number one is that I'll say is you have to have the ability to have a fairly accurate vision of the future and then to be able to convince everyone to buy into them.
John Hewitt:So you have to convince your investors, your employees, your franchisees, your vendors, your customers.
John Hewitt:You have to convince the world that you're going in the right direction, but it has to be an accurate direction.
John Hewitt:You can't be going in the wrong direction.
John Hewitt:So you have to have fairly accurate view of the world.
John Hewitt:en I started was HR block has:John Hewitt:No one else even had 100.
John Hewitt:I said, isn't there always room for a number two?
John Hewitt:Isn't there always a Burger king or a General Motors or Ford or.
John Hewitt:I mean, there's always room for more than one competitor and they don't.
John Hewitt:So it's obvious there's a niche and it's just someone needed to have the system is the system and the discipline to get to that niche, first thing is you have to have an accurate vision and then you have to have you be convincing to get people to join that vision.
John Hewitt:And then believe it or not, you'll never believe this.
John Hewitt:How simple.
John Hewitt:80% of franchisors fail.
John Hewitt:So there's been:John Hewitt:There are:John Hewitt:Half of them are going to fail.
John Hewitt:But it's so simple.
John Hewitt:The difference between success and failure, the difference between success and failure is simply happy, successful franchisees.
John Hewitt:And you have to have a system where the franchisee makes money and you make money.
John Hewitt:If they do and I don't, it won't work.
John Hewitt:And if I do and they don't, it won't work.
John Hewitt:But most franchisors, they don't get them.
John Hewitt:They build it from, I have to make extra amount of investment, they have to give me this.
John Hewitt:And they never look at it from the franchisees side.
John Hewitt:They look at it from their side.
John Hewitt:So they nickel and dime the poor franchisee to death.
John Hewitt:So the franchisee never has, only seldom or ever has a good return on investment of their money and time.
John Hewitt:It's not just investment.
John Hewitt:Money is investment of time and money.
John Hewitt:So as a result of that, then you don't have happy, successful franchisees.
John Hewitt:I think it's under clearly understandable that if I have all my franchisees, or the vast majority are happy and successful, they're not going to be able to stop me.
John Hewitt:They're going to be talking about it, buying more franchises.
John Hewitt:They're a great reference.
John Hewitt:But if almost all of them are failing or not happy, then I don't have any references and they're not going to expand and I got nothing.
John Hewitt:So it's that simple.
John Hewitt:And yet still 80% of franchisors that opened five years ago are gone because they don't get that one simple thing.
Neil Henderson:Well, John, I want to give you a chance to talk about your latest venture, which is loyalty brands, which is it sounds like to me it's part of trying to help create happy, successful franchisees and franchisors.
Neil Henderson:Can you talk us a little bit about what loyalty brands does and how it can benefit people interested in franchises?
John Hewitt:Yeah, in my first two ventures, I had just one brand.
John Hewitt:I had Jackson Hewitt, and then I had Liberty tax.
John Hewitt:But while I was waiting for my non compete to end with Liberty, I decided to based on a recommendation from a friend.
John Hewitt:Why don't you try getting an other franchise in other industries?
John Hewitt:Why just do tax and so we have eight different franchise systems.
John Hewitt:They come into three buckets, right?
John Hewitt:We have three focuses.
John Hewitt:Number one is my 55 year focus, which I just finished my 55th tax season.
John Hewitt:So it's tax and accounting.
John Hewitt:And so we have a division that focuses on tax and accounting.
John Hewitt:My second division focuses on construction, and it's led by my very fast growing roofing.
John Hewitt:It's called cr three roofing.
John Hewitt:And so that's the fastest growing roofing franchise in the country.
John Hewitt:Atax, the leader of the tax is fastest growing tax.
John Hewitt:And Cr three roofing is the fastest growing roofing and one of the top 1% fastest growing of all franchises that have started in the last two years.
John Hewitt:But the gem in our system is pets.
John Hewitt:And we have a pet initiative led by Zuman Grumman mobile Grumman.
John Hewitt:And that industry is just crazy.
John Hewitt:of:John Hewitt:And now we just passed this weekend, we were up to 132, but most of those are in the last six months, so.
John Hewitt:And we're adding over ten a month right now.
John Hewitt:And by this time next year, we'll be adding 20 a month, like I did at Jackson Hewitt and did at Liberty.
John Hewitt:By the end of this year, we'll be number one in the world, or number one in the United States in mobile grooming.
John Hewitt:within five years, we'll have:John Hewitt:We'll be in every city in this country and a brand name, and you'll have heard of it.
John Hewitt:And we're in Wilmington, North Carolina, by the way.
John Hewitt:It's called Zuma group.
Clint Harris:That's amazing.
Clint Harris:What a trajectory.
Clint Harris:And I just want to point out of everything you mentioned right now, when I think franchises, I think fast food and restaurants, you never even mentioned a food brand in that list.
Clint Harris:So I think for anybody listening and from myself, like, maybe expand your brain a little bit, that there's a lot more opportunity than that.
Clint Harris:And what it's creating is it's creating continuity.
Clint Harris:That wherever you go, this cr three roofing company is like, you're going to get the same service, the same product, the same system, everything like that.
Clint Harris:So it creates continuity and immediately gives a little bit of credibility and a feeling of trust.
Clint Harris:Right?
Clint Harris:Trust transfers.
Clint Harris:And so I think there's a lot of value there.
Clint Harris:This is reminding me of an article I read a little while back when it talked about the most important thing of the last decade among highly successful business leaders.
Clint Harris:And at that point in time for that ten year period, the number one most important thing was emotional intelligence.
Clint Harris:And I see that a lot in the way that you're putting the right person in the right place and giving them opportunity.
Clint Harris:You're looking at things from other people's perspective.
Clint Harris:And I think there's a lot of emotional intelligence.
Clint Harris:Obviously, with the success that you've had now, the most recent of the past ten years, characteristic that's the most important thing among highly successful business leaders is adaptability.
Clint Harris:The world is changing faster than it ever has before.
Clint Harris:I think those are the two things that I'm hearing.
Clint Harris:And what you're saying to me is that there is adaptability and emotional intelligence, and I think you've got both those combined in just the right way, and it's clearly given you a lot of success.
Clint Harris:Talk to me a little bit about ever changing business landscape, kind of where we are, the opportunity you've seen in the past, the opportunity you think is coming in the future.
Clint Harris:And how do you use that vision that you have to kind of visualize where you want to be, get a crew together using that emotional intelligence to empower the right people, and then still have to adapt in an ever changing world?
John Hewitt:Again, you're asking me questions that will make me answer, what are the ten most important attributes?
John Hewitt:Because you've hit on some of them.
John Hewitt:And one of the things that's critical is that you have to have the best system in the industry.
John Hewitt:And if David had gone under the field with the same shield, the same armor and the same sword as Goliath, there would be no David and Goliath story.
John Hewitt:He'd be the 271st guy killed by Goliath.
John Hewitt:So you have to have differentiators and to have the best system.
John Hewitt:And so there's two components to best system.
John Hewitt:One component is to have the best system.
John Hewitt:It has to be constantly improving.
John Hewitt:Even if changes hadn't escalated.
John Hewitt:There's been massive changes in my lifetime.
John Hewitt:And when I started, I did not only that computer, I didn't even have an and or a calculator.
John Hewitt:he and over an and machine in:John Hewitt:And you had to do most of the work in your ad, right?
John Hewitt:And then you went to calculator.
John Hewitt:art the computer hard back in:John Hewitt:I mean, it's changed.
John Hewitt:Sodom.
John Hewitt:A laser printer back in eighties.
John Hewitt:In:John Hewitt:You couldn't afford it in your office.
John Hewitt:I mean, how many laser printers do you guys have in your offices?
John Hewitt:And what are they, dollar, 250?
John Hewitt:You couldn't afford a laser printer.
John Hewitt:I mean, everything's changing.
John Hewitt:But even if it didn't change that massive, it changes.
John Hewitt:And to have the best system, it has to be improving.
John Hewitt:Now I'm fanatically committed to win, which means I'm fanatically committed to have the best system, which means I'm fanatically committed to improve.
John Hewitt:But the easiest way to improve is to listen to your people.
John Hewitt:Right?
John Hewitt:Your people know the answers.
John Hewitt:I don't deal with any customers.
John Hewitt:I get my people together all the time.
John Hewitt:And every year we have a convention and we say, tell us how to improve.
John Hewitt:I've been doing this for over 30 years at our convention.
John Hewitt:Tell us how to improve our support, tell us how to improve our marketing, tell us how to improve our software.
John Hewitt:And I'm proud to say that over 30 years, every year we change more than 50%.
John Hewitt:And it's based on the suggestions of the people.
John Hewitt:I think the service in this country has declined every year since I can remember.
John Hewitt:And it declines because CEO's don't listen.
John Hewitt:When I sold Jackson Hewitt we had at the convention, we would have that listening where we would listen to the advice of the franchisees every year.
John Hewitt:As soon as I left, they changed that.
John Hewitt:And the new CEO, who knew nothing about the income tax business, said, we are going to lecture the franchisees and tell them how to do it.
John Hewitt:No, you have to listen to the people that have the pulse of the customer.
John Hewitt:And so emotional intelligence to me is the most important aspect of it is listening to your people and really listening to your people and adapting based on what you're hearing.
John Hewitt:It's so hard to improve.
John Hewitt:If you gotta think of everything.
John Hewitt:If John Hewitt has, and I've been doing this 55 years, my companies have done 100 million tax returns and I brought in hundreds of thousands of employees.
John Hewitt:And I could get real cocky and think, I know everything or I could commit to be a lifetime learner.
John Hewitt:And I'm learning every week.
Neil Henderson:Wow.
Neil Henderson:I had a follow up question and then I decided that I think that's where we should end it.
Neil Henderson:That was just fantastic.
Neil Henderson:John Hewitt, this has been a fantastic conversation.
Neil Henderson:I've really enjoyed it.
Neil Henderson:I know Clint has because I can see that look he gets.
Neil Henderson:But if any of our listeners want to reach out to you and find out more about John Hewitt and what you're all about and loyalty brands, where would be the best place for them to do that?
John Hewitt:There's all kinds of links on loyaltybrands.com, including you can sign up and get a free copy of my best selling book.
Clint Harris:I will be doing that immediately.
John Hewitt:I compete we've already sent you guys yours.
John Hewitt:We've sent you your copy.
Clint Harris:Thank you so much.
Neil Henderson:Is it the book I compete?
John Hewitt:It is.
Neil Henderson:Okay.
John Hewitt:All right.
Neil Henderson:Look for that in show notes.
Neil Henderson:We look forward to reading it as well.
Neil Henderson:So listen, John, this has been great.
Neil Henderson:We appreciate your time.
John Hewitt:My pleasure.
John Hewitt:Have a wonderful day.
Clint Harris:Thanks so much.
John Hewitt:Thank you.
Neil Henderson:Thank you so much for listening and watching the truly passive income podcast.
Neil Henderson:If you liked the show, if you think it would be useful for someone else, the greatest compliment that you could give us would be to share the episode.
Neil Henderson:Leave a comment down below, or leave us an honest review.
Neil Henderson:If you have any questions, don't hesitate to let us know down below.
Neil Henderson:And remember, with truly passive income comes freedom of time, place, and the freedom to pursue your higher purpose.


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