How to Market a Franchise from Scratch: Pre-Sell, Content & Trust

We’re producing content where people can actually make sure that it’s the right brand that they wanna partner with as well. I mean, we’re not for everybody, but the reason why we do that is we’re qualifying them before they even come and speak with us. I think other founders, CEOs should definitely be considering that. I think personal branding is very important. You also see some really top entrepreneurs across the globe, like, for example, Mark Zuckerberg. Never actually done any podcast. Only recently in the last twelve to twenty four months you see him. Right? Elon Musk, another very, very successful entrepreneur. He’s been on the Joe Rogan podcast. These people are worth so much money. They can be doing so much with their time, but they’re deciding to do content. So welcome to another episode of the Franchise Marketer podcast. I’m your host, Joel Cleaver, and with me today, got Michael Black. Now Michael’s a a great connection, and I’m really respect what Michael’s doing in the franchise space. And I think it’d be great for you to talk about what you’re doing because you’ve started a franchise brand from scratch. So how the heck do you market that from scratch? And you’re obviously doing a lot more content and personal branding stuff as a founder now, which I wanna talk about too because I think it’s a massive unlock and untapped sort of potential for people in franchising. So do you wanna first start with a bit about yourself, Michael, and about how you actually started this whole thing? Thanks, Joel, and thank you for having me today. And I’m really excited to share a lot of secrets and and golden nuggets today for people that are watching the podcast today. I started success tutoring in a spare room in my parents’ home in a suburb called Bosley Park in Western suburbs of Sydney. I did that while studying at the University of Sydney majoring in management and law. While I was doing it, I got really passionate and addicted to the growth of the business and and seeing the impacts that we made for students. And so I continued running the business and decided to franchise it. We’ve grown How old were you? Seventeen. Yes. Seventeen. Seventeen years old. That’s when we started. Twenty six now. We’ve got locations all across. So we’ve got currently, we’ve got about forty five operating locations all across Australia and New Zealand, and we’re we’re growing as well. So, yeah, we’re just bringing on many franchise partners. At twenty six. So it’s pretty amazing. I I would have to say, I don’t know if another person starting a franchise system at seventeen. I definitely I’m pretty confident in Australia that’s never been done. I might be wrong, but I’d be pretty confident that you’re probably the youngest franchise founder at seventeen in Australia or I don’t think there’d be anyone younger. I’d be please correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t think there is. Yeah. I I think I think so. We didn’t franchise right off the bat. We had corporate owned locations. We ran three locations, including the tutoring business out of my parents’ home, and then we franchised that. Wow. That’s very impressive. Now let’s just talk in because it’s a it’s a podcast which we wanna talk a bit about marketing and stuff like that. So how did you go about marketing in the early days? Because it’s would have been very new to you back then. You’re like, you love doing this product. I love doing what I’m doing, but now I’ve gotta, obviously, scale it. And then, you know, you’re getting into a whole you’ve gotta learn as a founder, as you know, you’ve gotta know a little you gotta do everything right at the start, and then you can delegate once you get some more funds behind you. So how’d you start it in the early days with with marketing this thing? In the early days, like any small business, we had a variety of different ways to market. Now I remember in the really early days, I had about a list of about thirty different ways of marketing the business, and I tried every single way of marketing, and and actually none of them succeeded. And it was only the one that I didn’t have on the list, which was word-of-mouth. And that’s what really helped the business grow to having the first customer. So it took about I’ll say it took about between six to eight months to get the first customer at Success Tutoring. So I, you know, got the website up, got the Facebook page up, and, you know, shared it with friends and family. And it wasn’t until a friend, a family friend, recommended the services to their friend, and we quickly you know, the first two students that we had quickly got them really good results, and then word-of-mouth spread. I would say the yeah. In the very early days, it was all really word-of-mouth. We tried so many different things. I didn’t have the capital to spend a large budget, you know, on ads or anything like that. So everything was really, you know, putting flyers out, you know, approaching businesses, doing partnerships, all of these sort of things. But really, nothing really worked. It was just the word-of-mouth in the very early days. Yeah. So that’s great to hear because I think that people forget that now. There’s so much AI and digital stuff, and people are trying to flog from that side of boob. But as you as you know yourself, good old customer service, which generates your referrals and word-of-mouth, as you said, is is obviously the best This type of referral, even though we talk about franchise marketing a lot, the best referral for a franchisee is from a friend. Right? It’s not the online stuff. It’s always referral from a friend. So once you’ve got that that base in place and you’ve built your customer base, obviously, you’ve then expanded. So how how did you go about doing that? And, obviously, what were the the marketing challenges with generating leads, I guess, for those businesses? So in the early days, we did a lot. So after we’ve we we got the first, you know you know, fifty or sixty customers, what we we ended up doing is reinvesting a lot of that revenue and profit back into the business by doing more marketing. So some of the marketing that worked very well for us was running something called shopping center promotion. So what that would be was a stand. We would hand out flyers that would typically be like a free lesson or a free trial or free assessment. And parents, would come to the store and they would, you know, talk to us and ask us questions about the service, and then we’d book them in for an assessment. So, that worked very well, and that was before we ran any Facebook ads. And we that was our main driver. That was the way the main way that we attracted customers, and it worked very well for us. I love hearing that because, yeah, that’s completely opposite what people would think, you know, these days. You know, obviously, we’re doing Facebook ads and stuff, but that in person, you’re there. But, also, I reckon for you, personally, you would have got a lot of good feedback about the questions, and it would have helped you improve your offering as well with your a whole bunch of copy that you’re doing because you’re getting all these questions all the time and this feedback from people about your product. Did you how did you use that then that interactions to then shape what you’re doing forward? Was it just you took a lot of that feedback to to, like, this is a common question. We don’t have any content around that on the website. Well, how did you use that information? Well, I think these days, we we do a lot of, like, YouTube content, and we do we’ve put a lot of content out there on social media to, you know, educate the market in terms of, like, what we offer and what we have as a opportunity from a franchise perspective as well. Like, you know, what makes Success Tutoring unique? What are the key, you know, points about why you should, you know, buy a Success Tutoring franchise or why you should be a member of Success Tutoring as a student? So it’s all about educating the market now and just bringing out, like, a lot of content. We’re realizing that the content that we produce becomes one of the most important aspects for the business. You see it more and more often. Like, for example, very well known figure in the business and entrepreneurial space, Alex Homosey. He had so much content, you know, very, very early days and continued to build on that and then, you know, became one of the most successful, you know, book sales ever recorded. So that just shows Is there a million dollars? Of Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. That shows you the power of of content creation and and what it I think you said I think you said the key. Sorry to cut you off because I just wanna remind people. People think, oh, mosey. They see the success now and think that’s just always been that case. But you’re right. Go back to his stuff from years ago, like years and years ago, you know, he was grinding like Yvonne Nelson. There was this Probably the The the difference between his content, they’re not obviously now is completely different. Right? So I think the point is he’s been doing it for many, many years. You just see that a hundred million dollar launch and think That was, you know, just a a brain idea in a way it went, but that was years and years of doing the content. So with your content then now, how’s that sort of complementing what you’re doing. Yeah. So a lot of the content we produce these days is based on the insight that we get from, you know, the conversations that we have with our customers. So for example, from a franchise perspective, we’re always finding out what the you know, what what questions our prospects are asking us. Like, for example, what makes Success Tutoring different? Okay. That’s a question. Let’s make a video on that. You know, how do we find the Success Tutoring location to to operate out of? That’s another question. So what what do we do? We create a video out of that as well. So we’re creating videos No. Just stop there real quick. Because, I reckon, that’s a great point what you said. Because site based franchises, no one knows how they select a site, and you’re actually doing content around something which, in my opinion, should be transparent. But everyone’s like, oh, no. We gotta hide it hide it. But I think that’s really, really smart. So literally, just for French for franchisors and people in marketing, any question you get from a prospect, you’re making a video content answering that question regardless of what it is. Yeah. Unlike the traditional way of of of franchise recruitment where there there’ll be NDAs for that days, we don’t because we’re open, and we believe that ideas are great. Execution’s better. You might have the best ideas in the world. People can know what your idea is, but if they don’t have the proper means to execute, then so we believe, you know, we we share everything. Okay? Everything is available. People can can use that content however they wish, but we believe that the execution part, that that’s where the real hard work get, you know, in the processes and the systems. That’s that’s that’s where the real juicy stuff is. So we don’t shy away from, you know, just sharing the information that that our prospects are asking for. Think it’s very smart. You know, that’s the model of, you know you mentioned Hermozzi and people like that. They just give away all their free stuff online, and if people wanna do a coaching program or buy whatever it is to help with implementation, they’ll do it. But I think that’s very clever. So the implementation side of it with with your locations, you’ve got some young franchisees in your system, which I think is remarkable. But how do you then lead gen for them? Like, how are you doing that, and how does that work? Yeah. So we’ve got one of the youngest franchise partners. So we’ve got in in Success Tutoring, we’ve got the youngest franchise partner. Her name is Ishika. She’s twenty three years old. And and probably one of the youngest in Australia where we find that when she started, she was pretty much a student. She started as a student, became a tutor, and became a franchise partner. She bought into the brand from such a young age, you know, being a student, and she she she was impacted positively every step of the way, you know, from being as being a student, being a tutor, and then now becoming a franchise partner. It was a little bit accidental. It’s not something where we have, like, this mat like, this plan of of of having our students become franchise partners because, you know, that does take a lot of years in in in the making, but it just shows the impact that success tutoring has brought, you know, for her, but also how franchising now has become so accessible for young people. And the marketing that we’ve that we’ve done, it’s it’s spoken to her. So then she’s like, yeah. I don’t wanna do this anymore. I don’t wanna work at corporate anymore. I wanna run my own business. And and that’s the decision that she made. And with the the marketing for the franchisees, how do you what’s your plan with them? Do you do a lot of stuff before the location opens? Or once that location opens, how do you sort of help them in that area? Our business model works very similar to a gym membership. So it’s very unique in the education space. So traditionally, tutoring businesses or education businesses, they’ll they’ll launch and then they’ll market. And that’s what we used to do. That was the old way of marketing. Now the way that we market our businesses is we sign up the members before the business actually launches. So we’ve had locations launched with fifty members, eighty members, even a hundred and fifty members from the first week of operation, which which which really reduces the risk for our franchise partners and for us as an organization and allows us to grow because it gives them that confidence. People buy into a franchise system because they want that security and that stability, and they want that confirmation that when they do start their own business by the way, starting a business is not easy. But because that they buy into a franchise system, they get that support and assistance. So that’s you know, and and it’s allowed us to really grow and future proof the business and allow them to focus on running profitably rather than, you know, launching and then figuring out how to market afterwards. And now when they are you getting those via on, like, via Facebook? Or where do you do that where do you generate those sign ups from? Mainly through paid social media advertising. Yep. We do a lot of partnerships as well with local businesses. We still do shopping center promotions as well. It’s a combination of different things. It’s mainly really focused local area marketing, which we find that the best way to target a local area would be through paid advertising and then also through, you know, brand awareness campaigns, like, for example, doing a shopping center promotion or even doing a few partnerships with some businesses. Yeah. Doing a multiple bunch of things, and I think that’s the key now, isn’t it? You can’t just rely on one sort of area. Yeah. As as we know with with social media, ads going costs going up for the route a bit. So, I mean, that in person element’s really good too, and I think that’s really good for the franchisee as well to get them into that situation where they Having to meet new people, and it forces you out your comfort zone a Yeah. Absolutely. And I think and what we’re realizing is that the more content we, you know, release to everybody, the more people get to know about success tutoring and the more they can trust the brands as well. Because people are not just buying into a brand, they’re also buying into the people, they’re buying into the mission, the vision, and there’s no better way to to do that by than by just sharing that raw footage. Because I know you speak a lot about that as well, especially, you know, at at the gyms group, which, you know, is is growing, you know, continues to grow, you know, year on year. And and I think, you know, you guys are also a very strong reflection of that. Like, you’re just producing, like, heaps and heaps of content, and and that’s definitely translating into, like, hundreds of new franchise partners each month. We do the same thing. You know, we I made a big decision six years ago and said, that’s not hard. I think you’d be transparent with what we do. And we took the Gary Vee content and model to that, just ultimate transparency. And our franchisors and franchisees at the start were quite we had a few bit of a pushback, you know, talking about, yeah, you can just pay us the Australian Trade and Walk with your clients. No problem. And doing that on videos and stuff. But we found out that over time, just the trust that’s built over three to four years, it’s just such an easier sell now. And and people, when they as they do for you, they find the YouTube channel or the podcast and they’re watching a hundred or two hundred things. That means they’re listening to thirty to fifty hours of content about being a franchisee. That’s just a far better prospect so that the content actually gets a quality prospect. Because I know yourself, I hear this from for franchise all the time. I want quality leads, but then you give them nothing to consume. Know, the contents, the filter, and it’ll filter out people, and then you’ll get the quality leads out the other side. I was gonna say with what you’re doing as well now, couple things I wanna talk about because you do it really well. Franchise or personal branding, I think you do a great job. So you do a lot of PR. And then you’ve also done the book, which I think is a really cool, really smart thing to do. That’s what Jim does with his no other success, which I’ve got here. So do you wanna talk about real first about your approach as a franchise or the personal branding? Because I don’t think any of other franchisors don’t do it. And I think it’s a really good thing to do if you can do it. So you don’t talk about, you know, how you approach it, what you’re doing in Shojis for that. Yeah. So I recently, a few months ago, launched my first book, Millionaire Tutor, and I share a lot of my my background story, why Success Tutoring is the way it is, my key challenges and learnings, and a little bit about Success Tutoring and what makes it unique. I think by, you know, running Success Tutoring for almost nine years now, there’s a lot of key learnings that I’ve learned as a entrepreneur and as a founder and CEO, and I believe that there’s a lot of insight that I can share to people. And I’m a big believer that the more value you provide to people, the more good things happen to you. And so that’s why I wrote the book in the first place, is to provide value and to be very frank about my my background and my journey and and just sharing with people pretty much everything that isn’t that goes through my mind, it’s in the book. So that I think that’s really helped. You know, we we’ve been it’s it’s been out for about, you know, two and a half, three months now, and we’ve already seen a lot of, you know, great out you know, outcomes from it. A lot of franchise prospects are reading the book, which is really good to see. We’ve even, you know, looking at, you know, launching it across our locations across Australia and New Zealand where students can even read it and parents. So I think just being open, transparent, providing as much value is the new currency of today. Yep. And the more information that you can provide to the public, the more successful I think a business, will eventually become. Yeah. I I completely agree. Now with your book, how long did it take you to write? And then what was the process for because, like, you’ll go, I love the idea of writing a book. They don’t know where to start. So, obviously, you would have been the same. So how did you figure it out, and and and how did you do it? Being as busy as I am, I really focused for about twelve months to to to get it done. Now Well I wanted to get get it done less than twelve months. I was really aiming to get it done in six, but I really had to focus and and I I was able to get it done in twelve. Now if it took me longer than twelve, it probably would have taken many years, which a lot of authors does take many years, But I just really focused and got it done because I’m a big believer as well. You’ve just gotta, get things done. You know, there’s actually a reflection of, like, there’s a balance of perfection, like, if something’s perfect or, you know, or something that’s done very quickly. And I try to strike that balance because I really wanted to get the messaging out there. And, yeah, it took took about twelve months. Did I think it was gonna take less time? Yes. In any anything, a lot of the time you think it’s gonna be easier than it is, but it it wasn’t it wasn’t easy for sure. There’s, yeah, a lot of hiccups, a lot of, you know, new things that, you know, come up. Like, for example, once the book’s written, okay, now you need an editor to review it, and after the editor, you then need to figure out, okay, what’s the book cover gonna be? What’s the name of the book going to be? How are gonna market it? I mean, it’s good thing you’ve got a book, but how do you actually bring it to the market and how do you get it into more people’s hands? So there’s so much that goes into it. It’s not just writing because yeah. Because you you’ve also gotta be able to sell it. That’s very important. Yeah. That’s a really it’s a really good tactic, you know, and we has this which he updates every two to three years, and it’s the same sort of thing. We just wanna get into people’s hands. And we know that if people do really consume it, we’ll be they qualify themselves as a prospect because then they come into training. So that book for us has actually probably generated a lot more than what it cost Jim to do. So it’s a really smart tactic. And the other thing I was gonna say as well, Your personal brand. So you do a lot of stuff. Have you been on Sunrise? You and you do a Michael Black personal brand, you know, with IG and some short form content and things like that. So how’s that been able to help you, and and what would your advice be around that for other people? Yeah. So I think personal branding is very important. You know, people don’t buy into a franchise just because of the, you know, the logo or the branding or the colors or the marketing. They they it’s not just that. They buy into it because of the mission, the calling, the the people behind it, and the team. Because, yeah, you can have the best ideas, but if you can’t execute with the right team, you can’t you know, it just it won’t happen. Right? Like, the, you know, the the goals and the ambitions that a business might have may never eventuate if you don’t have the right execution. And so that’s why I think it’s really important to have the right execution and the right team. And so that’s why, you know, I I put a lot of content out there so people can learn a little bit about the background, the history of the business, and what our core mission and values are. Because people spend you know, they they they invest a very large percentage, you know, of of money into their into business. People get loans. You know? This is life. They they invest their blood, sweat, and tears. And so that’s why we gotta make sure that we’re producing content where people can actually make sure that it’s the right brand that they wanna partner with as well. I mean, we’re not for everybody. That’s the reality. I mean, some people can might wanna do it on their own or they might look at another franchise system or another industry altogether. But the reason why we do that is we’re qualifying them before they even come and speak with us. That’s right. That’s exactly right approach. And I think as well, just so much transparency, you know. If things do happen, touch wood, nothing ever happens. But, like, you got so much content online as well. Like, people be going, well, hang on. Look at all the stuff that’s available for for consumption. You’re not going into something that you didn’t know about, which is I think it’s a good thing as well, which is why we talk about earnings a lot because I just think, you know, there’s always like a touchy thing. You can’t tell how much people they’re gonna earn stuff, which we we don’t, but we’ll we’ll share stories of people and outside of the revenue figure and things like that because that is an important thing to people to know. I was gonna say as well, With your personal brand, are surprised that many other franchisors don’t do it? Because I think you’re one of the standout ones in Australia. I don’t think there’s many other that do it to the level what you’re doing it. So do you get people interacting with your stuff first then coming into the, you know, an inquiry, or how do you find that working with what you’re doing? So I I think other founders, CEOs should definitely be considering that. I think personal branding is very important in this day. I mean, you also see some really top entrepreneurs across the globe. Like, for example, Mark Zuckerberg. Never actually done any podcasts. Only recently in the last twelve to twenty four months you see him. Right? That is just, like, a testament to the importance of that. Like, this man’s worth billions of dollars, and now he’s deciding to make content. That is just an an example of the power of it. Now one thing I really like about Mark is the fact that he can transition a lot. So he’s, you know, started Facebook, and then now he’s doing a lot of the AI stuff and being very aggressive as well and and bringing, you know, talent. So I think I think what I you know, having that personal brand is so important. And even another example, you know, you look at, for example, Elon Musk, another very, very successful entrepreneur in the US. He’s been on the Joe Rogan podcast. You know? He’s doing a lot these people are worth so much money. They can be doing so much with their time, but they’re deciding to do content. And that just shows the best thing you can do as a founder, CEO, entrepreneur is make more content because that’s your biggest currency, and that’s how you’re able to really scale the brand and and and share because the thing is, Joe, and I think a lot of people know this, with the age of no NDAs, information is so available now. So it’s so your main competitive advantage is not the information that you have. It’s actually the execution in the team and the personal branding because nobody can ever replicate you. Nobody can replicate Joel. Nobody can replicate Michael, but maybe they might try to copy the business. But if you differentiate yourself through your personal branding, then then then you just, yeah, become Really good. One hundred percent. I’ll give you an example where people should know. Jim, six years ago, Jim hates video. Hates it. Doesn’t like it. Hates hates it. But he knows the ROI and what it does for the business. Right? And he gets to hear it in every training. You know, I’ve been following you for years or I’ve been watching you on TikTok or follow you on LinkedIn, and then it’s like, oh, this is giving me real business outcomes. I’ll keep doing it. But he’s an introvert, and he hates it. So if he can do it, other people can do it. You just need someone to come in and do it for your systems and and give it a trust because it does take time to say it probably takes like, how long you’ve been consistently doing it for, Michael? A couple of years now? I reckon I’ve seen your personal stuff with short form content and doing digital PR type things. So you’ve here for a couple of years now or how long? Yeah. It’s it’s been at least four years now. Personal brain Yes. Sort of kind of stuff. I think over the last twelve months, definitely increased that quite substantially, especially with the new book now. You know, I’ve been running a lot of ads as well, which some people might have seen, where we’re encouraging people to get a get a copy of the book as well. Having a book, I think, is also a very good currency this day and age. I mean, people might throw away a business card, but they don’t ever throw away a book. We we hope they won’t anyway. And you know Door Stopper or yeah. It it gives you a Google knowledge panel. So if you get your book, you should have a Google knowledge panel with the nice colors there. And it’ll say author or entrepreneur or whatever you want. So if you have a book that’s in Google Books or online published, it’s a really good way of getting a Google knowledge panel, which I think is a really good thing if you can get Yeah. I I think so too. And I think having title author, it’s pretty cool. I don’t need it. It is cool. A lot of people wanna visit author, But you but we need to do some of that sunrise and stuff when you do them in the future. We author, entrepreneur, CEO, founder, so you got the non buyer. I think I think everyone wants to be an author. They just don’t know how to do it. So I think, you know, if you can do it with how busy you are, I think people can just put the excuses aside and have a real crack. I’m actually doing I’m trying to work on a book myself at the moment, and it’s not easy. It’s tempting to use AI, but it’s definitely something that I completely agree with your sentiment there. And so what’s so what’s then the plan for you? Is it just a matter of now you gotta you gotta just gotta scale this thing. So that’s that’s sort of, you know, scale up response with it, I guess, make sure we’re franchising successful, grow the corporate brand, obviously, grow yourself. So is that the plan over the next five years? Or and how do you see actually probably AI affecting what you’re doing? Because there’s a lot of technologies coming out now, and I think it’s really, obviously, in your area, it’s gonna have an impact in some maybe a tool that you your your franchisees use, or or how do you see that impacting yours as well? AI is is revolutionizing the way we’re doing business, and it’s here to stay, and it’s here to continue to evolve and and and grow. So we’re using AI every single day now, and we’re continuously, you know, improving everything that there is about success tutoring and continuously utilizing the most latest technology to to improving and grow the brand. How are you using it? Sorry. Before we go into that one, how are you how are you actually using it in the business? So we we’re using it in different ways. I mean, a lot of people are using ChatGPT a lot these days, and I think there’s a lot of ways that you can get things done much quicker. So for example, it might have taken us, like, you know, five minutes to send an email. Now it’s only taking us about, you know, twenty seconds as, you know, as long as all the information’s there. So that’s things are just going quicker. We’re able to focus our team is able to focus on more higher order thinking rather than repetitive tasks that, you know, strain our resources. So what we’re able to do is be more efficient and purposeful with our time. So our team is able to utilize their time on more higher order thinking rather than the, you know, operational day to day sort of tasks. What about the students themselves? How does that work in with the students? We’ve we’ve created a few different tools. I mean, on our website, we’ve got a free AI tutor. So anybody can just go in on our website and then, you know, have a tutor where they can it’s just free, and they can just put their, you know, questions, and then it’ll answer them. So that’s one very cool thing. It’s also a very cool lead magnet for our website, which is, you know, good to, you know, good to bring people onto our website as well. Sometimes we’re using it for learning material as well. It just depends. We’ve got, like, a subject matter expert and educational consultants and advisers that make the learning material that we have, but we’re constantly improving it and using AI as well. So making sure it aligns with the curriculum, we’re using AI for that because it allows us to scan through the Australian curriculum, for example, and we can check to see that the curriculum does align. And any improvements or updates to the curriculum, we can, you know, use AI for that as well. I think some interesting return because they’ve been there’s a lot of studies that you’ve probably seen where people using Chachapiti regularly. The brain usage actually, it’s sort of going down a bit. They use a less brainpower with they’re just using Chachibi tea all the time. So I think the tutoring, if you don’t understand the actual concepts of the thing you’re asking for like, because I think that’s what happens a lot now with AI. People just don’t know anything, and then they’re trying to prompt it, and they don’t have an actual core understanding of the actual thing they’re trying to get an answer from. Right? So I think that’s where the big big worries I have, I guess, when people use these tools is they’re trying to you how do I do Google Ads might be the prompt. They’ve got no core understanding of all the other stuff that goes with it and expecting to rely on that output. So do you see it might even create more work for your franchisees in a way because I think you might get people who try and tutor with with AI, and they’re just gonna have no basic level understanding. So how do you see sort of how would you think about that in regards to what you do? Well, I think with so with with the free AI tool that we have on our website, that’s available for anybody to access. Right? So that’s that that’s pretty much available for incoming potential members. Right? So they they can go on the website and they can use that. And then, you know, looking obviously for, like, more of a human interaction and and and receive a a different kind of service, and they’ll they’ll they’ll sign up to be a member, and then they’ll come into a tutoring center and receive that human support. But what’s very important that we’ve realized as well is we need to be very open to AI and continuously looking at ways to improve our organization using AI, because it it certainly does allow us to have more efficiencies within the organization. We can focus on, you know, franchise partner profitability, HQ growth, and just bringing pretty much optimizing the business. I think with the AI with the, with the with AI these days, I think some businesses, the ones that can use it very well, will absolutely, like, completely, like, become leaders in the industry just by the use of the of AI because then they can reallocate resources to what matters most. Absolutely. I should’ve asked you before about franchise recruitment. So what channels are you doing for franchise recruitment? And how do you integrate your content into that. Yeah. So franchise recruitment, it’s always a long it’s it’s it’s always a long game. So, like, we make a lot of content on our YouTube. We run digital marketing advertisements as well, like Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads. And we’re just constantly looking at bringing people onto our website and learning more about the brand and then providing you know, we’ve got email campaigns as well. And then we’ve got a, you know, a franchise sales team that do all the franchise recruitment as well. So we’ve got a, you know, a bit of a process that that that they go through, and it’s always about learning more about the brand before, you know, committing to it. And do you know how much content on average people are consuming? Or do you need I’m sure they would tell you they’ve watched a whole bunch of different stuff. So what what’s your feedback from prospects around that? We don’t have an exact number, but what we do know is a large percentage and even, like, even these days, especially with the new release of the book, we’re we’re hearing a lot of people just out of their own free will. They’re just saying to us, oh, I’ve read the book or I’ve watched, you know, YouTube content. And I think with franchise recruitment, of of course, and a lot of franchisors will agree with me, each new franchise partner bring on board is is like an an additional way to to grow the business. And and a lot of CEOs in franchise organizations, they’ll spend a lot of their time on bringing new franchise partners on board and making sure that the existing ones are are performing well. But they’ll also agree that, you know, even if they produce, let’s say, ten videos and it only brings maybe one or two franchise partners, that is definitely a ROI that’s well deserved. I I believe it’s more than that. I reckon the more content is directly proportionate to the number of new franchise partners a business produces. That’s why we’re looking at, you know, hiring full time, you know, videographer within our organization. Like, there’s a reason why we’re doing that. It’s because we’re realizing the more content, the bigger the business can pretty much become. It’s like, I reckon there’s a direct proportion to both. Well, there is. I did it six years ago, it was the best move we did. So I hired one full time videographer, and then I hired another one. We had two full time. I’m back to one now because we can do a lot of this for our short form stuff. But I think it’s the best hire any business can do. And Gary Vee, when he did his book back in the day, Crushing It, said, there’s four people you need to start a business now. One of them was a full time content creator, and this is back. Eighteen years ago. So I just wish we started earlier, but you’re right. You’re already headed to the curve even though it’s twenty twenty five. And the only thing that annoys me, and I will say is blindly because it’s my podcast, I can say this this way. What pisses me off is that the people you say just do ten videos and expect the ROI from it. It’s not that case. As you know, you’ve got people who watch you for years sometimes, and you can’t just have a video from two years ago on your YouTube channel being the last thing. You’ve gotta have FreshCon all the time. You gotta have in my opinion, you should have a new video every week, long form or some sort of three minute piece on YouTube, and you should have short form content daily about, you know, being a franchisee or different aspects of the business. And I think because people stalk that stuff for years, and they read comments and all that sort of thing. And you’re up against, you know, for us anyway, you know, when they compete with us, it’s like, well, they’re looking at us, which has got literally videos every single day pumping out about different things in there. There’s so much trust built with that compared to your franchise. He does five videos from three years ago, and that’s it. So I think freshness of content’s a big thing now. I think the more fresh you are and the better you are. I’d also think you’re gonna be a media company in a way. So a lot of brands should have a media arm that’s producing this stuff internally. Agencies are great, but I don’t I I love what Glenn does. But I think you can do so much quicker things, and you’re the founder. Right? So they can follow you around. You can just yes. Let’s get it out there. Bang. There’s no silly approvals and legal has to read this stuff. You’re just gonna have such an advantage by doing it in house with speed of movement. And because you’re you’re the owner of the business, you’re gonna be smashing, which is what the advantage I had was I had Jim. Jim is getting full rein and said, do what you want. I don’t have any approvals. No. Nothing like that. I think that’s where we need to go because that comment you said I hear it a little bit as well. Ten video pack. How many franchise sales am I gonna get? It’s the wrong way to look at it. It can take two to three years, and you need constant streamer stuff all the time. And the great thing about those videos, as you said, on YouTube, they live there. And I’ve got videos from seven years ago now that are getting still watched from seven years ago and being the thing that brings people into the business. So you gotta create assets. Assets over ads is the way I look at it. Video assets over ads. Once you have video assets first, then you do ads. I feel sorry for recruiters or franchise marketers who have to do recruitment for businesses who have no video content or have no interest in video content because you can generate a lead. I’m gonna just look at this business, and I’m looking at three or four different things. I’m asking ChecksBit to see. I’m going here. I’m going here. I’m going here. And the business that has all the content that’s transparent will far more likely win out than the ones who don’t. Sorry. That’s my bit of my rant there. I’m supposed to be interviewing you. I think I think absolutely. I definitely agree with what you’re saying, and I and I think one perfect representation is the fact that you and I are on this on this podcast. I mean, we’re we’re we’re we’re spending our time doing this and providing value to people. And I think that in itself is if anybody’s thinking, oh, should I be producing content? Well, this is the perfect representation. You’re the c you know, chief marketing officer for the largest franchise group in the country, and I’m I’m I’m the CEO of a, you know, very fast growing education business. And what we’re what what we really this is like a perfect representation. Like, we’re spending our time. We could be doing so many things, but we’re spending our time making content here. And I think the more content produced, direct proportion to the growth of any business. And I, yeah, definitely agree with you. I think for anybody that’s, like, looking at getting any nuggets out of the podcast today, I think it’s just producing more content, making sure it’s, like, more purposeful with the brands, you know, image, the values, like and just like putting yourself out there because NDAs are a thing of the past and businesses need to, like, stop thinking about NDAs and they need be thinking about. Yeah. Like, they need to be thinking about how they could yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Great. I feel fairly great, mate. Because the beef with me was I had no idea what I was doing back six years ago. I just knew, you know, I gave Jim the crushing a book, Jim’s like, do the go back stuff. I’m like, righto. So I had no idea about NDAs and stuff. And I’m obviously, we choose a little bit different with with what Jim does. We don’t have any NDAs and stuff. And I hear, like, people charging five grand just to give a list of franchisees or prospects or NDAs before they even talk about training. I just think it’s absurd. And I think in a in a franchising which has got generally a lack of trust in it because it’s we get we get punched on all the time from media, I think the the way to to get around that is just by being transparent. But with your acceleration of your you’re only twenty nine, mate, so you you’ve done amazingly well. You’re well ahead of anyone else. I do think you’re probably the youngest franchise founder in Australia. That might be your new title besides franchise. I think franchise founder may be in the world. I don’t think there’s anyone at Seventeen who who founded their franchise brand. But I was gonna say, how you gotta like, we’re scaling this thing now. That’s probably my question at the start before we’ve been on sidetrack. How do you plan to scale this? Because you gotta now you’ve got the thing where you’ve gotta support the franchisees. You’ve gotta obviously keep generating work for them or helping them generate work for themselves and maintain quality service in their businesses. But then you’ve got to then, obviously, just build the brand of you and the brand of success almost at the same time. So how are you how are you gonna go back doing that? And it’s just a matter of, as you said, I’ve hired a videographer now internally to scale this thing up and then ramp it up from there, or how are you gonna do I think that’s the the the trick is good unit economics and making sure we can scale with the right economics. So what that means is making sure that franchise partners are profitable, running good businesses, and then we can scale. We’re not looking at scaling for the sake of scaling. We wanna grow a sustainable brand that’s gonna be there for many, many generations. Our largest competitor right now is Kumon. They’ve got thirty six thousand franchised locations. We’ve only won Thirty six thousand? Thirty thousand. So we we want to be the leaders in education. We believe our business has a lot of legs to stand on. We believe that there’s a lot of very cool unique things that we’re doing. For example, localizing the curriculum based on low curriculum. So, like like McDonald’s does. McDonald’s has different menus in different countries. For example, in India, they don’t have beef. They’ve got chicken. So it’s the same mentality. We’re localizing based on each country. So we’ve got we’re make sure we’ve got good unit economics, franchise partner satisfaction, and exceptional scaling. We wanna grow. We wanna grow aggressively. There’s no doubt about that, but we wanna grow, sustainably as well. And we believe that we can do both, and we’re gonna prove to people that we can do both. We’re gonna grow sustainably and then also grow aggressively that that these two things can happen together. And as we continue to expand the brand, we will continue to focus on the customer, the franchise partner, and head office because those are the three key stakeholders. I actually do mention this in my book. To run any successful brands, you need to have satisfied three stakeholders. That is the customer, the franchise partner, head office. If one of them is not satisfied, then the business crumbles. So you gotta make sure you focus on those three, grow the business, and and away we go. I’ll tell you about power of your personal brand. I’ve never heard of QMon, and it’s got thirty six thousand locations. Maybe I’m naive, and I know but I knew you. And that’s because I saw you come up in the feed and all that sort of stuff. So I just think that’s the power of personal brands. So how many locations you got currently? Is it fifty? You’re saying before, is it thirty? Yeah. We’ve so we’ve got forty five operating right now. By the end of the year, we’ll have sixty operating. We’re bringing on new franchise partners at at really record rates. We are the fastest growing, not just in Australia, but globally as well when it comes to education franchise. We continue to grow, and we continue to push the limits of what’s possible. Got a very, very strong team of people that are very motivated to really make a difference, and we believe we can make it happen. And with your running your running all this, how do you then manage your time? Because I think you got so many things you have to do. Like, where where do you put your time now? Or where do you where do you sort of spend most of your time trying to work on those high value things that are gonna shift the business forward? My main focus is franchise partner satisfaction and also head office support. So I provide a lot of support to the head office team to be able to provide more support to franchise partners. I’m still very active, and I will continue to be active in visiting locations, providing individual one on one support to franchise partners, and being there and present. I don’t believe in an in a a CEO that does not visit or interact much with franchise partners. I think that’s even the most important aspect of a CEO’s role is to actually be on the ground and helping and assisting franchise partners because we’re always coming up with new ideas. The power of venue franchise system is the ability to share ideas. So being here on the ground and being able to share and understand what franchise partners are saying, we can grow the brand because the best ideas come from franchise partners. Maybe some people that are listening to this might know this, but McDonald’s, McCafe, and the Big Mac were both ideas that came from franchise partners, not from the head office. And we are very strong advocates of that. The best ideas come from franchise partners. We’re a team. We wanna make sure that both, you know, everybody is successful, and that’s and that’s that’s the reason why, you know, I spend a lot of my time with franchise partners and also, you know, working on, you know, scaling the brand. And so there’s a lot of things. I’ve got my I’ve got my fingers in many pies, but but it’s definitely it it’s just it’s just the way you gotta do it. You know? And we and with them marketing their own businesses, do you have, like, a strict system in regards to, like, social media uses, or how do you how do you let them, from an online perspective, do their own business stuff? Social media. So we’ve got, like, brand guidelines, operations manual, and and all that sort of stuff to provide that that those guidelines for franchise partners. Franchise partners may run their own ads, or they might actually use an agency as well. And if they are using these videos and stuff as well? Yeah. Absolutely. We encourage and I think I think what we’re gonna do as well, which we haven’t actually done this, but we I I believe we’ll we’ll be looking at implementing this very soon, is at Success Tutoring, we have a success pack, and the success pack includes all the furniture, equipment, and necessary items to get the business started. But what we’re actually gonna add in the success pack coming up is is actually a microphone. Right. We’re gonna add a microphone because that is very important. So they can actually film content as well. Because there is the more content franchise partners can bring, the the better it is for the whole brand and for them as well. I mean, the biggest unlock in your business, we I call it FGC. Know, there’s usually CGC. Now there’s FGC, franchisee generated content. And And you’ll find that from my perspective anyway, you get a friend. You don’t expect all of them to do it. You want all of them to do it, but they don’t. That’s one person or two really take to, like, a duck to water. And then next thing you know, they’ve got a hundred thousand followers on Instagram or TikTok, and that’s content that you literally can’t create at corporate head office. It has to be done at the franchisee level. Now I calculated the other day, our franchisees combined have generated one billion organic views, and that’s actually those billing views have been generated by five franchisees. It just shows you we’ve got five and a half thousand franchisees or five five out of seven hundred, but we had five franchisees who’ve generated a billion views, and it sort of just pulls the rest of the, you know, those divisions along. But you only need one or two to do it and allow them to do it, I think, is the main thing. That’s really clever about doing a mic in a a startup package. I’m gonna take that idea. That’s a good one. Yeah. Yeah. So it just it just shows the importance of that, you know, the importance of building that content. And I think the more the more the more content, the, yeah, the bigger the business grows and the more impacts, you know, more lives that can be impacted positively. So, yeah, that’s for this. Awesome, mate. Well, I’ve I’ve kept you here for long enough today. Where can people find your book and what websites do you want them to go to? Yeah. Cool. Well, they can grab a copy of my book. It’s called Millionaire Tutor. It’s on Amazon. We also have a dedicated website for it. It’s called millionaire tutor book dot com. If they’re interested in learning more about the success tutoring franchise opportunity, they can go to our franchise website. If you just search up on Google success tutoring franchise, we have a dedicated website for that. And then if they wanna be a student, they can go to success tutoring on our website, which is success tutoring dot com. Absolutely. Now, Michael, really appreciate the talk. I’ve I’ve spoken with with a bit before, but it’s great to see what you’re doing as a founder. You’re doing the modern approach to your franchise marketing, and I think you’re gonna be in a really good position to just keep accelerating that growth. It’s gonna be exciting to see where where at forty, where you end up, you know, how many locations you get. And I think you’re gonna be a really big name in the franchising space for many years to come, mate. You’re well ahead of the curve at twenty nine. You’re doing an amazing job, so you’re a fantastic entrepreneur. You’re a good bloke too. And it’s amazing how humble you are for what you’re doing. So you’re ultra successful already at a young age, and I think it’s great. And you’re great for the franchise industry. You know? I think young people like yourself with really good morals and ethics and promoting the industry and what you’re doing in an online content point of view as well is great just to help everyone. So thanks for coming on today, mate. We appreciate it. And I do hope you changed your title to youngest franchise founder in the world. Because I don’t know if there’s someone that’s ever been he’s founded a franchise brand. I hate looking to it. But thank you very much, Hans. I am I am twenty six, by the way. But by the time I’m Twenty six? I’m glad. Jesus, mate. I’ll put it there. He’s on. Oh, okay. Hang on. That’s all good. But, yeah, I’m sure I’m sure we’ll be continuously in touch, and you have done an amazing job as well in in the franchise space. And I can’t wait to see what’s to come because I think there’s a lot of things, there’s a lot of opportunity in franchising and the impact that you can bring as well. I can’t wait for your book as well. I’ll I’ll be the I’ll be the first to to get a purchase a copy of that one. Appreciate it. I won’t I won’t always be giving away. Don’t worry. It won’t be football. That’s all good. No worries, mate. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Thanks, Joel.