Transcript from Episode 3 with Joel Stewart. Joel Stewart is a franchising expert. We discuss the basics of franchises, what to avoid, why it's a great fit for veterans, and much more. Then we dive into his new book called The Value Equation. You're going to want a copy of this book! It's available on Amazon now so pick up a copy.

https://www.amazon.com/Value-Equation-Joel-Stewart/dp/B08P5J4T4L

Interview:

Keith McKeever 0:05

Welcome to the battle buddy podcast with Keith McKeever. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of the battle buddy podcast. I've got Joel Stewart with me who I met maybe about five, four or five weeks ago to the veteran printer tribe. And we're going to talk about franchising and his new book. So, welcome to the show, Joel. Thank you. Happy to be here. All right. Well, let's go ahead and start I asked everybody this at first, what's your story? You know, where did you Where were you born raised? What your military journey and what got you to the point where you're at now?

Joel Stewart 0:36

Well, I was born and raised in Connecticut. And for those of you that feel sorry, for me, I accepted the military semi to some other states, and I feel bad for myself sometimes. But Connecticut is a beautiful state. So I will give it that. Um, so yeah, I grew up in Connecticut, I, I finished high school. And I remember my dad telling me when I was growing up, that he would work overtime, and he'd be he'd be gone 8090 hours a week sometimes. And he told me, Son, you can work 40 hours a week and provide for your family or you can work 80 hours, the choice is yours. And I kind of took that to heart. So when I finished high school, I thought, you know, I like the 40 hour idea. more attractive? No, it doesn't it. So I went to college, you know, we didn't have like college savings or anything. So you know, I still have, like 50 grand in student loans. But, you know, I went to college for an engineer, get an engineering degree. And when I was in college, there was a series of engineering co ops, I had to do where you go, and you get hired to become a junior engineer, and you get experience in engineering and that kind of stuff. And I was sitting there one day on a break and everyone that I went to all the engineers were miserable. They were overworked, underpaid. None of them liked what they were doing. That sounds about right. I mean, yeah, right. So I remember sitting there thinking myself, you know, am I really gonna work my whole life so that somebody else makes more money than me off my labor? I had that exact thought. And it wasn't maybe three or four months after that I was at a job fair at my college Rochester Institute of Technology. And, and I met a Navy recruiter. And I was just like, you know, you know what I want to talk. I'm like, I'm getting an engineering degree, but I do not want to be an engineer. What do you got for me? And he told me about the sub new program in the Civil Engineer Corps program. And I ended up going with the Civil Engineer Corps program. So that's what I did. I did that I went to OCS. And then I became a Civil Engineer Corps officer. So I spent most of my time down in Mississippi, because a recruiter asked me where I wanted to go. And I said, I really don't care where I go to somebody someplace warm. I grew up in Connecticut. I went to school in Rochester, New York. And at that point, I was just like, I just sent me to Guam. Send me anywhere I

Keith McKeever 3:01

screwed on that one. I mean, it's well done. Yeah. But so yeah, I've been down there, but I can imagine it being terrible. I

Joel Stewart 3:08

honestly, I really enjoyed it. I love Mississippi. I my wife grew up on Long Island. And when we were after I got out of the military moved back to Connecticut. We were both kind of sad about it. And we were down in Mississippi long enough that our blood kind of thinned out. So I think Connecticut, it was doubly brutal to have to get back used to the cold again. But But yeah, so you know, I kind of had some medical issues that got me out of the Navy, and actually absorbed a couple years of my life. And when I first started coming out of those medical issues, I went right back to school for my MBA, and I got my concentration in real estate. My mom had a real estate brokerage. So it made sense to me to go into real estate. And I did so I started a commercial real estate and business brokerage. And I did that for a couple of years I was pursuing my CCI M which is the commercial certification for real estate and then I was pursuing my CBI which is a certified business intermediary that was a little less known for business brokerage. And when I was at the IBA international business broker Association Annual Conference in Dallas, Texas A couple years ago, I ran into the international franchise professionals group, they had kind of done a sponsorship thing and they had franchises ringing the arena that they were using for the IDPA convention and franchise and just fascinated me it just right off the bat. I realized it was something I was passionate about and that was something that I'd never experienced in my professional career. I learned a lot of powerful things in the military. But it wasn't something I was super passionate about. You know, mostly because I felt a little bit of a fish out of water. I'm a very Gosh, I don't know explain. When I went when I was in the When I was going for an intermediate leadership course, we had to do the Myers Briggs Personality assessments. And there were like 70% of Navy officers fit into this category St. J's, for those of you that I guess you didn't fit anywhere near there, I was the complete opposite of an ISTJ. So this is probably the best way for me to explain it. And so two and a half percent of Navy officers had my ad my personality profile. And I'd never realized that that was really what it was, is that, you know, I, I loved what I was doing, I love the mission, I loved the purpose behind it, but just the environment that people I was with was not conducive to my background. But I still was planning on saying that because I love the mission and the purpose of it. But medically I just couldn't, I was forced out for medical issues. And so I, I kind of went from there into something else that made sense, commercial real estate. And I did that, and I was kind of forced into it really was the thing that made sense, but I had no passion in it. So discovering something professionally, that I was passionate about was something completely new to me. And I just I fell in love with the franchise industry. So eventually, I phased out the commercial real estate, phase out the business brokerage, and focus completely on franchise consulting. Because what I realized was is using a franchise system, I could help people that felt like they were in what I call a career prison, you're trapped in your career, you don't want to be there. You don't really like what you've done, you don't really like where you're going. But you feel like you're trapped because your past is dictating your future. And that's why I got into franchising. And I later we're going to talk a little bit about a book I just wrote, that's also why I wrote that book. Franchising is a great way to break out a career prison to use your background to do something completely different that you would actually want to do. And, but it's not the only thing, which is my the book that I just wrote, the value equation is kind of an extension of that, to try to branch out and say, franchising is one way to break out of prison. But here's a whole more ways. So, but we'll, we'll talk about that we get there. But yeah, so that's kind of my background is I was doing construction management down in Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina, I was helping rebuild a lot of facilities on the Gulf Coast. And I got out of that, and had to overcome some medical stuff. And then I got into the path that I'm on now. And probably for the first time in my life, I'm really enjoying what I do professionally. So it's pretty cool.

Keith McKeever 7:33

Yes, it's gotta be powerful to find like, you know, your why your passion, like, for something to just hit you and be like, Oh, that's what I like. That's what I want to do. Like, that's my passion. Yeah, I think there's a lot people that get in that boat, because you get out. You know, you know, one of the last questions I'll ask on the podcast here is, you know, kind of, you know, advice for people getting out of the military. But you got to find your why. And I think a lot of people get out for various reasons. And they don't have that they don't, they don't have that wire, that purpose, or that direction, at their head, that job. You know, transition, all they talk about is your resume, and networking and how to do an interview. That's really all they talk about. They don't, from what I remember, is almost nine years ago, now, they don't really talk too much about you know, finding your passion, and what do you really want to do, it's just kind of like, get into the corporate world, get your resume, get yourself dressed nice, and go nail these interviews. That's it, that's all you got to do to land on your feet, and there's so much more to it, like, a little nugget. And that's about it. So

Joel Stewart 8:34

restarting a career from scratch is hard. I'm still in the process of it, you know, I got out of one career with the military had a little bit of a lull that had to start something completely new, realize didn't want to do it and start something completely new. Again, this is like, this is like my third career.

Keith McKeever 8:50

You gotta like reset your mindset. And some of yours might have built on itself naturally. But if you change your look at getting out of the military, and you've spent in four years or 15, or 20, whatever, you're so used to a certain mindset and doing a certain mission doing a certain job, you've mastered it. And now you got to go do something that's probably so drastically different. You got a brain dump everything you've already learned, and you got to start from the beginning.

Joel Stewart 9:16

I would say that, in some cases, that I disagree with that assessment, because that's, that's what I am. A lot of actually what I talk about in my book is how do you take what you've done and apply it to your future and when when when I talk with franchisors, franchisors tell me that veterans, military veterans are their most profitable franchisees. They are the ideal candidate, and that's not all franchisors, but I would say probably 80 to 90% of the ones I've talked to

Keith McKeever 9:48

me because my mission and their passion at that point. Yeah,

Joel Stewart 9:53

well, don't well. The thing is, is veterans have learned how to replicate a system and just run with it, but When every military station that you go to you go, you show up to a new command, it's a new way of running things, they hand you the SOP and they're like, if you do x y&z, you're going to be successful here. And all you do is replicate the system that's in place, and you're successful. You know, and if you can make it better, that that's even more, you know, that initiative that drive, that's great. And that's what a franchise system is a franchise system is taking what you already have it taking something that's already there, following a set of guidelines, a set of procedures, and then just making it successful. And so that's why veterans are so successful in franchising, and that is a skill like that leadership, running a team, all of that ground into the most basic, you know, person in the military that reaches any type of kind of like mid level enlisted status, you're running teams, you're doing leadership. And there's no no, that is transferable to so many things if you have the opportunity to use it. So if you get out of the military, you've got all these leadership skills you've developed, you've got all this teamwork skills. And then the military transition, people say, Oh, go apply to help move jump from point A to point B, well, that's not using your leadership skills.

Keith McKeever 11:11

And I think that's where I kind of meant like, like a no man's land, and no, yes, if you go to start your own business, and you don't have any resources, you don't have any structure, you can easily fall in that trap of not knowing what you're doing getting down and depressed, you know, a lot of struggles, whereas from my perspective, with a franchise, they've got the marketing is done, the brand is done, you know, the structure is there, you just build your team, set up your facility, whatever, and, and you hit the ground running a lot faster, a lot of stuffs kind of prepared for you.

Joel Stewart 11:42

Yeah, well, and so with, with my book, just the parallel parallel list, in my book, the value equation, one of the things I talked about there is that you shouldn't be in a job, if you're not learning a skill. If you're in a job, that where you're not learning a new skill, that is a dead end job. That is a job that you want to be in as little time as possible. It's not that you might not be forced into it. So like if you got out of the military. And you know, all that you could find on short notice is a manual labeled laborer job where you're not learning any new skills, you got to take it right. But you want to get out of that as soon as possible, start putting out resumes or start a side gig or side business. Even starting a side business where you're not really making a lot of money, you're going to be learning how to start a business, you're going to be learning, you know, how to get products to sell products, how to do digital marketing, I mean, with me with with just with my stuff, like I've learned how to do video editing, I've learned how to audio editing, I've learned how to put together graphics, and I've started to learn how to use different social media platforms. And right now, and I'm currently in the process of learning how to publish books and ebooks and market those I'm learning all of these skills are completely unrelated to franchise, right? But I'm developing all these skills that would be applicable in almost anything,

Keith McKeever 12:57

you either learn it, or you have to pay somebody to do it. Right. Yeah, choices.

Joel Stewart 13:01

And when I first started in business, I thought the best way to do is to pay other people to do it. But now that I've been an entrepreneur, for for a few years, I've realized that if I actually just go through the work to learn the skill, I may still pay someone else to do it, because they'll do a better job. But I'll know what goes into it. I'll know like if they give me feedback, I'll say, Hey, here's the problem. And it's a skill that I'll be able to carry with me forever. So you know, skill development is, I think, the most important thing when you're looking for employment. And if you are in a job where you're not developing skills, you got to get out of that as fast as possible. Franchising is one way to do it, they'll teach you what to do, you're going to drink from a firehose of information, but they're going to show you the ropes give you support. And that's one way I feel I'm going to a little bit of a rabbit hole here. Oh,

Keith McKeever 13:48

no, that's fine. I'm just gonna add to that, I think, you know, if anybody listens or watches this, and they get out and they get a job like that, let's just say they get a job with an excavating company, and they're operating a backhoe. There's skill involved, and you can sharpen that skill. But if that if you know, that's not going to be your career, you don't want to do that for the next 30 or 40 years, start watching your boss, watch the competitors, watch what's going on, start reading business books and figure out maybe you love that industry, but you don't want to be that guy, you want to be the boss, start putting notes together of what you need to do to establish your own company and be the competition. And you know, and and beat your current employer at what they're doing, you know, ways that you can take a situation that isn't really building for anything, you're just making a paycheck and feed your family, which you can gather so much intelligence, if you will, on, you know how to do the right way, the wrong way. You know, there's bad employers out there, where they could teach you some bad lessons that you can still learn from and say, Man, this guy is running this way. I'm not gonna run my business that way. I don't know this ethically or that, this, that and the other. So, you know,

Joel Stewart 14:58

it's kind of like if you're stuck In one of those jobs, one of the ways you can benefit use like a research project, you know, don't just show up and do the job and go home. You know, study everybody with what they're doing. And, you know, ask your boss for more responsibilities, or ask him how he does certain things, you know, ask him how you can do or help. One of the things I suggest in, in the value equation is, you know, if you're, if you're in a location and you want to, and you like where you are, you want to see what your current employer, tell your employer what your goals are, and ask them how you can work together to reach them. So you can be like, I want to be making $30 An hour within the next two years. What is the plan that we can do to get there using your company? Is there other programs I can get certified with? Is there extra training I can do? Are there extra responsibilities I can take on and actually partner with your employer, show them that you're ambitious. And and let them be part of it, is it's because that's a different value proposition, there's walking into your employer saying, I want a raise, I deserve it, I work hard, you're going up and you're saying, Here's my goal, and I want you to help me meet it. And, you know, if you're in companies love employees that are producing, God knows that they probably they might hire five employees, and two of those employees do 90% of the work, though, if you're if you're a producing employee, they're gonna do whatever they can to keep

Keith McKeever 16:21

you. And we'll definitely plays in plays into factor there.

Joel Stewart 16:25

So 8020 rule. The one of the other lessons I learned the military is if you want to get something done, find the person has the most most on their plate and give it to the person taking care of stuff.

Keith McKeever 16:38

Absolutely, you know, and have value like, everything's about value. But if I had an employee, and they came to me and said, Hey, I want to I want to make $30 an hour, I want to do this, you know, you know, maybe maybe I'll just say an excavating company, I don't own one. But if I had somebody wanted to do that, and they say, Hey, we're not doing septic systems, or whatever. And they say, I want to go get certified to install septic systems and do this and do that. And I could look at that as a boss to say, Hey, I could pay you $30 An hour if you got all these certifications and got us all approved. And like that can expand my business and I can make X amount more profit per year by expanding like, that'd be a win win. Yeah, why wouldn't you? I mean, you'd love that as a boss.

Joel Stewart 17:18

Yeah. And in my book, what I say is that's expanding your market value. So when you do things that expand your market value, and make yourself more profitable to the company, it makes it so that you're worthy of getting paid more money. Or it makes they make a good, good case for it. And ideally, your employment contract would have i i really love performance based incentives. So you know, I kind of push that hard in the book is, once you negotiate, after you negotiate your flat rate, salary, hourly, whatever, then say, hey, what about performance based bonuses? You know, what about stretch goals? If I meet this XY and Z criteria, can I get like an extra bonus or something like that, or if they already have a bonus system, say, hey, if I really blow it out of the water, because what you want is you want to build a system where, you know, if you're going to really kill yourself for company, you want to be compensated for that. You know, time and a half for overtime, you know, is great and all but unless you're really learning incredible skills while you're doing it, it's you want something that's going to be heavily that you want something is correlated as possible to your effort to your pay. Because that way, when you put in that extra effort, you get the pay, people that don't like to put an effort are the ones that like higher flat fees, because then they are higher flat

Keith McKeever 18:34

pay. We've all worked with somebody who just wants to

Joel Stewart 18:37

call it profit share in the book where you try to fight to get as much of the total market value you create as possible back in your own pocket. It's one of the factors that feed into your take on pays how much of your value you create the the put in your pocket. Sorry, they probably

Keith McKeever 18:59

try and get ourselves a little bit back on track. We're kind of halfway off track here. So what are the pros and cons, in your opinion of buying into a franchise?

Joel Stewart 19:09

So a franchise? So whenever you're looking at the pros and cons of a franchise, you have to look at it as here's the pros and cons vers starting your own business, right? Because that's what it is. It's a different type of business. It's a partnership, instead of you just doing everything on your own. So I would say I'll start with the negatives, because I like ending on positive notes. So the negative is, yeah, the first negative is that there's a franchise fee involved. So a franchise I'm gonna keep making references in my book. In my book, one of the ways that is ascribe employment versus business ownership versus Franchise Business Ownership is that the business owner creates a money making platform. So let's say Keith here, builds a business where he puts in X amount of hours and he's making 200 grand a year and he realizes he can train somebody he You can scale his business, you can train somebody to make 150 grand a year and pay them 50, right. And you can hire a couple of employees and do that. So you've created this money making platform, you made it, you created it from scratch. And now you can hire people to come into your platform and utilize it. And they derive instead of the 100%, that you're making, they get 30% As an employee, or 33%, making 50,000 out of 150,000, right. So that's an employee uses someone else's money making platform, starting your own business creates the money making platform, and buying into a franchise buys somebody else's money making platform. So instead of starting from scratch, you get to buy one that somebody else already has going. So tying that back to starting your your own verse, business versus a franchise. So when you start your own business, there's a ton of stuff that you've got to come up with from scratch, you know, you've got to figure out your value proposition, your product or service, you got to figure out your marketing, your branding, your you know, your employee related stuff, you're gonna have employees, you need independent contractors,

Keith McKeever 21:05

all the manuals, and everything OSHA and all that stuff,

Joel Stewart 21:09

yeah, you've got it, you've got to come up with a product that has a value proposition that you can sell. And you have to figure out how to sell it better than all the other competitors in your space. And it's an iterative process. So at first, you're probably going to suck at it. And then you're going to get better and better and better over a period of time. Unless you're really experienced, some people, you know, they've started 20, businesses are really good at it, and they just like, you know, Bada, bing, bada boom, they can figure it out and get it up and going. But if you're just starting a business, without a lot of business experience, all of that stuff, and you're probably looking at five to 10 years to try to get your business startup. And that's if you don't fail, because a lot of business startups fail to get your business to the level that you could be starting out with day one with a franchise. So anyway, when you pay a franchise to yours, I mean, yeah, reasonable to me. Yeah. But when you pay a franchise fee, you are buying all of that intellectual property, those systems, all of that, that someone else has put together, you're buying that money making platform, all that stuff is handed to you. And you get the power of their brand that they've developed over years and years. You know, the, they outsource innovation, because the franchisor, you know, good franchisor is gonna be innovating on your behalf. And coming down to you consistently though, we found a better way to do things when a better way to do things. So you've got that going for you. But the the fee is still there, and a lot of times it is a large fee, but you do get a lot for it. So that's that's one of the negatives is that you do have to pay this fee, but what you're buying is a money making platform. The second negative is there's royalties. So franchisors this is where most franchisors make most of their money is the royalties. And, and these are generally paying for ongoing support, that ongoing innovation, all those things, and it's how the franchisor makes most of their money, that flat fee that you pay for the franchise fee, mostly pays for their marketing to find you as a franchisee and the training to get you on boarded and the additional man hours it's going to take to support you to get your business started up. So the franchise fee isn't a real profit center.

Keith McKeever 23:23

So Is that easier than others to start up? Yeah, I mean, yeah, you could get a McDonald's franchise, everybody knows what McDonald's is. But yeah, you know, like, I'll pick on somebody to send to tribe in the council with us. You know, like the J dog brands, I don't know that much about it. But maybe those of us in the veteran community might know a little bit more about it. But you know, you may not have any close in your geographic area. And you're gonna have to do a lot of startup and a lot of networking and stuff like that to get it, you know, still off the ground.

Joel Stewart 23:51

Yeah, but so I have to help. Very true. But with a franchise system. If you've got if you've got a franchise that has dozens, hundreds or even 1000s of locations, they've done that. And in open markets. One of the things I actually have a little blurb that breaks out of my book that describes markets and I break it down into there's three types of markets. You've got oversaturated under saturated and open an oversaturated market, you don't really want to touch unless you really, really know what you're doing. Because your product has to be better. It's got to blow away everybody else that already has all the market share. When you have an underserved market, that's ideal. Because an underserved market, there's demand that's not being met, there are people literally they're saying here, take my money if you offer this product, and that's that's the best. It's not new. You don't have to educate people. They know it and there's a demand for it. One of the things that, you know, I don't know if it's still the case, but a couple of years ago, we had issues in our area with home inspectors, where you know, it would it would take weeks to book out a home inspector for real estate. And if there was somebody that came in and say look, I'm a new I'm a new home inspector certified whatever I'll I'll inspect your place tomorrow, that person could grab a ton of market share, because there just wasn't enough people meet demand. So that's an that's an example of an open market. Another one in a lot of areas might be like custom branded, 3d printed logos, decals, that kind of stuff. Because the technology with you know, 3d printers and laser etching, and that kind of stuff has made it so easy to get into that field. But a lot of people don't realize it or think it's very difficult to get. So if you can get into your local community, make yourself known there, there might be options there for an underserved, but it's all it's all relates to your market. And there's open markets where there's nobody there at all, and you have to educate people on it, you have to try to convince them, you need your product, you know, somewhere to open a virtual Virtual Reality arcade in the middle of some small town, they might never have tried Virtual Reality before. So you have to try to convince them that it's great. You have to, you have to convince them to come in and spend their money. And then you have to hope that in that market that people want to buy it, maybe it's all old, people don't like it, or they get motion sick when they're doing it. So so there's but if everybody loves it, it could be huge, because there's no competition whatsoever. A lot of research on that. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying what you were saying with the markets, breaking into a new market. Most franchisors have broken into new markets where they are not currently there. Hundreds of times, you know, with most franchise industries, you're talking about junk removal is I got pest control, commercial cleaning food, all of these things generally have local operators that are in an area, and they've gone up against them. And the kind of the thing is, is a franchise business is independently owned and operated, just like a mom and pop business. But a franchise system has so much feedback going into it on best practices, how to brand how to market, how to provide support, that when a franchise business opens up, it's actually it's really hard for the non franchise businesses to compete, because they don't have that huge support behind it. But it's it's you got on one side to sale, it's really sad that these businesses are kind of pushing out a lot of the mom and pop, but then you realize both of them are independently owned and operated companies. You know, they're they're both mom and pop, you know, the say Mom and Pop is and they're, they're they're run by, you know, your neighbors living down the street. But one of them has a large organization that's training supporting them, the other one doesn't. But like those ongoing royalties, in general, they were talking about the negatives here, right? The ongoing royalties in general are going to take, because they know that this differs from Franchise a franchise, but because royalties are normally taken off of revenues, the impact of that on your net, is fairly substantial. I mean, I would say probably expect do 20 to 30%, some is going to be more some going to be less of your net, going to the front the royalties. But you do get to leverage employees. So when when you're saying, Well, you know, I don't want to that's almost like a job, if I'm, if I'm paying, you know, maybe even 40% of my take home, back to my franchise partner. And that's, that's, you know, probably more in the worst case scenario there. Most, most wouldn't be that much. You know, I'm paying that, you know, why don't, why don't I just go work a job and try to get 50 or 60% profit share. And, but with a friend, being a franchise business owner, you also get to leverage employees and, and that's where you can really start to generate wealth as you're leveraging other people's labor, which as an if you're if you are an employee, that's nearly impossible to do. There are very few businesses out there where they hire employees, and they let those employees hire other employees that pay them. It's a, it's, I don't think I've ever seen it. I'm not gonna say it's not up there, but it's out there.

Keith McKeever 28:44

So most franchise franchisees, in your opinion, are most of them, most of them are probably not working day to day. Well, I guess it depends on the franchise.

Joel Stewart 28:54

Oh, it's it really depends. So I just want to so anyway, so the negative is you are going to be paying a chunk in your royalties to the franchisor on your your net income. But because but their support is enabling you to do more faster. So while I would have to say it's kind of like buying time, because you could take five to 10 years to develop your own business and get 100% of the profits. Or you could take a franchise partner and save 10 years of business development and just jump right into it. But to your point on, on whether employees are working day to day in the business, that is really highly dependent on the franchise. So a lot of the service based businesses, they do the franchisees run the organization, because the organization is generally one it's one big organization there's there's two different ways that franchises kind of expand. The more common way is to have a bunch of small individual units. The less common way which is more prevalent with service base is you've got one large organization that can buy the rights to service larger and larger territories. but it's really one central organization. And the franchisee is usually running. Once it's up and running, they can replace themselves with a manager generally. But to get those started, a lot of them will require you to work in the business. Now, when you look at a unit base, like a restaurant, for instance, is generally a unit based or a storefront. And anything where you know, it's like you could or gyms, the most common type of franchising is unit based where you're buying where you can buy one and run it yourself. You can buy three and put in management and oversee the management team. You can buy 10, you can buy area development agreements and develop an entire city and sorry, yeah,

Keith McKeever 30:41

I bet those get pretty expensive if you start buying up a Jeep right here.

Joel Stewart 30:44

Yeah, yeah, so they do. But you don't need to start there. So that's what you're looking at starting at that. Yeah, I mean, if you're a veteran, you've got some money saved up and you want to start a franchise, you're gonna want to start with probably a single unit or one of those service base. And I'm really big on service space right now in the age of COVID. People are loving, or not maybe not loving, but they're using their homes more than they've ever used them before. And I think that the demand for home improvement and being able to use your yards and Beautification and all that stuff, I think is going to be going up. And I don't think it's going to go back down to where it was pre COVID. Because once people have gotten used to working from home used to using our house, I have a feeling that they're going to want to continue

Keith McKeever 31:22

in that there's a big adjustment going forward. Yeah, yeah, it is hard to buy things like the room I'm sitting in right now, I just had remodeled this summer. And the contractors putting it together was flat out telling you guys, man, it's hard to get lumber, the prices of lumber have gone up, you know, X amount percent, and, you know, just wasn't anything available at my local Menards. So he had to go next town over and go to Lowe's and, you know, pick up extra lumber there to be able to finish the job,

Joel Stewart 31:47

just saying they couldn't have taken all the lumber out of California before it all.

Keith McKeever 31:52

Yeah, a little bit went up in smoke down there.

Joel Stewart 31:55

But I'm sorry. So with the unit system, if you're like a guy who's or girl who's got some money saved up, and you want to start a franchise, you probably are going to be starting either one of those service base organizational expansion models, or you're going to be starting with a single unit. But franchises are very modular. So just because you start with one gym, or you start with one restaurant or one retail outlet, doesn't mean you have to stay there, you can start with one if that's what your budget allows. And then you can expand out using that we can expand out into other franchises. So say you like your geographical area, you've now expanded to three locations, you want to stay where you are, but you want to maybe open up other product lines, you can continue to do that. And I'm kind of hesitant on that, because I don't like one of the things I learned in going through my MBA was the correlation coefficient for investments. And you don't want your investments to be correlated to each other. So if you if all of your investments are all in one town, if that town goes downhill while your investment, so I'm not sure I'm not necessarily a proponent of that, but I'm saying it's possible to open multiple franchise lines in the same geographical area to try to stay focused where you are.

Keith McKeever 33:07

You got to figure out I mean, yeah, there's a lot of variables there that that makes a good point, that's kind

Joel Stewart 33:12

of my job is to help people work through those variables. So you wouldn't want to open up

Keith McKeever 33:15

a, I don't know, I'll just pick on McDonald's. Yeah, and you wouldn't want to find some town that doesn't have a McDonald's, but, you know, put two or three McDonald's in there. And then something happened where nobody, nobody can go out to eat, or can't go there. And all of a sudden, your entire portfolio of investments is not making any revenue. Yeah, you know, then you're hurting.

Joel Stewart 33:36

So that's, that's where there's options to expand out like going deep with one franchise or to go wide with many franchises. So there's, there is so much flexibility inside the franchise system to adapt what you want to do to your needs. But just going back to the negatives real quick, because there is one more thing one dimension is there is a personality type that will not be happy and afraid and a franchise and that is the people who are super entrepreneurial. They're like hyper entrepreneurs. If they're not making something themselves, they're not happy doing it. And, and my goal breaking people out of career prison, is to get them doing something that they're happy doing. So if you are one of these hyper entrepreneurial people, the only way franchising makes sense is if you're an empire, because if you try to do something small, you're just going to feel so constrained, you're going to have 90 Different million ideas to try to improve the franchise system. And the franchise systems not going to allow you to do it, that you're going to be very very unhappy. But if you're but if you are looking at doing like an empire building model, trying to scale out locations instead of you know optimizing a single location, it could work. That's another kind of thing is the two main people looking at franchising are generally the people looking to just break out a career prison. Try To open up one, two or three locations, and just kind of start working their way out into something they enjoy, or those people that already kind of have established finances established portfolios, and they're looking to empire built. And that's where you get into the area development in the master franchise models we haven't even talked about yet. But Master franchising allows you to buy the rights to an area like an area developer, but you sub sell the locations to somebody else. And then you split the franchise fees or royalties with the franchisor. And then you are the support arm for the franchisor in that region. That's kind of the other empire building models will

Keith McKeever 35:35

put you like a middleman between the corporate and the buyer. So you buy up your whole county for a particular company, and then you just you know, sell the have the right yeah,

Joel Stewart 35:46

yeah, but so master franchise model is, unless it's a brand new franchise, or fairly new franchise, or it's a or if it's a commercial cleaning type franchise, master franchise models are usually really expensive. Because they are, you know, from everything I've ever heard, since I started franchise consulting, Master franchising is the way to make the most money in franchising. Once you get your area developed, and you're getting in those passive revenue streams, you know, it's most it's very passive, I mean, it's gonna take some support to get all of your locations sold and support them while they're opening up. But once they're open, you could probably hire somebody to handle most of the the issues with the franchise ors, and it can turn into a pretty passive thing. And it's one of the best ways to make money. Franchises also exclusively use almost exclusively use master franchising to expand internationally, they have someone local, buy up the rights to a large portion or all over the country. And then that person is responsible for supporting all the franchisees in that country. But, but yeah, they are very expensive. Now, commercial cleaning is a little different commercial cleaning franchises, most of them, not all of them, most of them will sell the rights to say, a city, like a whole city and all their suburbs, they'll sell it as a master franchise model for actually a fairly reasonable fee compared to other master franchises. And then you basically recruits, other cleaning companies are already in the city to be your franchisees and, and then you secure large commercial cleaning contracts and sell those contracts to the franchisees. So you are that that role is a little more active than a normal master franchise model because you are securing your securing the contracts. But, but that's the most affordable way to get into master franchising is usually through some type of commercial cleaning, or service based model, where you're actually hiring or recruiting the local mom and pop shops to be franchise arms. And some of those guys, I mean, some of those guys will join multiple organizations with different T shirts. And we'll drive up and grab the right band for the day.

Keith McKeever 38:03

Back in the van and I want the orange one, the yellow one, what job Am I on today? Hey, you got to do what you got to do to pay the bills. Right? You got to make your money this this is that's a whole level of franchising. I didn't even know it. I mean, I don't know, we're near the expert, but I have no idea.

Joel Stewart 38:20

Like tracing is very interesting. It's very flexible.

Keith McKeever 38:23

It's very fascinating for you know, to kind of to kind of hear that. I mean, I think my level of knowledge was like most people that use buying the franchise, you get your brick and mortar location, or maybe a service location, you kind of do your thing, but I didn't even think about you know, that middle level that, you know, it's possible up there. And

Joel Stewart 38:41

most people when most people think of franchising, they think of food. Yeah, McDonald's took away a dime for every time someone said, Oh, what about Chick fil A? I'd be a rich man.

Keith McKeever 38:51

Yeah, you know, I mean, I know like locally where I'm at there's I can't remember the guys name. But I mean, he was like seven or eight different subway franchises. Probably owns more. There's a guy who was a state senator here that I know owns a handful of restaurants. You know, so it's, you know,

Joel Stewart 39:06

yeah, restaurants Believe it or not ranch at first fruits are very expensive. They're one of the most expensive franchises you can start. You know, if I were to if I were to categorize it, I would put restaurants and storage as probably the the most expensive franchise actually buy the property. You got to construct a building. Yeah, yeah, I work with one storage authority. They do self storage, I think it's like over 3,000,002 to 3 million thing. But even even with the portable storage, so like I work with units, which is kind of like a lot more people are familiar with pods, but I think they have most of America sold already. So good luck getting into that one. I think you all does it too. Yeah, yeah. So but there's one I work with really cool called units. And yeah, even with that, I mean, you can rent a big warehouse to store all of these portable units. You can go and drop them off but just buying those, you know, buying those shells, you need lots of them, you're gonna be dropping them off all over the place. They're not that cheap. So even with that you're looking at probably 750 to a million minimum or

Keith McKeever 40:11

is the building that you're going to either rent or purchase. Yeah. Now there are opportunities out there as brick and mortar, you know, because you're a commercial real estate and I'm in I'm in residential. There's a lot of brick and mortar, you know, I'm just gonna pick on another franchise, here. Kmart, Kmart, not really around anymore, we've got a Kmart in my town now. And U haul is working out of it. You still gotta use them with that big building. Oh, there's a U haul franchise there. Gotcha. You know, so, you know, maybe they might be doing that same exact thing right here.

Joel Stewart 40:39

I was gonna say you saw the Kmart, but then you were like, oh, no, they use the building.

Keith McKeever 40:42

Kmart clothes, maybe three, four. Yeah.

Joel Stewart 40:46

Kmart was a franchise, I could be wrong. I thought that was a corporate

Keith McKeever 40:50

could be corporate. But either way, you know? Yeah, brick and mortar buildings out there they sit empty. Yep. So if you've got the money, and you've got, you know, you want to

Joel Stewart 40:58

let me tell you that is like, my, this is probably the the other really great way to make money with franchising. If you can find a vacant commercial space, the cheapest commercial real estate, you're ever going to get vacant commercial space, it's not income producing, it's just accruing taxes. You know, the town might even be trying to throw blight warnings on them, like some of the ones around here. If you got vacant commercial real estate, that building is going to be very inexpensive. In general, when you have a building that has a 10 to 15 year lease on a franchise business, that is the lowest risk business generally that you're going to find. I'm not there, a lot of people don't really realize the way that commercial real estate is generally that valuated. But usually, it's based on what they call a cap rate. And the cap rate is, you know, say a low cap rate is good, a higher cap rate is bad when it comes to selling your business. And it's a it's a risk factor. And the risk factor is based a lot on your tendency. So if you've got a bunch of short term tenants that might roll out and leave the building vacant, you might make some money, but it's high risk, so you're going to get a higher cap rate. And the way it works is you take the net income for the building, how much money you're putting in your pocket from the building rent every month, and you divide it by the cap rate, and that is generally the sale price. So if you've got a building, making $100,000 net a month, and you sell for 10% cap rate, and you take that 100,000 divided by point one or 10%. And you'll get a million dollar valuation. And that's the way it works. So if you can get it smaller, if you can get it down to say point five, or 5% cap rate, that's now a $2 million building. So when you if you can do something to put low risk tenancies, you know, great known businesses with long leases, you can sell the real estate itself for an enormous amount of money. And so if you can buy it cheap, put it in a low risk business with it with a with a nice lease, triple net lease, you can just keep the business and flip the real estate and make a lot of money. Sorry, pro tip out there. Now for commercial development.

Keith McKeever 43:15

We're all about value, you know? Yeah. So anything is valued around commercial real estate or prank at franchising here might be valuable to somebody. So yeah, it's an interesting way of looking at it that I'm assuming those longer lease terms are probably your bigger. Well, no, you know,

Joel Stewart 43:33

no, I mean, if you've got a 10 year franchise acumen anyway, they'd want a 10 year lease. Yeah. So. So what about the positives? Well, I think I feel I feel like I've gone through them all kind of back and forth. I think the biggest positive, as I've said here is they're they're very flexible, and they utilize your soft skills. Like I said, you know, I heard somebody on a veteran job board, lamenting that they had these senior enlisted guys, and they're in there, and they're, they're begging, they're basically like begging these employers for jobs, and trying to try to prove to the employer while they're valuing, and meanwhile, they've run like these huge or basically run these huge organizations. And they've been in charge of, you know, hundreds 1000s of people sometimes, you know, planning doing all this incredible leadership development. And when you try to put them into a cookie cutter corporate role, so much of that is wasted. But you put them into their own business where they're given another standard operating procedure, the franchise hands on the book, you know, here's how you're successful, and they just go to town on it building their team. They're utilizing almost all of those skills they developed in the military and the but they're applying it to something completely different. So it utilizes soft skills regardless of what the hard skills are, you know, it you might not be, you know using your precision in accuracy on the rifle range. But all those soft skills you developed and leadership and coordination and logistics, all that stuff you can apply into your business. And you can choose a franchise business, it's going to use the most of your skills. So it's it's one of those things where you can you can choose how you're going to apply, because there's so many options. I think there's something over 4000 Now franchises in the United States. Wow. So there's yeah, there's a ton of offers out there. I worked with in the United States, probably close to 500. Myself, wow. But then it's like that's, that's barely over 10% of the total market. But that's because you've got the big franchises. When you think about the franchise that use a franchise consultant, like me to help connect them with franchisees, the big ones like McDonald's don't, I mean, they don't need to, and most of the territories sold anyway. They sold the area developers or master franchise ORS or build out the surgery.

Keith McKeever 45:55

I don't care where you're at. Yeah, so those other big brands are gonna be saturated.

Joel Stewart 45:59

Yeah, so a lot of the big ones, they don't need consultants to help them find franchisees, and they wouldn't have any territory available. Anyway, the mid level franchises, and the newer ones are the ones that utilize consultants like myself, the, you know, with a big focus on the middle side, so most of the franchises I work with are probably between 50 and 1000 units, which is kind of mid level

Keith McKeever 46:23

for franchise, like regional type at that point, or Yeah,

Joel Stewart 46:27

yeah. I mean, when you've got a handful, what do you think about a franchise system, right? So you build a business, and it's an amazing business. And then you're like, the way that I want to expand his franchise, maybe you've got people coming up to you saying, hey, I want to open up one of your things in my neighboring town. So you expand out to a couple of locations, that is huge. People don't realize that if you've got a business that grew to be really successful, and now is opened up in six different markets, each one of those markets is unique challenge. It's a unique demographic, its unique profile site. And the selection really comes psychographics and demographics and all that fun stuff. It's a complete that, that new markets, completely different animal. And when you've got, you know, 510 locations opened up, that is like, really huge, it's a huge accomplishment. And now when you double that to 2050. And there are so many franchises out there that are at that 20 to 50 level range, that are just starting to grow into national franchises. And that's where I think I think a lot of those 4000 are, I think are in the 10 or less range, they're still in that I'm growing stage. And most of the ones I work with, I do have some, but generally don't point person towards a new franchise, unless there's something really unique about it. There's something that's very innovative, or there's just no other options out there. Then I'm like, wow, this is like this, this is a trailblazer right here, you know, they're pioneering something nobody else is doing. And so somebody want, but because it's all about flexibility, you know, if somebody wants something that's very specific, or near that small franchise appointment that way, I like to see, you know, a couple dozen locations myself, because by the time you've got 30 or 50 locations, I mean, you've got so much feedback from multiple markets into your system. Like I feel pretty confident. And then when you got 100 or more, I mean, they they they've got it down, generally, generally not always

Keith McKeever 48:25

gonna grow a lot, from one location to a second location to by the time you get to three, four and five, you know, you're probably balancing is the owner, balancing a lot, these different market areas, how you making it work here, here and here, consistency, whatever you're doing, you know, I get those kinks worked out about 10 or 15. That makes me yeah, you start you start kind of hitting your groove.

Joel Stewart 48:47

That's exactly it. But there's I do want to throw out a warning though, just because a franchise is big, doesn't mean it's good. One of the things you want to look for and when, when, when you're going through the franchise discovery process, but I would not have time to go through on here. But when you're going through it, there's a docking, you're going to get called the Franchise Disclosure Document. Back in item 20, I believe it is near the end, they're going to have statistics of how many locations there are. They're also going to tell you how many they've gained in the last couple of years. They're going to tell you how many transfers they have. They're gonna tell you how many closures and terminations they've had. If you're, if you see a franchise, and they I mean, they could have 900 units. But if you go back there, and it shows that, you know, three years ago, they had 1000. And now they're at 900. You have to wonder why did 100 locations close? And the last red flag? Right? Yeah. Or, you know, if it's, there's gonna be closures, right. But if it's a growing system, those closures will be offset by new ones. The other thing is transfers. So like if there's a lot of transfers, sometimes that can be a franchise trying to hide its failures. They might try to resell it to somebody else or they might, you know, even buy it back corporately and then resell it as a corporate unit. There's So the you do want to look at the transfers and terminations and closures and you have to, if it's a high number, you really have to see you really got it, you really have to really drill down on the franchisor. Learn why the front why the closures happened, and try to make sure that whatever the circumstances was, that wouldn't apply to

Keith McKeever 50:18

you. Yeah, do your research. And, yeah, my

Joel Stewart 50:23

franchise consultants to help with is to help, you know, go help avoid the mind the minefields. Yeah. But yeah,

Keith McKeever 50:28

growth rate, like the growth rates, you know, that could be all over the place. Yeah. But like, what would be a red flag on a growth rate, like too fast, not not that

Joel Stewart 50:39

can growth. So on the growth rate, you really need to do, there's another part of the discovery process called validation, where you call existing franchisees, you need to drill down with them on their support, and how they feel about how the franchise is supporting them. Because the biggest issue with growth rate is that they say the franchisor is just amazing at marketing, they've got these incredible salespeople, they have these really flashy sales things, and they're just recruiting people like crazy. Well, they don't have the organized organizational structure to support all these new franchisees, they're going to break down and the franchisees aren't get support, they need to get started. And so they may have these promises of we're gonna do XY and Z. And then when you actually get there, they're not delivering on the promises. And, you know, when franchisees are frustrated, and you ask them a question that targets their frustration, they're going to tell you about

Keith McKeever 51:28

why the pressure in the right location, tell you everything you

Joel Stewart 51:31

say, if you're seeing like really expensive growth rates, make sure that you call. So sometimes a franchisor will set up some phone calls, and they're going to set up phone calls, generally with the ones they want you to talk to, but they're going to be there's going to be phone calls listed in the franchise or phone numbers listed in the Franchise Disclosure Document for you know, all the franchisees in the system. And, you know, you don't want to harass them, but you can, you know, reach out to some that they don't give you and just ask the question. And, and the other thing is, I mean, there's also lawsuits, and they have to disclose any lawsuits to them or their affiliates or in that's in the beginning. I am three I think. Yeah, so I know, a lot of lawsuits there. That's another question especially. You, you don't want something where it seems like every other franchisee that joins our system is litigating. Luckily, you can know that up front before you purchase. So the discovery process is pretty robust.

Keith McKeever 52:29

And I mean, lawsuits are gonna happen. Yeah, you know, sometimes, sometimes there's, they're silly, they're stupid. Sometimes they're legit. And so that's definitely a good. I like that one. I didn't know that that part of it that makes sense. Now that you mentioned it, you really want to know, what you're facing, you know, is it something that's going to like destroy everything? You know, you're going to get it, you know, get tied up in something that's just going to bring you down six months later, or a year later? Because there's some crazy crazy lawsuit is going on? So continue on some of the kind of answers some of these ahead of here that I had here. But you know, real quick, how would you know, maybe a small mom and pop shop that's looking has some success? Maybe they got two or three locations? Open up? How what should they do to get into franchising to sell their model?

Joel Stewart 53:19

Yeah, so there's a couple of ways to make yourself a franchise, you can try to do it yourself. And you can contact the franchise specialized law firm to help you put together the paperwork. But you're no, you're gonna also have to put together a lot of training programs, because the hardest thing for a mom and pop shop this one wants to transition to a franchise is you have to figure out how to replace yourself. If you think about how many small businesses are out there, if you took that owner, if you took that person that's running that business and took them out of the business, there's nobody else that can make that business work. So to franchise you have to figure out training programs, procedures, streamline whatever it is that you're doing, document what you're doing, and figure out how you can train someone to replace you. And that's your biggest job. And if you can train someone to replace you, and you can put that into a training program, you can start as far as trying to start, if there are people approaching you saying I want to open one of your businesses, that's usually a good sign. You're also going to want to be very profitable, like so. What I always say is franchising used to scale not to grow, if you're not profitable enough to keep your doors open, or if you're barely keeping your doors open. Trying to franchise your business is not the way to do it. All you're going to do is maybe sucker some people into your business model and then they're just going to fail along with you. You don't want to do that. You want to take the time and build a solid very profitable business model and then make it something that you can replicate by being able to replace yourself and then you can scale out by having other people open more locations. The The other thing is that I recommend is if it is a unit based thing open multiple locations yourself using managers. And you can even let these managers know that you're going to want to sell to them in the future. But hire them to open these locations, so that you understand what you need to do to open multiple units. Because the fastest way a franchise is going to grow is by recruiting other multi unit franchisees people don't want to open three, five, whatever. But if you don't have experience opening and running multiple locations, how are you going to train people. So if it's a unit based system, for me, I would say you have to open a couple of yourself with managers and and make them successful. And that'll also help you learn how to adjust to new markets, then you can have those managers you can have that you could, you know, sell them the franchise location, you could even do owner financing where they're just paying you off over time. And they can then turn into franchisees which can be used for validation. So validation is when you call the existing franchisees and figure out what it's like being franchisee in the system. If you don't have any franchisees, there's nobody that can validate that your system works. So by opening multiple locations, and then turning those multiplications into franchisees, you have people that are there that can tell people that want to get into your system that yes, this system works, I'm running it, and legal. And here's the other thing. Legally, you can't really give your corporate location, you can you can give the financials of your corporate location, I suppose, and the Franchise Disclosure Document and some franchises do that. But you can't talk about finances, about anything that isn't in the Franchise Disclosure Document. But your franchisees can, they can talk about their existing location, they can talk about their struggles, their expenses, their profits, their margins, all that stuff, unless you've got it in black and white, statistical provable, and your Franchise Disclosure Document, you can't talk about it. So having franchisees that can talk about that and can talk about the financial metrics of the business and how it works, is also very valuable. So that's my top advice, make a profitable business, figure out how to replace yourself, open multiple locations, and then sell those multiple locations to be your first franchisees, as

Keith McKeever 57:13

you know, you really want to have probably a minimum of three locations that are, you know, really, pretty much killing it in different market areas, I would say so Yeah, something like that. Probably maybe as a minimum benchmark, I would think listening to that. That's probably where I'd be at if you can do the other thing is here is a two or three different standalone franchises, different managers, then you could probably have some success being able to pull that off. Yeah, the

Joel Stewart 57:38

other thing is, even if you have a super successful business, there's no guarantee it's going to work in a market besides your own. So that's the other benefit of opening it in other markets, is its validation to you that you don't have like some one off amazing thing that only works in your micro demographic of a market. We

Keith McKeever 57:54

all know that little mom and pop shop, restaurant, coffee shop, pizza joint, whatever, that just kills it in a small town or someplace but their guy, there's no guarantee that if you move that to the next town over that, those people are gonna like it. Yeah. And I grew up in a small rural area, and we had a pizza joint. I won't name their name, but everybody loved it. Like in high school after football, basketball games, we would all go, we sit down and eat pizza and onion rings, it was delicious. And a handful years ago, they sold that company. And last time I went back I was like, just didn't you know, didn't hit they just, you know, ran it into the ground. If they would have had another location, they probably would have been a flop, you know, with, you know, after a change hands and all that stuff, different factors there. But yeah, that could be a epic disaster. So Well, I think I pretty much hit everything on franchise dive in your book here. You kind of hinted on it already. You know, it's all it's the value equation. So what you know, tell us what your book is about?

Joel Stewart 58:56

Yeah. So like I said before, breaking people out of career prison is something very passionate about in franchising, we covered all the ways franchising is really flexible, and can help people do that. But I, I wanted to go more than that I wanted to break out of just the franchising niche and just help people that they might have the finances sort of franchise, or they might not have any desire, but to give them a roadmap for success. And so what I do with the value equation is I say, Well, you know, I thought out using my, my engineering brain, I thought, what are all all the factors that feed into your monthly take home pay, when you get that check at the end of the month? What are the factors that feed into it, and I came up with five primary factors. The first is your skill set. And one of the big things I pushed through the value equation is that you have to continually develop your skill set that is the number one way that you are going to make yourself progressively more valuable every day of your life so that you don't stall out so you don't get stuck. No matter what life transition you go through. If you just Keep focusing on your skill set, you're going to keep becoming more valuable.

Keith McKeever 1:00:03

Nobody wants to wake up and be like, where did the last 10 years ago? Yeah, exactly. Well, I didn't do anything I didn't, you know, I'm roughly at the same point that I was nobody wants to, you know, not

Joel Stewart 1:00:13

be I propose being fairly ruthless using employment as a way to develop skills. If you're not developing skills, you find somewhere else to work, or you find a way to increase your responsibilities at your job. Using your extracurriculars, your the things you're interested in your hobbies, all of these things can be used as to develop your skill sets in various ways. The second thing that feeds into it is your fifth factor. So how is it that your skills fit into a specific job? So that that's really important. You know, the obvious example is you have a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, if they get a job as a cashier, they're not. They're not making what they could make. The fifth factor is very small.

Keith McKeever 1:00:56

strategic level thinking, Yeah, but you're very,

Joel Stewart 1:01:00

so I talked, I talked about four main ways that the way four main ways that your skills fit into jobs, and how you can try to maximize that effect, then the third thing I talked about is his profit share. So I touched on this a little bit earlier, but that I basically look at being an employee, being a business owner, or being in a business, that's a partnership, either a regular partnership or franchise partnership, and how I define market value as based off of your labor, the amount of money that you take home, and the amount of money the business takes home, put those two together, and I consider your market value. So when you've got that market value number, how much of that you get to keep as an employee, as a business owner, as a franchise, business owner or partnership, and then I focus on it, then I give all kinds of ideas on ways that you can try to maximize that profit, share and take home the most possible, then I talked about perceived value. And I talked about all the different ways that how you are perceived feeds into how much you get paid. And there's lots of different ways. And I cover a lot of stuff there from, you know, first impressions to getting involved in your community to working with, you know, local nonprofits, networking groups, you know, perception when it comes to negotiations, how your boss's perception of you can be changed or improved to raise your probability of getting approved for a raise, how you can use going into a salary negotiation, how you can use it when teaching aside like a general contract for like, beside business, I kind of get into the weeds a bit on a lot of different topics. Then the last thing I talked about is courage. And how you have to have that courage to move forward with anything, anything in your life is going to require courage, anything important. And, and I break down different ways that different techniques you can use so that Courage isn't that hard to get. It's not about just summoning up this big force of will to take on these life decisions. It's how you break the life decisions down into manageable chunks and you prepare for them. You know, then the military, you got the the PS. proper, proper planning prevents poor performance is the PG version.

Keith McKeever 1:03:18

Yeah. Absolutely.

Joel Stewart 1:03:22

But the, you know, it's just how you can use planning, goal setting collaboration to basically make courage a little harder, or a little easier, I should say, to muster. And that fear is important. You know, fear isn't something that you want to get rid of. I think one quote that I love that I came up with in the book was, if you are fearless, you are likely simply stupid. Fear is there for a reason. Why?

Keith McKeever 1:03:48

You know, we're all afraid to something. Yeah, you know, I'm not. I'm not super comfortable talking in front of large groups. But I've got my continuing educators license for real estate, and I'm in the process, developing some classes to teach. And, and that pushes me out of my comfort zone. And I do it because I know it's gonna make me better. And, you know, I know the podcast is gonna help with that I knew, you know, certain things are going to develop those skills. So that yeah, when I get to that point, I'll be alright.

Joel Stewart 1:04:18

That that is exactly what I talked about in my book. But so what I said like, if you were to just say, I'm going to go teach, like, it would take an incredible amount of courage for you to get up and just go and like, start trying to teach people, but you went and you took out all sorts of training, you got certified, you're doing a podcast to get used to talking, you're taking all of these steps. And each one of those steps is going to make, make it so that you need less and less courage to actually get up there in the classroom and teach. And that's the exact type of principle that I talked about in the book. So those are like the five main things that I talked about about some extra stuff, but those are the five main things that I think when you put them all together, all of those go into one side of the equation and your monthly income is going to come out the other and if you can improve Any one of those, whether it's the courage and how you approach opportunities, whether it's how you're perceived by those around you, whether it's the improving the profit share, or the fifth factor or your skills, improving any of those is in the long run going to increase that take home pay. So that's why I call it the value equations and talking about your personal value and the factors that feed into it.

Keith McKeever 1:05:25

It's a great book. And I'll tell you, what I think I liked the most is that you gave examples in the back of people kind of a different points in there, you're at the end of each section of people at different points, you know, those starting out kind of in the middle of the career, and then you know, the higher level. So I think no matter who reads it, they'll be able to identify pretty close to one of those three, and it gives you maybe a little bit of insight into the mindset of where you need to be what they're doing. Kind of a little bit of a roadmap. That's yeah, that was my goal to body. So I thought that at

Joel Stewart 1:06:00

the end of each section, yeah, at the end of each section, I break it down. And I have three case studies of three people that are in different, completely different phases of life, and how they can use the principles of that section, and apply it to their own life to keep their life moving forward. And the goal between that and all of the chapters is people reading, it will get inspired, they'll read it and say, Oh, that's something that I can do to get my life moving in the direction I want it to go. So it's like, the whole book is just there as like, almost like an inspiration to make is to give you those epiphany moments. Like, yes, I can do that. And then of course, I temper down at the end and say, Look, if you got if you got a lot of inspiration out of this, don't try to do it. Yeah, burn yourself out, identify 123 things and

Keith McKeever 1:06:43

go for it slow down, write it down, you know,

Joel Stewart 1:06:47

I'm actually I, I am finalizing it right now. But I'm also making a workbook to go along with it should be out pretty soon, next couple of weeks. But the workbook, because there is just so many topics, like I didn't even even process this show, I touched on like, probably a dozen different topics. There's a cover so many different topics, that I made a workbook so that when people go through it, they can go through it in depth. And at the end of the workbook, I have what's probably the most important part of it. And I actually have this 40 year plan where I say, Alright, so we've gone through all this, look at where you see your life in the future. And let's work back in five year increments, and see what skills you need to develop what experience you needed in the workplace. What did you need to get there, and I work it back, and that I start Alright, so now that you've worked back what you need to get from each stage to where you see yourself in the future. Let's start it from now what do you need to do in the next five years? What do you do in the next 10 years, and then I rebuild the plan forward in the workbook. And I think if people actually go through that, it's not that you'll actually, you know, stick to it hardcore through your whole life, but it gives you a path to follow. And if your path if opportunities show up in that path changes, you just redo it, you know, once you get used to replanting a path for your life, it starts to become second nature. But a lot of people just need that Kickstart to get started. So for those that do end up using the workbook in the future, six go through to the end and put time into that plan. If you fill that out, fully forward and backwards and forwards, I think that is going to be incredibly valuable for identifying specific steps you can start taking today to get your life moving forward. So

Keith McKeever 1:08:27

I think that's a really powerful tool there. And I didn't know that,

Joel Stewart 1:08:32

oh, I'll send you my working copy of it. Take a look at it.

Keith McKeever 1:08:36

I consider myself a very reflective person. And I think about legacy. And I think about you know, I don't know how long we live, but I'm going to die at some point. So what's my legacy when I leave this world? And you know, you fast forward 40 years, gee, I hope I'm alive in 40 years. I mean, put me in my mid 70s. But you need to think about that, like what do you want to do in retirement? When do you want to retire? What do you want to accomplish in life, and 40 years is a really long,

Joel Stewart 1:09:04

you don't get to do a 40 years like the basically do it from retirement backwards. And if you use all 40 years you do and if you don't, you don't,

Keith McKeever 1:09:11

but it forces you to kind of have those goals. And I mean, there's long term long term goals, and those are really, really long term goals. But you know, if you're very clear in your head about what those goals are going to be and where you want to be when you retire and kind of the world. You know, you just want to sit on your in your chair and watch the Cubs game every time it's on or do you want to get out and serve your community? Or do you want to travel the world like whatever it is? Put your head down and work backwards. I think that's genius.

Joel Stewart 1:09:37

Well, identifying the goals is not actually the main point of the exercise. The main point of the exercise is this is discovering which skills you need, right what employment experience you need.

Keith McKeever 1:09:47

When you go you know what you need to go Yeah, skills you need to do to get there.

Joel Stewart 1:09:50

Yeah, the goals are the endpoints. They're great. The goals are incredibly important. They're like, probably the most important, but how you identify but the but the point is that you're not going to have like if you've got a goal and here's my 10 year plan, I want to, I want to be a congressman in my for my state senate. Right? So if that's your 10 year plan, how do you have any idea what skills you're going to need to become a congressman in 10 years? What do you need to have done? And what do you need to have done by five years from now to be that state congressman, in 10 years, you know, it's about identifying the skills that you can start taking proactive action right now to develop so that your goals are achievable. Because otherwise you have a 10 year goal. If you never develop those skills, you'll be eight years in and say, Oh, I have two years to do this. And you've missed eight years of planning,

Keith McKeever 1:10:39

and then a long time to learn that person at 10 more years down the road at that point. Yeah, exactly, you get to it. But

Joel Stewart 1:10:46

another weird point is my definition of skills, I'll just throw this out. I know we're running really long here. I define skills, not just as your ability to, to do something, I also define your skills as accomplishments that enable future activity. So like a four year degree, in my opinion, I have an engineering degree, that's a skill, that's a skill I've developed, I'm an engineer, you know, I've got an MBA, that's a skill, that piece of paper that I have with that degree will help open up opportunities that wouldn't have been available otherwise. You know, I can go back to your military experience, it could be certifications, I have this certification, that certification, it could be specific programs. You know, for instance, a lot of people learn, and when they're in the military, they learn a lot of programs like as far as logistics, or reporting, or, or whatever I learned all kinds of programs I never would have learned for wasn't in construction management for the military. Those programs can be requirements for jobs, those are all skills to me, developing, developing program knowledge, platform knowledge, the ability to use social media, or YouTube, all that stuff, degrees, certifications, all that skill development. So say, say you know that you've got a better chance of being a stay, Congressman, in 10 years, if you have a four year degree, well, then then you know that that's going to take for those 10 years to get through. And you know that you need to be more proactive, you need to work on that. Now, more than later, alright. But the same thing, like or if you know, you're going to be doing it part time, it might take you seven years to get that four year degree for doing evening classes. So you gotta get on that, you know. So it's about identifying where you want to be in backtracking the skills you need to get there. It's sorry, I probably beat that

Keith McKeever 1:12:32

spot. I think it takes a lot of reflect you got to you got to reflect on what your current skills are. You got to know what those goals are, and what skills you need. But you also have to be very situationally aware, and, you know, maybe look to people in that position, that can be a mentor, whether they know it or not, you know, sit there and observe what they do and how they do it. Like, you know, if you would be a congressman, you know, you probably need to sit back and sit there and say, what do they do? What are they doing every day? How are they interacting with their constituents? You know, how do they do things? What skills do they have? What degrees do they have? What experiences do they have? Can I get experiences like that, that's gonna, you know, give me those skills.

Joel Stewart 1:13:09

So mentorship, I actually talked about in the section on perceived value. I talked about relational capital, a lot, and relational capital, two main thing, the skill section and talk about intellectual capital, that's increasing the value of what's in here. But relational capital is increasing the value of your network who you know, and what they can help bring to the table to help you advance your life. It's very important.

Keith McKeever 1:13:35

Yeah, that's gonna, that's gonna be a great book and a great workbook. So how should almost kind of skip to my last question, we kind of had the other ones here a little bit, how should somebody utilize the book just step by step and with the workbook combined? Or, you know, what's the best way to kind of work through that?

Joel Stewart 1:13:53

Yeah, the workbook is incredible, I think. And that's the feedback I've gotten from the people I've sent it to is that if you put the time into, it's well worth it. The book itself covers a lot of topics really fast. So if you're just looking to get an overview of things for your life, you can just read through it. And you'll probably get a bunch of epiphany moments sparking and saying, oh, that's how that works. Oh, that's the you know, like I said, I told you, I have like a little blurb in there about defining a market. You know, I have that section and talking about starting your own business, which I talked about in the profit share section. You know, I, I have a big blurb in the first section in skills, talking about opportunity costs, and how whenever you choose one action, you're not choosing another action. So to properly value anything you're doing, you have to look at what's the alternate. And I put that in the context of schooling. If you're looking at a four year degree, that's four years that you could be working, you could be developing other skill sets, and you have to weigh the future value of the time and expense of schooling versus the future value. the experience and the monetary game jumping right into the workplace. And there's no easy answer on which way is correct because it's all very much up to you. But everything you do has a an opportunity costs associated with it. So I talked about so many things, if you just take it and you read through it from start to finish on bury it when I started writing, I'm very ATD. So when I started writing, what I realized is I would just jump from one topic to the next to the next so fast that nothing was other ever properly flushed out. I've done much better. As I've been I wrote this, you know, big fiction novel I have yet to publish. But my writing skills have developed a lot, but I still move pretty fast. I think everything is flushed out just enough that you get what you need to know. But there's no extra flush, I don't repeat myself, I don't go back on and dribbling on and on and on about stuff already talked about. So I hate that I hate it when I read it. And I'm not going to write like that. So if you just want to go through it and just get a firehose of information. That's a great way to read through it. If you want to take it a section at a time read through it, ponder it, that is going to probably provide more value, but it takes more time. And the workbook is going to take even more time, but I think it's going to be well worth it. You know, I had another I had a friend of mine that was reading it today. And he's like, Oh, my gosh, I wish I had this workbook. 20 years ago would have helped me so much.

Keith McKeever 1:16:16

I think he's gonna help a lot of people. Yeah, I'll

Joel Stewart 1:16:18

send it to you after this podcast. Yeah, maybe you can give me a testimonial. It'll throw it on the console,

Keith McKeever 1:16:22

as I read through the book. And I and that's why I wanted to ask that question. Because I read through it fast, you know, well just read through it without kind of really stopping and breaking down anything you feel like it was a firehose of information. It was but I'm kind of add as well. So you know, I said, it wasn't a lot of extra fluff in there, because I'm kind of a straight to the point kind of person. So

Joel Stewart 1:16:42

it's like reading through your newsfeed. Oh, this is interesting. Oh, this is,

Keith McKeever 1:16:45

you know, some, some parts were more, you know, you're reading redo some parts, which caught my attention more than others, like opportunity cost on love. I learned that in economics, you kind of hit on school, like opportunity cost, I'm in school right now pursuing my bachelor's. And there is, you know, I'm not selling as much in real estate. Because I'm focused on school, well, I'm, you know, I'm getting paid to go to school. So there's, there's, you know, but I'm getting that degree finally. So if I ever decided to go do something else in my life, I've got something that can help me, I've got that soft skill that can help me, you know, land that job if I decided to go do something else, and, you know, got to use those GI Bill benefits before they go away. And but, you know, opportunity cost is a huge one that I don't think a lot of people really know about, I learned about it in economics class. And it's, it's so simple of a philosophy, but it makes so much sense of whatever you're doing over here, you're not doing over here. So you just have to be okay with whatever that cost is, what are you giving up to achieve this or that. So yeah, I'd love to see the workbook and see how that is. And then, you know, maybe, as time permits, kind of work my way back through it all slowly. And really take advantage of it rather than like an overview reading.

Joel Stewart 1:18:01

Now, the other thing is, I'm planning to write a bunch of smaller supplemental ebooks to basically kind of go along with it. Because I, I wanted people that got it to get the most value possible, as fast as possible. So it's written. It's very much fast paced, you shouldn't be bored. But the, but it's also written for a wide range of people. So some of the stuff is more in depth. But a lot of it, I tried to make it so that, you know, high school student that's looking at the world should be able to go back and read it. But I'm also working on a group of supplemental ebooks right, where I then can focus in on different aspects. Like I right now, because it's my specialty. I'm working on a couple enfranchising to try to go into that in more detail, but I plan on covering a lot of other topics. And I think I'm actually going to be publishing two other full books eventually, in this series, one geared towards high school students specifically to help them with their life planning. But another one geared towards a called defeating disability, to help those who are disabled and are trying to figure out what the heck they can do with their life. Now they have these limitations. And that was actually my initial when I first started writing a book, it was a book called defeating disability. And as I started flushing through the different options that people had, I realized I had to write a whole other book beforehand, to just set the background for it. So in a way, the value equation is almost a pre equal. The book I originally wanted to write called the feeding disability. So I do fully intend to finish that book in the future. Yeah, but just awesome.

Keith McKeever 1:19:37

To be so valuable on the list. I don't know how. I mean, I remember leaving high school and you just kind of directionless and like, nobody really tells you a whole lot and it's, it's sad, but you know, and so I can relate to that. You know, the other one. I can't imagine a mentality that you've got to have with some sort of limitation no matter what it is just They're saying, Okay, I can't just sit around all day like, I got to do something, what can I do? What do I have? What can I physically do? What can I mentally do whatever the case may be, and to be as successful as I can, with the situation you're given. So

Joel Stewart 1:20:17

it ties back to my own story. I mean, when I say I missed a couple of years, I missed five years of career advancement and everything. Because I was, I was highly fatigued, I had a bunch of stuff. But the short of it was, I couldn't even sit in a chair for more than a couple of minutes. And so when things started to improve, and I was finally able to sit up for an hour, which was a huge milestone for me, I said, I gotta start doing something. If I can sit up for an hour, I can do something. So I went back to college, and that's when I got my MBA. But even with that, I mean, I couldn't, I could sit for an hour, I couldn't sit up for three. So I had like, in the middle of class would be laying down in the back of the class or laying down in the hallway. It was a night class. And luckily, there wasn't people in the hallway. But I had to go lay down in the middle of class and, you know, humiliating. Yeah. It was hard. But I knew I had to do something, I could do something. And I knew I had to do something, because I wasn't content just to let myself rot away. And, you know, there's a lot more to that story, but definitely all the time. Yeah. Well, that's why that's why I believe

Keith McKeever 1:21:24

personal terracing. But you know, you got through it, you're out on the other end of it makes you stronger person. So XOT, you know, I got three questions left for you. And then we'll wrap this up. So what advice do you have any, for anyone looking to transition out of uniform? Soon, somebody you know, fairly soon.

Joel Stewart 1:21:44

I would say that you need to work, take a hard look at what your soft skills are. You may be doing stuff in the military that you will never do in civilian life. But you've developed a lot of things in the military, that you will work ethic, you know, being able to work hard is one thing. Leadership skills are very common and pushed everywhere. The military leadership skills are needed everywhere. And I think that one of the most important things you need to focus on is the way you're perceived. A lot of a lot of people I talked to in the military that came out of the military. There, you come out, you're very kind of gruff, and you're like, This is my persona. But civilians, you know, that's not their persona. So if you're doing something that's going to be interacting with law, civilians, like if you're in a highly like a veteran, that if you get hired by veterans to do job working with veterans, not as important, but if you're going to work with a lot of civilians, you know, the the perceived value part of it is very important and controlling how you're perceived. But I think what you need to do is you need to look at what are your soft skills, what have you learned that's valuable, that's applicable to other things? And what are those other things? What can you do to continue developing these soft skills, whether it's, you know, whether it's leadership or, you know, teamwork or specific stuff I got, you know, I've got a cousin that repairs aircraft, he got out and got a job repairing aircraft, and now he's managing a team of people running aircrafts. So I think that's a great career progression for him. He got out doing the same thing he was doing, and now he's using those leadership skills to advance up in the civilian world,

Keith McKeever 1:23:16

you don't have to like learn many other skills. Yeah,

Joel Stewart 1:23:19

but Yeah, is there is there a thing where you can use your technical skills? Yeah, one of the things I'm working on right now, which unfortunately, I don't think we have time to cover in detail today is I'm working with some nonprofits down in Texas, and we're working on a transition progress program to get active duty veterans or active duty military into their own franchise upon exiting the military using the skill Bridge Program, and using apprenticeship program, which allows them to tap into their GI Bill benefits while they're starting your business, the housing allowance. And though the word I'm getting from the guys I'm working with down there as they pretty much got the proper the program set up. And we might be able to start looking at some people for the pilot program. But with that, I mean, get out we've got an investment group that's going to buy a franchise for you, you start running it as through this Gilbert program. Then once you roll out of that you roll into the apprenticeship program, so you can use your GI Bill benefits. And then we sell you a percentage of the franchise business every year. So at the end of four years, about 60% of your business, and it's yours. So that's something that I am working on right now. It's in progress, but it's just about ready for its pilot program. I'm really excited.

Keith McKeever 1:24:28

I think that means we'll have to have another episode. We are about a lot in the warrior Council. Yeah. You know, in our in our echo squad meetings and I think it's it's an amazing thing for somebody looking to transition out where they can also skip the line but you know, just kind of just get dive right in and just get right into that without

Joel Stewart 1:24:48

franchising is a great thing for people getting out of the military too. I had a guy just this summer. He was getting out. He was on terminal leave. He had 60 days and he said I want to be in my business by The time I finished terminal leave, and we took a hard fast look at a bunch of franchises narrowed down to one that he wanted to get into it was in biohazard removal. And, you know, he had a mentor that was willing to partner with them. And he opened a couple territories. So, yeah, there's so many options out there saying franchising. So, wow. So yeah, going straight into a franchise is a great way to transition from, you know, the leadership kind of role you were probably in in the military, to leadership in civilian life where you're running your own system. And so that's obviously a path as well.

Keith McKeever 1:25:39

All right. Yeah, we'll definitely do another episode on that. So, next question I got here for you is, you know, for somebody who's looking to join the military today 2020 2021, whatever. What advice would you have for them?

Joel Stewart 1:25:52

Alright, well, for this one, I have to let you know, I'm a Navy guy. But even being a Navy guy, I've got I'm gonna give you an example here about the Navy in the Air Force. I was down in Mississippi and we have ncbc Gulfport, it's a wonderful, it's a cool base. It's got the construction battalions there. The Seabees can do Ra. It's pretty cool. But just down the road. 20 minutes is Keesler Air Force Base. And that place, at least while I was down, there was immaculate. The lawns were manicured. You know, the exchange was a mini mall. They had their own food court. It was just like a pristine base, and I got to meet a lot of air force people. And a lot of it like even going back to when I was in OCS, we had something called the J Mac, the joint military athletic competition, where we got to, we got to pair off OCS versus army OCS versus Air Force. And we went to the Air Force barracks and the people they're like, got to eat while they're silverware. We were like, what is that Navy OCS, you eat everything with a spoon? They call it your war spoon. Like eating bone chicken with a spoon is probably one the most frustrating things I've ever done. But, you know, it's like, so here's my recommendation, and take it for what you will. I think

Keith McKeever 1:27:15

I got to agree. I'm an Air Force that I was. So security forces maybe a little different than most of the rest of us. We all felt like we were crapped on being the cops, because they'll be like this. But But yeah, there's a lot of truth to that I spent time on some army bases and whatnot. And pre deployment training for my first deployment was Fort Lewis, Washington, and McChord Air Force Base was right across the highway, basically. And we'd go over there and I felt like home. But then we had to stay in the barracks on the army side, because the army is training us for an army mission that we're going to go do for them during the surge in oh seven. And we're like, Dude, it's freezing cold out these World War Two style barracks have no insulation in the walls. It was just wooden planks, you know, showers and a trough urinal. We're like, what's going on here? This is not our Air Force standard.

Joel Stewart 1:28:08

Yeah, so my kids, so I like joining the military is an incredible opportunity. Especially if, like, if you feel like you're graduating high school, and you feel like you don't have a lot of options. Because I mean, you will get all kinds of skills in the military, and you get out and get the GI Bill. Like there's so many benefits to joining. But I feel that that just from my personal life experience and everyone's life experience is different. But if I were advising my kids, I'd say Air Force has a higher quality of life for the same amount of pay. And then and then I would say probably Navy you know, if there was something really wanted to do, and then between the army Marine Corps I would probably say Marine Corps. I think that I think that both of them you know probably a tough really tough jobs compared to the other two. But I love the Marine Corps camaraderie. I mean the Once a Marine always a Marine like all the Marine Corps people I've ever met our you know, their Marine, their

Keith McKeever 1:29:10

marine our tents, they're a different breed. And but you know, at the end of the day, we all level they got their role. The Army has theirs Navy has theirs. Yeah.

Joel Stewart 1:29:19

Our advice, my kid, my kid wanted to join the military. That would be my advice. Air Force is the highest quality of life for the highest back. Oh,

Keith McKeever 1:29:27

that's exactly how I got in the Air Force.

Joel Stewart 1:29:28

If you're looking for a family if you're looking for camaraderie, the Marine Corps is second to none. I mean that those guys are just that their communities so tight knit, and so proud. None of the none of the other branches have the pride that a Marine has. So

Keith McKeever 1:29:43

Oh, totally. Yeah, there. It's not even close. No. So last question I got here for you and I might have an answer. I might know what your answer is. Are there any veteran social groups or organizations that you know you'd like to give a shout out to or recommend that people look up Join or whatever?

Joel Stewart 1:30:01

Well, yeah, I mean, so the vet printer tribe. For one, I joined the vet maneuver tribe when I was when I first discovered that I was an accidental entrepreneur. When I got into real estate, I wasn't initially thinking I was an entrepreneur, I thought it was more of just I'm doing a commission based job. And then as I got into it, I realized, Oh, I'm an entrepreneur. So I kind of fell into entrepreneurship by accident. But once I realized it, and I start, and especially once I discovered that, you know, franchises, loved veterans, I started networking in some different veteran groups, and the veterans who were tribe, I've been part of it for years now. And I've learned so much through that group. And I see a lot of the people in there almost like family. And then, you know, there's just recently they launched an extension to the venture weapon or tribe called the warrior Council, which is kind of a more tightly focused group. And I've found an immense amount of value as part of that. So yeah, both both of those groups have probably been the biggest impact on me. And, and I'm in the middle right now trying to start up some new veteran groups like the veteran franchise initiative. So I knew

Keith McKeever 1:31:14

you're going to talk about the the tribe and the warrior Council. Oh, yeah, I love just knew you were and because we're both on the warrior Council. We're both on echo squad, which is pretty much service related industries and stuff like that in there. But I've only been there for like a month. And yeah, I've been there. I got immediate value years and

Joel Stewart 1:31:31

years. Well, since the beginning, not quite but a member of

Keith McKeever 1:31:35

the tribe for about a year and a half been on the council for four or five weeks. And even at first week, you know, they kind of asked what I needed. I said, I just kind of need to kick in a button, my business, I need to be more accountable. This 2020 went on, like, just some of my habits in business just kind of fell off, and I need to get myself reorganized. And they said, Okay, well, what are you going to do in the next week? And outline, hey, I need to do this, this and this. And then that next week by that next Thursday, I had done it. Yeah, I got myself organized, rewrote my goals out. You know, listen, for me, it's more. So

Joel Stewart 1:32:07

I talked about it in my book, but it's the power of relational capital. You know, if I hadn't got if I hadn't been so active in your tribe, and derive such value from all the people that were instilling value in me, I wouldn't join the warrior Council, which I did. But if I didn't join the warrior Council, I wouldn't have met all the different people. And one of the people in there is a high performance coach, Judy Schelling. I had a you know, she offered people in the warrior Council, a free coaching session. And so I jumped on that, and I took it. And that's actually it was the outcome of that session, that got me on the the current path, Amman that inspired me to write the value equation, it was coming out of that. So even the fact that I'm coming out with this book to talk about it right now is in effect, because I'm part of these other organizations that are building relational capital. And that are, you know, investing in me in the same way that I'm investing in them, like I, I give them advice about franchising all the time. I go live and give them tips and tricks, you know, I'm investing in them, and all the knowledge areas I know, you know, they're investing in me. And I think we're all getting stronger because of it,

Keith McKeever 1:33:14

you're tagged in posts all the time. And you know, Andy's tagged in posts, you know, for legal stuff. And, I mean, I could just go right on down the list of people that are tagged and things because they're experts in it, and they contribute value, just straight up value, your opinions, your information, your knowledge, you know, just put it out there as a value to everybody else. So it's a, it's a wonderful place to be, I will echo your thoughts that if anybody's out there, and they're an entrepreneur, for thinking they are, or they're just interested in business, they need to go join the entrepreneur tribe. Absolutely. Because, you know, the council councils great to, you know, recommend that as well. But at least get in the, in the tribe, there's so much information. So even if it doesn't apply to your business, you can just take it as a nugget of information. And just kind of stored back there in case you need it in the future. And you get those those connections. So that is a that's all we got for the show. I want to thank you so much, Joel, for being here. And for everybody, I want to throw, we got to talk and you get that up there. The value equation and beyond available on Amazon, and it should be available here pretty soon.

Joel Stewart 1:34:19

Yeah, it'd be great gift for people for Christmas that I know that are facing a life crossroads, graduating high school, graduating college or getting out of the military, or if they just feel like they're in a funk. I mean, it's really designed to get you moving forward. So great Christmas gift, great

Keith McKeever 1:34:34

gift on that one. No, just a few weeks away, leave.

Joel Stewart 1:34:37

That's why I was killing myself to get it done by Thanksgiving. Yeah, to be available for the Christmas season.

Keith McKeever 1:34:42

Absolutely. You know, and I hate to say it with COVID. We, some people might have more time on their hands to sit around and read a book. So you know, unfortunately, you might have a little extra time to read through it and go through the workbook and you know, and actually use it as value and Get somebody run on the right path so

Joel Stewart 1:35:01

yeah Alright well thanks for having me

Keith McKeever 1:35:04

no problem I will catch you at the next council meeting

Joel Stewart 1:35:07

alrighty take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai