You, I'm concerned that too many people are dabbling in this successful, you know, when you, when you had the gold rush in the 18 hundreds in northern California, I mean, the first miners did pretty well, but it's a, but then, or sort of a Ponzi scheme, right. It's sort of a Ponzi scheme. The last ones in get hurt. So I'm not optimistic about. I wish I could be. But I can tell you this. If you join an excellent franchise system that's proven, that has a proven model and is replicable and has happy, successful franchisees, then it's a great way to grow. And I've seen thousands of people become millionaires doing that. But you got to be careful. We got to be careful to have the right leadership and the right franchise system.

Welcome to business Bourbon and cigars, the podcast for ambitious leaders who want a backstage pass to the top. Every episode, we're going to sit down with ultra successful industry leaders who have a proven track record and a deep understanding of how to grow a business. And we're going to learn the secrets and strategies that took them to the top. On this show, you'll gain access to exclusive insights and resources that'll give you what you need to achieve your most audacious goals. And of course, we may even sip on some fine bourbon and light up one of our favorite cigars while we chat. My name is Scott Joseph. I'm your host, and this is business Bourbon and cigars. Welcome back to another inspiring episode of Business Bourbon and Cigars. This is where we uncover the strategies and insights that are going to drive extraordinary success in the business world. I'm your host, Scott Joseph. And today we have the privilege of learning from what I consider one of the most accomplished entrepreneurs in the industry. Mr. John Hewitt John's remarkable journey in the tax preparation industry, from founding Jackson Hewitt to Liberty Tax, he's left an indelible mark on the business landscape.

And today we're going to delve into the principles and the strategies behind his success and uncover how you can develop an extraordinary strategy for winning in your own endeavors. So without further ado, let's welcome John Hewitt.

Thank you, Scott.

It's my pleasure, man. Absolutely. My know, when we talk about entrepreneurs or business owners, they're all over the spectrums. You got startups, you got very small companies. You got people that grow it very quickly, very fast. You've got people that take the slow and steady approach. Some people get to maybe they're five years, ten years in, and maybe they've plateaued a little bit. So I see this helping a lot of different people from all over that spectrum. Let's start off with you've had an incredible career and obviously in the tax preparation industry, you found two different companies. Some of the largest change in North America. Share with us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and what inspired you to get into that industry.

I give all the credit to my dad. And it started when I was at the University of Buffalo. And my dad had always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Just didn't have enough money or time to do it. And when I was in college, he decided it was the time that he and I should open an h r block franchise. So he called h r block and said, we'd like to buy a franchise in Hamburg, New York, which is a suburb of Buffalo. And they said, well, as a matter of fact, we're going to open a company store this year. We already have a location and maybe your son could work for us and he could take our tax course and work for us. I took the tax course, loved it, and started working part time for H and R block. I loved it so much that in twelve years later I was running 250 h and R block locations and again, loved what I was doing. I wanted to be an H and R block regional director. I made it. And my dad still hadn't been self employed yet. Now he was CFO of a public company and he liked the little Apple computer better than the mainframe that was running his public company.

And so he decided we should computerize taxes on an Apple. So he finally took him a long time. But he convinced me to leave my job and he left his job. And we built the first. 1981. Built the first tax software for an Apple computer. You're not old enough to remember a world without computers. But there weren't even a million desktops in the country. And yet we tried to introduce it. No one wanted it way ahead of its time. Got blessed and found a company in Virginia beach called Mel Jackson Tax Service. Mel had died and we bought six offices from his widow. We changed the name to Jackson Hewitt. We merged the two companies. We eventually went public and 15 years later we sold it for $483,000,000. So it went on to become a billion dollar company. So my first major retail company became a billion dollar company. Today has 6000 locations, 23rd largest retail franchise chain in the country. That was 1997. I had a three year non compete and it didn't cover Canada because Jackson knew it had never gone to Canada. And having grown up in Buffalo I did canadian tax returns.

I knew the canadian tax system. I knew how strong H and R block was in Canada. So we went up to Canada and opened Liberty tax and within three years became one of the top 100 retail chains in Canada. And when my non compete ended in 2000 came back to the United States and now I had to compete against my own name, my own company, my own people, my own software, my own system. And yet not only did we grow faster than Jackson Hewitt, we grew faster than Jackson Hewitt and H and R block combined. We opened 4000 offices in twelve years. Top ten fastest growing franchise or ever again we went public again. It was worth $500 million. So now I've developed, by then I had developed 2500 million dollar companies, two public companies, 10,000 locations combined compared with H and R blocks 9000. I'm the only person that's developed two of the top 100 retail chains in the country and brought in 5200 franchisees. Again I sold my stock and we started loyalty brands. And here at loyalty brands we have eight different franchiseors and the two premier industries are pets and taxes.

Gosh, pets. Talk to me a little bit about the pet thing real quick and I want to go back. I got a lot of follow up questions to everything you just said because man, you're sitting there telling me about your journey and my mind spinning and I think there's a lot of lessons to learn in there and we're going to get into a lot of different strategies that you've applied and used over the years to have that type of level of success and growth. But real quick, talk to me about the pet thing. I'm interested in that. I know that people spend a lot of money on their pets.

Yeah, it's amazed me. I never was in the industry before and we acquired a pet franchise or that was failing their mobile pet grooming and they only had four locations and we started bringing in new franchises 30 months ago, two and a half years ago and we're already up over 100 and growing by now. We're growing by about ten a month. And by the end of this year we're already fastest growing in the mobile pet grooming. By the end of this year we'll be number one largest pet groomer in the country. Mobile pet grooming in the country. And so I love tax. It's certain it's death in tax. Benjamin Franklin said that 250 years ago. It's always changing, it's always evolving, it's always an opportunity. But pets is growing so fast. We're growing by the whole industry is whatever you're in, whether you're in selling pet food or dog walking or pet sitting or insurance or even picking up poop, it's growing by leaps and bounds. It's growing by 10% to 12% a year. So my industry, my tax industry grew by, has grown by 1% a year. So I'm used to plotting growth, slow plotting grow, but in this industry it's spectacular growth.

I have to ask you, and I know there's going to be some tweaks and some adjustments and some differences, but for the most part, are you applying a lot of the same principles, basically a proven process of what you did in the tax industry to pets?

Exactly. We're growing as fast as I was growing at my tax companies, growing faster than our tax division. Atax, Zoom and grooming is outpacing that growth. And yeah, the principles of customer service are kind of generic to the United States. And one of my favorite authors, Stan Phelps, said, you never arrive at a meeting exactly on time. Let's say the meeting's 01:00 you either early or late. And he said, in the same manner, you never meet customers expectations. You either fail to meet them or you exceed them almost all the time. And so we have objective principles and structure that we exceed customers expectation and that's how we evaluate our performance is percentage of customers that we exceed. Their expectation needs to be constantly growing.

That's awesome. I'm going to go back to the beginning on this. When you first started this, what was your initial goal or thought process? Did you ever believe when you first started Jackson Hewitt that it would grow to the level? Was that in your mind?

Oh, our goal in our business plan in 1982, H and r block had 9000 locations in 1982 and our goal was to have 9001 location from day one. If you see my book, it's called I compete. I'm a fierce, fierce competitor. And so whenever I do anything, if I'm going to spend any time doing it, my goal is to be number one. Now that's a crazy goal. However, I did get to 6000. I mean, Jacksonville got to 6000 and combined liberty and tax got liberty and Jackson got to 10,000. So if you don't set big, hairy, audacious goals, you're not going to achieve greatness. If you set timid little goals, you're going to achieve timid little things.

And that is exactly why I asked that question, because I have to tell you, I was the opposite. Now I came into my business very naive. Not naive, inexperienced, immature. I was 22 years old. I did not finish college. I started the agency, and I wanted to make six figures, right? And I had limiting beliefs, and I did not set out to accomplish what we ended up accomplishing. So what I accomplished was much larger than my initial goals and dreams. But once you get to that, once I start talking to people like yourself, I realized my goal or goals weren't nearly big enough. They weren't even close. And I had to take a good look at myself as to why that was, because I thought I was a risk taker. I thought I had nothing but empowering beliefs. And when I took a deep look at myself, I said, you've got some limiting beliefs here. Just because you start your own doesn't mean you're a risk taker and you have nothing but empowering beliefs, because I think there's different levels of that. And so it took me a few years before I realized, wait a minute, there's a lot more out there.

I'm capable of accomplishing a lot more. And I did. And so I'm bringing this up. Not to tell my story, but I do believe there's very few people that have accomplished what you've accomplished. Right. I think where I was at early on, I think that's a dime a dozen. I love the part where you said about the audacious goals and stuff like that. What do you see from entrepreneurs? What is the biggest mistake they make when first starting out?

Well, there's so many things that people do wrong that it's hard to tell the biggest thing that they do wrong. But certainly it depends on the person, of course. Right. Some people set goals too low, some people set goals too high. But what they fail to do is to adequately put together a realistic plan, a budget. I think they don't plan to fail. They fail to plan.

Yeah, it's a good way to say it. So let's talk a little bit about I compete, the book you just mentioned. And I think the subtitle you've got is, I'm going to make sure I got this right. How my extraordinary strategy for winning can be yours. So clearly, when people are listening to the levels of success, it's not just once. And what I love about what you're doing on the pet side and what you're doing with loyalty brands is that you're taking that same formula, this proven process, and you're doing it again. You've done it now. This is third time, so this is not luck. Success has clues. There's a path to do it. There's a way to do it. And now you're laying it out there for everybody in this book. So let's talk a little bit about that. It offers a lot of insights developing this winning strike. What motivated you? You've touched on this a little bit before. You said you've impacted over 10,000 people, right? Yeah. I'm assuming that has a lot of motivation as to why you may have wrote this, but what motivated you to write the book? And what are some of the key takeaways that you hope that the readers will gain from it?

My goal has been I'm obsessed with helping people and making the world a better place and giving back. So the book is an attempt to do exactly that, to change lives and give back and to help people avoid the same mistakes that I make. And I think if there's one unusual thing about my book, it's that I talk a high amount about the mistakes I make. And in most books that I've read, business books, and I'm a voracious reader, they don't talk a lot about their mistakes. They talk about their successes. So I talk about my mistakes. And in order to help others avoid those same mistakes in my life, in my industry, I've either made every mistake or seen every mistake. So you can learn from that. Wise people need to learn from the mistakes of others.

What would you say were some? I love when I ask and I interview people, and I know you're going to give me good answers, but when you're interviewing people and you ask this question, it's always interesting. You don't get a lot of the best. What would you say are some of your biggest weaknesses when it comes to business?

Yeah, and that's a good point, Scott, because Peter Drucker, my favorite business author, said, people with great strengths have great weaknesses, and I've been blessed with huge strengths and huge success. And therefore, if I believe in that, I have to admit that I have huge weaknesses. Several of my weaknesses. Number one is I'm zero detail. Just zero detail. I'm sitting in my office. You see the picture behind me. I mean, I have about seven or eight pictures. I don't even know what they are. And I've had this office for eight years. I just don't pay any attention to detail. Also one of this. Well, if you can be too forgiving, I'm too forgiving and I give people too long of a chance. And I prefer that, though I'd rather give them too long of a chance than to cut them short. And so I keep people on too long. So that's one of my mistakes. Also, I'm a poor communicator, and here's an example of it, that I've been blessed with great intellect and great listening skills, but I'm also impatient. And I think great entrepreneurs have to be impatient. But what will happen? You could be asking me a question, and before you finish your question, I'm interrupting an answer, because I'm impatient.

And I think I know. Well, usually I'm right. But even if, when I'm right, I often don't let the person talking to me understand that I really understood them. And so they get frustrated talking to me. So I guess weaknesses are a lack of detail, not a great communicator. Impatient and too forgiving. If there is possible to be too forgiving.

So I have to tell you, I am going to be buying your book.

We've already sent you one, Scott.

Have you really? Yeah. I really appreciate that. Let me tell you, I'm doing it based on this conversation, because I'm sitting here, you talking to you, describing your weaknesses, and I'm thinking, is he describing me? The only difference between you and I, all right, is a few hundred million dollars. And I've achieved high levels of success, but not to where you are.

A few dozen years.

Yeah, I think I'm a little older than you think. I do remember prior to computers, I bought one of the very first Macs. Remember that little desktop with the floppy disk and it walked you through the tutorial of how to use it? I had that one.

This was six or eight years before that.

So we talked about your weaknesses, and gosh, you're sitting there talking about finishing people's sentences and answering questions. I'm thinking to myself, my business partner with the agency, with J. L. Marketing. Let me finish. Let me finish. And I'm like, I already know where you're. So I do the same thing. That's funny. What are your strengths, though? Because obviously you clearly have that.

Yeah, I think I talked about being a poor communicator, but in one way I'm really excellent communicator. One of the necessary skills in build. I founded a billion dollar company, and there's been less than a thousand people in the United States that have ever done that. And then I went on and did a half a billion dollar company that may become a billion dollar company. And now I'm on my third chance at another billion dollar company. So I have to have some good communication. And what I'm really good at is vision and then having the ability to get everyone to buy into my vision. And when I say everyone, that means the customers, the investors, the employees, the vendors. I'm convincing and able to get a lot of people to get on my wagon train, right. I get a lot of people that are following me and with me. And that's really the reason we named this company loyalty, because I have three people that have been with me, 35 years, five people, 30 years, five people, 25 years, eight people, 20 years. I just have dozens and dozens of people that have been with me because I create an environment of success and growth and fun, and I get people to believe in me.

Yeah, it's funny, when we talk about a lot of times we'll get into the topics of, whether it's through our events or on these shows where culture always comes up. It's impossible to grow a great business without a great culture. But a lot of people, it's almost like the chicken and the egg thing, right? They think they can manufacture the culture and to some extent, you can do all the right things and take the right actions. That does create that winning culture, but success also helps that, right? You can have a great culture, but if you're never winning and you're not growing and people don't feel like they're heading in the right direction, that destroys a culture no matter what type of actions you're doing. So it goes kind of hand in hand. Do you agree with that?

That's exactly what I believe. I believe that when you're growing and you're growing exponentially and setting records and it's rah rah is easy. But if you start dying and let's say that you get to, with one of my companies, I get to 6000 locations over ten years. I go from 500 to 6000, and then over the next ten years I go to 5900, 800. Once you stop growing, it's almost impossible to have great culture. You have to. So growth is an important ingredient of culture.

What's so impressive about what you've done? And you were talking about three different companies basically from the ground up and not just say it, hey, I've built this 10 million, 20 million, $50 million company, not even 100 talking billions of dollars here. It's just so impressive. I guess where I'm going with this is let's talk a little bit about entrepreneurship. A lot of times I get into circles and we're talking and debating entrepreneurship versus intrapreneurship. Right? So in your opinion, do you believe everyone has the ability to be a great entrepreneur. Let's talk a little bit about that. Share your kind of belief system on that.

I'll do you one better. It's not a question what I believe. Remember, I brought in 5200 franchisees.

Who.

Thought they were all going to be great entrepreneurs. So I have a lot of experience in this. And 1000 of them became millionaires and 1000 of them went out of business and the rest were in between. So 1000 of them were not met. And the number one reason that those thousand left my companies over the years is they weren't meant to be entrepreneurs. In this country, 70 75% of Americans think they want to be self employed. But it turns out only about a third of them are right that most people can't be self employed because they're not risk takers. And as soon as they hit adversity and everyone hits adversity, I've never met anyone that got to skate. God puts adversity in front of everyone, so everyone hates adversity and when adversity comes, they lose it. So they're not risk tolerant or they're not self starters. When you're self employed, no one tells you you got to be at work at 08:00 a.m. You got to be telling other people to be work at 08:00 a.m. You got to be there at 730. So no one tells you what to do. There's lots of elements of being self employed that people don't think about until they actually get self employed.

So yes, I've seen it thousands of times where people stepped out and 20% of the time they were wrong and they go back and get a job where they belong and God bless them, it's probably wonderful that they tried. As Wayne Gretzky said, you never make a shot that you didn't take, right? Yeah, you don't shoot.

I think when people go into becoming business owners, entrepreneurs, whatever, sometimes the ones who don't make it, I think, truly underestimate, or maybe they're just naive to the fact that of what it really takes in terms of the effort, for lack of a better word, the grind to make this happen, they don't go into it thinking, yeah, I can't wait to be working till two, three, four, some all the way through the night. They don't tell you that or they don't think it right. And I think when that realization, because that's sometimes what it takes and if you're not willing to do it, then the business just isn't going to take off. But what's interesting is you didn't start off as an entrepreneur. You started off as basically an entrepreneur. Right. You started off with H and R block. So here's my next question. Do you feel like for most people, it's a smarter play to start off working, become that employee, treat it as if it's your own? Right. Like, when I went in, I started off selling cars. And I got to tell you, though, I brought up that computer. You know what I did with that computer?

I was the only salesperson on the floor at the time with one. I sent out newsletters to my own client. I treated it like it was my business. So I was interacting with clients, sending out updates monthly, trying to get referrals, trying to do all this different stuff. But I don't know if those lessons taught me a lot because when I started my first company, I took a lot of what I learned, whether it's sales process, follow up, client experience, and the level of service that had to happen, how I wanted to be perceived in the marketplace. I learned all from that. And so talk to us about the relationship that you had going from employee to entrepreneur.

Yeah. First of all, let me say that in your comments that you have to be a student. Wherever you are in life, no matter what you do, if you're an employee or your whole life or an entrepreneur, you have to be committed to improve. And there's only one way to improve is to change. And the only way to really improve well is to learn. So when you said I didn't start as an employee, it's true and not true, but I was selling Christmas cards when I was seven or eight years old. I was mowing lawns. I've heard a lot of people picking up pop bottles and things, coke bottles and soda bottles. But also, I was the only one that I knew that picked up newspaper. And my poor parents had to take me down once a month with a car weighted down, and we would sell, I forget, 100 pounds of newspaper for $0.75 or something. So I was self employed when I was a kid. In my book, you'll see. One of the funniest parts of my book, I think, is when I was four years old, I lived in upstate New York, so it was cold.

I got a sled for Christmas, and I took it next door on Christmas day and sold it for $0.10 when I was four years old. So I've been an entrepreneur as long as I can think of, and I was blessed at H and r block to have a job where I was independent where my boss wasn't in the same city, I almost never saw him. So I was really sort of an entrepreneur when I was at HR block.

My daughter, who's just turned 14, but when she was eight, nine years old, she started a slime business, built a website, started a slime business. And she kept talking to me about what you said, the sled dig you sold. It reminds me of her because she kept talking to me about all the. She was selling her friends, and she had a couple of people go online and actually buy people that I knew. And she talked to me about how much profit she's making. And I said, honey, I said, it's true. You're doing great because I loved it. I love their entrepreneurial spirit. I said, but, man, isn't it nice when there's no cost of goods, right? All it did was make my house a mess. All it did was make it my house a mess. And I kept having to buy. She wanted me to buy these big mixers. I said, we're not investing capital. You're going to keep going the way you're going. Let's go back to your book. I compete. It emphasizes the importance of having an extraordinary strategy for winning, and that's really what we want to focus on today. Share with us some practical tips.

All right. That people can walk away from this discussion you and I are having right out of the book that our listeners can apply to their own businesses or ventures.

There's so many tidbits in there. I have, I believe, about a dozen novel theories, but one theory that's not novel but is incredibly important is Tom Watson Sr. Said, one of the founders of IBM. He said, give me 100 people with great attitudes or 100 great engineers, I'll take the 100 people with great attitude because you can teach engineering and you can't teach attitude. And, boy, do I echo that. I've made the mistake in my 55 year career of trying to change 100 or 200 people's attitude. And you know what? You can make a pessimist or someone with a bad attitude, you can change them for a day or a week or a month, but they pop right back. And attitude comes from within. Right? Attitude comes from within. And so one of the most important lessons I can share with the listeners is hire for attitude, not skills. Hire for attitude. And so I learned that lesson about 35 years ago, and the first thing we do is, and you mentioned culture, and culture isn't talked about enough when you think about great companies in the same industry versus horrible companies. And I got to say, I don't mean to be mean, but Kmart's a horrible company and going bankrupt, and Walmart's an incredible company that's making money hand over pins and the largest employer in the world.

And, Scott, what's the difference between the top team at Walmart and the top team at Kmart? I can assure you they're not smarter, they're not more educated, they're not more experienced. What they are is they have the right attitude and they create the right culture. So culture is something that isn't paid enough attention to. It should actually be a balance sheet item. You have your cash and your equipment, and you should have culture on there, what your culture is worth. And you said it earlier, that's absolutely true. You can't have a great company without a great culture.

So with me, plus Ultra, which sponsors this podcast with business bourbon cigars, we also do two keynote or flagship, I should say, events, leadership retreats, where we do true master mount breakout sessions. We call it business bourbon and cigars as well. And it's interesting, because this one coming up in March, we've got the common thread that will go through all mastermind sessions is going to be about accountability and culture. And we've got a former commander from Seal team one. He comes in, he talks about all that process, prioritizing, planning, accountability, culture. But our very first mastermind session, to your point, is first, identify. He says most people don't even. They have a culture, but they can't even identify it. And if they do identify, it's usually wrong. So we're going to identify our culture. What is the culture we want, and then what are the action steps and how do we prioritize and plan to get it there?

Exactly. I learned, for example, I'm culture. I'll give you another lesson. I was in church 30 years ago, and the minister said, everyone sins every day. And I said, wow, I get that. I do. But he admits he does. And it didn't occur to me until about three months later, I had an epiphany, thinking back on that lesson, that what he's saying is, we all violate God's principles every day. But my company has principles. We had our dozen principles. And it occurred to me that if we're going to violate God's principles, we're going to violate our company's principles. And so we need to go to extra lengths. And certainly as the leader, you have to be the number one advocate and proof of the principles. I created a system, and we called it mission moments, where we printed our twelve principles on pets and a tear off pet and put it blank for the name. And if you saw someone doing something, well that upheld our principles, you would write them a mission moment. And if you saw someone doing something that wasn't according to our principles, you would give them a mission moment. And I don't know any company that's ever done that.

But that's the importance of keeping up the. You have to understand, if we're going to violate God's principles every day, we're going to violate our company's principles. So it's a fight. It's a fight. And you got to just continue to fight that good fight.

One of the things we do with our core values, first off, at least with ours, they're not things that can be taught, they're virtues. And to your point, the behaviors and you can't, the attitudes and I want to hire for that. I can't teach a winning attitude. I can't teach someone that's just got an inner drive to produce great results and always have that right attitude. And they're innovative and they're honest and it's not that to your point, we violate our principles whether we're sinning every day or we're violating our company principles constantly. When I'm in front of the company and I'm telling them we're not this every day, but when we're at our best, right, when we're at our best, we're humming and it's centered and you can identify these core values easily. And so to your point, I'm really enjoying this conversation. I just think if people are listening to this, they've got to sit here and be like just checking the boxes. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. So guys, I'm telling you right now, I don't normally plug a lot of things on here, but I do want our guest.

I wanted to make it easy for people to reach you and stuff. So obviously you've got the icompete book and we'll get into how they can reach you with loyalty brands as well at the end. But how did you learn all this stuff? Mastermind groups? Was it mentors? What did you do along the way?

Most human beings can only learn by their own mistakes. And they say smart people learn from their mistakes. I don't know that many smart people. And they say wise people learn from the mistakes of others. I wish I was more wise and learn from the mistakes of others, but I'm a fanatical competitor and in order to compete I know that my company has to have the number one quality system in that industry, and I don't just learn. And Sam Walton said this in made in America, his book that he wrote 40 years ago. He said, you don't just learn when you're at your competitors. And Sam Watton was caught many times over in Kmart, studying the shelves, taking notes, taking pictures. So he was caught by the competitors learning from the competitor. But he said, in every consumer experience, whether it's at a hotel, an airplane, a restaurant, whatever, you need to always be learning. And I've learned so many lessons in so many different industries, but I'm constant because I'm such a fanatical competitor. I'm always committed to improvement.

Yeah. Kmart should have spent more time over in his stores.

Exactly.

Looking ahead, what excites you the most about the future? Know, entrepreneurship. What trends, developments do you believe are kind of going to shape this industry in the coming years?

Franchising as a whole, I'm concerned with. I wouldn't say I'm excited about the growth of franchise. What's happened, Scott, is over the last 20 years or so, too many companies start franchising because someone thought it was a good idea. So they go out and try to franchise. They have this great business, and their friends say, I want to do this, and you should franchise this. And so the wrong people end up franchise. So what I see in franchising is too many successful mom and pops, they try to become franchiseors, and what they laugh is they're not good at it. And they need to keep their mom and pop business because it's been throwing off hundreds of thousands of revenue to them. So they need to live on it. So they have a foot in each camp, and they're not even good at franchising. So in this country, there are 4000 franchiseors to be in the. I don't know. Have you studied franchising a lot?

Are you an expert?

Okay, let me say this, that to be in the top 50% of all franchiseors, you just need 20 locations.

Oh, wow, that's horrible. I would assume that was much higher than that.

For 25 years, I did 20 a month, 250 a year, and I have 10,000 locations, and I brought in 5200 franchisees. They have 20. So you have to be real careful. So I have to say, when you ask me what am I looking forward to? The future, I'm not excited about that trend at all. I think that I'm concerned that too many people are dabbling in this successful. When you had the gold rush in the 18 hundreds in northern California. I mean, the first miners did pretty well. Or sort of a Ponzi scheme. Right. It's sort of a Ponzi scheme. The last ones in get hurt. So I'm not optimistic about. I wish I could be, but I can tell you this. If you join an excellent franchise system that's proven, that has a proven model and is replicable and has happy, successful franchisees, then it's a great way to grow. And I've seen thousands of people become millionaires doing that. But you've got to be careful. You got to be careful to have the right leadership in the right franchise system.

How much time passed between when you ended your relationship with Liberty tax and moved into the loyalty brands?

Five minutes.

So literally, you were already thinking about the next thing.

Yeah, I'm always thinking when you're in, take a course. If there was a course called Entrepreneurship 101, it would be that we have too many ideas and so we try to do too many things. We're not focused enough as great entrepreneurs. So you have to fight that. True entrepreneurs that really have that spirit have too many ideas. And so I'm always thinking 24 hours, as long as I'm awake, I'm thinking about business and success and improvement.

You've talked about the three. Have you started any of them that have failed?

Yeah, we've entered relationships with some of our franchise groups, and talking about the mistakes that I've made, I thought when I partnered with a franchise group, and I've learned this lesson that I was just saying about entrepreneurs, what happens is I partnered with entrepreneurs and I said, well, look at all the things that John Hewitt and loyalty bring. I know how to grow, and they only have ten locations, and I know how to grow. And plus, I know hundreds of thousands of people around the country know who John Hewitt is. And so whenever you go to, if you go to Jacksonville, if you go to Seattle, if you go to San Diego, there's people there that have worked with me, that know me, and they might be employees, investors, franchises. What an I've been. I've grown two public companies to a billion dollars in sales and a billion and a half in value. I know how to grow things, and I can mentor these people. And what I found out is they don't listen. They won't listen to me, and I can't fix them. And if they won't listen, then I say, please, let's get a divorce.

I've had to divorce a few of them because they just won't listen. And if you're not going to listen to me, I'm totally frustrated. I mean, why did you partner with me in the first place? You recognize when we partnered that I brought something to the table, but then you don't listen to me, so it's a total waste. And I ran into a woman at dinner on Monday in Miami, an immigration attorney, and she was so impressed with, said she's about a year, and know I would love for you to be my mentor. I have offices in four countries. I'm opening in Spain next. And she was born in Bolivia, Hispanic. And I said, well, I will mentor you, but as soon as you stop listening to me, I'll stop mentoring you.

Yeah, because it's a waste of time. You're wasting everybody's time. Where are you located? I see the boat picture behind you.

Yeah, Virginia beach.

Okay, so nice. All right, so you got the water. Do you boat?

I don't have time.

All right, you probably answered this next question. Do you golf?

I don't have time. I used to golf until I took Jackson Hewitt public in the. Then I just. I mean, in Virginia beach, you have to get a card, and so it's not even exercise. You hit the ball and get in the card and drive, and then you get out and hit the ball again. Then you get in the card and drive. So there's no excuse. So I'm a tennis player and soon to be a pickleball player.

Yeah. So I want three different companies real quick, huge. And that's why I want to focus in on real quick. Where does that vision, what clicks in your brain to where you see that? And you're like, I can take this model and it would apply perfectly to this vertical. I can use this same process formula and it's ripe for it. It needs it. It would disrupt it. How does that come to you? What's that look like if you can describe it?

Well, first of all, it has to pass this test. We have to have a proven model, and then I have to look at the model. And can you make this replicable by someone with a high school, just a high school education? Because if it needs PhDs, if it needs MBAs, if it needs Einstein, then there's only so many of them and they're already too busy for you anyway. So in bringing in 5200 franchisees, there's a lot of normal people who haven't had massive success, and they're not the smartest guy in the room, they're not the most personable person in the room. They're not the best salesperson. In fact, the number one reason people join a franchise is they can't sell. And so they need us to help them sell. So it has to be proven model that I can teach to other people, that I can teach to a 17 year old high school student. If I can teach them how to run this business, then I know I have something that's going to scale.

I hope every single business owner, whether they're a franchise or trying to become a franchise or not, I don't care if it's mom and pop, listens to what you just said right there in terms about a proven process. Because if you're able to get someone to follow your process, by the way, that's not in your full time employee, you're not working with them in the office nonstop all day long. If you're able to do that, then how is it that business owners can make the comment, I can't get my people to do that. To me, that's an accountability and leadership issue.

Absolutely. You're right. It has to be done from afar. They can't be sitting next to your elbow and you guiding them all the time. That's a waste of time for both of you.

All right, so for our listeners or people who are watching this that are eager to learn more, they want to get into there and explore the resources that you might offer with loyalty brands. How can they find you?

I'm easy to find. It's John J ohn@loyaltybrands.com and I'll be happy to send I've already sent you a book. If someone sends me their address at john@loyaltybrands.com I'll be glad to send them a free book, too.

Wow. All right. If everybody's listening or hearing that, reach out to John right away. Blown away by this episode. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Enlightening conversation. This is exactly what we want when we talk about the business bourbon and cigars thing here and what we want to bring to the audience. You delivered ten out of ten. It was awesome. So a big thank you to John Hewitt, everyone, for sharing his invaluable insights and strategies for developing an extraordinary strategy for winning. I want you to make sure you visit loyaltybrands.com so where you can learn a little bit more about John's work. Discover how you can unlock your full potential as an entrepreneur. And as always, don't forget to subscribe Share Leave a review if you found this episode valuable, especially those five star ones, until next time, keep striving for excellence and win big. Cheers. Thank you so much for listening to business bourbon and cigars. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with other business owners and friends. And if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to the show on YouTube and your favorite podcast, play. My goal is to bring you conversations each week that challenge you and give you a no nonsense approach to growing your business.

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