In this episode;

• Intro to SuperCast
• Intro to Michael Riley
• US Trips
• New Websites
• Best Practice
• New Manuals

Introductions

Hi, Michael. So we’re finally we’re finally here after weeks of the weeks of planning where we’re recording our first SuperCast. So do you want to let the guys, everybody out there in the network and outside the network as well know what this is about for us.

Yeah, absolutely. So, first and foremost, Hello to everybody. For those of you who know me and have met me and seen me for or maybe have talked to me on the phone, you know, Hello again for everybody that hasn’t talked to me and has never seen me before. Hello for the first time. And it’s an absolute privilege and honor to be sitting in this seat in this position that David’s put us in. And, you know, one of the main things me and Phil been going back and forth with and talking about with this SuperGlass podcast or what we’re going to call SuperCast, is to bridge the gap in communications. David had for years always been very, very prompt with his newsletters, and especially when he got to the point where he was doing two a month. Unfortunately, we’ve been working through some stuff over the last year. And we definitely want to bridge the gap in that communication. And I believe this SuperCast will allow us to do that. We want to use it for multiple tools, as well as getting people involved and getting people involved with just sharing the knowledge, sharing updates.

Best Practice for Franchise Owners

Best practice as Phil dubs the term, ‘the tribal knowledge’ and I love that term. You know, we want to, you know, we want to stoke these conversations and, you know, and allow everybody to have access to us as well as, you know, vice versa.

I think that’s a big part of it because there must be somewhere between 4 and 500 brains in our global network. That’s a lot of brains. That’s a lot of brain power. So there’s probably 1,000 ideas that might bring the whole brand forward if we can share them. And some will work for everyone. And some will work for some people. But at least if we’re creating a conduit for that and sharing that, then that’s good.

David Casey

Absolutely good, good, good. So you mentioned David. Of course. Can you just update us on Dave’s health? Yeah Yeah. Everybody that’s been calling and sending their regards and prayers, you know, for most of you, I’m not telling you anything new. David’s a fighter. You know, I usually preface a lot of my conversations about him with starting with that and just, you know, for a guy that’s had a lot of trauma in his life and everything that’s happened over the last 7 to 10 years, you know, super, super blessed to be in this position and help SuperGlass moving forward. Right now, he has just been recently admitted into the hospice, and I know that can be a very scary word for a lot of people. You know, he had been diagnosed back in September. So every major milestone and timeline he’s beaten every time that there’s been something a little, you know, turning of the page or we might need to go in a different direction. So right now, diagnosis wise, he is at the point where some of the chemo is just not quite as effective as it was over the previous months. So they’ve made the decision to move him into the hospice situation in order to get him as strong and as healthy as he can to possibly revisit on a couple of weeks of radiation treatment to shrink some of the tumors down. Obviously, we’re very much in a day to day mode, so we’re kind of just taking it a day at a time. And we’re only a couple of weeks into that treatment. But I’ll definitely keep everybody posted on if anything changes and, you know, feel free to definitely reach out and ask anything that you guys need. You can always get a hold of me at the office as well.

Good Yeah. We’ll hope for the best over the next coming months, for sure.

Cool yeah, absolutely.

Network Changes & New Franchisees

So we kind of got quite, quite a few changes to the network. Well, both sides of the pond. One thing I should point out for everyone is I’m in the UK. In surrey, just outside of London. Mike, you are in Orlando. So occasionally we might have a little dip in the quality of the pictures, but we’re going to carry on regardless because we’re several thousand miles apart, but great that we can do this any time we want. So that’s cool.

So you’ve been on some trips within the US to support some of the guys. What’s been going on?

Yeah, man, we’ve, we’ve had some really, really good stuff. You know David’s put us in a really, really good position over here at the office over the last year, you know, getting everybody overhauled and up to date. And I’m very, very blessed to have a strong team behind me and be in the position to where I could do some travel.

And recently.

So for starters, we opened up Las Vegas a few weeks back. Mr Devin Collins is a very, very good young up and coming franchise in the company. This is his second franchise in his portfolio. His first one was in Portland. We’ve watched an unbelievable growth with him over the last couple of years. You know, going back to the beginning part of it, in comparison to a lot of people that are going to watch this. His start in Super glass was definitely a little unorthodox. His contract got finished right at the beginning of COVID and the training and everything was definitely a little outside the box to see him work through that and know what the trainings have been like over the last few years, and then us transitioning back out of COVID and to be able to do the trainings at the office, apply some of the city setups, watching Devin kind of not have that available and work his way to where he’s at now. It’s very, very impressive.

Support for Franchise Owners

For those of you that have ever been thinking about branching out or maybe going in to open another franchise in a completely different area, this gentleman has a lot of recipes for success, along with Mr wells here as well. You know, some of the systems that have to monitor the employees and the billing systems, all the different things that would allow him to be in multiple different states at the same time. Very, very impressive.

So he had reached out to us at the beginning of the year wanting to expand his portfolio. We worked on it for many months and then luckily everything lined up and we were able to open up in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. And I’m happy to report actually, I talked to him yesterday, and he was on a record day for what he did for billing. And, you know, he’s got big plans. He wants to open up in some other cities as well. And we’re fully behind wanting to do that. So I was actually privileged with being able to go out there for a few days and do some rental car meetings with him and go around and do some demo meetings with them. And, y it was a really, really good experience for me as well.

Who did you meet specifically?

We went we went to the airport, started with enterprise, then we went over to Avis. And then for those of you that don’t know, we do have a new telemarketer. Old face, old name, Joey Ball. He came back on a couple of weeks ago on David’s request for some help with getting some city setup stuff and getting some accounts going for some people. He did a fantastic job and then post me coming back from that trip. They did quite a few demos between the two locations in Portland, in Vegas as well. But yeah, we met with we met some really, really good prospects out there, a couple of high end dealerships as well as some regular mom and pop shops as well.

Cool that’s really good. And he’s doing all right because this is a new branch away from his base. And he’s someone that’s more entrepreneurial is he’s building a team of technicians to work underneath him, as I understand it.

Yeah one of the most impressive things was every morning he picked me up at the hotel to go out. There it was prefaced with a good 20, almost 30 minute around the table conference call with his guys in Portland. And that’s a religious thing every single morning. You know, I feel like I was talking to Mr Pavone recently about California, and he hit me with a cool saying where somebody had told them, you know, the best employees are the ones that are checked on the most. And for him being so far away, he loves just checking on his guys. It’s not a control thing by any means. It’s more of a do you need anything? What happened yesterday? Was there any good things? Was there any bad things? Was it highlights? Was there any breakthroughs? What’s on your mind?

So like a morning huddle?

Absolutely fantastic. Morning huddle. Yeah Yeah. He had it real dialed in, to where, you know, he’s out there grinding right now, doing his thing, building up the accounts. Eventually bring the manager down there to turn it over to him and try to build out a couple more routes with some technicians. And then. Yeah and then it’s on to the next one.

New SuperGlass Websites

Cool really good. I suppose the other thing that’s happened very recently. Well more recently, for my side in the UK than yours is, is Catherine’s work on the websites. Catherine’s actually an old colleague of yours Michael but she’s fantastic with the SEO work on the website for the company and you’ve been getting a good number of leads in now I’ve now I’ve copied you with your help, I guess sharing best practice again.

Yeah so we’ve, we’ve both got new websites. Absolutely. And I know you can attest to this. You know, I’d be the first one to tell you I am not very good with the computers and I’m not afraid to admit it. So I know where I need my help. I know what I’m good at. I know what I’m not good at. And she is just a blessing with the website, a completely overhauled corporate website. For us, the leads have more than quadrupled on a monthly basis. It’s allowed us to really branch out and start to kind of cultivate some good relationships and bring some good people into the company.

Franchise Sales and New Businesses

Overall, I would say, you know, numbers wise, we’re probably a little down on the franchised sales, but quality wise we’re definitely up. You know, we’re doing really, really good with the guys that we brought in. We feel that we’ve opened up some really good cities just recently in the last few months, and we expect it fully to move in that direction.

And then I know you want to talk a little bit about your website as well. I mean, she did great. She’s she’s knocked it out of the park. And yeah, so we’ve done things a little different because our website is strictly for attracting new franchisees. So the Services menu is and isn’t particularly relevant on that site because it’s just about over here. We’ve got an objective to literally get coast to coast coverage and sell out the place so that we can kind of develop a really strong relationship with people like Hertz and Enterprise and Avis Budget. But it’s different over here, you see, because they won’t engage with us until we can say we’ll do a repair anywhere in the UK. Whereas with you guys there’s much more flexibility. Yeah, well we can do it in this state. We can do it in this city. They won’t, they won’t allow us to do that. So I’ve got to literally cover the whole lot.

We’re a little more of the Wild West over here than in the UK. Yeah it’s great, it’s great work. We’ve put some different tools in our one and, and the podcast I suppose we should say this, the podcast is going to be open to people outside of SuperGlass as well because I think it’s going to be really useful when we get this on a regular basis and we’re doing the sharing of best practice, et cetera, et cetera.

I think it’s going to be great to hear for a prospective franchisee to listen to some of this stuff and say, well, they are a progressive company. Everybody is talking. You know, and I should also say that and I, we’ve discussed this before, Michael, but trying to get some interviews going with the guys in the field, not just and I.

So we will, especially if we get a hint of some best practice. It would be good to set up one of these recording sessions and literally ask for best practice because there must be a ton of it out there.

So so yeah, it’s kind of going to serve hopefully many purposes. I mean, you brought up the best practice I can show the guys. What’s up with that device that I showed you earlier from our guy in Charleston?

Good idea.

You know, this is something that Mr Wells have talked about quite often with going back to that tribal knowledge. You know, especially with my experience in the field being a lot shorter than most people out there. You know, everybody’s got something to bring to the table for sure. And whether it’s something that’s getting introduced for the first time, whether it’s something that’s validating for somebody or whether it’s something that’s just looking at it going, yep, that’s what I do. You know, that’s the type of stimulation we want to start generating for everybody and feel like they can participate in this as well. But I get calls all the time and I get fantastic phone calls. So I got a call the other day from one of our newer franchises that I had just trained a little over a year ago. His name is Rick for Charleston, South Carolina.

So he calls me and says, Mike, man, I’ve been working on this project for a couple of months now. I wanted to iron out all the details. And I got it. And I want to share this and pass this along. So when he passed along to me was there’s a picture hanger that he gets off of Amazon and hopefully everybody can see this. It’s a little bit of a hook, and they go into the wall and take it back just a little bit. Mike that’s better. Yeah Yeah. All right, so if you cut it right here and then file it off at the top here, you can get a little piece. That’s about the size right there. Now I have to get a couple of them and iron out the length of it. But what this little tool does have been telling me. It fits directly down the collet. It would go and the collet will go over it. And what this does is it allows you to iron out a depth of what you want your drill bit to be at the length when it’s hanging out the front of the call it. And it’s one of these tools where he’s like, I just want it to be the same length every single time. I don’t want to I don’t want to worry about it.

And the analogy that I used with him was the golf analogy. You know I like to play golf myself. David’s a huge golfer. So I tell him, I said, listen, man, that’s what’s the hardest sport in the world. And the one thing that I like to do is I use a set tee every single time. So when I put it down, I hit the ball at the same length every single time. And it’s one of those things where we can make anything a little easier as you go along. You know, we want to be able to pass that knowledge along and transitioning from golf back to the Super glass. That’s one of those things. If anybody’s having a hard time with swapping the drill bits out or getting them set at the right length, or you feel like you’re constantly adjusting it, this would be a tool that could definitely help you with that. He believes it’s made out of some hardened steel. He used it for quite a few months before he even brought it to my attention. And then shared it with me. In the SuperCast is going to be a tool for us to shoot that knowledge out to people as quickly as possible as well as reciprocating it. I know somebody is going to be watching this going. I’ve got about five different tools that these guys that would make it a little easier. And that’s the type of stuff we want. We want to get back and forth. Yeah, that’s what we’re looking for.

UK Franchise Growth

It’s interesting because ever since I was setting up franchises over here, we’ve got 32 areas covered now, so we call them post codes over. You call them zip codes. But, Yeah. Every time I would set up a franchise on both of the Dremels I would put an adjustable chuck in

But the same thing could work, but it could go inside the chuck and it would allow you to either use if you had a failure on one of your drills, you could just adjust the chuck and put the polish ahead in rather than the thinner drill bit.

So yeah these things evolve, don’t they? And that’s why, ideas like this are going to be good, good, news, hopefully.

SuperGlass Franchise Manuals

Yeah. The other thing you and I have been working on is, is, is revamping the a specific operations manual and marketing manual.

Yes so these are almost were they’re published now. We just got to get them on a site where people can access them because they’re going to be version controlled. But hopefully, as these discussions go on, there might be some disciplines that come out or marketing ideas, and we can literally feed them into these manuals.

So we’re trying to make it a little bit more explicit on if someone says, well, what do I do when this happens? Or what do I want? What do I do when I’m in that situation? Hopefully we cover all the bases and they’re pretty comprehensive right now. But I think with the input from everyone else in the network, we can probably build that and build it almost like have a playbook. So I’m trying to be American now we go for a playbook….Because then we can, we can do regular updates, repost them to the site where people can access them.

And hopefully, Michael, you can kind of get that out to the network in the next five, six days. I think it will be ready. So on the hosting and we’re good to go. Again So another thing kind of on the improvement stakes.

Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that. You know, ‘My SuperGlass’ has been a staple for a long time. There’s a lot a lot of good stuff on. There still is. You know, the reality of the situation is, is most of our leads are very different. A lot of the people want the same goals, but everybody comes from different backgrounds.

Everybody’s got different experiences, now everybody’s got something that they’re good at, something that they’re not good at. So anything that we can develop on our end to make it more of a turnkey follow these steps type of deal.

That’s, that’s what we’re shooting for, you know, and I’m really excited about a lot of the content that we’ve been working on, you know, pertaining to those operations manuals.

And I think there’s a lot of it will be validating for some people and a lot of it might be first time information presented as well. So, you know, we’re looking for feedback and input and we want everybody to come together on some of this stuff. And not that anybody ever has to feel obligated to do so. But we want we want a solid team effort behind everything.

Cool well, we’ve probably overrun it on our original timeline, but again, those are quite a few things I know that we still wanted to talk about, too, so that’s up to you.

So we can go for a little bit longer if you want. Or what are you thinking? Yeah, well, what I’d like to do is if we can, if there’s one or two more things that you need to cover, let’s do that.

But there’s some other bits that are probably a little bit more chunky. Maybe we can get that into sort of SuperCast number two, and then we can kind of build like a regular maybe, I don’t know, aim for every couple of weeks. We’re doing some sort of update on this and we’ll soon build up a library.

One thing that we probably should say as well is we haven’t figured this out yet, but they should be available pretty soon. If someone’s got a podcast channel like iTunes or Google Podcasts the technology we’ve got, we’re hoping that it gets published on all of their favorites so you can literally just subscribe or if you’re an outsider listening to, I say, outside, i.e. if you’re not part of the SuperGlass network and you’re listening, then you should be able to subscribe and listen to all of our regular updates for as long as you wish.

And I know there’ll be some people that tune into this to who are considering joining SuperGlass at some point in the future. So hopefully, it’s useful for everyone in that respect. Yeah Yeah. I mean our idea is to bridge the gap in the communication have a interactive platform for everybody, not just me and you. Whether it’s interviews or passing along information like I just passed along from Mr Kolb in Charleston. But yeah, you know, the idea is to have you guys be able to access this and listen to it while you’re on your way to your next account or first thing in the morning or whatever, you know, whatever suits you have it available, have it easy to use and access and also keep all the past podcasts will be kind of lined up and available on both sites.

And the players. So yeah, we’ll figure that out. So anything else you want to cover today, Michael?

Well something I wanted to throw at you. I mean, it’s you’ve got a lot of stuff going on over there. You know, I feel like this is definitely highlighted on what we got going on over here. But, you know, with bringing you on, helping us with the franchise sales and the stuff that we’ve been working on over the last few months, and then we could do a couple of podcasts just on that alone.

Easily, Yeah. If you want to touch on anything. You got going on sales related and you got shoot for it.

Sure Yeah. I mean, I think things are really picked up here. I think part of that the website’s had a hand in that some of the tools that we developed on the website, but also I think we’re now in this time where we’ve done Covid, we’re through that. We’re getting used to the fact that there’s a war going on in Europe and all the issues that brings and higher energy prices. But I think people are kind of coming out of that now. And all of a sudden and it might also be messages that we’re putting out there that people are actually listening to now. But the take up on and the interest in SuperGlass franchise is building and building and building. So yeah It’s a busy time, let’s put it that way.

I think probably we’ve in the last kind of 10 days where either we’ve either closed or we’re on the brink of closing up to six areas over here, which is great because towards our overall objective of coast to coast coverage. And the good thing is they’re in kind of areas that are location wise, extreme, you know, on the far coast of the UK. So, yeah, we’re hopeful to, to close a few more and yes, we’re starting to gain a bit, a bit of momentum back that we had before we went into COVID.

So yeah, it’s good. It’s good.

Listen he’s being very humble and modest about it. He’s over there kicking ass is what’s going on over there.

We’re doing our best.

Cool doing fantastic, man. Yeah Yeah. And for those of you that are watching and kind of going through some of this stuff that we’re talking about, one thing one thing I’d like to point out is for as many things that we’ve been working on, for as many things that we want to overhaul and update and make some changes, I’m not here to reinvent the wheel. I’ve been very, very explicit instructions from Mr Casey on what should happen, what he would like to see happen. Everything is done in his life and his vision and everything that he’s is blessed us with. I mean, what we’ve done in just the past year, you know, we haven’t been very forthcoming with exactly what’s going on and him being a part of the office and whatnot.

But I just want to reassure everybody. We’re as solid as we’ve ever been. And, you know, and everybody’s got a very, very strong role in what they do. You know, super blessed with the team that we have. You know, Jocelyn does an amazing job with our office management, everything related inventory period. You know, Jose on the manufacturing end has been one of the better, you know, better guys that we’ve ever had in that position along with David’s granddaughter Lilly doing the National accounts. She’s usually in Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then Joey ball on the telemarketing. So we’ve got a strong team.

We’re definitely looking to expand and grow. We want to do as much as we can, you know, support wise. But at the same level, we’ve been doing this for a while now. Everything’s been going really, really smooth. You know, all things considered. And we’re really, really looking forward to the future and what we can do and pushing everybody in the right direction.

Cool cool.It’s just you talk about being humble. I want to give you a shout out because I want to thank you for looking after David the way you have because you’re not just in there running the brand now. You’re also doing an awful lot for him. So yeah, Thank you.

Well, he (David) changed my life in so many different ways. I can’t even begin to. I could do a whole podcast on that.

Yeah, maybe we should.

But it’s just anything I could do for him on his personal. And not only does he deserve it, but I’m super, super blessed to have been a part of being with him prior to being sick, as well as being able to help them through a pretty tough time as well.

So it’s been one hell of an experience.

So yeah, let’s close super cast number one there, should we?

Yeah Yeah. You know, next thing up, our next go around is definitely a bunch of stuff that we can touch on. We just opened up another city that we can talk about that in Baltimore a little more and focus on what happens with the SEO and the importance behind the website building and for everybody that keeps hearing us go back and forth. Our website design is fantastic, but Kathryn isn’t the only one in the world. There’s plenty of people that do this stuff, but it’s very I think it’s very, very important in the way we’re moving, you know, technology wise, especially with the exposure and how people find us, how people come across the websites, the feeds, everything in general from us taking franchised sales all the way to generating organic growth through public calls and whatnot.

I mean and it’s not just privy to the public. We get plenty of calls from people coming across the website as well for wanting accounts and service as well. You know, dealerships, landlords and trucking companies. You know, we’ve seen a gigantic uptake just in the local franchises right here in Central Florida with the SEO.

So, yeah, we got a lot of good stuff that we can get into. And I’m looking forward to ironing out all these details and getting even better and better doing this. But I think this is going to be a fantastic tool for everybody and especially with the communication with the Office as well.

More Franchise Building Tools – Next Time

Next time around, we need to tell people about ZoomInfo as well, which is another pretty powerful tool which we, we intend to use for everyone’s benefit really. So but yeah, more about that as a teaser for next time.

Absolutely, man. Well, I appreciate your time. You know, Thanks. Thanks a lot for helping put this together. And Thanks for everything.

Super we’ll check out now and I see. I see you on the next episode.

Absolutely man, have a great day!

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