Sometimes you need to listen to the universe when it is trying to help you. Kyla Dufrense listened and survived.
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young.
Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.
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Speaker 6:
Told you, Brian.
Brian:
Told me what?
Speaker 6:
This is part two of last week’s episode.
Brian:
Oh yeah, and it was getting good.
Speaker 6:
If you missed it, go back and listen to part one first. Take it away, fellas.
Stephen Semple:
It’s funny how often we see this mistake. It’s even interesting. There’s a famous marketer, Al Rice, and Jack Trout wrote a book called The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. And one of the things that they talk about in the book is, don’t extend brand. Look, it’s amazing how many times companies try to just go, “Well, let’s just make it this bigger thing and we’ll talk…” And it almost always never works. You’re much better off multiplying the thing that you do well than trying to add around the edges.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah, you got to keep it simple. I will tell you, it is very challenging to train one person to be the best at five different services. Really it is.
Stephen Semple:
Absolutely.
Kyla Dufresne:
We know how to train someone to be the best waxer in a five-day program. We can turn someone with the right personality, obviously, but we can turn somebody into a fantastic hair removal expert in five days. To be great at nails and lashes and hair, I mean, God, that takes a really long time. And then you want to go, okay, you have to do all of these things. How do you get one person to be great at all of those things? You’re going to be putting out a mediocre product, maybe, for the convenience of a one-stop shop. Truly, you can’t be the best at all things.
Stephen Semple:
Well, and I’m going to put it to you another way too, because that’s the operational challenge. I’m even going to look at it from the marketing challenge. So, what we want to be, in anytime we’re marketing a business, we want to be thought of first and we want to be like the best, right? But thought of first for what?
Now, if it’s thought of first for being a salon, well, there’s lots of salons, right? Thought of first for waxing, that’s a little bit different, right? And it’s way easier than to lean into that and really be liked about, because even the whole thing, Foxy Box, people like that. Well, now it’s this other name that was a little bit safer and more conservative because we’re in this area. It was also harder to be liked for that.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
So this whole strategy had of being thought of first for this thing and liked the most for this, you had to deviate from that. And I’m going to say, even if you got the operations going, I don’t think it would’ve been a success.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah, for sure.
Stephen Semple:
In fact, I think if you got the operations going, it would’ve been a trap because it would’ve worked okay. I actually think the universe gave you a gift of it burning to the ground, and causing you to go, wait a minute, I should just focus. I think the universe was actually looking out for you there.
Kyla Dufresne:
Oh, for sure. Yeah. It was bringing me back to my roots. And I mean, I learned so many lessons in there. Every experience shapes the leader that we are today. I used to lose so much sleep. I used to cry a lot and now I just don’t. I always say to people, things don’t get easier, we just get better at tackling them.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, for sure.
Kyla Dufresne:
Your business doesn’t get easier. At the top of one mountain, you’re at the bottom of the next. Literally it’s just a constant like, okay, now what’s my next challenge I have to face? But the great thing about that experience is, I lost a lot of sleep. I got a lot of gray hairs, I cried a lot, and now I’m much stronger on the other side. I learned how to be a great leader. I learned how to lead a team, how to build a team. I got clarity on my business structure.
It wasn’t all a failure. I think Harvard is probably more expensive than 30,000, so that’s my [inaudible 00:05:03] education.
Stephen Semple:
So you had one store, went to two stores, you’re back to the one store. What was the next step in the evolution?
Kyla Dufresne:
My first franchise.
Stephen Semple:
So what made you decide to franchise?
Kyla Dufresne:
I knew I wanted to franchise from day one. I said, “I’m going to start a brand. I’m going to call Fox Box. I’m going to franchise and take over the world.” My fire behind that, I had a boss at the bar that I worked at. He’s probably going to hate that I call him out quite a lot on podcasts, because I love him truly. And I learned so much from him on how to develop culture into business. But he said, “You can’t franchise this business, Kyla. People come to you. They’re not going to go, you can’t franchise this.” And I just went, “I use this as my fuel. Watch me.”
Stephen Semple:
Nice. Nice.
Kyla Dufresne:
And so I told everybody that would listen that I was going to franchise. I’m a franchise. You can buy a franchise if you want. I had no idea what that meant to Stephen. I didn’t know what franchising was. I didn’t know what that meant for my role, but everyone knew like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to sell franchises.” I didn’t have anything. I had no franchise agreement, no FTD, but I told everybody I was a franchise.
So two of my top estheticians came to me and said, “Kyla, we want to be a first franchisees. We’re ready. We want to open in the West Shore in one of the fastest growing communities.” I think it was in Canada at the time. And I went, “All right, great. Let’s do it.”
I reached out to my lawyers. I said, “I’ve got two of my technicians. They want to be my first franchisees.” They whipped me up a license agreement because it was much cheaper and faster. And like, this is all you need. Put it in front of them. We all signed on the dotted line and things went south from that moment forward.
A few things that went wrong. Number one is that I sold a license agreement instead of our franchise agreement.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, very different. Yeah.
Kyla Dufresne:
When you sell a license agreement, there isn’t this 160-page document called a franchise disclosure document. And in a franchise disclosure document, it outlines everyone’s roles and responsibilities in this marriage that you’re going to enter into.
So we went into this blind, like, “I don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.” There was zero expectations. When it came to support, for example, for me, I thought, “Oh, if they need something, I’m going to answer.” If they text or whatever, support to them meant, “Oh, if I’m short-staffed, you come and work in my store.”
So when they open their door like, “Hi, I’m short-staffed. They need you to come work.” Well, this is not what I thought I was getting into. So our expectations were just not aligned at all.
The other thing that went wrong is that they were incredibly undercapitalized. Because I didn’t understand that you need a lump sum of money to start a business, because I did it organically.
Stephen Semple:
Because you did it differently.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah. I did it differently that I just thought, oh, everyone just figures it out and funds the business. That’s not how it works. These guys had… How much, I think they had $30,000 or something like that to their name and to open the store. 10,000 of that went to me for the license agreement. The remainder was to build out their 1,200 square foot store, market their business, and get up and running.
Fortunately, the two of them both were dating general contractors. And so they were, back then too, this was almost 10 years ago, back then you could kind of whip together a space for very little, and they managed to pull off the build out, which was insane. But at the moment they opened their doors, they were strapped for cash and super stressed out.
Stephen Semple:
Right.
Kyla Dufresne:
The other thing is that I had nothing systemized. I didn’t understand that. I was in there helping them train their staff. I had no training materials put together. I whipped up an operations manual. My friend owned a franchise, which she since sold a quick service food franchise. She gave me her operations manual. I kind of copied and pasted and changed like, “Here’s your hours.” And the waxing that we do and just general shit.
Anyhow, very basic stuff. I had nothing systemized. So when they opened, also I was still in my business waxing full-time. So when they needed stuff, I wasn’t available immediate to lead to them. So we opened and we just had a terrible relationship from the word, go. I realized very quickly that I had no idea what the hell I was doing and I needed help.
I found a franchise business coach here in Victoria. Her dad started M&M Meat Shops, which grew to 500 locations. Her name’s Angela Cote. If you don’t know her, she’s awesome. Follow her. Her new business is AC Inc. She teaches field coaching, trains people’s field coaches. But, I reached out to her. I hired her on the spot. I stepped out of my business.
We put in a manager at my store so that it could continue running smoothly, systemized everything, built in those proactive support systems, which is, I don’t just wait for you to need something. I’m giving you information to help you make decisions that impact your performance regularly. Weekly, I’m giving you KPIs. We’re meeting monthly to help support you, but we just couldn’t get that relationship back. It was too strained from the beginning. They hated me.
And so, we decided to have a mutual termination. I put two offers in front of them. One was, “You guys can keep your store and change your name, or the other is I’ll buy back your store from you and continue to operate.” They chose to keep their location and change their name. Thank God, because back then I went, “I don’t know how the hell I’m going to get money.” Well, you’re in your early days. You have exactly zero.
Stephen Semple:
Zero. Well, actually often less than zero. Yeah.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yes, exactly. So they chose the latter, which was a little bit of a relief for me. It was kind of heartbreaking to go like, oh my God, my very first franchise is a failure, but it was the best case scenario.
They decided to keep it. They still operate in that market and we’re actually back in that market with one of our fastest growth stores in the system that’s performing very well. But then we went back to market, over prepared at that. We had everything in place like, okay, we’re a buttoned up franchise and now we can go. And I did that. I learned that all from the first location.
So it’s a blessing that it was that it was just one that I went, “Okay, I’m out of my league here. I don’t know what I’m doing.” And then-
Stephen Semple:
How long was it from that coming to its end to then you going out and getting everything together and then getting that real first franchise going?
Kyla Dufresne:
Probably two years.
Stephen Semple:
Two years. Yeah. It doesn’t surprise me, because it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of costs, a lot of work, a lot of time. Yeah.
Kyla Dufresne:
I just want to add in, that that mutual termination, I managed to work through with my franchise business coach with no lawyers.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, that’s very good. That is very good.
Kyla Dufresne:
I always kind of lean into, and I know that we’re Canadian as well, and maybe that doesn’t happen everywhere, but I always lean into that relationship piece. We’re all human beings. And so, if you can get in front of someone and try and work it out together, start there.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, it’s always way better.
Kyla Dufresne:
And instead of going like, “Oh shit, I need a lawyer up.” Let’s start with having a conversation and seeing if we can’t agree on something together. Well, [inaudible 00:11:33]-
Stephen Semple:
The best way to do these things is you come to the agreement and then yeah, I get at the end, it’s got to be put into legalese words.
Kyla Dufresne:
For sure.
Stephen Semple:
But if we can do it where, okay, you and I have come to the agreement, okay, now let’s get it put into proper paperwork because you got to kind of do that. That’s always the best way to land on these things.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah. Yeah. It started with like a come to Jesus moment, which is like, “Are you happy? Because I’m not happy. I’m not happy. I’m trying here. And so if we can’t get on board, what’s our next steps? And so let’s get on this together.” But that was probably a two-year process, from me stepping out of my business to going back to separating and going back to market. We had to build a lot of infrastructure. Our FA, our ED, all of our training material had to be filmed and put onto Trainual.
There was a lot of building blocks, figuring out our KPIs, our chart of accounts, our COGS, all of those things had to be flushed out before we could go, “Okay, we’re ready.”
And so, now that was six years ago now is when we started to, we got our first franchise, because now we’ve had three renewals since then that have renewed for their next five-year terms.
Stephen Semple:
Nice.
Kyla Dufresne:
And so yeah, that was probably the pause. And to be quite frank, Steve, we’re kind of in that pause again at this size. We’re doing that now, which is, we’ve gotten this far. Okay, now what needs to change and pivot to be able to get to 50 locations and then get to a hundred locations?
Dave Young:
Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.
[Using Stories To Sell]
Dave Young:
Let’s pick up our story where we left off, and trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.
Stephen Semple:
I see this all the time. I have clients we’ve worked with for a long time. They get to a certain revenue and then they kind of flatten out for a few years. And often it’s because there’s a whole reorganization has to happen. Some changes have to happen to get ready for that next push.
You look at businesses, businesses do that. You go back, look, they grow, they flatten out for a little bit. They grow, they flatten out for a little bit. It’s just because what got you there is not what’s going to get you to the next stage. So there’s always this little retooling that has to happen.
But one thing I want to just go back and revisit, this whole idea that you talked about of me and people being out in the community, when you were talking about it, made me think of a story that Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon talked about.
And in the early days, he would seek out women who were like taking yoga and Pilates and things along that lines to hire as salespeople. Even if they had never done sales, because he’d be like, “You’re in that community, you understand that community, you hang out with people who are part of that community, and that community is who we’re selling to.” He would much rather hire somebody who was from that community, who had never done a sale of their entire life, than a professional salesperson who is from outside of that community.
Kyla Dufresne:
I always say to all my franchisees, “You should look for bartenders and servers to be your magicians.”
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Kyla Dufresne:
I’ll tell you why. They’re quick on their feet. They’re great at diffusing situations, they’re great at communication and they can multitask. So I actually kind of stay away from, if you hire an aesthetician, here’s what’s going to happen.
The great thing about our business model, it will look different when we go into the US, but I feel like there’s a larger net of estheticians to pull from. The great thing about our industry in Canada is that the hair removal industry is unregulated. So you don’t have to be an esthetician to perform hair removal services. We have our own certification program that we put everybody through to certify them as a waxer.
And the great thing is that if you hire on the right personality, and you train them to be a great magician, they’re going to have loyalty to you. They’re going to stay with you forever because our girls make great money. I think on average they’re like 37 bucks or 40 bucks an hour, with their tips and commissions, being a waxer. So to take someone that has no education, train them in this industry and build them up, they’re going to stay with you.
When you hire estheticians, a couple of things. Typically, a lot of estheticians like to do facials and spas, so they might not be the right personality for Brazilian waxing. The other thing is that because they’ve invested in their education themselves, they’re going to be real quick to leave you for someone that gives them 50 cents more.
Stephen Semple:
Sure. Yes.
Kyla Dufresne:
So really I lean into, yes, it’s expensive to train your staff, but you’re going to have much less turnover if you really invest in the right candidate, and look for that personality type that is going to be warm and inviting and quick. And typically that really aligns parallel to people in the service industry.
Stephen Semple:
You know what’s interesting about that, one of, super successful client of mine in the heating and air conditioning business in the US, talks about how he does a lot of his recruiting from people who work in bars and restaurants.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
For those reasons. And on top of that, like when you talk about being able to be taken away or whatnot, he’ll train them. So he’ll turn you into an AC tech and he looks at it and says, they may make more money, they may not, but here’s what you get, evenings and weekends off. He can actually give them a better life, give them a better path forward.
And what he’s found is, all those things. They understand how to talk to people, they understand how to upsell things, they understand how to diffuse the situation when things go wrong and they’re great in teamwork.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Right?
Kyla Dufresne:
Exactly. All of those.
Stephen Semple:
And those are the things that are hard to teach. The technical stuff, yeah, we got books and manuals and trainers.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think that’s one of the things when I go back to my boss who said, “You can’t franchise this business.” What I really learned from him is how to create a culture where staff want to stay as well.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Kyla Dufresne:
Because I could have. And at the end of my bartending career, I did go move to the place where I could make almost double the tips, because it was much higher volume. I used to get… Try to… People used to poach me to come and bartend at their bars all the time. And I say that, Lucky Bar is the name of the venue. It’s still around in Victoria. I was there for four years. I had people that I knew the bartenders made much more, try and poach me all the time, but I stayed at Lucky Bar because he created such a culture of family where I loved going to work.
We all jibed. He would take us on these staff retreats all the time. It felt like a family and I really wanted to go and work there, taking that-
Stephen Semple:
And those are important parts to retention.
Kyla Dufresne:
It’s not always about that extra money. It’s about, “I’m going to be spending most of my time at work. Where do I want to be?”
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. And you’ve created a place that’s got some fun and things along that lines.
I want to thank you for this time. If there’s a final thought, because the people who listen to this podcast, many are looking at this for ideas to help them with their business and they’ve got a smaller mid-size business. What is a piece of advice that you would give them?
Kyla Dufresne:
I would say, find a mentorship, really. Reach out to… Never be afraid to ask for help. I think that’s probably been one of my biggest blessings is that I have no ego when it comes to like, “I don’t know this.” You got to put your ego aside and reach out if you don’t know something.
I’m constantly looking at people who are where I want to be and reaching out and going, “How do I get there?” If someone’s got a hundred locations, 150 locations, I’m reaching out to go, “When you were at my size, what did you do? What did you change?”
Recently, our pause right now is I put together a board of advisors. I’ve got all these beautiful C-suite executives on my outside perspective on my brand to help guide me through, what needs to change or pivot, what suppliers do we need to add on or systems that need to be fleshed out in order to help us get to the next level.
I also, on top of that, I mean, I’m an entrepreneur. I have a two-year-old. So on top of that, I have my community of moms as well.
When you can connect with other business owners, or there’s also a group of, there’s 12 of us female franchisors, we’re on this text group and we meet once a month. When you can do that, it’s going to normalize some of your fears, your thoughts, your stresses, and your struggles, and it’s going to help you push through, because this is not easy. Opening a business is not easy.
Stephen Semple:
No, it’s not.
Kyla Dufresne:
It’s never going to be easy. If it was easy, every single person on the planet would own a business. So if you can surround yourself with people that are going to help push you through those challenging times or provide insight, then do that.
On top of that, reach back and help the next person. I’m also a mentor for other people franchising their business. I’m always happy to provide my time and give insight of the guts, especially I love it if they come prepared to a meeting to go, “Here’s my questions.” And I do that with people who are my mentors or I reach out to, I come prepared for that and I go, “Here’s my struggles and this is what I need help with.”
So my advice would be don’t just show up and go, “What do I need to know?” Come with what are your challenges right now so that you can get actual tangible advice out of it.
Stephen Semple:
That’s cool. That’s awesome. And if I was going to say what I think is the most valuable piece of information that people could get from this podcast, and I love how you leaned into it, was in the early days, grass roots, gorilla, face-to-face, whatever terminology we want to put towards it, that’s the biggest thing.
And if I could tell you the number of meetings that I’ve had over the years with people wanting to start a business, and the first thing I’ve said to them is, “Okay, in the first year, here’s what you want to do is you want to… And I’ll give you some coaching on how to do that,” and then I never hear from them again. And then what I find out is, “Yeah, but I hired this person who’s putting together this app for me and that’s what’s going to make…”
I’m like, “You don’t even understand your customer.” And so I really love the fact that you put that out there and leaned into it, because I think that’s really important in the early days.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah. Oh, for sure.
Stephen Semple:
And pretty much every entrepreneur I know who’s been hugely successful did that in the early days. The early days, there was a lot of precedent of the flesh.
Kyla Dufresne:
Yeah. I think it’s kind of a benefit, Stephen, sometimes if you don’t have that extra capital or money because you-
Stephen Semple:
Because you have to. Yes.
Kyla Dufresne:
If you felt like, “Oh, I’ve got access to this big loan or all this money, I’m just going to sit here and put it online.” It’s kind of a benefit. You should always think scrappy, always think scrappy.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Kyla Dufresne:
How do I get the most return out of my time? And that is… I mean, yeah, you got to go shake your hands with babies and hold babies, and shake hands like you have to.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, you really do in the early days for a whole bunch of reasons. Look, this has been awesome and thank you very, very much for your time. So if somebody wants to learn more about your business, or maybe even potentially franchise, where should they go to learn more?
Kyla Dufresne:
Foxyboxwaxbar.com is our website.
Stephen Semple:
Foxyboxwaxbar.com.
Kyla Dufresne:
We’ve got our franchise information. You can find me on LinkedIn, Kyla Dufresne. I’m super active on there. If you’ve got any questions to even … I’m always happy to give my time to people who are interested in franchising and have some questions. Always feel free to reach out.
And follow us on social media because our brand is super fun. We’re FoxyBoxWaxbar on Instagram as well, so check us out. We’re pretty hilarious.
Stephen Semple:
And it’s for the dudes as well.
Kyla Dufresne:
It is for everybody.
Stephen Semple:
All right. Thank you very much.
Dave Young:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big, fat, juicy five star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute Empire Building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.
