Tim Vogel, Founder, CEO, Scenthound
Tim Vogel is the Founder & CEO of Scenthound, a dog grooming franchise that specializes in wellness and preventative care. Tim started his business in 2006 initially as a mobile pet grooming business, and after a series of twists and turns, he developed Scenthound into a pioneering concept where pet parents pay a membership rate to receive dog grooming for any type of dog based on the breed’s needs.
https://www.scenthound.com/
https://www.scenthoundfranchise.com/
AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
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[00:00:57] Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. And our guest today is Tim Vogel. He is founder and CEO of Scenthound. We're gonna find out a little bit more about the business, how he started it, his entrepreneurial journey. Scenthound is a grooming services for dogs, for owners of dogs or us. I'd like to see in their their copy dog parents, we're going to learn a little bit more about how they approach that, about how they have positioned themselves in the market, about how they've grown and scaled the business, how they're kind of approaching the scaling process. Fascinating, fascinating approach to, you know, somewhat known a business model. But they've really kind of carved out a niche and looked to really make it a scalable global company. So I'm excited for this conversation with that. Tim, welcome to the program.
[00:01:38] Great. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Bruce, really, really excited to be here. Yeah.
[00:01:41] So why don't we start with the background? So, you know, I know you've been an entrepreneurial couple times. You've worked on a couple of different businesses. But tell me about Sandtown. Tell me about what the kind of how you got to this point of wanting to start this, how you went about starting it, and what was the vision when you kind of put pen to paper to begin the business?
[00:02:01] Yeah. So so in the very beginning, it all started with my wife convincing me to get a dog. And I actually said, you know what, I'd rather go to the bar after work than the responsibility of going to home to take care of a dog. But we got the dog and I and I fell in love and I started to kind of geek out about it. You know, really start researching dogs and this co-evolution of humans and dogs and all this really cool stuff. And into when I was looking to leave kind of what I was currently doing, I started looking at industries in the pet industry was huge at the time. And this is kind of back in 2005 was like a $42 billion industry in the U.S. And so I had the bright idea of starting a mobile pet grooming business. And, you know, there was kind of a lot of at home services were starting to emerge in that time. And so long story short, I went to grooming school just to understand how work got a van, built a Web site and launched this mobile grooming business. And it didn't take me very long. It was really kind of six months to a year into it. I started to realize I didn't know what the hell I was doing. And I started to realize that this business wasn't scalable like I thought it was. There was a whole bunch of barriers to scalability in this business. And you know, it about two years, I was I was able to successfully build it so it could at least sustain us. And I got it to about I got it to four vans running six days a week. But that's not really what I wanted. I was I had much bigger ambitions. And that's not what I got into this to do. And so I pivoted and I said, you know what, we need to figure out scalability within this industry. And that was really kind of two major problems in this industry. One is finding qualified staff.
[00:03:33] So there's no licensing anywhere in the nation for programmers. Interesting, because anyone can call themselves a groomer. And indeed, when I went out to hire people, I found a really wide range of skill and talents and capabilities. And number two, the margins were not good. And so there was just there was just a pricing and efficiency problem in it. And so that was that's what got me on this journey. And I became essentially obsessed with kind of creating a scalable business within the grooming industry. And one of the things that I found in that searches, 96 percent of grooming businesses in the U.S. have three or less employees. So it just totally fracture. And so the next stage of that really was opening up our own grooming center, a retail location where I could train groomers. That was kind of my big first solution is. All right, let me go. I went up to one of the largest grooming schools in the nation. I bought their curriculum. I put it into our business and we started making groomers. Yeah. And so we dovetail that with kind of a process where we could create additional efficiency. So kind of two innovations was, one, hire the people that were kind of a good fit, personality wise, skill wise, and then make them into the technicians and number to break the. The work itself down into multiple parts so that I could create greater efficiencies, which would create a better margin. Yeah. And so kind of on that front is really the issue was that, you know, typically in a grooming shop, you would give me your dog.
[00:05:00] I would do the entire process and give you a dog back. And what we did is we effectively broke it into a couple stages where the majority of the labor was actually low skill, the bath and blow dry. And then the high skill was really that the haircut and the styling. And so we created a promotion series or a career path where you started as bather. DREIER And then doing prepping, which is like the nails and stuff and then rough cutting, which is the basic haircut and then the finishing work. And so then then we could put that dog into the bathing drying process for someone who is an entry level employee and then have the trimmer do really the finishing work, which was the high end stuff. And that created a little bit better margin for us sense. So that was really the start of it. But, you know, after a couple of years of doing that, I actually opened a couple locations that way, but it still found that it took me about a year to make a really good technician, you know, 160 some odd breed standard haircuts. It's a real trade. And so, you know, I'd spend a year making a really great technician and they would leave. So, you know, create or over. And, you know, the 20 somethings were really my target employee. And so there was just a lot of transition at that age.
[00:06:08] And so I just couldn't I still couldn't scale it. And so I was kind of at that same place again, you know, I kind of solved some of the problems. We had a nice profitable business, but it still wasn't scalable. And so I kind of set back and I was continuously kind of obsessed. And this is when I was really I got stuck. And I. And that's when I kind of reached out to e0 and I joined the accelerator program. And the accelerator program was really helpful in helping me think through, you know, strategy, cash, people, execution, all those those stages to kind of help us solve that problem. And and a whole bunch of things started occurring to me as as I was going through that accelerator program. One of the things was really looking at the industry. And so what I started to realize after having been in the industry now seven or eight years is that the entire grooming industry was focused on haircuts and it was going down that path more and more. It's actually still doing that where, you know, the the better the stylist, the more attractive you are. And there's you no TV shows about styling complications. Now, that group, Team USA, that competes internationally. But when you look at the number of dogs owned in this country, you know, so I think a great way to think about it is the top 10 breeds owned in the U.S. Only two of them need a haircut.
[00:07:23] So you're saying your addressable market and smaller than you originally think.
[00:07:26] Yeah. But all dogs need care. Yeah. And so there was really an aha moment for me when I was in my neighborhood there. A new neighbor moved in. I was walking my dog. He was walking his dog. And we started chatting and he said, what are you doing? I said, I own a dog grooming business. And he's like, that's cool. You know, my dog doesn't need grooming, though. And he had a lab and I looked at his lab and I could actually smell his labs, your infection. And I could see that his labs knuckles were disfigured because he had never cut his dog's nails. And it was like, oh, my God. People don't know. Like, this guy really obviously cares about his dog a lot, loves his dog, would love to be a great dog parent. Just has no idea that there's some basic care that needs to be done. And so I actually decided we were going to turn and move in the absolute opposite direction of the industry and we were gonna be about fast, easy, affordable for dogs that didn't need haircuts. And so we set it up so that you could come and get your dog washed. And that's really what we started with. And we tested kind of washing nine ninety nine chicken come in to get your dog washed in a towel dry. And we started playing with that a little bit. And so then we started thinking about, well what if we opened a business that didn't have any haircuts at all. So the next location we opened, we tested this new model and we called it Scenthound and Scent is an acronym skin, coat, ears, nails and teeth, the five core areas that really all dogs need care.
[00:08:39] And so we tested that. So we put it a handful of innovations and that the first thing we did is we said, look, we're not doing haircuts, we're only doing basics. Number two, we're gonna make a membership based just so that you can get on your dog on a routine maintenance. And it really started to shift our brand from haircuts to health. And so we started talking about wellness and routine maintenance and preventive care. And so we started that model and we started getting members. And so it was twenty five bucks. You could come in once a month and get a bath, your dog's nails clipped, your dog's teeth brushed and their dogs ears cleaned. And we get you in and out the door in about 15 minutes. And so we started doing that for forty five dollars a month. We added this on later. We said, what, for forty five bucks a month, you can do an unlimited. And so we started to find that there was a crowd out there. It was an education piece to put a crowd started to come around. But we also realized that the word grooming really was owned by a certain you know, there is a certain schema associated with that, which is really about haircuts and people that had dogs, that had haircuts where they really were the ones that were communicating with the rest, the community about our service. And so we became kind of known as a place that isn't really dog grooming and it didn't grow as fast as their locations.
[00:09:48] So the next big innovation that we had was, OK, we're gonna do a haircut, but we're only do one haircut. And so we tested one length all over and you basically choose the length. So we have a couple variations, but it's basically all one length all over and we reintroduced that. And that's really what started helped us really take off, because now we were for all dogs, not just dogs that didn't need haircuts. And so we then came up with you have a basic membership for the basics, but then you could add on a brush out and a blow dry or you could add on a brush and a blow dry and a haircut. And so we were a. For all dogs, you only pay for what you need. And as we tested that in our third location that was so successful, we retrofit or other two locations with it. And that was a big risk we took because we had essentially thousands of customers coming into our centers and paying a lot of money. And we were doing breed styling. And one day I said, OK. We are now called Scent Hound. We are now a membership based business and we no longer do breed specific haircuts. And a really interesting thing happened is we did lose about 5 percent of our business, but we lost the 5 percent. We didn't want. That's probably the right 5 percent. Yes. So I was fighting with Mrs. Smith about her poodle.
[00:10:58] It was top. Not anymore. We really got clear that we were about health, not about haircuts, and we were about fast, easy, affordable. So we have opened up our fourth location, kind of combining all of those elements. And we tested a handful of other things like, you know, location, demographics, build out flow through our centers. So we dovetailed all of that. We started this new location and now we have four centers doing the preventive maintenance model. And we are we have exploded. And really I see it now in hindsight, is this really blue ocean strategy. So we're really going after the 80 percent of dogs that don't need haircuts and making it fast using affordable. So now we are an errand intensive shopping centers where people run their errands and we educate our customers so that, you know, you've got a laundry list of things to do. The dogs almost always at the bottom of that list. So why don't you combine your errands? So when you're going to the gym, say, your orange series next to relocations, bring your dog and you go into the grocery store, bring your dog. When you go into the coffee shop at the dry cleaners, bring your dog. They can then get taken care of. Drop me off. Go eat your coffee for 15 minutes. 20 minutes later, your dog is done. Clean, happy, healthy, you know. And that's now supported by a huge trend that's going on in the U.S., which is, you know, the humanization of pets. The statistic is 62 percent of small dogs sleep in their owners beds.
[00:12:16] That statistic alone just makes me cringe, but also makes me understand the popularity of the service.
[00:12:23] Yeah. And so people want a clean dog. The reality is what people want is we've done this, the statistics on it. People want two things. They want a clean dog and they don't want to clip their own dog's nails. And so we solve that. But what happens is when they come in and start becoming a member with us, we work our way in the side door. And every time you get a bath, your nails and teeth with us, you get a set check, a report card that rates their dog's health on skin, coat, ears, nails and teeth. And then what really starts to happen is the dog parent gets educated about preventive maintenance or wellness. And then all of a sudden they're saying, well, wait a minute, I need to get a dental for my dog or wait a minute, shedding is actually healthy for their skin. Get me on your shedding program. And then all of a sudden we started getting more, more momentum and greater and greater awareness about how, how and why to care for your dog. And so now on a busy day, we'll do one hundred dogs and one of our centers in a day. Wow. Where I'll play another really quick funny story in our Jupiter location. We had it. We have a non-compete in there. Says no one else can come in and do grooming services with one clause. One exception is less and less. This the space was ten thousand square feet or more. So if it was a big box or something, then they let them in. Well, lo and behold, the bookstore went out of business five doors down from us and PetSmart moved in and PetSmart built their entire facility with the front of it with big windows and grooming. And just along the windows 7 or higher, the entire show was grooming. And so I was nervous.
[00:13:46] I was like, oh, there we go. This is the test. Yep. Now is the test. And our business went up. Yeah, I can see our business increase.
[00:13:53] And now look at that PetSmart. They're doing about 15 to 20 dogs on a busy Saturday. We're doing 100. And it's because they're just serving a different audience there. They're serving a smaller audience. So that that hundred versus that 20 is about right. It's that 80 to 20 percent, you know, the dogs that need haircuts versus dogs that don't need here.
[00:14:11] Have you thought. I mean, I did that inspire you to start opening locations around around PetSmart?
[00:14:16] Yeah. So we want to be close to grocery stores, veterinarian offices, pet supply places, PetSmart, Petco, stuff like that, because their marketing have to so good that people then all the sudden become aware that there's a pet place in there, you know, and then they find us because we're just fast, easy, affordable and we meet their needs better.
[00:14:32] Yeah, exactly. Like you're doing it kind of pulling pulling the walk in traffic or, you know, the street traffic. You know, that's that's automatic. Yeah. Coming to these big stores, you know, you're getting a ton of the benefit of that, right?
[00:14:43] Yeah. And so so as we started kind of looking at, you know, where we were and what our mission was and our mission really is to remove barriers so that people can love and connect with their dogs every day. And so we talk about culture. We don't talk much about culture yet, but we're really in the business of bringing unconditional love into people's homes and helping people connect with that on a daily basis. So so fundamentally, what what my dog Aggie did for me when we first got her is that she really showed me that, you know, there's this kind of connection, this kind of unsaid connection between dogs and humans. And then I just felt good when I was with her and I just felt kind of more like me and more grounded. So when we bring dogs into people's homes that are clean, they're more likely to connect with them and it's really helping people practice love and be more human on a daily basis. And I fundamentally think we're in a kind of an attention based society. It's very complicated. You're constantly being bombarded.
[00:15:36] And if you've got a moment to pause and feel good, it kind of reground you and the science is there. Your heart rate slows, your blood pressure goes down. You actually live longer if you have a dog. Now, there's just a ton of health benefits around having a dog. So. So we really are like in the business of bringing love into people's homes. We talk about that on a daily basis with our with our teams. And that's why we have so we have a couple, I think, competitive advantages. One is everyone starts at the entry level and then they're constantly being promoted and trained. So there's just kind of this career path that they can go along. And number two, we're really in a business of making a difference. So we've got a cultural culture really around making the world a slightly better place. And so those two things really help us kind of on a strategy front, have a have a stronger business, a better service offering and and really kind of just a better retention rate with our with our staff. Yeah.
[00:16:29] You know, there's a couple things in a story that I think are really powerful for folks listening to this that are are kind of thinking about their business and how they're going to grow and scale it. The first thing is just how how you used the, you know, kind of looking at the cash component, the business or the financials and the profit margin as a tool to kind of understand how to how does this business work? Where does it not work and where can we innovate using the data that you had around kind of the finances to to see opportunity. It's like when you when you did the analysis and you start to see like where you're making money, where where your costs centers and like, where can we rethink some of these things? How is how obvious was it or how long did it take to kind of see, you know, see where where the opportunities are or where you needed to drive innovation if you're really going to make this business model work?
[00:17:14] Yeah. So, you know, the two biggest expenses in our business really are rent and payroll. And so as we started to really get clear on the right KPI is to focus on one of the big innovations for us is we focus on LCR on a daily basis, on an individual basis. And so LIRR has labor efficiency ratio. And basically all we're really measuring is for every dollar we spend in payroll, how many dollars we generating revenue. And when you start to pay attention to that, you start to really understand where you are making money and not make money, where your efficiencies are and where your efficiencies aren't. And so, you know, one of the other big KPI is once we start. So we have to get clear about that. And that's really what helped me identify, hey, look, I'm paying a highly skilled person to bait, to blow dry a dog for forty five minutes. Does that make sense? Right. And so then we could flip that around. And now we put the dog through stages where, you know, they're getting the basics with it with someone who's very capable of doing the basics. And then we've got someone doing kind of the real technical work with somebody very capable of doing the technical work. So in a typical grooming shop, a groomer can kind of groom eight, maybe 12 dogs if they're really good in a day. But when you break when you have someone do all the other labor, you know, I can out of a group or do 20 dogs, 25 dogs in a day when they're doing just finishing work.
[00:18:28] And for folks listening, you know that the LIRR labor efficiency ratio, if I'll put a link in the show notes here, we did an episode with Greg Crabtree, who wrote simple numbers, who we did it in depth on that. So there's you can use that as a resource. But the thing I love about it and I use it with so many of my clients is that it gets away from those kind of revenue per employee metric, which can be really deceiving if if you're paying people at very different levels. So, you know, you're paying people, you know, someone thirty thousand dollars versus sixty thousand dollars. Your revenue per person would be the same, but your labor efficiency ratio is going to be dramatically different. And I think it gives you a much better indicator on how efficiently am I running in terms of for the dollars that I'm spending on salary, one of my generating.
[00:19:09] And it leads to these insights that you're mentioning around. Well, what could I do differently? How could I reorganize the process, design the operations such that I'm leveraging my higher skilled, higher paid people for higher skilled, higher pay work, which is which is great. I mean, I think that that insight that you develop do that is a phenomenal one.
[00:19:27] Thank you. And yeah. And so and then the other part of it is just radical transparency around how the business works with all of the staff. And so we do daily huddles every day. We talk about what our North Star is, what our mission is. We get clear on who the new members coming in are, any special these around dogs. But we also talk about the numbers and what I am specifically doing to impact the numbers. And so we know when we grow the membership base, we get more people on the path to wellness, their dogs on the path to wellness. But we also know that when they come in every single time for their monthly service, we can add services on that will actually make their dog healthier because we've been doing the scent check evaluations with them. And so our model now with this recurring revenue and we do want to come in unlike some businesses that, you know, just want to get people signed up and then have them forget about you. We want them to come in because our add on value is so high and the health in increases of the dog every time we add on those services. And so. A really cool thing of our business is that membership basically pays all of our expenses. And then when we add on a service like shedding treatment or ear's treatment or something like that, that's almost all profit for us now. And so having the staff clearly understand their impact when they do a good scent check and communicate well with the parent, when they do a really great service and help the health of that dog when they all understand how they impact those numbers. That's what really impacts the business profitability and growth.
[00:20:46] And I like how you've you've kind of quantified the health aspects of of pets. You know, you're developing the model, developing the score. Having the report card, you know, gives a very clear and specific tool for a pet parent to understand where are they in the care of their pet and gives them some targets, gives them some structure to understanding how these how these services actually go into helping the pet be more healthy. Cleaner. It's a better pet for them. Hopefully live longer lives, things like that. So it's like how you did that.
[00:21:16] Yeah. We everything that we do as a service or work is goes through kind of the wind lens. So the business and the employees have to win. That's kind of one category the dog parent has to win. And then the dog has to win. And so if we can find a service products or, you know, anything in that arena that serves all three of those, then we have a winner and then we really then pursue pursue that.
[00:21:39] So, you know, let's talk a little bit about talent. You mentioned it in the beginning that, you know, one of the big challenges was just the inconsistency of of training, of, you know, being able to find folks going through the process of actually, you know, purchasing or finding a training program. So you could basically meant your own employees and staff. You know, I think we you know, we always talk about or, you know, there's all this discussion of, you know, higher first for culture and then train for skills. You know, and I think that's it's easy to say. I think it's hard to do. Yes. You know, I'm kind of curious to what extent you feel like like you kind of cracked that nut in terms of. Yeah, we we do know what we're actually looking for in terms of culture from day one. Yes. We really can take someone off the street that has no background or, you know, you do need some kind of, you know, familiarity with pets or with pet grooming to be successful. Tell me a little bit or give me some insight on how you've kind of now approach this finding talent, developing capabilities, you know, such that you've got a repeatable, scalable talent part of this.
[00:22:36] Yeah, yeah. Great question. And so I think we've got a pretty nailed. And so the first thing I would say is we know the ratio of people that are going to stay with us. And so having it nailed doesn't mean we do it a hundred percent at a time. So for every four bathers we hire is going to go all the way through the process. And so just knowing that helps take some pressure off because you know what? There's just so many it's such a complex equation that 25 percent is a pretty good hit ratio for us. Number two, we really dialed it down to what are the key characteristics. And I'll give you one of those characteristics as an example. So empathy is a really important characteristic when working with animals. Animals, especially dogs, communicate very clearly to us as long as you have some kind of emotional intelligence to understand what they're saying. Right. And so we thought the higher the empathy, the better. And that actually turned out not to be true. Interesting. So. So when we got someone who was a 10 on the empathy scale, they were a terrible employee. And the reason they were terrible employees, because, for example, nails. So there's all kinds of different breeds. Dogs, dogs or modified wolves, wolves dales grow at a rate at which they traveled, which was an equilibrium with their environment. Now they're modified to these dogs that are on carpet all day.
[00:23:42] And so we need to clip their nails. Some dogs are designed to dig holes to get, you know, to get rats and stuff like that. And so when you go to clip their nails, they're like, don't do that. These are my tools. Hello? Well, if you don't, their knuckles are going to get disfigured. It's going to mess up their whole skeletal structure. So you got to clip their nails, but they don't want you to. And so somebody's got a super high empathy level. It's gonna be like, oh, my God, I can't cut this dog's nails. So, you know, you're gonna have to hold the dog in a humane, safe way and you're gonna clip those nails and he's gonna yell at you. He's got a bark at you. Right. Well, so if you're a 9 or 10 on the empathy scale, that's just too hard for you. Yeah, exactly. But if you're a kind of a 6, 5, 4 or you're not can actually be able to understand what the dog's telling you. So you're not going to have the empathy level to be able to understand. They're like telling you, hey, I'm I'm not comfortable with this or I'm getting upset. You know, you need to really understand what they're saying. So we need a seven or eight on empathy. We know that specifically. And we have certain questions that test that.
[00:24:41] And we say, how do you test that? I mean, I think, you know, these are always the challenging things. It's like I know I know what I want. But, you know, going through this interview and candidate recruiting process, interview, process, onboarding, how do I guess how how do you sort of practically measure these qualities in candidates that you're talking to for the program?
[00:25:01] Yeah. So we do a couple of tricks, like one of them is laboring my dog in on interview days and we have the interaction with that just to see how they interact. But on the UN, specifically on the empathy level, the final stage interview process is a trial date. So we actually bring the technician in and they work with us for a day. We pay them to do that job. And then there's a. Activities we put them through and were listening for that empathy level so we can get pretty down. But that's that was one of the challenges. You know, we do a bunch of interviews. People seem great. But when they got an action, it was a whole different thing. So we ultimately decided we had to have them in action to make that decision, to make sense of it.
[00:25:34] I've always said the only thing interviewing does is tell you how well someone can interview you. You're going to have to put them into the fire, you know, into actually real life kind of.
[00:25:44] And we benefit in two ways from that. Because a whole lot of people get in there and say, this isn't for me. And so, you know, you hate to get down that road where you've gone through all the process paperwork and getting mine and going through the training. And in the end there and they're like, oh, I don't like this. So. So the self-selection process is also important for us. Yeah.
[00:26:02] And what have you noticed in terms of as you've kind of grown the business, where have some of those numbers change? You said now you're out this four to one. You know that for every, you know, four entry level folks, you're gonna get one that rises to the top. Has that always been the case? Has that changed? Have you looked at, you know, that things that you do to change those?
[00:26:19] Yeah, that's significantly improved. That's I think that's kind of our landing spot. I'm not sure we're gonna get a whole lot better with that just because of the complexity, that interview process. But yeah. So we're not that good before and embarrassingly to say. But it's just you know, we were kind of an 8 to 1 in the very beginning.
[00:26:34] But I like that idea is that you kind of look at the numbers and you say, what can I reasonably take this to and what's the right balance? I mean, yes, maybe you could get it to a two to one, but what kind of time energy process do I need? And, you know, maybe it's not worth it. Maybe the return isn't there. And maybe four to one, you know, is really the optimized ratio for those.
[00:26:51] Yeah. And the other thing is, so where we decided to optimize after the 4 to 1 ratio was how quickly we found those three. And so we have a 90 day onboarding process where we we promote them pretty quickly. And so the job is or out by 90 days. And there's raises that happened within that 90 days as they go through their curriculum and learn to become better and better technicians. So. So we kind of figured I kind of thought, all right, I'm not gonna do a whole lot better in the hiring process here, but let's not let them linger if they're not the right fit.
[00:27:21] Well, I like that, too, because, you know, the hiring or the recruiting doesn't end with hire. Right. Like there's there's ongoing performance evaluation and filtering and promotion.
[00:27:30] I like that. You've kind of carry the interviewer carry the selection process into the first 90 days. Yeah.
[00:27:36] Because it's like you're not going to see someone's performance until you kind of see them action and they kind of settle and they're outside of, you know, yeah, they're no longer in interview mode and trying to be perfect mode and they're kind of settling in unnatural behavior.
[00:27:46] And that's when you're going to see like, well, who's really able to perform and who's going to excel within the organization both culturally and technically. So make sounds.
[00:27:54] And we found, you know, if you're really paying attention and they're working full time, two weeks is really all you need. Two weeks kind of the the genuine individual comes out and you kind of know if it's gonna be a fit or not. And then the rest of that time is just verifying that and communicating that, giving them every opportunity to kind of change direction and then making the decision to let them go. Yeah.
[00:28:14] And so now you're looking as you grow and expand your doing franchise model, tell us about how you kind of landed on that and how that process is working. And yeah, I why that model for being able to grow the business.
[00:28:26] So I did a lot of soul searching around franchising. There's obviously a whole lot of ways to scale a business. But franchising really dovetailed kind of two of my passions, really. So the first reason for scaling is that was always my ambition. But, you know, as I got further into this business and understood the impact in the and what we were really contributing to the world, I really wanted to, you know, scale for the simple reason of amplifying our impact, bringing more love into more homes and, you know, just spreading kind of what our dog does for us personally and what we know it does for other people. So kind of one was amplification of our impact, too, is really around this entrepreneurial journey up and on. So, you know, I talked about being involved in the accelerator program. You know, I ultimately went to become a coach of the accelerator program and ultimately ran the accelerator program. And I just found a real passion around watching people own and grow their own businesses and kind of all of the aspects around kind of my passion for our true realism. You know, I think I think just kind of having the freedom to run your own business, the impact your business has, watching people make a difference within their communities through these businesses just really gets me fired up. And I'm very involved in the afternoon organization just because my my love for entrepreneurial. And so franchising allows me to do that. It allows me to help people who want to kind of move from kind of one lifestyle, which might be a corporate job or something like that into another, where they can actually have their efforts, impact a community in a positive way.
[00:29:48] And watching that personal development. So one of our values is see growth. We believe, we learn, we grow. And so that that means we hire entry level people. We watch them grow. It means having someone own a business and watching them grow that business. It means our business and watching our business grow. So. So that growth piece is really just super exciting. So that those were kind of two you know, two things that really kind of feed feed my gas tank, you know, get me fired up every day to come into work and really passionate about what we're doing. So those were kind of two big two big decision points. The other decision points are, I think. We've got something really special and we've cracked a nut that no one else is cracked and I really see us as a disruptor in this industry. And it's not going to be very long until someone else is doing the same thing. And and so franchising allows us to scale more rapidly. And and it allows us to at least gives us the opportunity to establish ourselves as the brand in that space. And so that that's another decision making point for us, because, you know, I truly believe we're gonna be an overnight success that took us 40 years.
[00:30:51] Exactly. Well, I like it.
[00:30:53] I mean, I think from a franchise point of view, I mean, when we look at franchises, I mean, the two things that you really need is, you know, a brand. It's something you can actually build awareness around and then repeatable operations. Right. Something you can develop a playbook for and train other people on. That's not, you know, horribly complicated. And it feels like you've done both of those things, like you've carved out a fairly specific nation, a strategy, and developed a brand around that. And then the whole operational process and everything from training the employee to how you service the pets, you know that all all seems like the right formula for a franchise.
[00:31:23] Well, you're actually right. And I think there's kind of one other complexity to that, which is really the integration of the brand into the operation. So where does that brand live in all of the processes that you do and all the communication pieces around those processes? And so I think we've done a really great job of creating a brand position that nobody else has, really communicating in an effective way. Wellness, you know, health, not haircuts visually with all of our marketing collateral. And then really taking that, Brandon, integrating it into our process is like the new member package or the marketing brochures or, you know, the email campaigns that we've put together, an ET brand just kind of lives in everything that we do all the way down to our architecture stack, which is our kind of one page strategy that's on the wall and every single centered. And our staff gets around and does the daily huddles with. Yeah. And so, so we're really excited. We've just started franchising this year. We kind of 2018 we built the franchise infrastructure, we started selling Q2 this year. We've effectively sold 6 as of a couple of weeks ago, our 6 1. So we're really excited that we're kind of now now on our way.
[00:32:28] Congratulations. This has been great. If people want to find out more about you, about Scenthound, about whether you have pets or whether you're interested in becoming a franchisee, what's the best way to get information?
[00:32:37] So I'll just go right to our Web site, which is soundhound franchise dot com. And that scent is S C E N and T hound like dog. So Scenthound franchise, how common? It kind of tells your whole story and it can kind of see ours offers works and there's places to get in touch with us there.
[00:32:52] And I love the message that your dog thinks you'd make a great business owner. Do you copy? I think you've done a great job of building a brand and actually working that and all the message and everything. So good work. I'll put those in the show notes here so people can click through and get that information. Tim, this is a great, great conversation, great story, a great business. I'm excited as to how things play out for you in 2020, but thank you so much for taking the time today.
[00:33:16] I appreciate you having me, Bruce. A lot of fun.
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