Podcast

S3 Ep7: Hank Horkoff’s Secret Sauce to Creating Franchise Revenue

When Hank’s son described his dad’s job as ‘driving the car’ Hank knew it was time to come out of retirement. Now he’s building a STEAM education empire with Steamoji.

Having already built and sold two businesses, Hank turned his entrepreneurial skills to solving the problem of STEAM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Art & Math)educational provision.

The Wolf and Hank dive into why STEAM subjects should be a national priority, how to develop growth mindsets in children, and why in-person training centers are the point of differentiation for Steamoji.

You’ll also hear Hank reveal his revenue-building tactics for franchise success.

If you’ve enjoyed listening to Franchise Empires, I’d be so grateful if you could drop me a 5-star review on Rate My Podcast. Thank you so much!

Follow Hank:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hankhorkoff

Twitter: https://twitter.com/hankfdh

Check out The Wolf’s newsletter

Stay up-to-date on all things Franchise Empires by following The Wolf on Twitter: https://twitter.com/franchisewolf

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

01:21 Hank’s Aha Moment

04:02 Bridging The Gap

05:00 Nurturing Interest

07:32 How To Prepare The Future Makers

09:42 Building a Growth Mindset

15:33 The Point of Differentiation

17:27 Calling In The Experts

20:07 Why STEAM Is A National Priority

24:24 Hank’s Secret Sauce For Success

Episode Transcription

Hank Harkoff:

You’re right, I have exited a couple previous companies. The last one was, they figure exit. I don’t need to work going forward, but at the same time, I’m not gonna be spending it the next 10 years of my life doing something that doesn’t have a big potential. First and foremost, I built for explicitly. And it’s great that we can be able to help other communities, other families out there to teach their own children, other, their children in their community. But at the same time, this is a business. Our franchise partners need to make money. And the more revenue we can generate as a system, the more we can plow back into building better and better curriculum, building up the brand, just better supporting all of our franchise partners.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Welcome to Franchise Empires, where aspiring entrepreneurs learn exactly what it takes to become a successful franchise owner. From one location to 10 and beyond. I’m the wolf of franchises.

Hey everyone, it’s The Wolf. Today in the show we have Hank Waroff of Steam Moji. Hank is a serial entrepreneur who is already at two exits in the e-learning space. One of them was an eight figure exit to a pretty massive tech company that a lot of us would know while he was semi-retired, he decided he wanted to get back out there and start building a new business. So this franchise is his next endeavor and I think anyone who’s considered founding a franchise or has been an entrepreneur in other spaces will appreciate the perspective Hank brings. Hope you enjoy it.

Narrator:

The Wolf of Franchises is the CEO of Wolf Pack Franchising as well as a creator at Workweek Media. All opinions expressed by the Wolf and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Pack Franchising or Work Week. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The Wolf Work Week and Wolf Pack franchising may maintain positions in the franchises discussed on this podcast.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Thanks for coming on Hank. And I’d love to dive into Steam Oji and the brand, but as a starting point, can we get kind of a primer on your experience? Cause from our last conversation you said you have quite a bit of experience in the e-learning space.

Hank Harkoff:

Yeah, thank you for the invitation. Over the past probably two decades I’ve started and been fortunate enough to sell to e-learning companies. And then basically in 2017 I found myself semiretired in my early forties.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Amazing. And so during that retirement, I guess you decided you wanted to stay within education but not online education anymore.

Hank Harkoff:

After probably about 18 months of doing dropoffs and pickups for my two sons who are currently eight and 11 years old, I started going a little bit stir crazy and I think it finally came to a head when one of my youngest son’s kindergarten teachers pulled me aside and said, Hank, we were asking all the children, what does your father do for work? And one child said, my dad’s a doctor. Another child said, my dad’s a lawyer. And this teacher said, Hank your son, said, my dad drives the car <laugh>. So after I heard this anecdote, I was like, I’ve started and exited two companies and my younger son is gonna see in the car and not see in what I believe I truly can do. So based off of that story, I felt I had to do something else. And so I just started talking to a number of other parents where my children went to school. I started exploring the local for other opportunities within education and happen to stumble upon the franchise fair. And everything in education was educational centers for kids. And with my background more in eLearning, this was a completely new world for me. So yeah, I started digging deeper into it and really trying to understand the marketplace.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Fascinating. Yeah. What has, I mean just generally going from e-learning to now franchises that are operating brick and mortar locations and require real estate when starting steam oji think to maybe start something that didn’t require any real estate and kind of stick to some type of model that maybe was more online based at all.

Hank Harkoff:

So absolutely. It’s something we definitely explored, I guess two parts of that question. One, as we were exploring the existing marketplace of brick and mortar locations, you know had the more from my research and understanding, you have the Cummins of the world where they basically just through and repetition, tried to get your children to remember concepts. You had more of a generic K12 tier of tutoring centers, basically tutoring all K12 subjects for all K12 age groups. And then there seemed to be a trend towards more specialization over the last few decades, tutoring centers that only maybe did math or only did coding. And so yeah, just discussing with other parents, we just started asking ourselves what potential vertical might be next. And having two sons and a background in technology, I personally wanted to expose them to more of STEM education. I feel that’s very important for their future development.

If you look at your iPhone, your Android phone 10 years ago compared to now, it’s dramatically different. But how much has the school curriculum really changed over that same period of time? And so as much as schools have talented teachers that care really passionately about developing their children, they’re often constrained by budgets experience with the subject matter. And quite frankly, school curriculums just don’t really put a huge priority on STEM subjects. So that need sparked me as a parent to try to solve that gap. And so I first went on Amazon, I searched for STEM kits and I got bombarded by thousands of results. There’s no way a normal parent can make sense of which project to start with, how to progress and even how to do it themselves. They probably don’t have much experience with these kids. So it’s very, very challenging for a parent to navigate this themselves.

And more often not these kids were to send up unused on the shelf downstairs or something. Communities often have great camps. And so I would send my kids to summer camps, but when I picked him up, my you son, my older son for instance, I took him to a summer camp. I got really excited by a robotics project and when I picked him up on Friday, they’re like, we’ll see you next year. I’m like, what do you mean next year? He’s passionate about it now why is the no kinda after enrichment opportunity that he can continue to and develop this interest? So just from selfish reasons, we early on, very quickly zoomed in, narrowed in wanting to do something in stem. And one thing about STEM is that it’s incredibly hands on a lot of this stuff. You’re always making something or doing something or using tools.

And so it’s very challenging to deliver something like that virtually unlike math or coding, A lot of these more academic theoretical subjects that, to be honest, could be completely done online for most age groups. And so yeah, really gravitated first towards STEM really seemed to make sense to have a physical location to do this. And then obviously I didn’t have much background originally with of commercial real estate or commercial buildouts or even just the franchising world in general. So we were very fortunate to be introduced to a former chairman of one of the franchise associations. And he just recently sold one of his brands and had started consulting younger franchise like ourselves to really bring best of class world class training and support and partners to help us navigate through of commercial corporate locations, but in addition to helping our franchise partners as well. So it was not the most logical step for someone that had e-learning background, but as we started going through STEM hands on and just being very fortunate to have great partners to us through the areas that I had less experience with.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Sure. Yeah, no, one of my questions is just what that transition has been like. So it sounds like you’ve definitely gotten some help to manage that transition, but even just when you thought about building and founding your own franchise concept, there are STEM franchises or franchises that maybe offer a component of what the STEM education is. So yeah, how did you really hone in how you could differentiate yourself in the market? And maybe just as a better starting point, if I asked you what iso, how would you just explain to maybe a parent what their kid will get out of going?

Hank Harkoff:

So sure is a maker academy for kids that trains the builders makers, inventors and entrepreneurs of the future. Like I said, technological change is very much accelerating and many parents feel that STEM subjects science, technology, engineering, arts and math are important to help prepare their children for the careers of their future. But they see their schools more focused on traditional studies. So that’s kinda the pain point we’re trying to solve for parents in terms of how we differentiate within the marketplace. In terms of stem, stem, it’s a field that’s a little bit, one of the challenges that we have is really explaining to parents what is stem. If you wanna have help your child tutoring in math or in any other traditional subject, you as a parent probably have already gone through that yourself. So you may not be so good at algebra as you were decades ago, but at least you have some sense of what is right.

And so if you’re your child providing tutoring sessions for them around that at you have some concept as a parent of know what it’s stem, it’s very important. And so we were very much inspired by what’s often referred to as the Bible for maker spaces, but called invent to learn. And they very much break down sort of maker spaces in this kind culture into four subject pathways. So the first one would be fabrication. Now fabrication are, it’s things like additive fabrication where you’re doing 3D printing and using CAD design to actually print physical objects. So that’s a big part of what we do for our kids, but also laser comings. So subtractive of fabrication and these are of things that we get our kids streamings. The pathway would be physical computing. And physical computing is basically having sensors that interact with the real world, using code to do something with a physical object based on those sensors.

So basically using applied coding circuits, more complex robotics, and then all the subjects such as more traditional engineering, digital arts. And then in addition to some of these hard skills that we’re trying to teach the kids, we feel it’s just as important to teach some of the softer skills. So concepts of growth mindsets. So encouraging children to just be engage with challenges and problems rather than just saying, I’m bad at math or I can’t code. We really wanna try some of those closed mindsets. And then other concepts, design thinking or the engineering process. So this whole approach that nothing is really perfect on the first attempt, you as a child need to be trained to have the confidence to take on the challenge, try to come up with some solution, make it, build it, play around with it, see where it can be done better, get feedback from others in terms of how it can be improved.

Then do it again, go through the whole process, then do it again and again. And this is something that’s often not taught in schools where things are right or wrong. And so for a child, they kinda need to get outta the mindset where they don’t need to be afraid to be wrong on that first attempt. They need to understand that it’s a to anything great. Personally, I have never achieved anything significant on my attempt. Everything from starting a business to building anything, it takes many repeated attempts to do it. So these are subjects that we are very much trying to intertwine and I think it very much differentiates ourselves from other STEM focused brands that maybe focus only only on math or only on coding. We are very much multidisciplinary and very much focused on solving problems rather than just teaching abstract coding or abstract math. Everything we do is practical and hands on.

The Wolf of Franchises:

It’s fascinating. And that was kind of where I was going too with kind of competitive landscape. There does seem to, there’s definitely multiple coding specific franchises, but I haven’t seen anyone kind of like you where you said with the physical computing, just even if you look at the Steam Oji website, you kind of see the projects that get worked on there. It’s cool, it’s like a lot of actual building kind of going on. But I gotta ask, so how has either covid impacted Steam Oji or more importantly, I guess just these kinds of businesses at large, right? Cause I would guess that there was potentially some transition to online education that’s been made. Or is this something that you feel is really built for the in-person live experience?

Hank Harkoff:

Yeah, I think that’s a very good question. And I think one thing Covid clearly demonstrated is, or clearly encouraged, is a dramatic increase in the adoption by say middle school or high school students to e-learning or to just zoom based learning. And so as I talk to prospective franchise partners, the reality is they’re looking at a number of different brands. First of all, most of the franchise partners we target, they tend to be very mission focused. They more often than not, our parents themselves, they wanna do a business, but they also want to do something for the community, do something for their family, do something really feel good about things. So when we talk to them, they’re evaluating a number of different options, us versus other tutoring centers or other math or coding schools. And I tell them the reality is the middle school and high school students now really don’t want to physically travel to your location.

They’re happy to do this on their phone, they’re happy to do this on their iPad or PC at home. And you know, as an entrepreneur then are basically having to focus maybe on smaller segments of the market. I still think there’s great value in face to face interactions for younger children. And so that market I don’t feel is going online anytime. But for older its, and so you’re gonna be taking on, as you’re looking at a smaller addressable market, in addition to competitors are popping up that don’t have physical locations, that don’t have to pay rent and do tenant improvements. And so they have a lower cost base, but there’s your co competitors now as they’re teaching coding and everything else. On the other hand, with the emoji, we just use a lot of stuff and everything we do is hands on. We tried during Covid to do some kind of virtual program where we would send a box of kit to S homes and then do zoom sessions helping guide the child through their session.

What we found very quickly though is if the parent was not sitting right next to the child the first time the child had any kinda challenge or issue or problem, it would be immediate failure. It just didn’t work at all. So if the mom or the dad was half cooking dinner, half watching over the child, it just very, very bad results. And so that gave us one, it was disappointing to not have that business be able to thrive and grow, but at the same time it gave us the confidence that, you know, really do need a physical academy, a physical center to be able to deliver what we do. It’s not something that’s gonna be disrupted by any kinda online competitors.

The Wolf of Franchises:

That’s great. Yeah, I mean it makes sense just given what you’re doing, but that with all the physical building that the in-person experience would matter more. But I hear you. I feel like that also just from a competitive standpoint is a positive thing because that service you’re providing is so differentiated that you’re kind of not having to get caught up in that virtual world that maybe Covid has accelerated kind of the desire for that.

Hank Harkoff:

And one thing that’s always been a little bit weird to me is again, all of the entrepreneurs in every educational centers, they’re passionate people, they’re very mission focused and good on them. But if you’re a tutoring school offering online services, you’re competing with national providers of this, you don’t really have any other differentiation I know, versus these national providers and they just don’t have the cost base that you do. So for us, everything, we just have a lot of stuff. There are some challenges that come along with that, but at the same time, you really do need a physical center to be able to do what we do.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Yeah. And when you design this franchise, I mean are you the only person designing the curriculum and could you do everything effectively that’s being taught or have you brought in people with different specialties to help design this curriculum from scratch amongst all the age groups that kind of take these classes at atmo?

Hank Harkoff:

No, absolutely not. I definitely had to bring in subject matter experts. We have a whole internal team. So going back to that original problem of how do you provide a structured program to help guide a six to 14 year old through potentially five hours or five years of activities, we developed a program that’s structured and reinforcing across those four subject pathways I discussed. We do have a VP product who’s helped develop that, not just develop it, but iterated we found some challenges both in terms of improving different missions or courses and projects or different activities both to better keep the kids engaged but also to help make operational delivery of these projects a lot more efficient, impossible. So yeah, we, we’ve definitely had a lot of learning with that. But yeah, we have a team of internal team guides the process, but we also work with external consultants and experts. And then we again is perfectly built on the first attempt kids of course we do our best to out a but fully expecting that we’re gonna have to it and it our

The Wolf of Franchises:

Understood. No, that’s fantastic. And I gotta ask too, the name Oji, how’d you guys, or if it was just you, how, how’d you come up with that?

Hank Harkoff:

No, that was one of our other co-founders, TR Harrington. He was playing, he’s branding marketing guy than myself. But we were just playing around with concept of STEM or STEAM and then just trying to make it playful and fun and so emojis. We just married it together, steam, steam and emoji to get emoji and yeah, it’s this great unique brand, easy to trademark, easy to make, it created a playful, kind, fun kinda environment with it. So our mascot is an OG character and within the actual physical centers we try to do playful things with og. We have a number of different gamification elements as well to how keep the kids engaged. So most educational centers for will give, so the attends they’ll, they can redeem one. We’ve also layered in things like house teams to help create bonds between some of the older, younger kids. Like many British schools might have Harry Potter style and then even achievement levels. So just in karate, as you progress through a number of different levels to become a black belt, we have 10 different achievement levels to help motivate our apprentices, the kids that use to go through all 400 hours of activities over those five years. So it’s definitely important to keep the kids engaged.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Yeah, no that’s amazing. I love that. And I could see that just, I kind of wish something like this was around when I was younger cause just that’s where I think it was on your website that a large percentage of jobs are gonna require some type of scale or knowledge from a STEM curriculum. So it’s a great offering what you’re putting together. And yeah,

Hank Harkoff:

Just on that point too, it’s not just careers, I think it’s increasingly obvious that kids will need more and more STEM skills to be prepared for the careers of their future. But I think having competing stem, it’s also becoming more and more of a national priority. I was just reading the magazine this week and I came across this quote, technological innovation has become the battlefield of the international strategic game. And this is from not President Biden, this is from she in China. And so they’re putting a huge priority in terms of building out STEM skills within their population within America. They recently passed 50 billion chips for America Act I think is a start for this. But if there’s no pipeline of train personnel, are we really training our kids to be able to fill the pipeline and be able to work in these companies of the future? This is a national priority. This isn’t just something you should be doing for your own kids now. It’s really something you should be doing for the entire nation.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Completely agree. Yeah, I think, yeah, there’s a saying that you hear every so often just about the next great war isn’t gonna be fought right on the battlefield, it’s gonna be gonna be fought with code. Especially with all the technology amongst remote control drones and all these other things. I mean it, it’s a little scary, but I hear what you’re saying.

Hank Harkoff:

If your international competitors are saying Game on, you’re not ready. Come on guys, we have time here to prep our kids and train our kids with the necessary skills to help the whole nation compete. Let’s get going

The Wolf of Franchises:

100%. And so diving more into your background, you know, built multiple businesses and if I remember correctly, one of them was acquired by a pretty well known tech company. Is this more of a passion project for you or did you look at franchises with some benchmark measuring stick in mind and just Yeah, I’m more curious going from effectively what I would classify as more of a tech entrepreneur of sorts moving it to the franchise space, which some might think is kind of an outdated industry or maybe they just think of McDonald’s, right? Do you also view this right as a potentially high upside opportunity Or again, is it more of just you thought, hey I’ve kind of had a few big wins, let me just do a little passion project.

Hank Harkoff:

So I think two parts of that question. First of all, it was mission focused for me as well. Selfishly I wanted to create a company to help teach my own two sons that first and foremost was the main driver for this. And then once I started digging into the numbers for potentially if we could reach the scale of say a map focused franchise brand out there, they have a thousand plus locations across North America. If we could achieve that kinda of scale, what kinda of revenue and numbers that would result in that Caught my attention. You’re right. I have exited a couple of previous companies. The last one was when they figure I don’t need to work going, but at the same time I’m not gonna be spending it the next 10 years of my life doing something that doesn’t have a big potential appetite as well. So first and foremost I was, ive built stim emoji for my sons explicitly and it’s great that we can be able to help other communities, other families out there to teach their own children or their children in the community. But at the same time, this is a business. Our franchise partners need to make money. And the more revenue we can generate as a system, the more we can plow back into building better and better curriculum, building up the brand, just better supporting all of our franchise partners. We gotta get that flywheel going.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Absolutely. And more thinking about the business model, how do you guys approach it? If I’m going tomo, am I paying on a per class basis? Is there a monthly membership? How does it break down?

Hank Harkoff:

So getting a little bit into the secret sauce of what we do, but I can definitely share a bit about it. Yeah, so from my previous experience, my more successful companies were subscription based. And so I’m a big proponent of recurring revenue. I think as an entrepreneur it’s much better to have recurring revenue to help you better predict what next month’s revenue’s gonna look like. That just helps you sleep better at night and it just helps you predict forward. So that was a big focus for me from day one to make sure we design that into the system. A lot of educational centers and tutoring centers specifically, they tend to end up pricing just on by hour. And that’s something I really wanted to get away from. So we adopted more of a gym membership model and so by purchasing a membership at a, that entitles you to a certain number of sessions and all the different benefits and rewards. But yeah, we wanted to avoid that whole hourly thing completely. I think that’s a flaw in the design of a lot of educational centers out there.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Definitely now, and I hear you on just the predictability of the revenue and how important that can be. And also I feel like it’s probably simpler for franchisees to just wrap their head around. I mean you don’t have to share the number if you don’t want, but I’m curious, do you guys internally have a number in mind for franchisees based on the investment and all that and the expected estimated right profitability of if you have X number of students, then you should be profitable. Does that come into the projections for a franchisee? Cause I know for instance they have a numbers in mind for all their franchisees where it’s like, hey, you should hit this number and regardless of your market, that’s when you’re starting to hit your stride.

Hank Harkoff:

Absolutely. I think we’ve filled this number internally, but more importantly we’ve used that number to help guide our initial support package for franchise partners. And so like I said, we copy membership model in terms of pricing, but even terms of our prelaunch sales activities in terms of using things like sounding memberships and different pricing incentives for people to help get them, accelerate them, our franchise partners to get to that threshold. Obviously there’s gonna be variance in ongoing costs, primarily driven by real estate or whether they not the franchise partner wants run the academy themselves or they in a director to do it. But we do have a rough number that we kinda target towards and try to accelerate our partners to get to that point. It may or may not get them to break even, but in any case they’ll be in a very healthy position for growth going forward.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Definitely. Yeah, I just think it probably makes it, it’s a lot easier I think to structure your activities and then just understand what you’re trying to accomplish when you have just a membership model, it just makes it easier.

Hank Harkoff:

Hundred percent.

The Wolf of Franchises:

I love that. And going off again, your experience with past companies, what would you say just given that you’re now in the franchise world? I’ve learned from just some of my content on Twitter and in my newsletter and whatnot, that there is a surprising amount of interest in brick and mortar businesses, whereas you know, follow mainstream media and Shark Tank and not that I love Shark Tanks, I’m not hating on Shark Tank, but the entrepreneurs and the companies they get glorified are usually these high growth tech startups and things like that. So just being an entrepreneur that’s now dabbling in the brick and mortar world with more of that tech startup you experience prior to this, any learnings that you’ve had so far that you could take away for if there is someone listening to this who has had a few big wins like yourself and is thinking of, hey, maybe I wanna try a franchise cuz I didn’t realize the possibilities within these different types of models.

Hank Harkoff:

So I think you just taking a step back, it’s like what is the benefit of having that physical location? So for what we do, like I said, it makes ton of sense. You need to be physically print presents at a center that has a lot of stuff and a lot of equipment. So you can’t deliver this. Virtually so’s the actual delivery of what we wanted to teach, especially these younger kids, the six to 14 year olds, it’s critical to have that physical location. Some of my previously learning companies, they’re both target adults to have a physical location. To be honest, there might have been some initial benefit in terms of sales and onboarding to get them into the service. But on an ongoing basis, the adults just put a much higher priority on flexibility in terms of convenience and so it wouldn’t be appropriate in that context.

So for what we do, the nature of what we teach, that physical location is absolutely critical. And then secondly, in terms of scalability, I sometimes get asked, why don’t we just build our corporate locations everywhere? And we feel a big part of the marketing of what we do really needs to be digging deep into the local community. So we want parents in their local community to become our franchise partners. We want them to be telling other parents when they’re standing on the sidelines of a soccer pitch, Hey, I gotta go take my son or daughter to afterwards and to do this cool project, we need those parents to be talking to the schools that the kids attend to say, hey, this would be a great extracurricular after school activity to be exposed. So we really need local connections, local networks in order to spread the word to really get deep into the communities where our franchise partners are.

And then from our point of view, the quicker we’ve been pretty deliberate with the scaling and the sale of our franchises. This is something that we were heavily advised on early on is don’t grow too fast. This is an race you need to grow at a healthy pace, at a pace that you can actually support. And so we’ve been very, very deliberate in terms of where we’re targeting, how we’re growing, and just at the speed that we’re growing at to be able to support, make sure that all of our initial franchise partners are successful, but we are getting better and better at it and we are gonna be speeding that up quicker and quicker. And just having physical locations, it just really helps us scale to potentially a thousand plus locations across North America.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Yeah, that’s fantastic. And yeah, that kind of leads me I guess into the next question, which is just long term mean. What do you think the goal is for steam emoji? Is it kind of focusing on North America? Do you see international expansion potentially at some point? What’s the long term goal that you have in mind?

Hank Harkoff:

So it’s the interesting question and I’ll tackle that one in two parts. Again, first and foremost, like I said, I built steam emoji for my own kids. And so as my kids are getting older, they’re gonna be a point where they kinda graduate from our 400 hour program. And so internally we were just looking at new ways or new types of programs that we can help foster and nurture these extremely talented young kids that have gone through and learned all these skills that we’ve taught ’em for five years, how do we help them next? And so really coming up with some innovative programs to help get that 14 year old through high school, doing a whole bunch of interesting and cool activities or teaching them more intense coding or getting them into robotics competitions or even entrepreneurship, teaching them how to start their own businesses.

So that’s a big mission for me personally, to help my own children and then the rest of the apprentices that are going through our programs. And then secondly, throughout the franchise system, why isn’t there a thousand plus locations STEM franchise brand out there? We feel we can do it, we feel we’ve got a good start at it and yeah, let’s focus on North America first. International is always an option, but like I said, this isn’t a race. We’re gonna be very deliberate about our growth. We’re gonna make sure that our partner’s successful and we’re laser focused on building out locations in the United States and Canada.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Yeah, I love it and I agree with you, it’s not a lot of, or not a lot, but you do see franchise founders come into the industry and maybe, right, they are in the mindset that let me just sell a bunch of franchises and it can become more of a money grab than building a sustainable foundation with a proven model that franchisees will actually benefit from too. So it’s always good to hear that you have that in mind.

Hank Harkoff:

Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, this is, I’m not doing this primarily for financial reasons myself. My goal is not to collect a bunch of franchise fees, sell to some kind of PE come in, this is something we’re just to be growing very deliberately, first and foremost. Like I said, my kids, they have to go the program and then as we’re able to help other families and all their franchise partners out there, that’s great. It’s just something that someone should be doing and why not us?

The Wolf of Franchises:

I love it. That’s a great mindset. Well look, Hank, this has been really fun to talk and learn more about your brand. I’m excited cause I agree with you. I think there’s a big need for this kind of service and the franchise models a great way to scale it and get it out into as many markets as possible where there’s the man for it. So I’m excited to watch you grow. And is there anywhere where people can follow along your journey, whether it’s individually or for the company?

Hank Harkoff:

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously our customer parent facing website. We also have our sort of franchise partner facing website, atmo franchise.com, and then across pretty much every social handle out there. So yeah, I invite you to fall along and feel free to reach out and contact if you wanna bring us emoji to your community.

The Wolf of Franchises:

All right. Yeah, we’ll plug those in the show notes and now I hear what you’re saying with steam emoji making trademarks and everything easier. I’m sure all those social handles were just available in the first look, whereas other folks have to come up with creative names to create a social handle is it’s usually already taken for sure. Yeah. But alright, Hank, good to chat and we’ll talk soon.

Hank Harkoff:

Thank you for having me.

The Wolf of Franchises:

Thanks for listening to Franchise Empires. We’re coming to you soon with actionable insights to take the next step on your franchise journey. So make sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen.