Jeremy Weisz 18:37
You’ve obviously very experienced and been doing this over a decade in the franchise space. So you’ve seen a bunch of trends. So I love to hear, I don’t know, maybe recent trends. You know, maybe someone listening, wanting to do their next business idea, or maybe have someone go give them some creative juices with what you see trends in the franchising space?
Kirk Allen 19:04
Well, I would say in the last few years that franchising is pretty high, like in terms of people looking to buy into a franchise, it is an all-time high. Circle back to before COVID and different companies have franchise show. So the Canadian franchises Association has a few shows a year. Two in Toronto, two out west, one in Calgary, where the brands would go and say, hey, I’ve got the best franchise for you to buy. And before COVID, the attendance of those shows was in decline. COVID hits, they stopped, and then things opened up again, and they started back up. The attendance at these shows has been at an all-time high, like, for example, the Canadian Franchise Association shows are more tenants than ever before. And then we see it on the marketing side as well.
So Google Trends, people buy my own business, work from home, work for myself, best franchise to buy. So we’re seeing trends such as service based businesses is pretty hot right now, so not having to own a brick and mortar location now, there’s still lots of brick and mortar franchises out there, especially in the QSR business, they’re doing great. And I’ve done exceptionally well through COVID, especially if they had a drive through. And delivery is really big. So, there are people who’ve got more capital and they’ve got half a million dollars, or million dollars, you can open a really nice brand, top brand, QSR, do very well for you and your family. For those who don’t want to have a own a physical location service based brands, whether it’s window cleaning or painting, those types of companies are doing exceptionally well right now, because there’s a lower cost of entry, you don’t have the build out cost. And they typically have it figured out where there’s customers out there looking to have their houses painted or their windows cleaned, or their lawns cut, or there’s all sorts of different businesses, right?
So they are quite popular right now, but franchising in general to be your own boss. So you’re in business for yourself, but not by yourself. So in other words, you’re the boss of that franchise, but there’s a proven formula on how it operates. So whether it’s the UPS store or whether it’s Dog Topia, which is a great dog daycare franchise in North America, there’s businesses out there, and it seems that COVID kind of forced people to think about, do I really want to work for someone else and risk losing my job if that business goes under? Owning your own business like a franchise is a great way, because someone else has done the work to make sure it’s a viable business, and you’ve got some money in your own boss. So, we work with a lot of franchise systems, and I sat on the board of directors for the Canadian Franchise Association a number of years.
Was the chair of the supplier committee was very involved in everything from advocacy, where we’re on Parliament Hill, talking with politicians about the size of franchise in Canada. It’s actually the 12th largest industry in Canada franchise. So it’s huge and employs a lot of people in Canada, and we’re fortunate to be working with some of the top brands and franchising. So it’s a great industry and a great business to be in.
Jeremy Weisz 23:35
I’m going to share this. I had some research pulled up here, Kirk, I’m not sure how accurate it is, obviously, but let me share this. And I’m curious, what are some other examples you gave a few of the service-based businesses, but we’re looking at this as fast as growing franchises right now today. May change in the future, obviously. And this is on entrepreneur, and a lot of these are actually service ones that you have stratus-building solutions, environmentally friendly, commercial cleaning, disinfecting. It’s showing right now is the number one fastest growing. Again, I haven’t, fact checked the accuracy. If this is on entrepreneur.com, then you have crumble cookies, Jersey mics, which I was surprised about. This one, dream vacations, travel agencies.
I’m like, that was that number four. And then you mentioned this actually commercial clean. There’s number five and six are commercial cleaning. Like, actually one, five, and six are all commercial cleaning. And then you have stroll with this, you know, some kind of monthly publication. Then Kona ice, which I’ve actually hired them to have a shaved ice truck, Taco Bell and scooters. So does this list surprise you? Does this look accurate?
Kirk Allen 24:54
No. And entrepreneur is great, by the way. Their list, they have like the no bad. Restaurant franchise. They have the fastest growing ranch franchise. They have the best emerging franchises. So this doesn’t surprise me at all. Jersey Mike’s just came into Canada by the way. Couple locations, and they are now expanding into Canada dream vacations, I would imagine that’s a work from home. You see the initial investment is $2,000 yeah, so that’s probably work-from-home. Be a travel agent, a supply leads and a website and that sort of thing. But service based businesses and the top five there are, you know, more industrial. And there’s all the home based ones, right? So as you would scroll down, they would be different ones that would be servicing the…
Jeremy Weisz 24:55
Prow looks like something.
Kirk Allen 25:12
Yeah, that’s fire restoration.
Jeremy Weisz 26:01
There’s another travel agency, cruise planners, I’m shocked.
Kirk Allen 26:03
Yeah, I know, I know their lists are quite good. In fact, we’re listed in entrepreneur under a top franchise marketing or technology firms like we’re number 12 or something like that. But there’s the UPS store, and, you know, they go down, and there’s some really, really good ones, but this is an excellent list. Entrepreneur slices and dices it by category, and they’ve got a lot of data. So this is what I like about entrepreneur. It is voted upon, so it’s not like you pay you get to the top of the list. There’s actually voting that takes place in order to make it on the list.
Jeremy Weisz 26:52
Yeah, I’m actually surprised by a bunch of these. You mentioned Dogtopia. Can you talk about some of the work and what you do with them?
Kirk Allen 27:02
Yeah, so Dogtopia, when we started working with them, I think they had 37 locations. But today they’re well over 250 with a lot in the pipeline still to open. But we do everything for them. We started, we built their website, we got their digital presence in order we do their advertising for them, and in fact, the global franchise award, the a study we did for them about lead generation, because they’re basically, they’re looking for people to bring their dogs to their daycares. And it’s such a cool place. They’ve got like, three rooms, little dogs, medium sized dogs and big dogs. And so, you basically take your dog to dog topia, and they spend the day there. They have a spa there, so you want to get your dog groomed during the day, you can. It’s a fantastic concept. So, yeah, we’ve done everything in terms of digital for them over the years, and very proud to say we’ve seen them grow over the years. And in fact, the global franchise award is a direct result of the lead generation campaign we do for their local locations.
Jeremy Weisz 28:30
Kirk, talk about that for a second. I mean, even if someone’s not a franchise, what are some of the mistakes in things that worked from a lead generation standpoint, and maybe talk to Dogtopia, what worked from lead generation that other companies besides franchises should be doing for their business.
Kirk Allen 28:52
That’s a really good question. So, often the shiny object, people think, oh, we should be on TikTok because it’s the newest, and my kids are on TikTok. But sometimes the newest and latest platforms may not be, at that time, the best choice. So today, Meta, so Facebook and Instagram, you’ll get people saying, Oh, aren’t they declining, and kids aren’t using it anymore. Well, yes, maybe kids aren’t on Facebook as much anymore, but they’re certainly on Instagram and the audience that Dogtopia is trying to reach, they’re certainly on Facebook and very easy to target, people who like dogs or like pets in a certain demographic, age, gender and geography. So what we like about meta, for example, is you can target just around a five mile radius around a Dog Topia, which is the general catchment area. Combine with Google. If someone looks for dog daycare or dog boarding or dog grooming, up comes a Dogtopia ad for that local area. But you have to do testing.
So there’s not one silver bullet, and we’ve done a lot of testing over the years to make sure we’ve got it really honed in, and we are testing TikTok as well. But you kind of go back to the old, tried and proven platforms like meta and Google AdWords that work very, very well, especially in their case, lead generation. They want someone to fill in a form, come in for a visit with their dog and then sign up to take their dog to daycare. So it depends, every client’s a little bit different. We have some customers where, let’s say QSRs, and they want to track these guys track leads, but let’s say QSR want to track actual sales, and most of their let’s say a pizza place. Most of their sales nowadays are online, right? People order and have a pizza delivered. Well, they want to know how many sales did I generate from that campaign, and what’s the value of those sales. So you can put on a Facebook conversion pixel and track stuff like that. So we’ve developed a platform called The Brand Amplifier, where a local franchisee can run a local meta Google soon to be TikTok in their local market, and be able to track the not only how many people they’ve reached and how many times they saw the ad, what are the sales generated from that campaign?
And for a thing, of a local franchisee. This is like, you know, like, this is the dream right now. I know I spent $1,000 in the month of July, and it generated X number of sales and X number of new customers. So the tracking available today, and then depends on your POS and depends on some integrations, but to be able to track to that degree is fantastic, right? And so for local franchisee, they’re always like, well, I don’t know what I got for my investment. Well, now you can find that out. So our Brand Amplifier has been a big, big part of our success. Jeremy to for local franchisees to run pre-approved on brand current promotions in their local market using their own credit card, so head office doesn’t have to chase around for money. They actually pay for the ads using their own credit card, and they’re all pre-approved and they work, so that’s been part of our growth as well.
Jeremy Weisz 33:08
Now is that a self-serve, or are you running it for them?
Kirk Allen 33:12
It can be a self-serve where they just log in, we would be the ones creating ads for them, or it could be used as SaaS. So in some cases, they would have an agency or head office has a large social media department who builds the ads in the platform, and the local franchisee would be given access, and they log in. If they’re a multi-unit owner, they would have access to all their locations and self-serve from the franchisee point of view. But it could also be run by the QSR as a SaaS if they want, or we can provide the service that they don’t have that capacity.
Jeremy Weisz 33:59
So there could be agencies that will use your platform and pay you like from a SaaS perspective.
Kirk Allen 34:06
Oh yeah, yeah, we have a lot of agents that do that because they find that when you run that’s a really good question. So often an agency takes the easy way, way out, and they run a national campaign that’s not localized. So he runs the ads where they’ve got locations, or a city where they have locations, but they don’t go to the trouble of really zoning in on exactly that local market and it’s proven every campaign that we’ve run, the results from a local campaign will be better than from a national campaign, simply because the localization and the relevance of that local campaign to the audience that sees it. Just imagine. You see an ad on Facebook or Instagram and it’s got the brand name and the address or the cross streets, oh, it’s one right here, so you don’t have to go to find a location near you.
With every click, you’re going to lose people. So this way, the relevance is there, the targeting is there no wasted ad dollars, and the franchisees love it because it’s effective. And these agencies have a better, more effective campaign.
Jeremy Weisz 35:32
So Kirk, in this sense, let’s say there is an agency listening to this. They’re like, I want to use Kirk’s platform. Where do they go? Do they go to reshiftmedia.com or is there a separate site, or?
Kirk Allen 35:44
We have a separate site, brandamplifier.io, brandamplifier.io, or just find me on LinkedIn, find me on LinkedIn, or go to, either way, there’s multiple ways to find us, go to the reshiftmedia.com, fill in a form. Go to brandamplifier.io, go to LinkedIn. That contact us and fill in the form.
Jeremy Weisz 36:08
This is it right here? Very cool.
Kirk Allen 36:08
Yep.
Jeremy Weisz 36:08
Okay, so everyone, if you are an agency, I mean, obviously, if you don’t want to touch this stuff. Obviously, you call Kirk and their team, and they can do it all for you, but if you are an agency and you want to use their platform that’s available. One thing that stuck out to me on your website Kirk was the social media contests and promotions. I’m wondering if there is a favorite throughout the years. It’s an innovative, cool contest or promotion that you want to talk about.
Kirk Allen 36:44
All right, we’ve done so many. And the funny thing is, Jeremy, sometimes the ones that you don’t think will be successful blow the numbers out of the water. And there was one, it was a promotion for dog, tick meditate, medication, and it was called Lone Star Louis was the character. And we said, oh, this is not going to work. And the numbers were off the charts. Good old Lone Star Louis, who came over from Mexico and came up through the US to hop onto dogs, was a huge, huge hit. It was one of those where you go, oh my God. Like, look at all the shares. Look at all the likes.
Jeremy Weisz 37:50
Why do you think it hit like that?
Kirk Allen 37:53
I don’t know. Well, the targeting is very good with meta, right? So it was dog owners, so that certainly gave us a leg up. And the character that was designed was quite good and catchy as well. But, yeah, I think contest sometimes you really, people talk about, oh, it’s gonna go viral. Things don’t go viral now, like, you got to put money against it to make things go viral. So that’s an old I want my campaign to go viral that just doesn’t happen like that. So, yeah, sometimes the best campaign you think is going to be great is a dud. So there’s so many factors, it’s hard to know what caused the campaign to fail. Sometimes, usually, you know, the ones fail, the why, but the ones that succeed sometimes surprise you.
Jeremy Weisz 38:57
I’m trying to pull it up here to see. I think I have it.
Kirk Allen 39:02
It’s still around.
Jeremy Weisz 39:03
Oh, it is. I think, what’s interesting is, with this, I’m gonna share my screen here, and we can take a quick look at it, because I had one of the founders of the Harmon brothers on and kind of echoing what you said, they have a lot of you think of squatty potty and poo Pourri and those ones that, like you said, quote, if you look them on YouTube, they have millions and millions and millions of views across them, but when I was talking to them, he’s, like, they put a ton of traffic behind it, right? So when people like, oh, this went viral, yeah, well, if you’re spending a million dollars, it makes it a little bit easier, right? And then it takes on a life of its own a little bit, but it’s got to reach a certain critical mass. From what he was saying,
Kirk Allen 40:01
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. They take off. But there’s typically money behind it. There’s typically an ad spend. It’s kind of like, what was that deodorant? The think of it. Dr. Squatch, by the way, that one took off, but there was huge amount of ad budget behind it, too.
Jeremy Weisz 40:26
So this is the one that we’re looking at. Is this the right one?
Kirk Allen 40:30
I’m not sure if, that’s the character, yeah, okay, this character, but that’s not the specific campaign. But yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 40:37
Well, there’s a Canadian flag.
Kirk Allen 40:40
Yeah, there it is, traveling the Canada, yeah, craziness.
Jeremy Weisz 40:46
Yeah, this must be it, the new ticket.
Kirk Allen 40:50
New ticket. That’s right, good for you. But, yeah, it’s sometimes you use don’t know why something takes off. But typically, there’s people don’t know this, but there’s usually an ad spend behind it. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 41:07
First of all, Kirk, one last question for you. Before I ask it I just want to point people to check out, reshiftmedia.com, to learn more, and all things there. And my last question is about resources. Throughout your career, I’m curious some of your favorite resources. It could be a mentor, colleague, it could be a book, it could be a software. What are some of your favorite resources that you used in your business journey?
Kirk Allen 41:42
A big part of our success has been the Canadian Franchise Association, and getting involved with them, you learn so much. So it’s one thing to be a member Jeremy, but we became members of the CFA six months into our business, and that was driven by David Drucker, the president of the UPS store. Said Kirk, you should join this the CFA, because you’re going to learn a ton and probably makes great contacts. And so we did join. And then we came National sponsors, and then I we got involved in all sorts of different committees at the CFA. So, getting involved, being a member, is one thing, but getting involved, and you learn so much from getting involved. It’s amazing. And the contacts you make, many of which are friends of ours, are friends of mine and ours for life. So, I’ve made so many but learn so much, and we’ve generated a lot of business over the years, and you build up a pretty good reputation over time, right? And then business comes to you, like people basically go call Kirk, or call the CEO, call a Reshift guys, call Steve, call Jen, call galley.
And that has been as a resource. And then the other one is the IFA. So the International Franchise Association has been very, very good as well. And we typically speak at all of these conventions, and the way we position ourselves is being credible and experts on a particular subject matter. So we never go up there and go Reshift Media. We’re the best. We go up there and talk about, you know, best practices in franchise development, or best SEO practice is for a website. And you actually, you know by doing that, you build up a good reputation. And you mentioned at the beginning, Jeremy, that your contacts and relationships are huge. And I could not agreed with you more. And an old boss of mine, Dennis Skalski, who was my boss at Ken West. He was the president of Ken West’s the newspapers said to me, Kirk, at the end of the day, all you have is your reputation. And that has huge value on its own. And really, Jeremy, we’re all brands onto ourselves. So you myself are brands, even though we have companies and we work for companies.
At the end of the day, it’s you, it’s me. The individuals are all brands onto themselves. So that’s something that stuck with me from many, many years ago, and has been guiding me along the way to make sure don’t burn any bridges behind you, make sure that you’re always delivering on your promises. And it’s been a lot of fun to date, and we continue to grow. And I really love being on your podcast. So thank you for this opportunity.
Jeremy Weisz 45:33
Thanks, Kirk. I love that. All you have is your reputation and also some of the lessons you learned with just joining like-minded industry organizations, whatever niche someone’s in to, that’s proven to me to be really the best use of my time is to surround myself with like-minded individuals in certain industries. So thank you, Kirk, everyone can check out, reshiftmedia.com, more episodes of the podcast, and we will see everyone next time and Kirk, thanks so much.
Kirk Allen 46:03
Thanks a lot. Take care.
