How to own a successful Power Washing Franchise small business with Aaron Harper. 

Aaron Harper is the CEO of Rolling Suds – a successful family-owned power washing franchise business.

Rolling Suds, through their franchise owners, provides professional pressure washing services for residential and commercial properties, using advanced techniques and equipment to deliver fast, effective cleaning while ensuring safety and environmental responsibility.

Aaron Harper’s journey from the competitive world of film and television led him to franchising, driven by a passion for empowering others and simplifying the path to business ownership.

After a successful period with Patch Boys, where he opened over 400 territories in only a few years, Aaron decided to build something similar on his own, venturing out to transform Rolling Suds, a successful family-owned power washing business, into franchise.

Aaron has led the growth of Rolling Suds, selling over 200 units in just over a year and a half.

Aaron lives in Brentwood, Tennessee.

Power Washing Franchise:

Questions and topics discussed include:

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of this episode of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run and grow your small business.

Resources:

Books mentioned in this episode:
[We receive commissions for purchases made through these links (more info)].

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
• Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by Dan Martell

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Sponsor:

This episode of The How of Business podcast is sponsored by The Franchise Guide.

Giuseppe Grammatico is the The Franchise Guide. He provides expert consultation services to help you find the right franchise small business.

If you are considering a franchise business, I recommend consulting with The Franchise Guide.

Giuseppe is a franchise veteran who simplifies the process of franchising and excels at guiding his clients to the franchise model that best suits them.

He helps people like you find flexibility and freedom in their lives through franchise business ownership. As your guide, he will help answer any of your questions about a franchise business. Once he gets to know you and what you’re looking for, he creates your own personalized model and shows you which franchise opportunities best match your needs and preferences.

The best part? It’s all free. No catch. Like real estate or business brokers, Giuseppe’s fees are paid by the franchise company.

If you are interested in a franchise business, take the first step and schedule a free no-obligation call with Giuseppe.

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Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:16):

Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. This is Henry Lopez. My guest today is Aaron Harper. Aaron, welcome to the show.

Aaron Harper (00:22):

Hey, thanks for having me.

Henry Lopez (00:24):

So Aaron is with me today to discuss franchises, specifically the franchise that he represents. He’s a CEO of Rolling Suds. And Rolling suds is a successful family owned power washing franchise, small business. We’ll get more into the details of that, but that’s what we’re going to chat about today with Aaron. If you want to find all of the resources that I have available through the How a Business, including the show notes page for this episode and how to learn more about my coaching programs, please visit the How a business.com. I also invite you to please consider supporting this podcast on Patreon and subscribe wherever you might be listening so you don’t miss any new episodes. Let me tell you a little bit more about Aaron and then we’ll get into the conversation. Aaron Harper is the CEO, as I said, of rolling suds. Rolling suds through their franchise owners provides professional pressure washing services for residential and commercial properties.

Henry Lopez (01:20):

They use advanced techniques and equipment to deliver fast effective cleaning while ensuring safety and having an environmental responsibility. Aaron Harper’s journey is interesting. We’re going to touch on it briefly today, but from the competitive world of film and television and how that led him to franchising, we’ll explore that. He’s driven by a passion for empowering others and simplifying the path to business ownership, which of course franchising is what it’s partly all about. And after a successful period with Patch Boys where he opened over 400 territories in only a few years, Aaron decided to build something similar on his own venturing out to transition, or rather to transform rolling suds, a successful family owned power washing business into a franchise business. Aaron has led the growth of rolling suds, selling over 200 units and over a year and a half. Aaron lives in the Brentwood, Tennessee area. And so once again, Aaron Harper, welcome to the show.

Aaron Harper (02:23):

Thanks so much. I’m excited to be here today.

Henry Lopez (02:25):

Sure. So let’s start there as what I alluded to. What were you doing? I mentioned film and television industry. What was it that you were doing in that industry?

Aaron Harper (02:36):

Yeah, so I’m a recovering Hollywood executive, so I was learning basically how to manage and represent actors and writers and directors. Interesting. In Hollywood. Yeah, so I learned a ton from that, but realized after a few years that I was not enjoying myself. I didn’t enjoy the people that I was working for and that life is not something I wanted to have. And so I got into a B2B sales role after that in the telecommunications space. Did that for a couple years, was able to really quantify a lot of the skill sets that I had. Whereas in Hollywood, it’s all relationship capital and reputation versus I did this many things. And as you build those relationships, those relationships present opportunities. And one opportunity in that space could be the Will Smith and then you represent Will Smith. I just wasn’t willing to do that forever. Also, the kind of life in California is very costly and I wanted something different. And so I reached out to a friend of mine and he worked in the franchise space and he suggested that I get into franchise development and I said, what’s that? What’s franchise development? And I, like many other people thought that franchising was just McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A right.

Aaron Harper (04:15):

And when he explained the opportunities that the industry presents as it relates to home services particularly, but also health and wellness and beauty and youth enrichment and really just all facets of business, I loved the idea of just being able to help people become business owners. Interesting. Kind of like a business ownership with training wheels type thing. So I emailed his boss every three weeks for six months until he hired me

Henry Lopez (04:43):

With no experience building a franchise system or working in franchises.

Aaron Harper (04:47):

None, zero experience.

Henry Lopez (04:52):

What do you think it is that they saw in you eventually to hire you? What was the skill or part of it was the perseverance, but what is it that they,

Aaron Harper (05:00):

I think ultimately franchising and kind of just business in general is all about relationships. And for me, I continued to persist with no responses on email until the seventh email. And the only reason he responded to that point is I had found out someone had just left the company and selling a franchise, awarding a franchise territory and doing that sales processes unlike anything anyone else has ever sold. And oftentimes these organizations want people who have that experience less risky for them. But I didn’t have that experience. And so I think the persistence that I had and also obviously the relationship that I had with the person who worked there went a long way.

Henry Lopez (05:52):

So one of the things that has to have been, I dunno what would I call it, but very different environment is going from what I suspect is that environment that you alluded to where every situation is different. It is about the people, but it’s all you got to make of it what is presented to you in the franchising world. There’s a lot of structure as this is the system, here’s the recipe, you follow this process. How did you accommodate to that way of thinking about business?

Aaron Harper (06:23):

Yeah, so I was taught that this is exactly what you do. This is actually funny. So I was told this is exactly what you do to sell franchises or to award franchises. And it was like, you do this, then you do a webinar, then you do this and you do that and then people move forward or they don’t. And I came at it kind of from a first principles thinking standpoint and was like, wait a minute. These guys are making workouts, are making a massive life decision, life changing decision, and maybe they don’t need to get onto a webinar immediately and maybe they can get their questions answered without having to sit through an hour long kind of presentation on something. And after I learned the process and procedure, I kind of flipped it upside down on its head about two years later and my sales almost tripled, and I kind of created my own process that was fluid to what I knew worked essentially. And it was evidenced by when we took on this other brand, which you mentioned in the opening, which was Patch Boys, I worked at Chem Dry First. Chem Dry is a longstanding carpet cleaning brand

Aaron Harper (07:39):

That does floor cleaning as well. And Ho I acquired that brand in 2019 and founder was no longer involved. And I was the first kind of full-time employee on a hundred unit franchise system. And we basically had to restructure the whole company and rebuild it. And I was able to implement what I learned from the previous company I was involved in and kind of able to operate more or less in a silo building teams and training programs and marketing programs and really building a franchise system. And as a result, we were able to grow that company in two years by 223 locations in 24 months.

Henry Lopez (08:26):

So obviously what was incredible method that you developed, it works and different, at least a slightly different way of doing business. So what then led as we move forward, what led you to decide to join Rolling suds? Rolling suds was an existing brand when you joined them. Did I get that right or

Aaron Harper (08:43):

Not? So they were a local business. So it’s funny, when you’re good at franchise sales, you sell yourself out of a job every two to three years, you no longer have a role. And I worked at a portfolio of service brands that was constantly adding brands. So the goal was basically to continue to have more or less constant opportunities.

Henry Lopez (09:10):

I mean, that’s becoming more than a trend in the industry. We’re seeing a lot of that related consolidation of brands, right?

Aaron Harper (09:19):

And it makes sense from an economic standpoint both for franchisees and the franchisor in terms of sharing resources and buying power and such like that. So we built the second largest conglomerate of service brands right underneath a brand portfolio of service brands called Neighborly. Neighborly has about 5,000 franchises and 25 brands. We had less brands but really close to the same amount of franchises. So were at, when I left, we had 12 brands and like 4,600 franchises across 55 countries.

Aaron Harper (09:56):

So we built that company from two brands to 12 while I was there. And one of the most prominent and fastest growing and reputable ones was patchwork. So at the end of that, we sold all those locations, we opened all the locations, and Belfor gave me an opportunity to have a title with the word president in it and almost double my salary. And I was making over half a million dollars a year. And so they gave me this killer opportunity to basically take a business that was non franchised and build a franchise system around it. And I was on track for C-suite and all that, and I was like, wait a minute, I can do this on my own and build a team. I can raise capital, I can find a business that I believe in and I can franchise it. And so I turned the role down like a lunatic entrepreneur and

Henry Lopez (11:00):

My wife was, I’m sorry, I lost you. This was an opportunity with whom?

Aaron Harper (11:04):

With, okay. So I worked at Belfor Franchise Group, so that’s the company that owned Cam Dry as well as patchway. And they were buying a 13th brand and they wanted me to take it on.

Henry Lopez (11:16):

Understood.

Aaron Harper (11:16):

And it was in the storage space and I loved the concept, but I just was like, I can do this on my own. Many of the people who might be listening to this, you work for someone else and it’s great, and there’s the quote, stability of a paycheck and bonus structure and career path, but ultimately you either have very minimal ownership or you have no ownership.

Henry Lopez (11:40):

And that had been your career. I mean, going back to where even when you were in the film entertainment industry, you were working for somebody else. Is that correct? Yes.

Aaron Harper (11:49):

Yeah. So I had been an employee my entire career up until rolling since. So catching you fully up to speed, I turned to that roll down. I sought out across the country a bunch of different businesses that met the criteria or met some of the criteria that I had in seeking out a business I’ve always been in since I started in franchising in the residential and commercial services space.

Speaker 4 (12:19):

So

Aaron Harper (12:19):

The intention has been and will be to stay in that space. So I looked at roofing and plumbing and HVAC and insulation and lawn care and tree care and epoxy coatings and garages and line striping and really ran the gamut on doing diligence pretty heavily on seven or eight of ’em and met the founders of Rolling Suds in September of 2022. And I was still an employee at that time and it was the best business I looked at. It was the only one that checked all the boxes for me. But the founders of Rolling subs are incredible humans. They’re just wonderful people. And for me it’s people first and number second, and the Wendling family who founded the business in 1990. They’re just great people. And so we finalized the transaction in January of last year.

Henry Lopez (13:16):

And when you say transaction, did you buy a majority stake or bought them out or,

Aaron Harper (13:20):

So the deal structure, are you familiar with entrepreneurship for acquisition or ETA space? Kind of that idea? There’s a book called Buy then Build by Walker, I think how you say his last name. Anyways, the concept for those who don’t know what that is, who are listening is you acquire someone else’s business and then you build it essentially and you become an entrepreneur through acquisition. It’s really big in the entrepreneurial community. There’s a lot of MBA grads that are like, I’m not going to go work at McKinsey, I’m going to go buy a plumbing business between 2 million in net

Henry Lopez (14:00):

Profit. And the owners have some kind of a transition period or they still are involved to this day.

Aaron Harper (14:07):

So for our deal, we did something that I call franchise through acquisition. So I basically, they continue to run their corporate business and we built a separate company together, which is a startup, which is the franchise business.

Henry Lopez (14:23):

Understood,

Aaron Harper (14:24):

That makes sense. And I raised capital for the franchise business and I’m a majority shareholder in the franchise business. My company, I took all the risk, I raised capital, I built the team, but they get to keep their business and now they have a minority stake in a new business, which is the franchise business. And what the else is really cool, they get to have their family name in every single major market across the country,

Henry Lopez (14:55):

Which is the brand value increases for their company owned sites, if you will. Yeah,

Aaron Harper (15:01):

Oh totally. Yeah, exactly.

Henry Lopez (15:03):

So obviously I mentioned that it’s power washing, but formerly introduce us to Rolling suds. What is it that you do?

Aaron Harper (15:09):

Yeah, rolling uds is now the biggest power washing brand in the world. And

Henry Lopez (15:15):

That’s based on what?

Aaron Harper (15:17):

Based on unit count? We’re far and wide the biggest franchise out there. We’re the first coast to coast power washing, power washing brand, and we’re far and wide the largest power washing franchise in the world at this

Henry Lopez (15:32):

Point. Right now, units in the US only are looking to expand. When you say the world looking to expand internationally or what’s the

Aaron Harper (15:38):

Purpose? Yeah, so next year I think we’re going Canada because that’s easy for us. We can just drive the trucks across the border.

Speaker 4 (15:47):

Sure, yeah.

Aaron Harper (15:47):

Well, I shouldn’t say easy, but it’s easier than

Speaker 4 (15:50):

Developing

Aaron Harper (15:50):

A whole other product line in England or whatever Australia, which I’ve had requests for those markets as well. But we have 222 locations in 28 states, currently

Henry Lopez (16:04):

2 22 open locations

Aaron Harper (16:07):

We have, so it’s 63 franchise owners that own 222 territories. And out of the 63 franchise owners, 53 of them are open and operating.

Speaker 4 (16:23):

Got it.

Aaron Harper (16:25):

So we have a development schedule. This kind of is getting into the weeds, but they add a truck per territory and we don’t do any single unit deals. So everyone is on track to add multiple trucks within those territories, which will establish them as open as they grow their businesses.

Henry Lopez (16:44):

Yeah, that was one of the questions I was going to ask just to clarify there, and I’m seeing this more and more with franchises, especially for this, is you’re not looking for someone who wants to build one territory, one truck, you’re looking for someone who’s going to develop an area or a territory. Is that fair?

Aaron Harper (17:02):

That’s exactly right. So we’re not looking for the guy or the gal who wants to power wash a building and kind of maybe do this with their son or daughter or whatever. We’re looking franchise owners that want to come in and build an enterprise, build a legacy for their families. And so the minimum deal size we do is two units. Most of our franchisees will qualify and fit within this kind of like three to four unit deal size. And then we’ve brought in some larger operators who own other successful businesses that are coming in with a lot more capital that have purchased five or six or seven territories and are establishing big teams within those territories.

Henry Lopez (17:49):

Alright. I’m going to ask you in a minute more about what differentiates rolling suds, but just higher level, the power washing segment. Why are you bullish on it? What is it about that that continues to excite you about this

Aaron Harper (18:03):

Segment? Yeah, I had a checklist of things I was looking for and a lot of the things that I was looking for, you could really get in a lot of different brands. For example, high margins for franchisees of once they’re at scale, 20% or more EBITDA after franchise fees. That was unskilled labor was a piece fragmented market scalability in terms of adding trucks in territories and the cost associated with that is less. There was an element of recession resistance. I was looking for a massive total addressable market, so both residential and commercial customers. So these were all things that rolling sets met, but there were two things that I couldn’t find literally anywhere else. And that was one was a difference in product offering, which will answer your question about what we do differently. But basically I wanted something that had a moat, meaning other power washers or other competitors can’t do the thing.

Aaron Harper (19:01):

And the thing that we do is objectively better and superior to our competitors. And so what we have is custom trucks that we build ourselves for our franchisees and that allows them to hit five stories from the ground without having to get up on ladders and then they can do a 3000 square foot house in about 20 minutes start to finish. And this is just a service offering that other people can’t do because the trucks are proprietary to us. Our process is proprietary. And so rolling sets have that piece to it that other businesses didn’t. And there was another piece that rolling since had and that the power washing industry at large had, which is little to no competition in the franchise space.

Aaron Harper (19:53):

So what you’ve seen over the years or anyone who follows along with franchises as they come to market and scale is that pretty much big franchise brands will professionalize an industry. You’ve seen it with Pest in the 2011, 12 timeframe. You saw it with junk in the early two thousands with 1-800-GOT-JUNK and you’ve really kind seen it with HVAC and plumbing over the years with the professionalization and consolidation of private equity and franchise brands that have come in and really started to set standards that hasn’t been done yet in the power Washington industry. I was shocked to learn that as a due diligence on the industry that there’s a really prior to us no category leader in the space, there are franchises that offer power washing, but it is one of the 12 services they do, or they’re predominantly windows or they

Henry Lopez (20:50):

Do. So is that part of you focus almost exclusively on power washing?

Aaron Harper (20:56):

Not almost exclusively. We focus exclusively on residential and commercial power washing. We do nothing else and we do that one thing better than anyone else.

Henry Lopez (21:05):

And so this custom truck that you have that gives you the proper equipment, the powerful enough washer, that’s a key differentiator that protects you as you described at that moat. Because that’s the challenge with just about all of the home services businesses in my observation is the barrier to entry is low, right? I can get a pickup truck and get a compressor and call myself a power washer. Right. So this piece of it, this is one of the primary differentiators against Henry in a truck that you’re going to compete.

Aaron Harper (21:41):

Yeah. I mean it’s going to take Henry in a truck three hours to do a 3000 square foot house.

Henry Lopez (21:47):

What else keeps you from having to compete just on price?

Aaron Harper (21:52):

Well, the reason why it wasn’t a hundred percent necessary for me to have kind of a proprietary differential, it was kind of a nice to have and not a need to have on my checklist, if you will,

Speaker 4 (22:04):

Was

Aaron Harper (22:05):

Because there will always be a market for a professionalized service provider in every single vertical within the home service space. It’s been proven with plumbing, with Mr. Rooter and some of these larger brands. It’s been proven with moving with brands like two Men in a truck. It’s been proven with junk with brands like 1-800-GUT-JUNK or college chunks. There will always be a demand for a professionalized service where the franchisee in that market is upheld to a standard that Henry’s power washing company isn’t.

Henry Lopez (22:42):

Right. And that’s everything, Aaron, from the way I show up, how I look, the branding, the experience from the time you contact me to after the service, all of that is what you mean by the A professional service?

Aaron Harper (22:56):

Yes, yes. And just a nationally recognized brand, if you think about it, a homeowner sees our truck when we walk up and we give them an estimate and they can type in rolling sets.com and see hundreds of locations nationally. And we don’t have to compete on price because at that point we’re competing on value. They can pay someone less, 50 bucks less, but that person may or may not do a good job, may or may not be in business very long. And what we found is that our competitors as we go into these markets are local operators that don’t have a ton of business acumen. And I’m doing a generalization

Aaron Harper (23:42):

Power washing cohorts to think that I’m speaking poorly of them, but there are very rarely multi truck operations in this space. And so we have been able to step into a fragmented market with a better mouse trap as the truck as you’ve mentioned, but also just all of the professionalized elements of what we do with a call center, with a logo, with website, with consistency in customer experience across multiple different markets. That has allowed us to capture market share in a way that I don’t believe we would’ve been able to, if there was already an 800 pound gorilla in the power washing space, we would’ve had to fight and claw a little bit more for those jobs. Whereas with the power washing industry, to go back to your original question as to why I’m bullish on it, we can become the 800 pound gorilla, which is what we’ve done.

Henry Lopez (24:38):

Sure. This is Enri Lopez with a quick message about our show sponsor and trusted service partner, the franchise guide. Giuseppe Grammatical is the franchise guide and he provides expert consultation services to help you find the right franchise small business. If you are considering a franchise business, I recommend consulting the franchise guide. Giuseppe is a franchise veteran who simplifies the process of franchising and excels at guiding his clients to the franchise model that best suits them. He helps people like you find flexibility and freedom in their lives through franchise business ownership and as your guide, he will help you answer any of your questions about franchises once he gets to know you and what you’re looking for. He creates your own personalized model and shows you which franchise opportunities are a best match for your needs and preferences. The best part, it’s all free. There’s no catch. Like with real estate or business brokers, Giuseppe’s fees are paid by the franchise company. So if you’re interested in a franchise business, take the first step and schedule a free no obligation call with Giuseppe. To learn more and to schedule your consultation with the franchise guide, please go to the show notes page for this episode at the how of business.com. There’s also a link to the show notes page in a description of this episode.

Henry Lopez (25:51):

So to kind of flip it over to the franchisee side of it, and you talk about it as responsible franchising, let’s begin there. Kind of explain to me what is your approach, why should someone consider, what are the things that are highlights of being a franchisee of rolling subs? And maybe we start with what is responsible franchising? Yeah,

Aaron Harper (26:14):

Sure. Yeah. So very generally, most franchisors don’t have any experience franchising a business. They have a good power washing business and they decide I’m going to franchise this thing. But the idea of building a franchisor, building a franchise, brand building systems, it is a completely different business than whatever that franchisor is used to doing. They’re used to running a power washing business, a local power washing business, or they’re used to running their math tutoring business. And actually the business of helping other people start businesses is completely different. And so I’m coming into this with my experience, but I also raised capital from franchise legends and have brought on a full-blown executive team. And so combined we have over 200 years of franchising experience coupled with the experience of the power washers, which is 34 years of knowledge in the power washing industry. And now the franchisee, very generally speaking, you need experience in both. In order to de-risk the opportunity you need to go with a franchisor franchise brand that has the knowledge, the institutional knowledge in both whatever the widget is that’s being franchised, which in our case is power washing. I could do, we could have done this with any of these other services because the actual business of franchising is more or less the same

Aaron Harper (28:00):

When you look at an emerging brand. The reason why there’s more risk than an established brand theoretically is because the franchisor needs to learn how to become a franchisor at the same time that franchisees are learning to become franchisees.

Henry Lopez (28:14):

Sure.

Aaron Harper (28:15):

Does that make sense?

Henry Lopez (28:16):

Yeah, absolutely. And this is why I’ve explored with a couple of different brands that I’ve built building a franchise and I’ve helped others. And that’s exactly what I have learned is that it is a separate business.

Speaker 4 (28:29):

It’s

Henry Lopez (28:30):

Leveraging this wheel that you’ve perfected, hopefully this mousetrap, but it is a completely separate business, the business of selling and helping people be successful with their franchise.

Aaron Harper (28:43):

And to get a little bit more granular, the business of franchising is incredibly capital intensive when you scale at the rate that we’ve scaled. And I knew that going into it, most franchisors like, oh, I’ll just get a few franchisees, I’ve got a good business, I’ll sell it to them. Then they’ll have a good business. And it’s so much more complex than that. And to get, just like I said, a little more granular, franchisees need the most amount of help when they produce the least amount of royalties.

Henry Lopez (29:16):

Exactly, yeah. It’s early in the

Aaron Harper (29:17):

Process, and so you’re taking a bet on them and they’re taking a

Henry Lopez (29:20):

Bet on you. That’s why I also tell people that franchise fee that you pay, that franchisor isn’t getting rich on that money. And then some goes into the resources that they’re going to provide you upfront, which are extensive, ideally if it’s the right franchise.

Aaron Harper (29:34):

Right? Yes.

Henry Lopez (29:36):

So let’s talk a little bit more about that. For example, on the marketing and sales side, how do you help the franchisee be successful there? Because that’s often one of the bigger challenges even from just talk about competing against Henry in a truck. If we can just answer the phone and reply to people’s requests, sometimes that’s half the battle, right?

Aaron Harper (29:55):

Yes. So that is half the battle. However, you still need to know how to sell and you need to know who to sell to and how to find them.

Henry Lopez (30:04):

That’s right.

Aaron Harper (30:05):

And so I have vendors that I’ve partnered with over the years, and our founders have had marketing vendors that they’ve partnered with over the years. And we’ve basically combined forces and built a vendor stack allows franchisees to get a quick ramp. So for example, we turn on commercial leads about a month before franchisees go to training. And we have an outbound mechanism to generate warm leads for our franchisees in their market with property managers, facilities managers, maintenance companies. And the predominant the lion’s share of our business is commercial. So when you come to a commercial customer with a big 16 foot box truck with a thousand gallons of liquid, and you can say, Hey, I can do this job faster, better, and stronger than anyone else hire, it is appealing to them.

Aaron Harper (30:58):

And so we have really a way to get these types of people interested. And then franchisees are generating warm leads prior to going to training. And we actually require our franchisees to be full-time on the business from a business development standpoint for 40 hours a week for four weeks prior to launch. And then they go to training for a week, they bring their two technicians and general manager in training that they hire two training and they hit the ground running with jobs and estimates on the calendar upon leaving. In addition to that, we have a call center that answers the calls and books the appointments for them, and then we have additional resources as it relates to residential marketing. Some of our franchisees take advantage of a cold calling service that we are partnered with that does cold calling generating estimates for franchisees as well. And basically we’ve got about seven different marketing vendors that will generate leads. Now, I say this with a caveat, I don’t want people listening thinking that they don’t have to go generate their own leads. As a business owner, oftentimes I feel like there’s a misconstrued just buy into a franchise and then the leads rain down on my head and I don’t have to do the

Henry Lopez (32:19):

Phone just starts ringing magically, and that’s enough.

Aaron Harper (32:21):

And that’s absolutely not the case. Now, we offer a ton of resources, and from what I’ve seen in the franchise industry, considerably more than 99% of brands. But the expectation that we have of our owners is that they’re still going to BNI, they are still networking with referral partners, they’re still going to other business events in their community to establish those relationships and build that community and build their business

Henry Lopez (32:48):

That doesn’t go away. That need to build those relationships to establish yourself in your community as a small business owner is essential to continue to grow the brand in your territory. And that you have to get out there and do that. Right?

Aaron Harper (33:04):

Yes, absolutely.

Henry Lopez (33:06):

So that leads me to this question. And Aaron, what have you seen when you look at your high performing franchisees or what is it that you look for that you believe has the potential to make for a good franchisee, a good franchise owner? What are some of those things that you look for?

Aaron Harper (33:24):

Sure. Yeah. So we are very, very rigid on who comes into our system. As I mentioned to you earlier, we do a minimum of two territories and most of our franchisees are getting between 750,000 to a million people. That’s only there to service, which you build a sizable business with that big of a territory. So we’ve been ultra selective, turning down over 80 people who had the capital and wanted to move forward but weren’t right for our system. The predominant things that we’ve noticed that enable franchisees to be successful, and the biggest thing we look for is grit. Have they gone through hard times in the past and persevered? Have they been successful at the things that they’ve done, whether it’s jobs, whether it’s other businesses, whether it’s building businesses within other people’s businesses like business units. Do they have experience operating at a high level and persevering through tough times,

Henry Lopez (34:32):

Not necessarily in the business of their own, but in whatever it is that they do, even if it’s a career job,

Aaron Harper (34:37):

Whatever it is that they do. So have they elevated to multiple different roles and grown in their career faster than the average person? Have they been able to set aside and been financially responsible enough to amass a wealth that’s large enough to be able to take this risk without putting everything on the line? Are they going to be comfortable? That

Henry Lopez (35:00):

Shows you a discipline that shows you a knowledge, at least a base knowledge of how money works because that shows you that they’re willing to put in the effort and they have the work ethic to achieve.

Aaron Harper (35:12):

Correct. I wouldn’t sign someone up who had $80,000 liquid and a $300,000 net worth to put 300 to $400,000 into growing a big residential and commercial power washing business.

Henry Lopez (35:26):

They’re not ready for that level of risk yet. They’re just not ready for it.

Henry Lopez (35:30):

Correct.

Aaron Harper (35:31):

Understood. Yeah, they’re not mentally prepared no matter how hard. So we’ve just been very, very diligent on our approval process and as a result we’ve been able to attract some very high level operators. I mean, out of the 53 franchise owners that we have operating, 13 of ’em are former c-level executives that we’re making 3, 4, 500 grand a year. We have people who have exited businesses before. We have people who have built business units within companies or LED raises for $50 million and different things like that. And so what the commonality that our owners have is they dealt with much more complex things or situations than a power washing business, which candidly from an operational standpoint is quite simple.

Henry Lopez (36:24):

Yeah, fairly

Aaron Harper (36:24):

Simple. We are spraying water and soap on the side of buildings and mixing it off. It’s

Henry Lopez (36:28):

Not complex. Complex can teach me how to do that fairly quickly. And so I gather then that most of your owners had no experience in the power washing business prior to getting a franchise.

Aaron Harper (36:42):

Not one of ’em, no. It’s easier to train than untrained.

Henry Lopez (36:47):

Anything else that comes to mind that you see as a common trait or skillset that they have in their background that leads to success or the potential for success?

Aaron Harper (36:58):

Yeah, I mean, while sales is not a required skillset in terms of actually having a legitimate sales role in the past, in fact, some of our owners, some of our best owners have never done sales prior to their ability to be confident enough to be out in their community. Asking for the business every single day is something that is a difference that every single one of our franchise owners that’s in the top 20, 30, 40% ads is that this unrelenting, I’m going to ask for the business every single second, every single moment that I get the opportunity to. And I don’t care if I get a hundred notes as long as they get one. Yes, those hundred nos worth doing. And that has been a common theme. I mean, 60 70% of our business is commercial, so it’s property managers that manage a thousand doors. It’s facilities maintenance companies that are doing seven to $10 million in revenue annually. These are the types of people that our franchise owners are interfacing with and they have to feel comfortable being in those situations.

Henry Lopez (38:15):

Got it. Understood. Alright, you touched in it obviously already, but as far as the investment level, and this is going from the website, obviously there’s restrictions on what you can say, but on the website it said total investment ranges typically 182,000 to 2 91, that’s for one unit, so would double that as we’re looking here for the minimum of two units.

Aaron Harper (38:39):

No, you don’t necessarily need to double that because a lot of the costs aren’t going to double.

Henry Lopez (38:44):

Okay. Alright. So that investment takes into account that I’m probably, I need to go in with two units.

Aaron Harper (38:51):

Yeah, you’re going to add the down payment for a second truck because we require that if you buy two units, you have the down payment for the second truck, so it’s around 300 that you’re going to need. However, our franchise owners like liquidity, they need to have two 50, but a lot of that can be in retirement because we’re approved with the SBA and have a whole program to help franchisees not have to spend all of their money and they can utilize the SBA funds, obviously they still have to be able to support the note with the capital they do have. But there are options that allow people to leverage the government’s money instead of their own, but they need to be prepared. And it depends on the size business and how aggressive they want to be. I always say the franchise owner that needs to replace his or her income year one is typically not going to be our franchise owner.

Aaron Harper (39:47):

We’re looking for franchisees that are willing to put everything they’ve got and everything that they do back into growing this thing because sure, you could draw a salary on one truck, but then you’re not getting the people in place for truck number two or truck number three, and all of a sudden now you have a job. And we try to help our franchisees understand that even if they’re leaving a job, they’re leaving a job to go build a business that eventually can run without them at some point that has enterprise value that they can hopefully sell for a multiple of its earnings.

Speaker 4 (40:22):

And

Aaron Harper (40:24):

That’s just not taking a ton of money out of the business year one or year two, even when you have an opportunity to build something that has real meaningful and potentially life changing wealth, that’s what we’re helping our franchise owners understand that they have the opportunity to do.

Henry Lopez (40:45):

Excellent. Alright. What have I not asked you about that you think that somebody who’s been listening this long might be interested. What else should they consider as to why rolling suds?

Aaron Harper (40:56):

I think just the size and quality of my team. We’ve talked about call centers and marketing and some of the supplier relationships that we have, but I can’t do this alone. And I’ve built a team of over 20 people that all support franchisees. So we essentially have a three to one ratio employees to franchisees, which is insane at this level of a company at this. We took the brand to market in February of 2023, it’s October of 24. So to have that size staff now with the immense experience that we have collectively in the franchise industry, we’re truly operating this business as if it is an established franchise brand even though we’re new. And that was by design, that is what I was planning on doing when we launched this thing. But we’ve been able to uphold that and just as I would ask a franchise owner to continue to reinvest in their business, we’ve done the same and we’ve been able to provide and build this world-class support team for our franchise owners that they may not even get in some established brands. And so I’m really proud of the team. I wouldn’t be able to do this without the team that we’ve built and I’m just honored they’ve all kind of decided to join and go along this journey with me.

Henry Lopez (42:29):

Sure. Yeah. Got it. Okay. At a higher level, last question here and then we’ll start to wrap it up. What do you think when somebody thinks about starting a business, build your own or buy an existing versus a franchise, there’s a difference there. What do you advise or what do you see that’s the right either? We talked about traits for a good franchisee, but what do I need to know before I decide, okay, a franchise is a fit for me regardless of what franchise it might

Aaron Harper (42:59):

Be? Yeah, sure. If you like breaking stuff and coming up with your own systems and processes, and maybe you’re a true born entrepreneur, franchising might not work for you. I joke, but it’s true. I’d be a terrible franchisee.

Aaron Harper (43:17):

I would I, because I like breaking stuff and hankering and if there’s a puzzle, I’m going to rip the puzzle up and I’m going to cut it up and I’m going to fit it together with some tape and then it’s going to end up being beautiful. But it’s going to be a big process to get there. And with a franchise, you own 100% of your business, but you are required to operate within the confines of what is allowed at the brand level. So for example, if you started your own business and you ran a power washing business and you’re like, you know what? My customers need gutter installation. I want to start offering them gutter installation, that is not something you’d be able to do in a franchise that only offers power washing. Now the ones who are good in a franchise are like, Hey, I have read every single employee manual at every single company that I’ve ever worked at. I watch the training videos three times, and then every single job that I’ve been at, I’ve executed really well and I’ve gotten promoted every single year and a half for my entire career, and I’m excellent at following a rule book and give me the process to execute and I’ll do, and those franchisees can build businesses. They’re used to following systems. Former athletes do really well as franchisees, former military do really well as franchisees.

Aaron Harper (44:46):

When you buy into a franchise, you are buying a playbook of what works. And while we don’t have everything figured out because no one ever has anything figured out,

Henry Lopez (44:56):

It should evolve over time, right? It’s going to evolve to some extent, but there are guardrails here that I have to follow.

Aaron Harper (45:02):

Totally will. Yeah, absolutely. But what you’re buying is this knowledge a franchisees get to buy into 34 years of power washing knowledge. They didn’t start using the truck that franchisees get till 29 years into business because it took ’em 29 years of tinkering to figure out our process that we do, and franchisees get to buy that. And sure, they pay an upfront fee and an ongoing royalty to essentially rent that business model. They still own 100% of their business and can sell that business and grow a big business. I always joke, but it’s like why would you show up to a knife fight when you can show up with an assault rifle

Aaron Harper (45:44):

And the business starting a business is a knife fight. You have no clue what you’re doing. You have no one to call. It’s completely lonely. You don’t know what systems and processes to use or create because you’ve never done it before. And so someone thinking about starting their first business, showing up with all of the systems and processes and the suppliers and everything built in, you’re showing up to a knife fight with an assault rifle, and you have to use the bullets. It doesn’t make sense to rip apart the assault rifle and try to turn it into a machete or just belaboring the metaphor. That’s what you’re doing when you get into a franchise is you’re skipping a ton of steps that you would otherwise have to figure out on your own. And that time that you’re spending, which that’s what it’s going to take, is time to figure all that stuff out. What is that time valued out? And when you do it that way, it’s like, okay, well yeah, I’ll pay a $55,000 franchise fee and a royalty so that I don’t have to go through all that heartache and lose three years of my life.

Henry Lopez (46:54):

Right. Agreed. Yeah, that makes sense to me, and I’m with you there. It is interesting. Aaron, just to add a little bit of color here, if you would’ve asked me 10 years ago, I built my own brand. It was a frozen yogurt business and there were franchises available, but at that point in my business ownership career, I’d done several businesses. I knew I could do it. I knew I could build it. I knew I could develop the systems, and I did. And if you would’ve asked me back then, would you consider a franchise? I would’ve said no for all the same reasons, because I’ll fight everything. I’ll object to everything I know best. I want to do it my way, I want to create it. But then several years ago, I helped my cousin as his business coach to find a new business, and we arrived at a franchise, and I’m a minority partner in it because I saw that for me now at this point as one of the businesses in my portfolio, it made sense.

Henry Lopez (47:47):

And that space, interestingly enough, as an example, what we were able to tap into as a single location owner in the way of a call center, I can’t build that on my own. I just can’t. The economies don’t work. So where I’ve gotten to now is I realize that even though I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I do have to be careful buying into a franchise, if a franchise also for me even has benefits that I can’t build at my scale, that’s another reason why I’ll adhere to the policies because I’m getting that benefit. Sure. Yep.

Aaron Harper (48:22):

Absolutely.

Henry Lopez (48:22):

Excellent. Well, thanks for sharing all of that. I’m always looking for book recommendations. Is there a book that comes to mind that you would recommend to us?

Aaron Harper (48:31):

Yeah, so for those who are thinking about starting a business, I would read the hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. It kind of basically says there’s no training for being the CEO, you just become a CEO and that’s it. So here’s some things to think about going into it and some things that I’m actually thinking about rereading that, but I read it before I launched. And then if you aren’t starting a business, but you want more freedom in your calendar, you want more, I would recommend reading Buyback Your Time by Dan Martel, which is something I read recently, which is awesome. It’s basically the idea of for both business owners and non-business owners, but I think it’s geared a little bit more towards business owners, but it’s basically the idea of your time is incredibly valuable and it’s the only asset you can’t get more of. So how do you use it wisely and build a life that you don’t hate doing things you hate doing, and what does it look like to build a life that you don’t have to retire from? And it’s really changed a lot of my perspective on things.

Henry Lopez (49:42):

Love that. Thanks for those two recommendations. I got to think the hard thing about hard things. I also read that a while ago to need to reread it. It’s a great book. It speaks to, I think a lot of what you were talking about earlier about those traits that you have to have to be a successful franchisee for that matter or successful business owner, which is, and we use the metaphor as well as the weapon. This is not easy. If it were, everybody would be doing it, going and starting a business franchise or not. So I think that book speaks to some of that. Do you agree?

Aaron Harper (50:13):

Yes, it absolutely does. It at least sets you up with an idea of, okay, this is going to be hard, but let’s all know what we’re getting ourselves into before so that we fully understand what we’re doing. And I mean, I’ll tell the people who are on the fence about starting a business is like there is not a better way to grow as an individual than to start a business. I mean, your business works on you more than you work on it. I’m a completely different person now, 12 months later than I was last year, and the business has demanded that effort.

Henry Lopez (50:52):

Well said. It’s a very interesting point because I think it also forces us as individuals to take full accountability and to develop a confidence that if it happens, it is going to be because of me, my team of course, as well. But at the end of the day, as the owner, you’re the one that really is taking the risk or the highest risk, but it forces us, it allows us to, for those of us who are ready to do it, to release ourselves from this perception that a job is security and instead realizing that it’s what I can do, what I can go and make happen that is security, if you will. Does that make sense?

Aaron Harper (51:35):

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it’s a perceived sense of security. If that business decides they need to change their initiatives, they could decrease the size by 20%, and your job may no longer be relevant. That’s right. That’s right.

Henry Lopez (51:55):

Now, again, listen, I can start a franchise, even the best of them, and there’s no guarantee of success. So there’s always a risk involved, but to your point, what you will learn about yourself, how you will evolve and develop as a person is incredibly valuable regardless of the success you may or may not have in the business that we can’t guarantee.

Aaron Harper (52:14):

Yes, absolutely.

Henry Lopez (52:16):

How would you summarize this? Let me ask it in a two part. Give me your final thoughts, takeaway on the power washing segment in industry, and then summarize for me why we should consider rolling suds,

Aaron Harper (52:31):

The power washing segment in general. I think anyone who’s thinking about business ownership should look at the services world, residential and commercial services. It’s not going anywhere. And in fact, there’s just more and more money and institutional capital flowing toward it, meaning that those companies think it’s a good place to spend their time and capital. And as a first time business owner, it’s a lot less risky from the difference of going to build out a McDonald’s or a fast food chain or even any other kind of brick and mortar business or gym, just less volatile. And then in any home services space, if you can find a brand or a business that has a lot of tailwinds and is filling a market gap, which is kind of the argument and the case for power washing as we’re filling a segment and we’re professionalizing a space that just hasn’t been professionalized yet, there’s always benefit being first. And we’ll have people that come behind us just as I have with other brands I’ve launched, but we’ll have such a significant size and market share at that time, it won’t matter too much. And then, what was the second question?

Henry Lopez (54:02):

Why rolling? Summarize? Why rolling suds, why we should consider rolling suds?

Aaron Harper (54:08):

Yeah. You want to find a brand that you believe in. You want to find a brand that you feel like you can march with that has a greater purpose. And our mission statement is, this is a relationship because we believe that if the relationship comes first, then any kind of economic benefit or financial windfalls will follow. And we are a values driven organization and we’re focused on helping our franchisees be successful. I say this all the time, but the success of Rolling suds is dependent upon the long-term success of our franchisees, and that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to help people build power washing businesses and be successful. And if that sounds interesting, we will see if the territory is still available. You can reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn or anything like that.

Henry Lopez (55:04):

The website is

Aaron Harper (55:06):

Ro franchise.com.

Henry Lopez (55:08):

Perfect. We’ll have a link to that on the show notes page for this episode. Aaron, thanks so much for entertaining all of my questions and sharing all of this knowledge. I appreciate you being with me today.

Aaron Harper (55:20):

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Henry Lopez (55:22):

This is Henry Lopez, and thanks for joining me on this episode of the Howa Business. My guest today is Aaron Harper. I release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find a show anywhere you listen to podcasts, including the Howa Business YouTube channel, and at my website, the how of business.com. Thanks for listening.