I recently had the opportunity to interview Brandon Neilson from The Dog Stop. Brandon has been in franchising for quite some time. He and I go back many years and have helped many people get into the right franchise. I asked Brandon why people should look at the pet care industry and what is special about The Dog Stop.
From Brandon:
In the world of franchising, there’s obviously a number of franchises out there where you can build yourself a profitable business, you can do well financially out there. But the reality is, there’s not a lot of franchises that where you can be truly passionate about what you do. And, and this is one of those. The Dog Stop is one of those franchises that I’ve seen where people are by far the most passionate about, they love it, they absolutely love it. It’s not just the franchise owners that are passionate about it, of course, but it’s all of their employees as well. Everybody that’s involved in the business, they love it. I mean, we literally have general managers that work for some of our franchise owners that have taken pay cuts, just to be able to come work for them because they can work with dogs and be around dogs and work with dogs every day. It’s one of those businesses that yes, you can do extremely well financially, but it’s also one of those businesses where it’s a very passionate business for people. You know, it’s not very often you can wake up in the morning and own a business and do something you love to do every day, and then still do well financially. So that’s this business for sure.
The Dog Stop is really the only one true, what I’ll call, one stop shop for dogs. The Dog Stop offers all services under one roof for the dog owner. They do dog boarding, doggy daycare, grooming, training and retail, all under one roof. The way that those services break out overall roughly is that dog boarding is about 40% of our total revenue, doggy daycares about 30% of our total revenue. So those two services right there make up about 70% of our business. And then dog grooming which continues to get bigger all the time is about 15%. And then the last 15% makeup, retail section, and our training dog training service as well. We’re not big on retail, we do have retail, but we’re not big on it. The retail section basically brings in enough money to pay your monthly rent out of your location every month, it’s worth having. It is also huge convenience for the customer, for the dog owner. You know, when they drop their dog off or pick the dog up for daycare every day and their dog food is sitting right there on the shelf, or their treats or toys, whatever it might be, you might as well have it ready for them and that’s really a convenience for the customer. But it is also revenue stream for the franchise owner as well.
Brandon, are their particular people that make better Dog Stop franchise owners than other?
From Brandon:
You know, it’s interesting, because if you take a look at the backgrounds of our franchisees, it’s all over the place. There’s not one particular profession or a background that is common really, with all of our franchises. I think the one thing that is common is if you look at what the most successful franchise owners do in the business, they are not owner operators. They are not franchise owner that want to come in and essentially buy themselves a full-time job. We don’t want franchise owners that are going to be managers, we want franchise owners that are going to be what we call semi-absentee owners that are going to be working on their business but not in it every day. That’s there’s a big difference there. The most successful owners that we have are the ones that are getting involved in their local communities. They’re the ones that are getting involved and getting to know all the different veterinarians in the area. They’re the ones that are getting involved in the local dog shelters and adoption agencies. They’re the ones that are literally taking their dog or their dogs to the dog park and passing out their business cards to all the other people there. That is, that is what drives traffic. And that’s what’s going to create a booming business for people. The reality is if you’re in as a franchise owner, if you’re in your facility every day, all day long as the General Manager, it gives you zero time to do those things that actually drive more traffic and business into your facility. So that’s, that’s what we’re looking for. So as long as people like doing those things, networking, getting to know people building relationships, that’s the type of person we’re looking for.
Greg Mohr is the Wall Street Journal Best Selling author of “Real Freedom, Why Franchises Are Worth Considering and How They Can Be Used For Building Wealth”, and has managed restaurants, been a micro-electric circuit engineer, owned and operated dry cleaners, storage units, rental properties, and franchises. Greg has helped hundreds of people invest in a few hundred franchise units. Contact Greg at 361-772-6401 or greg@franchisemaven.com