Unpredicted Entrepreneur Episode 92: From Touring Musicians to Franchise Leaders: Kay and Joseph Barker’s Entrepreneurial Adventure

“We’re continuing to open up studios of our own. We just opened up a studio in Indianapolis that's ours. We're opening up a second one in Indianapolis this year. Courtney and Dustin, our first franchisees to sign on, opened their second studio the day after we opened our studio in Indianapolis. It was a great learning process and so much fun to go through this process shoulder to shoulder with them. We're constantly growing and modifying things to provide better support for our franchisees. This affects us too, because we're opening and operating studios along with our franchisees. We’re experimenting so that our franchisees don't have to, and implementing new programs and new marketing to understand how it's working. And then we can go to our franchisees and say, ‘Okay, cool, here's a new thing, and you should implement it for these reasons.’ It's important for us to have our team operating studios so we have firsthand knowledge as we go through these processes with our franchisees.“

This shows a real alignment between franchisor and franchisee. 

When franchises actively run their own locations, they aren’t just selling a concept, they’re in the trenches with you. That means every strategy, update, or innovation they roll out has been tested on their own dime first. 

Opening studios side-by-side with franchisees creates real-time learning and support. It’s a collaborative, “we’re-in-this-together” environment. It also means the franchisor is constantly improving systems based on real experience, not theory.

Because they’re operating their own units, they can experiment, refine, and then confidently share what works. This allows franchisees to focus on execution, not trial-and-error, so there’s faster innovation with less risk. 

We cover many current and relevant topics. A few include:

◈ What it takes to support the emotional leap from employee to business owner 

◈ Why owning a business is not a passive investment

◈ Partnering with a franchise that has its feet on the street with its franchisees