0:00:06 - Craig Schulze
Okay, everybody, welcome to this week's episode of the One Shot Movement podcast. So we dive deep into this, into the stories of entrepreneurs, business people, anyone that's out there making that happen. At the moment, I'm running a very special series where I'm interviewing franchisors and CEO of franchise networks really high growth industry and it does so much and I spent 15 years in that industry myself. I'm super passionate about that. Today we have a phenomenal guest on the show. We actually met on a platform called Clubhouse. His name's Ross Franklin and he started the Pure Green Juice Bar, which started in 2014. It's now around 20 to 30 sites. He's going to share a bit more about the story of Pure Green, but we're going to dive into his story and all about franchising and why he loves that industry so much. So welcome to the show, ross. 

0:01:00 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Greg, thank you so much for having me on. 

0:01:03 - Craig Schulze
No worries, and I always like to invite every guest just to provide a bit more context to the story where you started how your entrepreneurial journey, to spend a couple of minutes doing that and then we'll get into the conversation. 

0:01:16 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Absolutely so. I started out in the fitness industry, started out as a personal trainer all throughout college. Right out of college, I worked at the sports center at Chelsea Pierce as fitness manager, managing over 50 personal trainers. From there, went on to be a general manager for some very high-end health clubs before starting my own company, which was fitness consulting. So I opened up a lot of health clubs all throughout the Northeast. One point I owned my own health club, sold. It started to get, then get specialized. I started to specialize in yoga studios, pilates studios and finally, juice bars, and I came to a realization that when you look at optimal health, 80% of the equation is nutrition, while only 20% is fitness, and I came to that realization. I also saw from opening up all of these 50,000 square foot health clubs that when you look at a 500 without 1000 square foot juice bar, it's much more scalable. So that, and my mission to build healthier communities around the globe, was really the backbone behind founding Pure Green in 2014. 

0:02:30 - Craig Schulze
Well done, and I just to provide a bit more scope on your growth. To date, you're around 20 to 30 open, but you do have big plans. Do you want to share a bit about that? 

0:02:43 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Yeah. So right now with Pure Green. So a couple of things. We're an omnichannel business. There's two parts of the business. We have Pure Green franchise where we have 27 locations that are open and another 30 in development. So the development is either locations that are in the real estate process or franchise partners that are about to sign leases. So we're growing really fast. We're on pace to have 100 locations open by the end of 2023. Then we also have our wholesale division where we sell cold press juice and cold press shots all throughout the United States. We work with over 50 professional sports teams, over 30 college teams. Even SpaceX is a client. 

So the interesting dynamic between the two divisions is, you know, part of the way I started. The reason I started turning Pure Green into a franchise is because I looked at all the competition and these guys are all taken 2000 square feet, 3000 square feet, and I'm like why is it so big? Why are they taking such a large footprint? I realized that what they're doing is they're making the cold press juice and shots in inside their location. And I realized that, with our wholesale division having distribution channels all throughout the United States, we have a big competitive advantage. And so what we do at Pure Green French is we allow the franchisees to purchase the cold press juice and shots from our distributors on the wholesale side and we allow the franchise partners to focus on the core products, which are superfood, smoothies and the assayibals. 

0:04:15 - Craig Schulze
That's an interesting concept and I really like that. I guess my question. You probably answered it, but I just validate that. I think franchises in really competitive markets and the juice industry is a competitive market, let's say. You know it's what's unique about you and your business model and I think that there really hits it on the head the fact that you don't need to have really large shop brands to have a really profitable business based on that model. Is there anything else in your offering to potential franchises that you should let people know, just in case they're interested in your business? 

0:04:58 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Yeah, the other big thing, our big point of difference is actually the products themselves. We designed all the products to have unparalleled, amazing taste and also high performance nutrition, so it's that once you punch between taste and nutrition that really sets us apart. And then also, like you said, the model is very small anywhere from 500 square feet to 1500 square feet, so all the costs are lower. You don't have the expensive overhead like some of our competitors do, and so it's a very streamlined model. 

0:05:34 - Craig Schulze
Also, when I was looking through your website, I just really impressive looking website. One thing that really stood out to me was you talk a lot about vision, mission values. You know, just completely written all the way through, and I think that's a backbone of a business and if you want to build something that's got legacy capabilities, you know your vision mission values is critically important to that. Do you want to share a bit about that? And am I on the money by making that assumption? 

0:06:09 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Yeah, I mean you're 100% on the money. I mean when people join a franchise, you know they want to aside from just the financial benefits and really setting themselves up and their families up for a financially successful future. You know people want to know, they want to trust what they're buying into and they want to know that you know there's meaning behind it. So the mission, especially when it relates to a franchise business, is extremely important. Our mission at Peer Green franchise is to build healthier communities around the globe by connecting people with superfoods, and one of the first things we look for in potential franchisees is how does our mission resonate with them? Do they share our passion for health and wellness? And if they do, that's the first step behind us evaluating them as a good fit. 

0:06:59 - Craig Schulze
Yeah, and I guess your business now you said around the globe is predominantly a US based model. Do you have plans to scale internationally? 

0:07:12 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Yeah, so we have all kinds of requests from other countries outside of the US who want to get involved, and our goal is to have 1000 units within the United States and to go outside the United States. What we're looking for is a master franchise. So we're looking for a big group that's outside the US that wants to open up pure green and have their whole country as a territory and really develop their country with pure green all across it. So we're just looking for the right groups to take pure green on outside of the US. 

0:07:49 - Craig Schulze
Hmm, well done, and that's that's an industry that I've spent time in. Most of my listeners would know my story. I did set up 22 franchises myself had five fitness club owner and I did master franchise. So I did do that once upon a time. So it is a really good way to be able to grow your business if you find the right people to be able to do that. And while we're talking about growth and scale, I recently read a report, I think, published in Forbes magazine and you were talking about a capital raise and a crowd funded model. There, some of the franchisors I've had on have taken on equity partners as a way to raise capital. Do you want to share a bit of insight to that? Absolutely. 

0:08:39 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
So, with pure green, over the years, we've been approached by a lot of the institutions, a lot of the VC firms, private equity firms, and all of them, like you know, pose like very sharky offers, right, like it's ideal for a company to wait as long as possible for most companies, not unless you're a tech company before taking on the institutional money. 

So for us, you know, equity crowdfunding, which is which is newer, really is, within the last five years, really just started becoming popular, because before it was really only for accredited investors and then in 2016, 2016, they changed the law where they opened it up to the general public, and so we felt that equity crowdfunding really resonated with our mission of building healthier communities around the globe, because we allow micro investors to kind of come into the pure green family, people that share our mission and our values. 

And it was really interesting because right when, right when we started the equity crowdfunding rounds, that's when COVID hit, and so our team was like, oh no, you know, we this is time to kind of be worse, and I'm like guys, like right now we let's just focus on our mission, and we gave cold pressed juice thousands of bottles of cold pressed juice to local hospitals, supporting the frontline workers. 

We videoed everything that we were doing and all these micro investors rallied behind us and we ended up maxing out the campaign. So we raised the full 1 million 70,000, which is the most you can raise on a reg CF campaign. At the time we had 5000 micro investors and that sits on the cap table as a single line item. But the equity crowdfunding is great because it's very founder friendly money, because you're able to apply that money for growth and it converts to equity upon a trigger event, but it's not immediate equity, so it gives the company time to really grow and scale and the companies that make it big there's there could be a very high return for the for the investor, so works well both ways. 

0:10:45 - Craig Schulze
And you mentioned the last two years Interesting economic climate for many businesses. If you lived in Melbourne, australia, where I did, we went two years where shops, restaurants, fitness clubs pretty much retail was closed technically. So that was extremely challenging and I had a challenging time going through the global financial crisis with bank, bank funding, etc. With my business growth back in 2008 2010. What are some of the challenges and even growing pains that you've experienced that people could learn a lesson from your experience? 

0:11:27 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Yeah, so I would say, prior to COVID, you know, most of our locations was in New York City. New York City got hit really hard with COVID, especially Midtown. Midtown basically shut down because everyone went out of the offices, and so what we ended up doing was we we actually relocated our company headquarters to Florida. So our company headquarters is now in sunrise, florida, and Florida was a lot more open, and so we use that time to really grow and scale. So we, we built eight company locations that are now open, with another one in construction right now, as well as a company store, and so we really dug our trenches into into Florida, where things were a lot more open. 

And, as far as our New York expansion, new York is always going to be close to our heart. You know, a lot of the people moved out of the city, went into Brooklyn, so we opened up some additional locations in Brooklyn. And so when, when there's tough times like the key is really how do you pivot, how do you take advantage of this, of the situation, and, ultimately, how do you, how do you make it work and how do you, how do you spin things around? 

0:12:38 - Craig Schulze
Yeah, well said and I think you know, in these interesting, challenging times for many, some people will look at that and but the reality there's more millionaires as more opportunities made in in these economic times and in any other time. It's just how you, I guess, embrace it. You move headquarters and I guess, on reflection of that, you know you may have a new blueprint for cities and locations that you can open up. If you know, in America it's, you know, there's Florida's and Texas type of cities that are more open to run business properly. Does that mean that you may have to adjust your mindset, moving forward on where you do put your locations in America? 

0:13:33 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
So for us I mean we we do really well in high volume areas and that's always been the case. We've always done really well in cities. You know COVID made it really tough for for the cities, but we knew it was just a matter of time before everything bounces back and so we we opened up. We started opening up locations that in construction because it's pretty much like a six to eight month cycle from when we sign on a lease to when you know, to when we open, or when we sign a franchise agreement to when we open. So we had franchise partners sign on in major cities that during COVID were slow and the timing just worked out really well so that things started coming back and when those locations opened they were instant home runs. So that worked out really well. But COVID also allowed us to get our branch out into Florida. It allowed us to really focus on our systems and our processes and really coming up with amazing training materials and really building the fundamental structure for to have a scalable franchise business. 

0:14:39 - Craig Schulze
Yeah, and you mentioned systems and when you know the whole reason, someone would buy a franchise. Typically is the branch group buy benefits, you know, but the systems are really really important. Do you have a focus on building really rock solid, robust systems? Or I interviewed a guy the other day and he said we would nearly be we're a fitness club, but would nearly be classified as a tech company based on our systems. How would you describe that if someone was looking to buy a pure green business? 

0:15:15 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely, tech. Tech has become so important and, especially as you get into your systems and your processes, there's so many amazing third party apps that have come out that have been really game changers compared to how things used to be. So you know, we use technologies like flipping book for all of our manuals that make it interactive. You can embed videos in there. You could send people links or even QR codes to view these presentations and training manuals. For us, we've been investing heavily in video because you know, with the explosion of social media like TikTok, especially the millennial generation, these guys are used to just watching videos very fast paced. So we've we adjusted a lot of our content. So, like, how do you train someone to make a smoothie? What we figured out is that if you make it look like a successful like TikTok video, so it's like everything's like fast motion, voiceover, this text, it's an amazing training tool and the millennial generation is just so used to it from TikTok. So we applied that just to all of our training materials. 

We also found this, this program called one huddle, and it gamifies the whole training process so we can literally take a 300 page manual, send it to one huddle and then from someone's phone. It's an app on their phone. They log in, they and there's a whole test. It's like multiple choice with buzzers and music and there's a whole score where our team members can see how they rank from all of the team members across the entire country on there. So everyone's like really competitive. And it's funny, within all the companies one huddle works with, we always have like one team member in the top five who's consistently there. Our team members just just absolutely love it. So tech is just so important, such an amazing tool and really adopting you know what's trending, what's working and making it fun and enjoyable for people to learn is really a key part of the process. 

0:17:18 - Craig Schulze
Well done, and I think gamification these days is it's growing rapidly, I guess. And if you do talk about millennials, they want, they want to see progress all the time as well. So I think it's a smart strategy. You, your business. It's a juice, you know it's pure green juice, but you also do smoothies. You have snack bars and other products. You want to just showcase your suite of products. So, again, somebody may be out there looking at a juice bar and don't want to just have it listed just as a juice bar. So do you want to show? Showcase your product? One Sure. 

0:17:56 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
So with pure green, the bulk of our products, the bulk of when you look at our revenue as a percentage of revenue, the bulk of revenue comes from our superfood smoothies, and so we use superfoods from around the globe. Everything tastes amazing, but superfood smoothies is the main category 12 different smoothies. Then we have assayibals. Assayib is a Brazilian superfood that's really high in antioxidants. So there's six different assayibals that all taste amazing, are all loaded with nutrients. The two category superfoods smoothies and assayibals make up the bulk of revenue. Then you have cold pressed juice and cold pressed shots. In one bottle of cold pressed juice we use up to five pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables. So you get all those nutrients and definitely it's a key category, but certainly not as high as the superfoods, smoothies and the assayibals. 

0:18:47 - Craig Schulze
Also, I always like to ask this question to the founder CEO, because a business will grow to where the leader grows. As a business owner, and most of the other franchisors that I do come across are really dedicated to personal growth. Masterminds, you know, learning, growing, getting coach in Is that something that you believe in and what do you do from, I guess, a personal growth point of view? 

0:19:18 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Oh, absolutely. I mean, continued education is so important and what we do as a company is, you know we have monthly franchise calls. You know we I send books to our franchise partners. You know typically about franchising, but we're really focused on just you know, growth and development. For me personally, I'm in a franchise mastermind group. I'm also, you know, there's some certain Facebook groups for the franchise industry that I'm in, and then I have a personal coach. His name is Jarek Robbins. So I have weekly calls, calls with Jarek Robbins in a mastermind group with other business owners that everything specifically designed to we all work together to grow the business. 

0:20:09 - Craig Schulze
Well done and I think, yeah, I mean, if you're, you see, oh, your franchise or the visionary of the company you know doesn't keep expanding their mind and learning new skills, new mindsets and build networks. I think ultimately, you know, your currency will be your contacts list and building those networks, potentially strategic partners. That's one thing that I've been able to manage to do well is I've been doing some capital raising for a business at the moment and I was looking I've actually got a part I'm part owner of a plant based food company myself and I was looking for money for that and then I come across somebody else and I said actually know the person that needs you right now. So being in those masterminds is a great way to be open doors for you and you may find your next master franchise there. 

While I'm talking about that binding franchisees and that was one of the things that I felt was challenging when I was looking for franchisees to buy businesses Do you have a process for that? Do they have to be a certain net worth or they have to be able to work in the business? Or yeah, what's your strategy around that? 

0:21:23 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Yeah. So we look for franchise partners that one meet our minimum financial criteria, which is they have to have 100,000 in liquidity and a net worth of at least 300,000. A lot of them we help them get SBA loans to help provide the capital. So they have to one, meet the financial minimums, to have to be passionate about health and wellness, and three, as far as like working in the store, what we find is the most successful stores the franchise partner is very hands on, they're in the store, they're constantly checking in, they know the numbers. The more active the franchise owner is in the store, the better it's going to perform. So we require because we get a lot of franchise partners that go on and they do multiple Most of the franchise partners they've either gone on to do additional locations or they've expressed interest in that, and so we require that they at least work the first 90 days in their first unit so that they fully understand the operations and they're able to maximize the opportunity for their locations. 

0:22:33 - Craig Schulze
And, from a corporate point of view and head office, what other value do you bring to franchisees? In regards to obviously, I've seen you do a bit of PR and marketing to help raise awareness. Is there anything else that franchisees might go? Wow, it'd be great to get involved so I can leverage that opportunity as well. 

0:22:53 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Oh yeah, I mean we do a ton for our franchisees. So, first off, the most important thing is guiding them through the process of getting their location to grand opening, and that's, you know, a process in itself. So it's we help them find the right site. Site selection process is the most important thing. So once they find the right site, it's helping them negotiate the best deal. Then it's, you know, working with the designer, the architect, the general contractor to get their store open as quickly as possible. Once their store is open, then it's a whole nother game that we help them with, and I think a lot of business owners really overlooked this. So it's the whole SEO component. So we set up for them one Google business page and we set up the whole thing, optimize it for them. We help them promote it. Then we build them a page on our website. They get their own page that's optimized for SEO. Then we make sure that they rank for all the keywords. We do all this research so we know exactly what terms people are searching for Juice bar franchise, juice franchise, smoothie franchise, juice bar smoothies near me all those keywords we help them rank number one. So if there's a location open in, let's say, chicago and you're in Chicago and you type in juice bar, you type in smoothies near me, superfood smoothies our stores are going to rank number one and so we do that. 

Whenever our franchise is open up location so it drives the traffic in, you're having a really strong digital presence. These days is more important than ever. Then there's, you know, social media. Social media is really important. We're one of the fewer franchises that allow our franchisees to create social media accounts because we know how important that is for local marketing. But we provide all the assets, all the pictures, and we're constantly coming up with new assets for them so that they have things to post and they can promote their own store and they have that ability. 

We have monthly promotions. Every month we have a different promotion. We send them all the marketing materials, all the poster boards, the five by seven cards, everything. We help them do email marketing. So we help them. We set up, set it and forget it automated campaigns for them. So we call the people that come through the doors guests, but there's one report it's called we don't call them customers, but just this report. It's called the customer. It's called the lapse customer report. So if someone hasn't visited in 90 days they get an automated email with an offer to get them back into the stores. So there's about 10 automated reports that we set up for them, automated email flows, and so all of that is just set up so they can focus on the operations of their business and all of this marketing is kind of working in the background to help support them. 

0:25:42 - Craig Schulze
Well done and always ask this question. I like to work with movers and shakers, people that are going somewhere fast, so I always like to ask you your plan for the next three to five years. Is it you shared a bit about your growth, etc. At the moment. Is there something that's really embedded into your, your mission, that you would like to achieve in the next three to five years? 

0:26:10 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Yeah, so so going in. So for us we look at achieving our mission of building healthy communities around the globe. We look at that kind of by unit count right. We know that once we have 1000 units throughout the US, we're making a substantial difference on impact on people's health. So we look at kind of the growth of the company by how many units. So we're on pace right now to have 100 open by the end of 2023. And we think it's going to be, as we continue to grow and scale, another seven, eight years before we hit that magic number of 1000. But that's really what's driving us and the closer we get, the closer we get to achieving our mission. 

0:26:50 - Craig Schulze
And at the end of every episode I always like to ask a few rapid fire questions. They're not rapid fire answers by any stretch, but it's just the same questions I ask every guest because I think there's a lot of value and wisdom in these questions. Is there a book, a podcast or a piece of content that you just totally believe in? If there's an entrepreneur or business owner out there that they should listen to if, or read if, they want to get ahead in life? 

0:27:17 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Yeah, this one's going to be a little self promotional, but actually have it right here. What's the book that I wrote? The Founders Success Formula. So I really wrote this kind of as a roadmap really for our franchisees. But any business owner can apply all the strategies in that book. But that's a little self promotional, so maybe, maybe I'll give you another one. Since this is a, this business is focused on franchisors, I got one right here. This is a book we gave to all of our franchisees. It's called the Wealthy Franchisee, by Scott Greenberg. So he kind of went through the struggle of being a franchisee multi unit operator. Talks about it in the book and it's just a wealth of knowledge for anyone who's interested in becoming a franchisee to see what a really successful operator went through, to see what life is like as a franchisee. So great book. 

0:28:14 - Craig Schulze
I have to get that one myself. What about annual book too? Definitely get that one. What about the best mid-boss you've ever received? 

0:28:26 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Best advice I've ever received, I would say what it would be is. So my mentor, who's actually his name, is Isaac Cohen. He's the yeah, I actually brought. We brought him on to be the CEO of our wholesale division. So he, you know, he runs eight different companies. 

The guy is just a total genius, and so one thing that he always tells me is he's like look, he's like when it's good, when you're having like really good times and you're crushing it, he's like that's where, like, you got to scale it back, you got to be really careful, right. 

And then when it's low time, so when things are really bad, you got to kind of get back to neutral, because as bad as you think it is, it's really not that bad. So, which is really interesting, because you always want to kind of be in this neutral state and you never want to get too comfortable, because when things are going good, it's very easy to get comfortable and stop the driving force that of, and that's probably why you became successful. But so if you, if things are too good and you relax, it's not going to be that good for long. And it's like vice versa, right, when things are like super low, it's just a mat. That's when you're the most aggressive, you're the most hungry, you're taking the most action to get the result that you want and it's going to bounce back up. So really you want to kind of be in between. He's like if you operate there. That's the key to success. 

0:29:52 - Craig Schulze
And on the flip side of that question, I like asking this one what's either the it's the worst bit of advice you've ever received, or it might be something that you just totally disagree with. You know people talk about all the time and you just say that's just rubbish. 

0:30:08 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Yeah, I'll tell you that when I was back in a health club industry I was working for this really high end health club and became very close with the CEO. He took me under his wing and he was, you know, working on mentoring me. And he said to and I said to him I'm like, hey, I want you know one day, like my goal is, I want to be the CEO of a huge, of a huge company. And he's like you know, he's like you know you got to be careful. He's like you should change that. He's like what you should do is change it to just you always want to constantly advance, just gradually advance. 

And so I totally disagree with that advice because you want to set your sights on something big, something really exciting, to get you going. That gets you every day you jump out of bed and it gets you to take massive action. Because if your goals are too small and you're playing it too conservative and you're not, you're not going to be excited about it, you're not going to take the action that you would take if you have a big goal that's really exciting and emotionally really gets you going. So that's one piece of advice that I just disagree with Dream big, set big goals. 

0:31:18 - Craig Schulze
Absolutely, and this podcast is about inspiration to inspire as many people around the world to make the most of their one shot at life. Is there something that you would say to somebody that might be sitting there listening that might not be aspirational at this stage to make the most of their one shot at life? 

0:31:42 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
So I would say that come up with a goal, something that really that really excites you, and once you have that right, you have the why. Then it's like you need to be like persistent as a mofo, like that. That's it. You need to let nothing stop you to drive you towards achieving that goal, because it's going to be. It's a process. Success is a process you have to put in the work and you got to make sure that what you're aiming for really excites you and ignites you, gets you going, because if not, if you're just kind of like, sit in there and you're not that excited, you may not have the best goal. 

0:32:21 - Craig Schulze
Well said, good advice. And the final question is a bit of a promotion for yourself. Where do people find you, find out about your business, want to connect with you? Just feel free to drop a few ideas. 

0:32:37 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Absolutely so. For pure green franchise, our website's puregreenfranchisecom. You can go there if you're. If anyone's interested in open up a franchise, learning more, go to puregreenfranchisecom. And on social media, my Twitter is at Ross Franklin. My Instagram is Ross F Franklin. 

0:32:58 - Craig Schulze
So if you are interested in exploring the opportunity with pure green or want to know more about their business model, make sure that you head to those websites and links. There We've been with Ross Franklin, the franchise, or pure green juice bar, doing phenomenal things and making a huge impact in the world. Big vision, big plans. I want to thank you for joining us on the show. 

0:33:22 - Ross Franklin - CEO Pure Green Franchise (Guest)
Thank you so much.