Secretsos:

Jeff Walter (00:00)

Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the Training Impact Podcast. My guest today is April of Secretsos. April is one of the leading voices in modern franchising. She has combined unique set of skills, having a varied career.

 

as an attorney, a criminal judge, a multi-unit franchisee, and she now serves as the founder and CEO of Secret Sauce, or Secret SOS. The business intelligence agency advancing new standards of franchising and small business performance. April simplifies complex strategy into practical action, blending emotional intelligence with disciplined decision-making. She is the creator of the Infinite Franchisee Conference and the host of what’s been recognized as the top

 

and business strategy podcast, the infinite franchisee show April. Welcome to the podcast.

 

April of Secretsos (00:47)

Thanks so much, Jeff. It’s a pleasure to be here.

 

Jeff Walter (00:50)

very interesting path. How did you end up as the founder of secret sauce? from attorney to judge to multi-unit, franchisee, help, help me understand that journey. Cause that is one heck of a journey.

 

April of Secretsos (01:02)

Yeah, I think it’s, you know, probably indicative of how most people feel when you get to a certain point in your career and you look backwards and you say, wow, I really see how all of the skills I’ve gathered along the way have put me to be the right person at the right time in the right place to serve in this capacity. And that’s essentially what has happened for me and why I founded Secret Sauce.

 

So I started my career as a prosecuting attorney. One of my core values and core drivers is to fight against injustice and to fight for victims of what started out victims of crime. But I mean, even through my childhood, I was one to speak up if I saw anything that seemed to not be fair or not be just.

 

Jeff Walter (01:40)

Okay.

 

April of Secretsos (01:54)

And so it was really a very natural fit for me to go into prosecution out of law school. So that’s where I started.

 

Jeff Walter (02:01)

And so, okay, so that makes complete sense on the law school journey. And then eventually that gets you to criminal judge that like, okay, we’re tracking and ⁓ I have a lot of friends, you know, have that have gone down that same journey and that, but then it took this kind of turn and it started with a multi, with being a multi-unit franchisee. So, so you’re sitting there on the bench.

 

April of Secretsos (02:05)

Right?

 

Yeah

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, so…

 

Jeff Walter (02:28)

And you’re like, you know what I really want to do? That seems where you were kind of jumped. what, what, what was going on in your life and, and in what you were wanting that, you know, cause that’s a, that’s a heck of an accomplishment right there. Like just period. End of sentence.

 

April of Secretsos (02:45)

Well, to clarify,

 

to actual clarify, I did not become a judge until I was a multi-unit franchisee. So I did those, those, yes, those two things happened simultaneously. And if you’ve ever seen the show, Night Court, it, my judgeship was very similar to that in that it happened at night and we were handling those types of cases, meaning, you know, not the big heavy lifting cases in the evenings.

 

Jeff Walter (02:52)

my gosh, really?

 

April of Secretsos (03:12)

So I did that at night while I was building and growing my kickboxing gyms during the day.

 

Jeff Walter (03:17)

Okay, so okay. Well, love that series, by the way. Funny as heck. It was a great series. So, okay, so you’re attorney and you’re on that track, right? And then where does the franchising come in?

 

April of Secretsos (03:21)

⁓

 

Yeah, so I

 

Yeah, so I made the transition because I’d been a prosecutor for 10 years when I when I transitioned into franchising and At the time well my whole career had been dedicated to really horrible heinous crimes my assignment was started out in domestic violence and then moved to crimes against children sexual assaults and homicides and that’s all I did for 10 years and so

 

Jeff Walter (03:52)

my gosh.

 

April of Secretsos (03:55)

It was heavy, heavy subject matter. But like I said, I really felt passionately about fighting for victims. So it didn’t bother me so much, the subject matter, but I got to a point in my career where I really didn’t feel like I was helping people. Excuse me. My job was to, you know, to put people on the stand and have them relive the very worst things in life that ever happened to them.

 

And then I watched the defense attorney, you know, call them liars and try to paint this picture that they made it all up. And then if we got the jury to agree with us and convict the bad guy, then the judge might give them a slap on the wrist. And it just became, you know, like you felt like you’re banging your head against the wall and not really making a difference, but living every day in like the drudge of society.

 

And so I just really needed to make a change.

 

Jeff Walter (04:51)

Yeah. You know, I personally, I mean, not myself personally, I can understand it from a family situation. My dad was an undercover police officer and he did that for a number of years and it does, it takes a huge emotional toll to, to face that element of society. Um, day in and day out, I saw the toll it took on him and I was, I was just a kid, um, at the time, know, teenager, but,

 

But kudos to you and for fighting the good fight there. So on behalf of all of us that have lived our careers in the corporate world, and it’s probably one of the reasons I ended up in the corporate world myself was that’s tough stuff. That’s tough on the individual and it’s tough on their family. you know, but necessary work because, you know, got to combat, know, good’s got to combat evil, right? ⁓

 

April of Secretsos (05:41)

100%.

 

And I truly loved it. And even today, I’d be happy to go back. In fact, I get drawn into certain cases in the news, right? Or things we see on TV. And I’m always making comments. I probably drive my husband crazy. I see things on X, and I’m like, that’s ridiculous. Just headlines where things are spun. And I’m like, you can’t even admit that as evidence in court. That’s not

 

real, you know, so I notice all of that stuff. I am very passionate about it still. But I’m also glad to not have it be my day today.

 

Jeff Walter (06:17)

Yeah, so so then as you’re doing that was and you said franchising kickboxing. So is that was that a passion of yours and then the passion turned into let’s make a business of it and let me let me have some time to spend like. Like I.

 

April of Secretsos (06:23)

Yeah.

 

It

 

was more kind of, again, right place, right time, I guess. I mean, I grew up as a competitive dancer and all the way through college and I even taught dance after college, which turned into teaching fitness. So I did that on the side while I was an attorney, which was kind of my like fun time. But also it kind of fed the entrepreneurial spirit that I’ve always had. So I’d always had those little side gigs, taught fitness.

 

Jeff Walter (06:39)

Mm

 

All right.

 

April of Secretsos (06:59)

saw my friends in Kansas City. I live in St. Louis. For those of you that don’t know, Kansas City is actually in Missouri, four hours away from St. Louis. And that’s where I grew up. And I saw some high school friends opened this kickboxing gym. And I was like, man, that looks like a fantastic concept. It’s like 30 minutes. You can walk in and work out. You don’t need to set up a class time. And you get to work out with a trainer every single time.

 

And I’m like, if this was in St. Louis, this would be my gym. And so I actually sent my baby sister over and I said, you guys should go check out the gym, go support Melissa and Chris and go to their gym. And so she did, and she called me and she said, it’s so cool, I think we’re gonna franchise it. And I was just like, what? Like, what are you even talking about? Like, how do you just franchise something in…

 

Jeff Walter (07:30)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (07:51)

And of course in my head, I’m also like, and if you think you could do this, I definitely could do it. Like you’re my little sister, right? So, so there was a bit of competitiveness there, but my husband and I had been discussing what’s next. What are we going to do? And we really thought a Jimmy Johns would be great in our town. So we looked into potentially bringing that, but the investment to do a Jimmy Johns was about one and a half million dollars, which we didn’t have. Yeah. So.

 

Jeff Walter (08:11)

Right.

 

wow.

 

April of Secretsos (08:20)

So anyway, all of this, so I started to look into the franchising. It was within a budget that we could do and we could be the first people in St. Louis to actually bring this concept in the gym. So I said, and we said, okay, let’s go for it. let’s, you know, I became an entrepreneur. He still works for AT &T. He really doesn’t have an entrepreneurial bone in his body. But that’s how it all came to be.

 

Jeff Walter (08:43)

But, but,

 

but by any chance it’s not title one, is it? Okay. Um, one of my, my, former colleagues, um, uh, his, his wife, uh, started a title one franchise and then our title boxing. Yeah. And, and then, uh, they decided to expand it and become a multi-unit. And, uh, after working with him for, I don’t know, 10, 15 years, he was like, Hey, Jeff, uh, you know, I’m going to go do this. We’re going to build this out and,

 

April of Secretsos (08:47)

No, it’s not.

 

Title boxing.

 

Jeff Walter (09:12)

And it was great. It’s really cool. So I was just wondering if it was title boxing, but that would have been funny. OK, so now you got into it. And then I guess one begot. Yeah, once you’re in, you know, in for a penny and for a pound, it sounds like I mean, you.

 

April of Secretsos (09:16)

Yeah.

 

That’s exactly what

 

it was. We took a look at the model and you know, it was a smaller investment. Franchising has a very wide range of what it could cost to get into a franchise concept. Like I said, Jimmy John’s would be one and a half million dollars. This concept cost us about $150,000, like is what we would need to start one. But also typically how much you can make out of a single unit is somewhat relative to how

 

to what the initial investment is. So looking at it, we knew that if we really, I mean, if we’re going to go through the heartache and the headache of owning a business, you want to be able to grow it to a level of wealth, not just replace your salary. so, right. So we looked at it and said, okay, they were selling. If you bought three territories, you got a discount. We said, hey, go bigger, go home. Let’s go ahead and do three. And that’s

 

That’s initially how we came in. Now we ended up ultimately getting four as we got into it and got going, but we committed to three out of the gate, which was kind of bonkers because I’d never run a business in a storefront before, had employees, you know, but, but, you know, when you’re a trial attorney, you’re pretty confident. So to a fault sometimes, but.

 

Jeff Walter (10:39)

Yeah.

 

All right, so now you’re into the franchise world. It seems interesting, it’s going well. Were you more owner or owner operator?

 

April of Secretsos (10:51)

Yeah, great question. So our concept, we were actually advised by the franchisor that the owner would be the only employee in the gym at all until you became profitable, which was a nightmare because in our concept, we were open from eight in the morning until eight in the evening with a two hour break in the middle of the day. And clients could walk in any time throughout that day.

 

And if a client was in the gym, you were demonstrating exercises to them and you demonstrated three exercises to each client every three minutes. So if you had multiple clients in the room, you were physically going around. mean, I might demonstrate 22 exercises every three minutes all day long. So it was just like, like it was just like the most exhausted you could ever be great. I was in great shape, but, ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (11:38)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (11:46)

you know, but very exhausted. But it did work. I mean, what the franchisor told us by doing it that way, we were profitable in three months. And that’s when we were able to hire on our first couple of part-time employees. And that’s when I really started to look at, okay, I’m going to now go do this a second time. And I’m, I can’t be in two places at once. So.

 

Jeff Walter (12:10)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (12:10)

So not only do I need a couple of part-time employees, but I’m going to need to be able to hand this location over to a team and get the next one up and going. And I was very aware that having been the only employee in the business for the first three months, the critical time of actually building a membership, that a lot of that progress that we’d made could be contributed to my personality and the way that

 

I remember every person’s name who walks through the door. I remember their kids. remember, you know, again, you know, studying law school and being an attorney, like I have a very sharp memory and can pull things out of my head very easily. Not everybody can do that. So how do I get a team in here who could replicate my energy, my personality, my care for the customers, making the customers feel like they were really part of a culture?

 

⁓ that’s what, that’s where I was like, Ooh, I don’t know how to do that. And my franchise or was out of training. Like we did a five day training with my franchise or, and there was nothing else in the playbook. That was it.

 

Jeff Walter (13:24)

So kind of your classic on, like you see that a lot in the franchise, you get a new franchisee, you know, there’s that intense week or two of indoctrination training. Like this is our brand. This is our process. This is that. And then, and then go forth and be profitable.

 

April of Secretsos (13:42)

Right, right. And it’s kind of like, and then it’s up to you. And that’s, so that’s where I really had my first taste of, okay, there is an assumption that you’re making as a franchisee when you buy into a brand. And that assumption is based upon all of the party lines, right? There’s a lot of buzz phrases in franchising like business in a box. It’s a proven system. We’re going to give you everything you need to be successful.

 

And so as a franchisee, go in really living in this like void of knowledge. You’re living in a place of, don’t know what I don’t know, but thank goodness I have a franchisor who’s gonna fill in all the gaps in what I don’t know. And then once you get in there and you go through the training and you learn, I I learned how to kickbox. I learned how to work the CRM and the technology. And I learned how to sell a membership.

 

Jeff Walter (14:25)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (14:39)

I didn’t learn the difference between business and personal finance. I didn’t learn how to understand what the numbers are telling me about how much traffic I need or how many leads, how much should I be spending on marketing? How could I convert more people to customers? How could I retain my customers longer? What human resources policies do I need in place? What’s required by law? mean, none of that is included.

 

And you don’t know that until you’re actually in the system. And again, I had an advantage just because of my legal background. So I knew, I’m like, wow, there’s a lot of employment laws out there that are going to dictate how I hire these people. What interview questions can I ask them and what is off the table? All of that I knew, even though I didn’t know the answers, I knew the questions to ask and the research to do to find out the answers to those questions, but most franchisees don’t.

 

Jeff Walter (15:33)

Well, and it’s interesting because especially in franchises that are personal services, right? You know, like there’s a difference between say a quick service restaurant where the franchise is the, going back to your Jimmy John’s it’s like people are always important, but there’s a process there, right? There’s a, there’s a set of equipment and a set of processes and you do need the customer service and you do need people that have to run the process. But the end of day, I’m buying that Jimmy John’s sandwich.

 

And personal service franchises like, like the, what you were talking about where it’s like, well, what I’m buying as the customer is your knowledge as a fitness instructor, whatever, whatever that dimension might be, or your knowledge as a senior care advisor or your knowledge of, and, and so it’s a very different ball of wax. And, we’re, we’re not only do you have all these legal issues in terms of

 

hiring and how do I do that? And I’ve never done it before and I’m a manager and I’ve never managed before, but also the person is the product and how do I train them to, to, know, to do exactly what you said. It’s like, well, I knew that I was successful because I was, knew everybody’s name, knew their kids, did this, you know, I had this way of engaging the customer. How do I make sure that that happens with my hires, my new hires? it’s very, I think, I think it’s a lot, I think the training becomes a lot more.

 

April of Secretsos (16:36)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (16:58)

important, especially on personal service franchises. so it’s, so it’s interesting. So, okay. So, so then you got your multi units, you’re up and running and you’re an attorney and now you’re a judge. And do you sleep by any chance or like, and, and, and, and, and you’re, you’re, doing all that. And then, and then you said, you know what?

 

April of Secretsos (17:12)

At the time? No!

 

Jeff Walter (17:21)

I think I’m going to start a consultancy.

 

April of Secretsos (17:24)

Yeah, well, it didn’t quite happen like that, but what

 

actually happened, and I think this is what happens to most people, is I hit a wall. know, we’d been in business like 18 months. I had two locations open. We were scouting our site for our third location. And I tell this story all the time. So if anybody’s heard me speak before they’ve heard this, but I came home after another…

 

Like, and at this point in time, we were opening at 5.30 in the morning and closing at 8 p.m. So I got home at nine o’clock at night. My husband had already made dinner. I had a cold plate that I had to reheat and I’m standing in the kitchen and I’m, I’ll never forget it. I was facing the sink and the island was behind me and he came up and stood on the other side of the island and said, you know, hey, we need to talk. Like I am not happy. And I was just like, and of course me saying it here, doesn’t sound the same. Then it was like,

 

It was like the breakup conversation, the we need to talk, you And my stomach dropped and I was in full on like panic mode. Like I thought this was a conversation about divorce. And luckily, you know, it wasn’t, my husband said, no, it’s not that extreme yet, but something has to change. Like you are never home. This is not why we got into this. You’re like, I was working 70 hours a week as a trial attorney and the…

 

purpose of doing this was to work like at least a 40 hour week, if not less, and to make more money than I made as an attorney. And at the time we still hadn’t replaced my attorney salary because we were building and we hadn’t, you know, created like a sustainable multi-unit business yet. And so that’s when things got like, that’s when I realized I had hit a ceiling on

 

the questions I knew to ask. So like I said, originally, because I was an attorney, I may not have known the answers, but I knew some of the questions to ask. I knew how to research. I had, by this time I had created a whole training and development program for my team so that I could develop them to be what I call mini-me’s. And I call that our ownership cloning system. So I cloned myself. I had a bunch of little mini-Aprils in the locations we had doing things the way that I would do them if I were there myself.

 

And that was working out great, but I still was there all the time. I hadn’t learned how to let go. I hadn’t learned what other activities should I be working on instead of worrying about the day-to-day. And I needed help for that. And that was a really hard thing because I tried a couple of different coaches and thinking, maybe this person has the answers. And then they had some nuggets, but it didn’t help me actually transition into being truly an entrepreneur.

 

And that, I did finally find an executive coach and that’s really what made the difference was working with the executive coach. I really found out where I had set up this great rep, like repeatable system, but I was the bottleneck. I still was thinking small. was hanging on to a lot of beliefs, about how to run the business that were really more beliefs about how to work in a business, how to be an employee in a business.

 

And I had a lot to learn about scaling and business strategy and leverage and those types of things. And that’s what my coach helped me learn.

 

Jeff Walter (20:46)

Okay, so you decide to make this shift and…

 

When did Secret Sauce come to being and what let, know, yeah.

 

April of Secretsos (20:53)

So, yeah,

 

so after I did that, I mean, we, things started to change for us very quickly. It’s within 60 days of initially getting that coach. I was no longer working nights, no longer working weekends. And my husband and I took the first vacation we’d had in like five years. And then we scaled and we opened our fourth location. I had all of them performing in the top 20 % of revenue across the brand.

 

Jeff Walter (21:12)

Okay.

 

April of Secretsos (21:21)

And it got to the point where I wasn’t working even a full 40 hour week in the business. And this was fairly quickly. And that’s when the other franchisees started to notice. They were like, well, hold up. What is happening here? Because that is not what my life looks like. Their lives looked the way my life used to look, where they were working nights and weekends and had, have a vacation. And, and so what happened is I started getting phone calls from around the country. It was like, like,

 

Jeff Walter (21:28)

Wow.

 

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (21:47)

Word was spreading. So one person would talk to me and then they’d go back and the people in their area, they’d be like, well, I talked to April and this is what she’s doing over in St. Louis. So word just kind of spread and people, I was getting five to seven calls a week, people wanting to spend an hour on the phone with me and I wanted to help them, but I still had my own business to run. And also,

 

I could not replicate or teach them everything that I had done to get to where I was at in an hour phone call. That it just, you know, I mean, that wasn’t going to happen. So, so ultimately that’s how the consulting company was born is just out of the necessity and the demand for it from other franchisees.

 

Jeff Walter (22:32)

And now as that was, I could see that happening within the brand, right? Did, did, didn’t before you, uh, put secret sauce out there, did you start to get calls from people outside the brand? Like, you know, because like, you know, I, I’m in the brand and I talked to you and you gave me some great pointers and all of a sudden I’m noticing my revenue is up 10 % and I’m working like a third the hours, right? Or I’m working, you know, like 20 hours less a week.

 

and I’m getting my, you know, I’m able to have dinner with my family again, that type of thing. And then I tell my buddy who has a different brand, different franchise. And so they started to call you as well.

 

April of Secretsos (23:11)

Yeah.

 

So what actually happened is our brand was going through some friction with the franchise or like many franchise brands do. And we, the franchisees ended up forming an independent association and they did that through the American association of franchisees and dealers, which is a franchisee kind of association. And so once we had a chapter with the AAFD, had, they had 60 chapters across 60 different brands.

 

Jeff Walter (23:18)

Right.

 

Okay.

 

April of Secretsos (23:41)

And that’s where it became really apparent to everyone that some of the problems we were facing inside of our brand were not brand specific. They were systemic throughout franchising because these other, you know, 59 other brands that we knew of were also facing that. But it was through that relationship where I was hosting as…

 

part of our chapter, was hosting some strategy calls to help people just like pro bono with some things, which led to that association asking if I would be their business education task force chairperson and start doing that for other franchisees across other brands, just business intelligence. then, so that really started to build my reputation more in all of franchising for providing franchisee business intelligence, essentially, which

 

The other piece of that puzzle is that no one else, there is no one else in franchising who does this.

 

Jeff Walter (24:37)

Yeah. Now,

 

can I ask you a question? Cause I’m a tech guy. So business intelligence has a very specific kind of tech meaning to me. You know, like means big data warehouses and, and, know, doing stuff like that. when you say business intelligence, what does, what, what’s the connotation there? Cause you know, I, I hear as a technologist data warehouses, and I don’t think that’s what you, I don’t think that’s what you meant.

 

April of Secretsos (24:57)

Yeah.

 

Okay.

 

No. So, I think it’s helpful to understand that Secret Sauce, my current company, Secret Sauce is secret agent themed. And so the tagline is Secret Sauce, the business intelligence agency. And it’s meant to be a play on kind of like the central intelligence agency because our content is gamified and that helps organize it into missions, create objectives, clear checkpoints and things like that for our franchisees.

 

Jeff Walter (25:21)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (25:32)

But when I say business intelligence, I consider it a culmination of the education or the knowledge that you need, the business acumen and skill, the emotional intelligence that is required to level up out of being an employee into an entrepreneur, strategic thinking. So all of these emotional, psychological, and physical components that have to change within a person.

 

to really move out of the day-to-day and into becoming a true strategic leader.

 

Jeff Walter (26:06)

So is this the secret? It’s just got to use the word secret sauce, but, but, good name, but it is well, cause one of the things, you know, I, I’ve been interviewing a lot of people about, Hey, how do I, on the, on the franchise war side, the emerging and developing and people in that ecosystem, how do I, you how do I scale my, my concept without, you know, without,

 

sacrificing the quality of my concept. And one of the themes I keep hearing and, it sounds like something that you you’re addressing if I’m, if unless I’m mistaken is you want to get the right person as your franchisee, right? Like here’s our concept and our values and what we do. And we need people that are like this and they’re not like that and whatever this and that is, right. It can differ from brand to brand to brand.

 

But one of the key challenges that they keep, you know, one of the, keeps coming up is like, one of the hardest things though, is, you know, 90 % of these people have never been business owners before. And it’s a, it’s a very different mentality having been at myself being a business over the last 20 years. It’s a different way of looking at the world and looking at your job and looking at what you’re doing. And is that when you’re talking about that business intelligence and is it that kind of helping the franchisee?

 

⁓ develop that mindset. It’s cause it is a different way of looking at it. And hopefully when you get it, like when I got into business, it’s like, was lucky enough to be successful enough for long enough that I could develop that mindset. Right. But you know, a lot of people aren’t right.

 

April of Secretsos (27:39)

Right.

 

Right. is mindset is a component of it, but it’s mindset as well as knowledge that they don’t have. And the problem is, that because, and I think in some respects it’s even harder for franchisees than independent business owners who aren’t part of a system because franchisees come in and they get a significant amount of training from the franchisor.

 

Jeff Walter (27:46)

Mm-hmm.

 

April of Secretsos (28:06)

which means in the beginning, they’re drinking from a fire hose and they’re completely overwhelmed with everything they’re being told that they need to do. And so there’s not a lot of time to learn what they don’t know that they don’t know. In fact, there’s not even not a lot of space in their brain at that point in time. They think they’re learning everything that they need to know. And this is where a lot of mistakes happen that cost them working capital. And of course, when we run out of working capital and we fall back into scarcity, then we…

 

Jeff Walter (28:07)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (28:34)

We definitely, we kind of run the other direction in a mindset from where we need to go in order to become an entrepreneur. And so we see that happening. I mean, I see that pattern all the time over and over and over again. So one of the best things we can even do for franchisees is to change the conversation at the point in time when they are becoming a franchisee and say like, look, we’re not going to give you everything you need to be successful. What we’re going to give you is a working model and we’re going to teach you how the model works.

 

Jeff Walter (28:39)

Mm-hmm.

 

April of Secretsos (29:03)

We’re gonna teach you how it operates. We’re gonna teach you how to standardize it so that you can ultimately get employees in there doing that and you can move on and build more units. But in order to do so, you’ve got to bring some skills, some mindset, some emotional intelligence to the table. And if you don’t have those things, those things are gonna have to be developed alongside of you operating our model. And that’s where Secret Sauce comes in is that now we can do that in collaboration with the franchisor.

 

in a very structured way so that it’s not more overwhelming to the franchisee, but does fill that gap. But it has to start with the conversation that isn’t happening right now. Because people are trying to sell franchises by being like, we’re gonna give you everything. It’s like, right.

 

Jeff Walter (29:43)

Okay.

 

Business in a box right

 

and and so when that we that you were talking about just a second ago Is that we the franchise or or we secret sauce? so we Okay

 

April of Secretsos (29:56)

Yes, we the franchisor. So

 

when the franchisor is having that conversation with the franchisee and considering them as a candidate to become a franchisee, we got to start it there. And something you said earlier, I’d love to go back to, because it was about the franchisee selection process. And ⁓ as you were talking,

 

Jeff Walter (30:09)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (30:20)

So this is the first time I’ve ever said this, Jeff, you’re gonna get an exclusive here on your podcast. So, cause it came to me while you were talking and where I think it is so focused on every franchise conference you go to, everybody says, you know, you’ve got to get the right franchisees, the right franchisees, the right franchisees. And ultimately the franchisor is betting on this person.

 

Jeff Walter (30:25)

Thank you.

 

April of Secretsos (30:44)

we don’t actually know how they’re going to be as a business owner until they are in the thick of it, right? So what the franchisor is actually saying yes to is they’re saying yes to that person’s potential. That’s what they’re saying yes to. And where I see us going wrong as franchising as a whole is that if we don’t have, if we don’t understand the psychology and the emotional ⁓ triggers,

 

of these individuals that are coming into the system. And if we aren’t ready to address those, we could kill someone’s potential. And that’s what’s happening is that you either feed someone’s potential or you kill it. And often the way that they go through training and things of that nature without this bigger conversation about what they need to bring to the table and helping them remain bold and brave through the initial ups and downs.

 

so they have more resilience and more risk tolerance, we kill their potential because we aren’t talking about that and we don’t have anything in place to help them through those things.

 

Jeff Walter (31:48)

Yeah. So, so help me out. I like the way you phrase that as we’re banking, you know, the franchise or is banking on their potential. Cause I hear the same thing over again. It’s, it’s, it’s the fit, the fit, the fit, the first thing you gotta get the right fit. Then come the processes and technologies that, you know, operate on and all that, but you gotta get the right type of franchisee, which begs the question, well, who is the right type of franchisee, especially

 

You know, well, the best one is the one that has already been in your network and has demonstrated they can do it in spades. And then they just do it again and again and again. And that’s those, your multi-unit folks and all that, but that’s great. But, know, I got to, I got to start and bringing it. And I like the way you put that is you’re banking on their potential, you’re betting on their potential. So if, if we can go back to the conversation, you know, see you as the, as.

 

you know, as a when you when you were doing the kickboxing as a candidate, like let’s put the franchise or his head on the hat on and go, OK.

 

April of Secretsos (32:45)

as a candidate.

 

Jeff Walter (32:53)

How, what would the franchisor, I mean, obviously you’ve got a lot of tenacity and a lot of drive, but I’m thinking of that situation and going, okay, well, we see that a lot in franchising where it’s like, Hey, you come in, you do your couple, you know, one or two weeks at headquarters, getting trained, maybe you spend a week or two over at a company location or a friendly location, you know, on the ground doing things. then you, and maybe they come and help you when you launch your thing, when you launch.

 

And then the training kind of drops off, right? And there’s plenty of franchisers that do that, that continue it, but I’m just talking to general. What should or could that franchise or have done differently, or they might be doing differently today. Cause this was, you past history. You know, that would have done exactly what you’re saying. Things they could have done that would have.

 

Minimize, diminish the probability because we’re all paying probability here. Nobody, right? Nobody can predict the future, but, but look, lower the probability that they would diminish your potential. knowing everything, you know, now, if you went back and replayed that, cause we talked about that in some good detail. And I think it would be a nice illustrative example of what could that franchise or have done differently at that time? Cause you know, Lord knows what they’re doing now. You know, hopefully improve themselves beyond.

 

recognition. But what could they have done that would have improved the potential and not squashed the potential of not only you, but all those other franchisees that contacted you and said, help, right? Like what, what, what’s some of the things proactive actions they could have taken?

 

April of Secretsos (34:32)

Yeah, so actually this is what I help franchisors with now. So I have two companies where I ask reporters where I consult and then Secret Sauce helps all the franchisees through the curriculum that we’ve built to get them where they wanna go. So I actually do work with franchisors on this exact thing right now. And so a few different things. Number one, during the sales process,

 

I advocate for drawing a very hard line in the sand. Because when we say things, even when we say like, okay, this is all the training we’re gonna give you and this is how we’re gonna support you and we’re focusing on positive, positive, this is all the features of our brand and why you should sign up with us. The franchisee is making assumptions. So they’re not verbally asking questions.

 

Jeff Walter (35:01)

Okay.

 

April of Secretsos (35:20)

and they don’t know what questions to ask. And so they’re just assuming that that means, okay, good, great, I can breathe easy. I’m gonna come in and you are gonna give, you are literally gonna hand me paint by numbers. And when I finish one picture, you’re gonna hand me the next paint by number picture. So we have to draw a really hard line in the sand and say, this is what we will be giving you. And here is an actual list, which I have of the things that we do not give you.

 

that you will be responsible for either bringing it to the table, because it’s already part of your skillset, or you will be responsible for developing within yourself and within your team. And it lists out things. And what it does is that gets the conversation going and it gives the candidate a context for maybe some questions they should be asking that they otherwise would not think to ask. So they might be asking like, well, I mean,

 

Who would I talk to about this? Or what’s the difference? But I don’t understand what could possibly be different between business finance and personal finance. Isn’t it all money in, money out, right? So it starts conversations that are not happening now because there’s not a context for that person to work off of.

 

Jeff Walter (36:22)

Right.

 

And, and, and do you do that? I’m, yeah. I mean, it’s, I’m sorry. I’m, my brain is going in seven different directions, but you know, it, it, it’s tough because on the one hand you want to get them on, on, because you’re trying to get that territory filled. But the other hand, you don’t want to scare them away either. Right. And so how do you, how do you, how do you have like, well, how do you, how do

 

April of Secretsos (36:52)

Right? It is.

 

How do you fix that?

 

Jeff Walter (36:58)

Yeah. You know, and the, and the, thing that pops into my head is I was actually talking about it and where I was like, is, you know, I always think of these things as kind of like trying, it was like getting married, right? It’s like dating to get married and it’s like, well, you know, and is this interesting dance when you’re, when you’re dating for a mate, um, you know, I want to court them, but I also want them to know what it’s like to be in a longterm relationship with me, but I don’t want to scare them away.

 

April of Secretsos (37:27)

Right.

 

Jeff Walter (37:27)

Because, you

 

know, I snore at night and I don’t want them to, you I, you know, when in a relationship do I disclose that I snore, right? Like that type of thing. And, and, ⁓ you know, so.

 

April of Secretsos (37:35)

Right. Well, there’s a

 

few different ways to approach this. Number one, getting them educated on the fact that, by the way, that’s not our brand, that is franchising. So it doesn’t matter what brand you go to. Like if you go shopping brand to brand to brand, go ask them, do they have counselors on staff that are gonna help you with the emotional and psychological toll that being a business owner is going to have on you? The answer will be no.

 

There isn’t a brand out there that provides that, right? So this is education about how franchising works, that if you’re the franchisor providing this education, you can actually do it in a way where you’ve been more transparent with me. You’ve been more honest with me. You’ve actually laid out exactly the playing field that I’m stepping into. So I’m not going in blindsided.

 

So that’s one way to do it. And of course, the franchisors that are working with us, they have the actual answer to fill in that gap too. So that’s when our franchisors say, look, you’re gonna have to bring all of this to the table, whether you go with us or whether you go with, like if we’re pet brand, you could go with us, you could go with our two top competitors, you’re still gonna have to bring all this to the table. But with us, once we get you through operational training, then we have a separate

 

Jeff Walter (38:41)

Mm-hmm.

 

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (38:55)

third party program run by a former multi-unit franchisee that you’re going to go into. And that’s where you’re going to fill in all of these other gaps and they’re going to walk you through and help you do that. So that’s where we help franchisors actually elevate their system to beat their competitors. And we help turn those, keep that potential that the franchisee has when they originally come in. We help them see that potential fully realized.

 

Jeff Walter (39:21)

That’s really interesting. it’s ⁓ if I can, if I think I hear what you say, you paint that going back to your paint by numbers, you said, go look, here’s the entire paint by numbers. But our brand, you know, only gives you these six colors and these three paint brushes. And so you’re to be able to paint part of the canvas with that. But there are these other six colors you need, and you need these other specialized brushes.

 

for the rest of the thing. And we can point you to, here’s where you can get this paintbrush, here’s where you can get this, but it’s not something we do. And oh, by the way, it’s not just us. If you go with anybody else, they’re not gonna provide those colors either. And so at least we’re telling you kind of more open kimono what you’re getting into. Am I understanding that right?

 

April of Secretsos (40:12)

Yeah, yeah, I

 

think that’s a good analogy how I would say it, and I don’t know if this is on video too, but instead of it just being a portion of the picture, we’re gonna, you know, okay, we’re gonna paint, we’re gonna help you paint the picture. But then if you want it to look realistic, right? If you want it to go from a cartoon or like cartoon with shading and things, and suddenly it turns into more of a photograph.

 

Jeff Walter (40:18)

⁓ is, by the way.

 

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (40:39)

type picture where it’s fully developed and you could sell it for a lot of money, you’re gonna need more, right? And so that’s really, and that’s what we focus on too is I have a phrase that I use to really break this down for franchisees. And I said, look, why did you decide to own a business? It’s not because you wanted a job. It’s because you wanted more time freedom, more money,

 

Jeff Walter (40:46)

Okay, I gotcha. Yeah, yeah.

 

April of Secretsos (41:08)

more impact than you could do at whatever job you held before deciding to take this venture. And what I call that is swag. So we say you’re looking for more sanity in your life, not chaos. You’re looking for more time freedom, right? You’re looking for actual wealth, not just an income or a salary. And you’re looking to live a life of gratitude where you’re not worried about where, you know, the next…

 

Jeff Walter (41:21)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (41:35)

paycheck is coming from, or you’re not worried about team members showing up, you’re not worried about anything. And because you’re not worried, you’re in a place where you can be fully grateful and give back at a higher rate. Because that’s what most of these small business owners are actually motivated by, is making an impact on their communities and helping other people.

 

Jeff Walter (41:56)

Can you repeat that again? So the swag, so the S was sanity, sanity, wealth and gratitude. And the sanity is the chaos, the calm, not working 100 hours, know, building wealth, which is different than income. ⁓ And then the gratitude, which is having that

 

April of Secretsos (41:57)

Yeah. So swag, stands for sanity, wealth and gratitude.

 

The time freedom.

 

Correct.

 

Jeff Walter (42:22)

peace of mind so that you can give back to your community or, and it’s, it’s interesting. The gratitude I was talking to somebody yesterday on the show and we were just talking about the free market. And I believe in what, and one of the things I love about the free market is really you have to be of service to your customers. Right. And so the gratitude is not just

 

you know, I can do this so I can give to this cause that favors my heart, let’s say. But also I’m giving to my customer. I have to be a service because they have to voluntarily want to give me their business. Right. And so like I find the gratitude. That’s really neat. I really like that. That’s very cool. That’s very cool. And it, and it, and it, when you were going through it, reminded me of the conversation you had with your husband that we talked about earlier, right? Where you just, where you came in.

 

April of Secretsos (43:08)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (43:18)

you know, that one day and it was like, Hey, this is not why we decided to do this. Right. I mean, if you want it to work 80 hours a week, you could have just kept doing what you’re doing. And, know, and that’s not why we signed up for this, that we, did this for different, you know, and, and, and we found ourselves back in the same trap. I think that happens to a lot of people. Yeah.

 

April of Secretsos (43:40)

for sure.

 

And what happens is like people get into business focused on the passion more than the long-term vision. So, you know, I love dogs, so I decide I’m going to buy a dog grooming business. And then before they know it, they hate, they still love dogs, but they absolutely hate grooming dogs, but they are doing it all day, every day. And what happens is people get in,

 

and they dive into the passion piece. So they dive actually first into the gratitude piece. Let me make a bigger impact. my gosh, I’m so happy I’m making an impact. That they sacrifice building wealth and they sacrifice their sanity. And then when they burn out, now they’re like, okay, I really need some sanity in my life. And so what they do is they start cutting back their hours.

 

Jeff Walter (44:14)

Right.

 

Yeah.

 

April of Secretsos (44:30)

And again, they’re sacrificing wealth because they haven’t built wealth to account for that. So now they’re actually paying other people to work the hours and they’re not making any more money. But they also are like, I won’t, I’m not going to worry about making an impact just because I need a break. I need to pull back my hours. we always end up novice small business owners frequently are sacrificing one of these for the other. So that’s why the word and is actually really important in swag because

 

Jeff Walter (44:55)

Yeah.

 

April of Secretsos (44:59)

We’ve got to get to a place where we’re not sacrificing one for the other, where we can holistically experience sanity, wealth, and gratitude. And that means our focus has to change. We have to become obsessed with the things that allow us to have sanity, wealth, and gratitude. Gratitude has to mean more than just spending the day with the dog. Gratitude has to mean I’m now impacting my employees. I’m giving my employees an avenue

 

for a career, an avenue to establish skills that will help them go on in life and build more wealth for themselves. I’m gonna build more locations and territories so I can increase my wealth, but also because that allows me to employ more people, to help more communities, right? So it’s about getting people to really kind of think bigger than they’ve ever thought before, because they’ve only ever had to think about how their actions during the day impact a particular outcome.

 

as an employee. And so now, if we really want to build the life that you want, you got to think bigger, which takes courage. It takes a different level of courage and a different level of discipline and a different level of risk tolerance.

 

Jeff Walter (46:11)

Yeah, well, and I would also add to that. And I, it’s, it’s, it’s a, you know, when you’re an employee and I think this is something that a lot of business owners don’t get it first. It’s like, an employee, there’s only, even if you’re working 60, 70 hours a week, there’s only so much you can do for some type of return on your time. Right? Like, I mean, it depends on the industry you’re in and all that.

 

But, but there, there’s a practical upper limit of how much energy you can put in to actually get something out of it. Right. And I think one of the alluring things and one of the kind of dangerous things as a, a, as a business owner is there is no upper limit. Right. Every incremental hour you put in can yield incremental something. And, ⁓ and that’s a very.

 

hard thing to say no to. And I think what it boils down to, and I think some of the things you’ve been touching on with the swag is it’s, it’s what a former colleague of mine once said, it’s it’s leverage. It’s like, I can do these things and I can do that incremental hour of additional effort to get that incremental nickel. But I got to sit there and go, well, what are the high value things I’m doing?

 

And what are the low value things I’m doing? And then I got to give those low value things to somebody else. Cause I need, because as the business owner, I got to focus on the high value and you’ll hear it in a bunch of different things. You’re gonna get to work on the business, not in the business and things like that. But it’s really, I got to leverage myself and I can’t be sitting there mopping the, you know, if I’m working a hundred hours a week and I’ve got staff, I shouldn’t be.

 

mopping the floor, not because I’m above mopping the floor, but because that’s a necessary, but not high value task. It’s, you know, I mean, it’s a D you know what saying? But

 

April of Secretsos (48:15)

I know exactly what you’re

 

saying. And you just touched upon like, so that example of mopping the floor, there are two major limiting beliefs that are programmed into people that will make them mop the floor no matter what. And that’s where people get stuck. And one of those beliefs is my employees need to see me mopping the floor because if they don’t, they won’t respect me. They won’t work as hard because they…

 

Right? So it’s like, if I expect someone else to do it, I have to be willing to do it. And I need to show my employees that I’m doing it. I hear from business owners all the time that are afraid that if they’re afraid, if their employees don’t see them working and the employees are working, then the employees think that I’m just not doing anything. And then they get resentful towards me. And I’m like, that is a completely made up story in your head, but that holds people in those small menial tasks.

 

Jeff Walter (49:06)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (49:06)

And

 

then the other thing that holds them there is the scarcity thinking of, but if I can mop the floor and that’ll save me paying somebody else $15 an hour to mop the floor. So that’s something I can do myself and it’ll save me 15 bucks. And that’s the, that’s a misunderstanding between the way personal finances and business finances work. And so if we like those two things are some of the early things that we help.

 

franchisees and business owners, like reframe and reprogram, literally reprogram neurologically, those belief systems, because we got to break that. Those are unconscious habits that will continue to pull them down and back into those employee activities.

 

Jeff Walter (49:48)

Yeah.

 

Those are two really good things. Can you just repeat those one more time?

 

April of Secretsos (49:53)

Yeah, so one is like the belief system that, you know, I have to be the hardest working person in the business in order to earn the respect, in order to earn loyalty, in order to earn love or whatever it is from employees and from everyone else. And then the other one is not understanding the difference between personal and business finance. And so believing if I’m capable of doing a task, I need to do it because it saves me money.

 

Jeff Walter (50:08)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (50:21)

not understanding that it’s actually costing you opportunities to make much more money when you’re stuck in those tasks.

 

Jeff Walter (50:28)

And it’s, it’s that if I could hit the two in reverse, because it was a really powerful lesson, like the Kennedy. And if we look at that, that, ⁓ that job that you pay $15 an hour for. So I can be, if you do that, it’s like, congratulations. You just emptied your bank account to buy this business so that you can have a $15 an hour job. Like really that’s what you just did. And, and, and there’s, and it’s, and

 

The question is what can you do that others can’t? And it’s not right. Like, that’s where that value comes. And it’s, but it’s, but it’s like you said, it’s, it’s that, it’s that scarcity mindset of I can make an extra nickel if I just spend an hour doing this. And one of the things that was drilled into me by a mentor was yes. So what, so, but we all only have 24 hours in a day.

 

April of Secretsos (51:01)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (51:23)

So by spending an hour doing that task that you could have paid somebody 15 bucks an hour to do, what did you not do? Cause it wasn’t that you worked an hour less. if, like you can, whatever level of energy you’re willing to put in, let’s just say that’s it. But you only have so many hours in a day. So if you’re spending an hour doing that $15 an hour job, then what thing did you not do? It’s the opportunity cost. And that might be like,

 

I didn’t put that, I didn’t design that flyer for this that would bring in a thousand people through the door. I didn’t go to that networking meeting that, I didn’t do this other thing that I could not pay somebody $15 an hour to do, right? I would have had to pay a consultant $300 an hour to do, right? Like that type of thing. And I thought that was, I liked that, I really liked that.

 

April of Secretsos (52:14)

Yeah, so what I think is super interesting about what you just said is that conversation that you had with a mentor that worked so well for you, that conversation would work really, really well for a left brain person who’s more logical, analytical, explaining it in that way is gonna help them see that and potentially take different action. For right brain people, they can understand what you’re saying, but it will not be a catalyst to changing their behavior.

 

because the reason that they’re compelled to do that $15 an hour activity lies more in the subconscious programming and emotional attachments that they have to the way that they were brought up than it does about the actual logicalness of the task. let me give an example because this is probably the number one biggest thing that holds small business owners back that I see.

 

But let’s take, have two potential small business owners who grew up in different ways. The first one grew up where the parents lived paycheck to paycheck. They were cognizant of, you know, we get like one pair of school shoes at the beginning of the school year. You know, money is tight. We always have to weigh and measure. Do we have money before we can make a decision? Okay. Then you have another franchisee, small business owner who

 

If they wanted it, their family bought it. They went on vacations. Money was never an issue, never a concern. Now, when both of those people start a business, they have a certain amount of capital in reserves in order to get that business up and running. And in a franchise, they’re told to spend it on, a certain portion of that is already allocated because the franchisor has told you this is how much money you’re spending on things. Now, when they get past that point,

 

Jeff Walter (54:00)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (54:01)

The person who has always, money never has been an issue. They talk to a marketing person at the chamber who’s like, oh, you should put a billboard up on the 70. I can help you do that. That’ll be really, that’ll bring a lot of awareness. Oh, okay, sure. Here’s 10 grand. Let’s do the billboard. Because money’s never been an object. So they’re not making decisions with any understanding of the strategy behind whether or not it will work. It’s, like this person.

 

Jeff Walter (54:21)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (54:30)

I wanna do this, here’s the money. On the other hand, you have somebody who talks to that person and is like, well, I have X amount of money left in the bank and I have to make that money work forever because that’s how their life has always been, right? So it’s like, I don’t wanna spend money even on any marketing right now until I see how the business is going to go, until I can see how much money is coming in. So what ends up happening,

 

is that the person who’s spending the money spends it on things that are not productive. And they end up coming to a point where now they have, for the first time ever, they are feeling scarcity around money because it’s gone and they don’t haven’t seen any results with it. And the other person has held onto their money so much that their money has been going to just sustain them, literally sustain them personally versus growing the business. So now they’re out of money and everything feels tight.

 

Jeff Walter (55:20)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (55:28)

So that’s where people get to. And it doesn’t matter that you’re telling me that somebody else could be doing that $15 an hour job and I could be at the networking meeting because all I can think about is I have to save as much money as possible. If I don’t, then there’s gonna be zero in the bank account and then my business will close and I will fail. And that emotional like stress point overwhelms people and paralyzes them.

 

Jeff Walter (55:55)

So, so how do you break that cycle? Cause then another like lesson that was drilled into me by my mentors was in business, expense always proceeds costs. mean, costs always proceed revenue, right? Like it’s, it’s what you just said, right? I, gotta, I got to invest in the marketing before I get sales, right. And, and I got to buy the machine before I can make the widget. I got to hire the person.

 

April of Secretsos (56:16)

Exactly.

 

Jeff Walter (56:24)

before they actually generate benefit, right? Like cost always proceeds benefit. And so how do you break that, you know, that, that, that, that mindset, cause you just laid out two extreme mindsets, right? One is like, I’m not going to think it through and I’ll just throw money at it until it becomes an issue. And the other one is I, I’m, I, I am very uncomfortable spending anything before I see the defined benefit. And so.

 

Same thing. just, I just wither because nothing ever comes in because I’ve never, never make, I’d never make that investment. You know, how do you, how do you change that mindset?

 

April of Secretsos (56:54)

Right. Well, and

 

so.

 

I’m gonna explain that. But first, this exact thing is why I feel that under capitalization gets blamed for business failure. And I don’t think it is under capitalization, it’s under education. If we can change this and we can educate people and help them understand this and overcome this, then under capitalization won’t happen. Because they will use their money appropriately and understand how it generates more money when you do it that way.

 

Jeff Walter (57:10)

Okay.

 

April of Secretsos (57:25)

So ⁓ how do we do this? Well, there’s a couple of different things, particularly in franchising that need to change. The first thing is that many franchises, especially early franchisers, are trying to compete on price. They’re trying to get their initial franchise investment down to be as low as possible because they feel like they’re scaring candidates away by the initial investment being high. And this I would advise against. You do not want your franchisees to be

 

Jeff Walter (57:36)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (57:53)

undercapitalized. You also don’t want the franchisees who are coming in saying, ⁓ wait, it’s going to cost, you know, 150,000 instead of 75,000 to start a business. Well, then this isn’t the business for me. That’s an extreme low investment to start a true, you know, revenue generating business. ⁓ And so if those are the conversations, if you’re afraid of scaring people away from, for asking too much to get them prepared to be successful,

 

Jeff Walter (58:11)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (58:21)

Those aren’t good candidates for you. Those are people who are already so far down the scarcity rabbit hole, it’ll be hard to pull them out. So one, stop trying to sell franchises based on price. Create a true capital investment pro forma that spells out what people…

 

Jeff Walter (58:30)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (58:43)

realistically need in order to have the cushion that they need in order to get a business to be successful. So that’s one thing on the side of franchise that I would say. But the other piece of the puzzle, again, goes back to let’s educate people before we dive into actually securing financing. Because once we get the financing secured, I mean, once you have the SBA loan, you can’t go back and then say, wait, I miscalculated, I need more.

 

Right? The time to say what you actually need is when you’re applying for that loan. So again, this is where this education, if we can do this early, then that we can stave off and we can also help people understand what does it really look like as far as how do you calculate what you really need? Most people aren’t even creating a pro forma.

 

They’re just looking at the FDD and what is that initial investment? And then they’re pulling a random number out of the air for what they think they will need for working capital. these are all, again, it can all be solved with education. And it is something that we do, like some with the franchisors that we work with, we actually advocate in spending the first 30 days after they sign their agreement with us. And all we work on is educating around mindset, educating around business versus personal finance.

 

Jeff Walter (59:42)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (1:00:02)

educating on what it’s going to look like as far as like, let’s walk through a roadmap of what growth really looks like in a business and how does that growth happen? It happens from spending and not from saving. You cannot save your way to becoming a millionaire, right? You have to make the right investments in order to do that. So that piece of the puzzle, along with teaching people how to be self-aware of their limiting beliefs, how to uncover those limiting beliefs,

 

Jeff Walter (1:00:16)

Right.

 

April of Secretsos (1:00:30)

And then what is the process to break that belief and to form a new belief? And that’s a lot of mindset work. It includes like meditation for some people. Some people need a journal. Some people, there’s a lot of different methodologies that we talk about, but these are the things that we are talking about all the time. That’s why we have Alison Chavis inside Secret Sauce, who is our prosperity mindset executive coach. And she does, this is what she does is,

 

breaking old beliefs and reframing and let’s create a new belief that now you can take the proper actions on and your subconscious will no longer sabotage you. So yeah, and that’s why I think that our franchisees are so successful is because we layer that type of inner work with actual business acumen and business strategy.

 

Jeff Walter (1:01:10)

Yeah, pretty cool.

 

That’s right. That that’s really, you know, it’s I that’s really very cool by the way. Very, very cool. Cause it, you know, I use the word mindset, but it’s just a different way of approaching things and, and, separating your personal from your business finances. And then, I mean, I found this as a business owner personally, that doing that makes me a lot more comfortable to spend a dollar. yeah. Invest the dollar. Cause it’s like my personal finances are over here.

 

and my business is over here. I think a lot of business owners don’t think of it that way. They view that company checking account as their checking account, right? If I spent a dollar, it’s a dollar less in my pocket. And it’s a hard mindset to break.

 

April of Secretsos (1:01:57)

Yeah. Well, yeah, and I always advocate

 

too, like personal finances, when you spend money personally, it typically is an expense. It’s going out and it’s not creating more money. It’s not coming back. It’s because you got something in exchange for it, but not money necessarily. On the business finance side, every dollar you spend should be an investment. Like it’s at a strategy for turning that dollar into $2.

 

Jeff Walter (1:02:07)

Right.

 

Right, right. It’s mostly expense.

 

April of Secretsos (1:02:25)

So it’s a difference between expenses on the personal side versus investing on the business side. How do we use it to create more money?

 

Jeff Walter (1:02:31)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, exactly. And the successful executives, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or a large business, it’s the same way. It’s actually, it’s interesting that you use that analogy because in talking to folks that run training programs, I talked to them about the executive mindset. And it’s funny that you just use that. go, look, executives are very simple creatures. And I’ve been one for a while, so I understand this.

 

There’s only one thing we do. We allocate money. That’s all we really do. And there’s only two types of things we allocate money to. Just two. Things that are strategic investments, which is exactly what you just said. I put a dollar in, I get $2 back. And the other things are costs of doing business. They don’t, I put a dollar in and a dollar disappears. And there are things like that that I have to do.

 

I have to pay an accountant to file my taxes. I’m not going to get any return on that investment other than I don’t go to jail. Right? Like there, there are just things you got to do cost of doing business. And then as an executive, what you do is I want to minimize the amount of money that I spend on cost of doing businesses. So I can maximize the amount of money I put into strategic investments because that’s where I grow my business. And what I, what I convey to our clients is I go.

 

So the question is, where does your executive view your training program? Are you a cost of doing business or are you a strategic investment? Cause if you’re a cost of doing business, then your budget is going to get cut as soon as times are tough. It’s going to be the first to go last to come back. And you’re always going to be begging for money. If it’s on this side, you’re going to say, Hey, I need a dollar to do this. And a dollar is going to appear because they know they’re going to get $2 back somehow. And so it’s, it’s, it’s an interesting, it’s interesting to use that. Cause I’ve used that.

 

It’s one of the things I use with our clients. go, which side of the ledger are you on? And you’re right. But I never thought it on a personal side with a small business going, look, 90 % of what we do as individuals, as personal, it’s like, there’s my savings where a dollar goes in and $2 come out. But if I look at my checkbook, it’s all expense. There is no.

 

April of Secretsos (1:04:26)

Exactly.

 

Awesome living. Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (1:04:48)

There is

 

no coming back. There is no investment. So yeah, if you haven’t done that before, then you don’t. Yeah, that’s it. That’s, like that. That’s really good. That’s really good. So very good. So, is our, or does our times wrapping up is, April, it’s, it’s, has been really awesome. and I really like what you’re doing here. It’s really kind. It’s very cool. It’s very cool. ⁓ cause I, I’m a big believer. I’ve been a big believer in entrepreneurship.

 

April of Secretsos (1:04:56)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (1:05:13)

I always have been, I really believe it goes to the heart and soul of, it’s part of the American dream. It’s like owning your house. mean, owning your house is, you’re the entrepreneur of your home. You’re the CEO of your life, right? And then extending that, being able to be of service to create that value, it’s really cool. And to give people that feeling.

 

or helping them succeed at that is really wild. You know, it reminds me as you were talking about what secret sauce does. my, my, my daughter used to work at the national basketball association and, um, excuse me. And she was telling me, you know, um, you know, the, uh, you know, you get these players and they come in out of school and they, they, they, make quite a bit of money and your, your, your career is relatively short there. And.

 

She just told me of all the resources that they’ve that they put in and all the education that’s available to help these players set themselves up for life. and, and as I was thinking, as I was listening to you, it’s like, okay, here you got a bunch of people that made that leap into grabbing the American dream, being a business owner. They want to build wealth, you know, that swag, they want to have that lifestyle. They want to build wealth.

 

and gratitude and, you know, just like that player coming in and getting that big contract. And they just don’t necessarily know what they don’t know and how to actually set yourself up for life. and as you were telling, we’re going through it, was like, Hey, this is just like what they do with the NBA players. You know, they, they help set themselves up for life. It’s I mean, it’s really cool. It’s very cool. So thank you for.

 

April of Secretsos (1:06:47)

Hahaha!

 

Jeff Walter (1:06:54)

enlightening me and everybody in the audience. I really appreciate it.

 

April of Secretsos (1:06:57)

Yeah, no, it’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

 

Jeff Walter (1:07:01)

You know, and so before we get any anything else or any other pearls of wisdom, or would you like to just tell people if they needed to get a hold of you or secret sauce or ask April of Secretsos, what should they do?

 

April of Secretsos (1:07:13)

Yeah.

 

Well, I mean, you can definitely tune into our podcast, The Infinite Franchisee Show, where every week we share some kind of business strategy or tidbit that you could potentially apply to what you’re doing if you’re an entrepreneur. And then you can find us. We’ve been talking about the name of the company, Secret Sauce, but it’s spelled a little funky. It’s Secret S.O.S. So you can find our website at SecretSauce, secretsos.com.

 

and or askaproporter.com on any of our social media channels.

 

Jeff Walter (1:07:47)

April, thank you so much. It was great. And to everybody out there, thank you for listening. Really appreciate it.

 

Alright, how’d we