Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue IV, 2015 | Page 64

Counts!

Culture
says Casey. “It’s much easier to acquire than
to build, although we do both. To go into a
new market with a 50-store footprint with
20, 30, or 40 years of goodwill is priceless.”
Nevertheless, when it comes to introducing its culture and implementing change,
their biggest challenge is resistance from
the system’s franchisees, says Sam, the
company’s CEO, who focuses on franchise
growth and store operations; while Casey,
as president, leads the company through
big-picture initiatives like acquisitions.
“You have a culture you want to implement for the customers, but the first person you have to get past is the franchise
owner,” says Sam. “At the end of the day
the franchisee is still an entrepreneur and
wants to make their own decisions.” He
says franchisees can get stuck in the ways
they’ve been operating for years, and even
if it’s sub-optimal, they’re still getting by.
“You’re tampering with their income.
Their money is on the line,” says Casey.
Building trust with them and a comfort
level with a new culture can be a slow process, says Sam. “We don’t make changes
immediately. We come in and take some
time to understand what the company was
built on,” working with the previous owner
whenever possible. “When they see you’re
implementing systems that help them before it helps us, it makes a big impression.
Then it’s much easier to create buy-in and
start creating the culture you want.”
But it still takes time. “When we take
over a company, we focus on a system to
help our franchisees make more money,”
says Sam. Nevertheless, it can takes 24 to
36 months to break some bad habits and
create new ones. “We were franchisees
first, so we understand what it takes to
operate a store. We make sure systems are

62

not only easy for franchisees to use, but
also for employees. We create programs
and systems that have worked well for
other operators.”
Despite the advantages of the improved
systems, marketing support, and expertise
Askar Brands offers, some operators just
don’t fit into the new way of doing things,
and the brothers work with them to find
the most amicable way to part. While those
are not easy conversations, says Sam, he
says it’s for the best interests of the system
over the long term. “You can take good to
great in less time than bad to good.”
Driving team
Rick Nussle is a first-time franchisee who
came to franchising after 32 years in the
commercial printing business. He learned
about the SafeWay Driving brand in an unusual way: he did their printing and got to
know Brad Coleman, a former NASCAR
driver who, along with a group of former
SafeWay students, bought the brand from
the founders four years ago.
Nussle was looking for a change, had
been thinking about franchising, and SafeWay offered him the chance to “do some
good for the kids and make some money
too,” he says. Having done the brand’s
printing for the better part of two years,
he’d performed an informal due diligence.
And as soon as franchises were available,
Nussle bought up all seven school zones
(territories) in Katy, Texas.
His attitude? “Let’s go do this thing, I
believe in it so much,” he says. “I told myself I probably wouldn’t make money for a
year, but about month six or seven I started
making money and haven’t stopped yet.”
What attracted him to the brand was
its team culture, which he says is much

different from other brands he’s looked
at. “It’s almost like a sports team. We really are a team,” he says. Nussle and all the
instructors go through the same extensive
training at SafeWay University, speak the
same language, and share the same values.
“The culture we have is almost like a
family,” he says, a family that extends to
the families of the teens they teach. After
each lesson the instructors take time to
speak with the parents, rather than just
dropping off the students and heading out.
The instructors are all teachers (one is
retired), used to working with young people. They work part-time and get together
with Nussle regularly on the weekends,
usually for breakfast, where they review
the week and look for ways to improve as
a team. And all are or were sports coaches.
“That’s where the team mentality comes
in,” says Nussle.
He also was attracted by the brand’s
“Driver’s Ed at Your Speed” program, a
specialized curriculum designed for individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum diagnoses, ADD/ADHD, and learning
and processing differences. Developed in
partnership with Social Motion Skills, a
501(c)(3) organization, the program offers
intellectually capable studen