Franchise Success: Lessons from Lesly Harden’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Dylan Silver (00:00.642)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver, and today on the show I have Lesly Harden, really a franchise expert here on the show. Lesly, welcome to the show.

Lesly Harden (00:14.764)
Well, thank you so much for having me, Dylan. Super excited to be here.

Dylan Silver (00:18.444)
We’re excited to have you. Let’s start off at the top. How did you get into the franchise space?

Lesly Harden (00:25.234)
You know, it’s funny that looking back at it, it was pure coincidental. I was a graduate out of college thinking, you know, how can I put myself involved in a business that involves my passion, which is art, and of course, entrepreneurship. And so right out of college, I decided to build an art studio for children ages three to 17, and kind of became one studio, turned into two, turned into three, turned into five.

And it became a franchise shortly after that replicable concept where we can manage from different state lines. And that’s really how I got myself involved. I had no clue what I was getting myself into. Very hard, very expensive, but I learned a lot. so fast forward what, 12 years later, I’m still in the industry, just doing a little bit of a different role now.

Dylan Silver (01:18.944)
So franchising, and we talk about this being applicable to restaurants, of course, when people think of franchise, that may be the first thing that people think about. But here you have an art studio, and it was spurred by a passion for art. I believe you said you studied art. And so from there, you open up a business. Did you know when you opened up that business that the exit strategy was going to be franchising?

Lesly Harden (01:44.214)
Not at all, not whatsoever. You know, they were corporate locations, you know, owned by myself. And in fact, I believe the actual way that it happened, one of the parents of the students that we had there was, I guess, involved in franchising and had suggested, you know, this would be a great concept if you could have it in, you know, in Texas or in California or places where, you know, we would need more of these services.

and they were kind of the person that kind of introduced me to those individuals that were in the business or in that ecosystem and exposed me to it. So it was definitely a word of mouth thing. I would have never thought in a million years, hey, let’s turn this into a franchise. And like I said, lots of moving parts, lots of learning curves and the support that you would want to bring to a successful franchise is so needed for it to thrive and grow.

effectively and efficiently. so learning all that right out of college was a challenge. But we found our way to sell the concept, you know, I believe it within the seven year mark. And then after that, I just became involved in the corporate side of franchising through other brands. So.

Dylan Silver (02:58.934)
Are you still involved in the other business at all?

Lesly Harden (03:01.666)
No, I sold it and that was that.

Dylan Silver (03:04.416)
Okay, so you have an exit, you franchise, have an exit. This is like a lifelong achievement for most people. You did this really several years out of school. Walk us through getting the network of people to franchise your business. What were those early discussions like? And then, what’s the moving pieces here? I’m thinking attorneys, I’m thinking having to get educated yourself on what all this means. Of course you have the background from maybe school.

but there’s a lot of business acumen that you don’t necessarily pick up in a textbook.

Lesly Harden (03:39.974)
yeah, absolutely. Everything that I learned was trial and error and my own like hands like sleeves of roll up your sleeves and do it yourself kind of thing. So I learned obviously with industry attorneys that reached out to us through those connections from those parents that I mentioned to you earlier. There’s a whole sort of process that goes with the development of a franchise. So you have to have obviously an attorney.

You have to have maybe people that are going to help you create the operational manuals, everything related to from opening the door, turning the key to how you conduct a class or how do you put a lesson plan together. mean, all those things have to be documented. So a lot of it was my own sort of, I would say, creation of instructions or processes.

and then having a company that would kind of revise those processes and polish them even more until you have a finalized finished product. So anyone with pretty much any basic education can follow the system and follow the steps into conducting that session or that class from A to Z. So think of it like having a manual or a recipe to create the perfect cake. So that.

Everyone can have the same exact flavor in the end and that’s exactly what we what I had to do from scratch with the help of Professionals and of course once all of that was all put together nicely and packaged then we proceeded with with the attorney and kind of getting the franchise registered your trademarks and you know the FDD Do you want to sell in in California where you it requires more paperwork and then having access to that professional?

advisor, you know, guiding you every step of the way. So it was a lot. For a 24 year old, I think that was intense, you know.

Dylan Silver (05:39.298)
I just had a door swing open here in this dwelling unit that I’m gonna close this. Hold on a second.

Lesly Harden (05:41.714)
No worries.

Dylan Silver (05:50.988)
back. So you’re 24 years old, you’re now speaking with real, excuse me, attorneys, going through the franchising process. This is really some impressive stuff. Who were the people in your life that you were bouncing these ideas off of, or did you have partners in the art studio who were able to kind of help you navigate these waters?

Lesly Harden (05:52.338)
it

Lesly Harden (06:12.892)
So honestly, was all myself and my business partner at the time. We were just researching to young individuals, really, I mean, passionate about helping people, yes, passionate about education, sure, but entirely in the dark about what was the next thing we needed to do to make this actually work on paper, right? So a lot of it was going to trade shows or events that were related to

franchise development, international franchise shows, and then just really connecting and networking with the individuals in those fields or in that ecosystem that then pointed me in the right direction. Hey, I know this great person or this great broker that might help you get some momentum in your brand and exposure, or hey, I know this amazing…

person in franchise development that can help you in XYZ area of your business. So there was just so much, I would say value in all these events that we would attend to try to get ourselves involved in educating ourselves in this brand new world that we had no knowledge about. And that’s really how we learned or how I personally learned what I know today through events, networking, and just talking to industry experts in the field.

Dylan Silver (07:35.405)
Networking for me, Lesly, has been everything. It’s been huge. I could have, 31 now, if I could go back three years when I was thinking about getting into the real estate space and almost swap all the time that I put into kind of Xs and Os and strategy for just networking, I think it would have been like.

almost a 5X increase in, or you would say maybe decrease in the time that I spent doing a lot of these things. But I want to talk about something that you mentioned here. 24 years old, navigating these decisions, networking business partner, You have this art studio that was really your baby, your passion, right? And you’re having to make these big decisions.

Were there any pivot points when you were going about this where you said, wow, this is really like a make or break moment? Or did you kind of hedge risk in a way?

Lesly Harden (08:28.934)
You know, at 24 years old, I don’t think I was thinking of anything, but like the worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t work. So for me, it was very low risk because I had nothing to lose per se. Like me as myself, had no, I was not married. I didn’t have any children at the time. You know, I found it enjoyable to just take action and see what the next moment would look like.

Maybe for some people, obviously with families and things like that, that’s way too risky. But for a young person that wants to go at it at the entrepreneur world, or business world, go for it. So for me, it was just a venture and lots of education and figuring out if this could even be, like I said, replicable.

Dylan Silver (09:15.906)
Having that proof of concept is an amazing deal. think for most people, they feel that first kind of rush of, this works, and that’s their jet engine fuel. I believe you mentioned you had seven locations before you sold. Five, OK.

Lesly Harden (09:32.978)
Corporate stores were five, five corporate stores. And then, you we sold another five agreements of which I believe two or three were open. But then at the time that I left the organization, you know, they had nearly 10 total.

Dylan Silver (09:47.552)
And so walk me through chronologically time point you started the business to the time point you had just that second store.

Lesly Harden (09:55.794)
started in 2011 literally with 900 bucks in my pocket I had no idea what I was going to get myself into and two years after that I had my second location so in between the first location to the second store I moved twice because I grew so quickly in that first year with the offering you know I was

doing free classes essentially, because nobody knew who I was, nobody knew anything about the brand or the name. And that’s how I got people excited to trust us that we would give their kids a good service in their after school activities. And so that blew up, know, you know, service free, check us out, come in and just have a nice time, an hour of an art class. And within the year, I had to move my store.

Dylan Silver (10:28.142)
Yeah.

Lesly Harden (10:51.794)
to a bigger spot because it was just too many students that the space could not handle. So from that moment, I realized, okay, well, we have something special and we can definitely replicate this and build more local locations to see if it could withstand the possibility of even considering this to be a franchise. So it took me about four years to get everything down to its science.

And then on, I guess, year four was when I decided, okay, sure, this seems to be okay to franchise now that we’ve done it ourselves through trial and error and figured it out.

Dylan Silver (11:33.834)
So would you say that that’s pretty typical for people, and I’m sure every case is different, but when people are looking at possibly franchising their business, that they open up a few locations that they personally manage themselves, and then they have maybe outside investors or interested parties come in and say, hey, we see what you’re doing here. Have you ever thought about franchising?

Lesly Harden (11:54.034)
Absolutely, I think the longer you can be a corporate and like a you know, corporately owned like like yourself owning it yourself the better because then you have proof you have data you have you know seasonality you can tell okay, this is the the period where things are gonna drop off or here’s where how we Pivot and adjust, you know, you have lots of data to to understand if your business is going to be you know, like like they say a hero or a zero

So you want to make sure that you have lots of that to or proof, you know, to be able to to to grow it and also to come to to tell the the audience, hey, I actually have a product that you might be interested in investing. So the longer that you have it, the better, because I from my from my experience, I could not sell something or promote something that I knew was not going to be, you know, successful. And in six months on the road, somebody is going to be complaining that the numbers don’t make sense. You know.

Dylan Silver (12:22.766)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (12:52.824)
So pivoting a bit here, so you scaled this business as your baby, you get the franchise, it must be a huge win, right?

and then you ended up selling the business, right? So, many people, like those are two distinct and huge victories, the franchise and then the selling. Having not sold a business myself, but owning a business, but also hearing about other people who own businesses and are looking to sell them, that kind of high and also the relief of selling is like no other. So walk us through kind of the journey of selling the business, once you had franchised it and it had grown to a certain degree.

Lesly Harden (13:29.202)
So, you know, selling was entirely kind of like a bittersweet experience for me. Of course, being the founder, because that’s what I would consider myself to be at the time, you know, the founder, the creator of that baby or of that business was emotional, you know, seeing it from very, very humble beginnings to what it was at its peak. I would say that the experience was…

somewhat emotional but also a relief because now someone else can then give it more love than I could have simply because resources and I would say resources money time is so important for even bettering of systems which I didn’t have so at that point where I realized you know if I’m not able to give my franchisees the ultimate most support and and the

best sort of, I would say the best interaction and best everything that I can possibly give, then what am I doing here? Like I would not feel comfortable continuing to promote or sell a business that I don’t have the bandwidth for or stretching myself so thin that I’m not gonna be able to meet the request or the metrics that people are looking for. So I thought it was a prudent time.

Dylan Silver (14:50.062)
Yeah.

Lesly Harden (14:54.438)
to sell at the time that I had the opportunity to sell because I knew that the next company that bought this business was going to do even better of a job than I could with the resources that I had at the time. So I felt a relief in that sense to be able to give an opportunity to somebody with more knowledge, more money, more resources to acquire my business so then they can do better.

Dylan Silver (15:06.414)
I hear you.

Dylan Silver (15:18.262)
It’s really amazing hearing this story because I haven’t spoken to someone who their business was so, I guess, personal to them. Like it’s a passion project. You like art, right? Many people that I’ve to, I’ve spoken to people who’ve sold car dealerships. I’ve spoken to people who’ve sold real estate.

tech related services and et cetera. And yeah, this could be someone’s baby too, but this is a different thing when you’re talking about the arts, right? And your personal passion for it. And it’s very apparent in talking to you just how deeply you cared about that business.

Lesly Harden (15:56.634)
Absolutely, I mean, like I said, coming out of an art school, realizing that, you know, I wasn’t going to make a living with the paintings that I created, because let’s be honest, there’s a million people that have immense amounts of talent out there. It was a non-negotiable for me, and it was easy for me to realize, you know, I can serve the community, I can also make a decent living, and I can, you know, eventually employ local artists as well, because…

at the time is, you know, and it’s still hard as an artist to be able to make a living for yourself if you’re not constantly selling your pieces every single day, you know?

Dylan Silver (16:33.836)
Let’s pivot a bit here, Lesly, and let’s talk about homevestors. Let’s talk about this, and I’m familiar with this kind of tangentially. I’ve heard people say the term, and I’m kind of aware that, okay, this is an actor in the real estate space, but what does homevestors do?

Lesly Harden (16:50.194)
So Homevestors is a franchise real estate investing concept. They buy houses, they fix houses and sell them. Typically the houses that they acquire are in disrepair. So houses that need a lot of work. And so the people that we serve are sellers that are looking to get out of a rough patch of their life. It could be a house that they inherited recently. It could be a house that they really don’t want. Maybe it’s a hoarded house.

Maybe it’s a house that, you know, just requires a lot of TLC and they’re calling us for help and a lifeline. And so these individuals reach out to us through the advertising that we do and they opt in to our 800 number and call us directly for some assistance. And that’s what we do.

Dylan Silver (17:41.26)
And so you’re offering them basically a cash offer and a way for them to get out from underneath the problem. But then you’re also working with investors to find properties that meet their needs as well.

Lesly Harden (17:54.716)
So all the franchises that we have are individually owned and operated. So they’re operated by franchise owners. So the corporation, it’s Homebusters, but everything else as far as the locations, let’s say in Kansas City and Fort Lauderdale, wherever, all over these cities in the country, they’re owned by franchisees, regular people, just like you and me, small business owners. And so…

They’re the ones that are boots on the ground, locally owned, locally operated, and helping those communities thrive through the work that they do.

Dylan Silver (18:29.806)
And so your role over at Homevestors is finding more individuals who’d like to have a franchise, a Homevestors franchise.

Lesly Harden (18:39.612)
Correct. So my role is to help people find options if they are looking for an opportunity in business, whether it’s franchise business or maybe they’re interested in real estate and kind of giving them that option as it pertains to real estate investing. And typically the individuals that we help could be people coming out of corporate America, maybe they’re getting ready to retire, or maybe they want something different and something a little bit more meaningful.

to do and that is, you know, wanting to help people.

Dylan Silver (19:13.926)
And so is owning a Home Vestors franchise, is this going to be something where they need to have a real estate background or do you see lots of different avatars of individual who might be interested in this?

Lesly Harden (19:28.978)
Sure, you know the avatar really you don’t have to have a real estate background if you are willing to You know follow a process a recipe to make that beautiful delicious cake at the end Then that’s what we want someone that has an open mind that is willing to follow a process That doesn’t want to reinvent the wheel and that is willing to follow that blueprint So you don’t have to have real estate license. You don’t need to be a realtor You don’t need to have any kind of background in real estate whatsoever because we will teach you

with the tools and the resources that HomeVestors provides, you’ll have a coach or a mentor from day one. Whether you have zero experience or 25 years in the business, you’ll still have your coach to access any information or whatever case you need for the business.

Dylan Silver (20:16.95)
I’m thinking about the businesses that I’ve been a part of in the real estate space and I guess having the opportunity to be a franchise owner while also participating in real estate is a huge win-win because I think about myself as when I was working for a big box wholesale dispositions company, right?

not really seeing all sides of the game. And I’m thinking, man, if I would have had the capital to invest in a home investors franchise, I could have taught myself the game from people who are operating at the highest level.

Lesly Harden (20:52.732)
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s exactly what I would say joining a network or a franchise could do for someone that might want to avoid having to figure all those nuances out themselves is, you know, what a relief is to have maybe an on-speed dial advisor or what a relief is to have a marketing engine that’s constantly generating leads for you while you sleep. You don’t have to door knock.

You don’t have to cold call. You don’t have to do any of that. You just have the brand that has been around for nearly three decades doing that for you. And in addition to that, you have all the financing behind the franchise, the programs to buy these houses and fix them. So if you’re looking to kind of save yourself some time, of course, real estate investing, anyone can do this on their own. That’s a fact. But if you want to maybe save yourself the time, save yourself some of the potholes that you might come across.

then this could be an option to consider that saves you a little bit more work than you have to do.

Dylan Silver (21:55.958)
Lesly, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to get ahold of you?

Lesly Harden (21:58.322)
You know, I’m on LinkedIn all day long. love that platform. You can search Lesly Harden, L-E-S-L-Y, because it’s a little different spelling. And yeah, I’m on that platform. If you want to jump on a Calendly one-on-one and learn more, that’s the best way to reach me is on that specific social media platform, Dylan.

Dylan Silver (22:22.774)
Lesly, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Lesly Harden (22:26.98)
Absolutely, Dylan. It was a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks so much.