Bryan Park: Well of course thanks for having us on here Patrick. I’m Brian Park the more handsome and larger of the two. But I started the business in 2008. And before that, I was in the air force. I was young, I was in my early 20’s, newly married. Got out of the air force trying to figure out what to do in life. I was a history major in college, which means I don’t have a job. And moved back to Denver, move back home trying to figure out. My wife and I had gone out for dinner one night and came home and we have three puppies, cause that’s what normal people do, they get three puppies. They had eaten our carpet they just tore it up and shredded it. The pad was all over the house.

Footprints floors franchise

BP: I know, I got fired at an Arby’s. They owe me like 35 grand and they were like, good luck! And that was the landscape. I was 30 or 40 thousand dollars in credit card debt, had four dogs, and my wife was pregnant with our second daughter. I have a two-year-old, 800 square foot house. At that moment I was unemployed in the worst recession since the great depression. And I’m starting a flooring company in the winter and it’s a seasonal business, so not ideal. And that’s when I started Footprints Floors.

December 9^th of 2008 was our starting date. We went the next couple of months not doing any work. We just can’t. I was walking neighborhoods, putting flyers on doors, just trying to drum up any business. Hanging out at Home Depot hitting up customers in the flooring aisle. Just anything I could to support my young family. And then in February of 09,’ we did our first project. And then just started to roll from there. Kicked on marketing.  I ended up doing almost 550 thousand dollars that first year. A lot with my own hands. I’d gotten some old gear and I was doing all the floors myself. For the first half of the first year.

Once we got busy enough. I was doing a floor still myself and then I would have other crews running parallel with me. We got to a point where I was running three, four, five crews that the first year.

PF: What’s the profit margin? If you don’t mind. In 500k what’s kind of the industry profit margin for the foreign business?

Footprints Floors Franchise Cost

BP: Back then my profit margin was close to 50 percent. Because I was doing a lot of the work myself. Also, my wife was the receptionist. I was not paying her. So we make good money that year. We paid off that 40 thousand dollars in credit card debt. We were way upside down in our 800 square foot house because we bought it at the top of the market. Now the markets crashed so we had the cash to get out of that house. So it was a great first year to jump-start Footprints Floors. I learned that this could be a very profitable deal. But at that time and really for the next few years it was just growing a business in Denver with no intention of franchising. I intended to feed my family. And that was it, that was all I was planning on doing with it.

Franchise Development

BK: Yeah, so my story is probably more related to Footprints Floors franchise development. In 2012 we founded an organization called Raintree. We support franchise organizations like Footprints Floors franchise and a variety of others in all things recruitment. So franchise development, application to their business. We kind of took it as Bryan and founders and executive leaderships of different franchise organizations understand how to make unit-level economics for their franchisees. We understand how to go find more franchisees.

So in 2012 we started that company in 2018 and fast-forward to 2018 we met Bryan Park. We started discussing the opportunity of working together. I immediately had an attraction to the business for a variety of reasons.

BK: So I still maintain that role at Raintree but I also own three territories throughout Indiana.

PF: Incredible, and working at Raintree I understand they’ve represented 20 plus franchise brands, right?

BK: Yeah, probably a little bit more than that throughout our operation. Right now I think we represent about 14 in our portfolio.

PF: Have you ever had as close of a working relationship as with Footprints Floors? As with some of the other franchises in that portfolio?

BK:  I would say across all of our relationships we have a very similar working relationship as far as our franchise development responsibilities. But me being entrenched in the operation of Footprints Floors daily I have a stronger understanding of this model. More so with relevant tools and technologies and industry assistance. Just everything that´s happening, that’s impacting franchise owners I’m in the real-time understanding of that. As a recipient of all those services.

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“…being entrenched in the operation of Footprints Floors daily I have a stronger understanding of this model. More so with relevant tools and technologies and industry assistance. Just everything that´s happening, that’s impacting franchise owners I’m in real-time understanding of that…”

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PF: What attracted you to open and operate three territories for Footprints Floors? What was it about their business model as well as the industry as a whole?

Home Service Franchise

BK: I have been closely related to the service industry. Take flooring out of it. I’ve been closely related to tree removal, and window screens and my brother works at an interior design company. I’ve always been attracted to the needs-based business where there’s an easily identified need from the consumer. It’s not a hard sale per se. But as I evaluated Footprints Floors, just the level of infrastructure that Bryan’s put into place to create this operation where you can manage multiple jobs, multiple individuals, and a tremendous amount of output.

So it was largely the infrastructure that he and his team have to support us franchise owners. And I hate to use the word compartmentalize but, he’s compartmentalized the business into some key categories. This makes money over here, you need this player to make this money and he’s identified what we need to do as owners and it is quite simplified. So it’s the infrastructure that supports us to go and sell and manage. They take care of the rest.

BP: And so we called and hired a flooring company to come in and put in hardwood floors. I’m watching this guy install all and I was like this is kind of cool. I asked him, how much money do you make doing this? Don’t know 100 grand. I was like I can still go to school at night. Because the vision was that I was going to be temporary. I was going to install hardwood floors while I was finishing a different degree. I was going to be an engineer. And change kind of the course of my life.

I started floors for a company that I called them up and said: hey, are you hiring in? Sure. So I started working for those guys installing and sanding floors. I was a floor technician. Supporting my young family.

PF: So you just had the three puppies and daughter at that time?

BP: Three puppies. My daughter was born, and my oldest was born right about then. I think my wife was pregnant when my puppies eat the carpet. If I did the math right. So, I started working for those guys. So that’s about two and a half, three years later. I worked free for those guys for like six months. I was a W-2 employee and they weren’t paying.

PF: There was no payroll protection back then. You didn’t get anything.

BP: Well, yeah

Brian Knuth: That’s a new term, right? That’s a new coin term.

BP: No, there was no payroll protection. So yeah, they stopped paying their guys. I worked for free for like six months trusting they were going to pay me back. November of 08’ they sat me down at an Arby’s. They didn’t even buy me…

PF: Classy playstyle.