The Fruits of Being a Franchisee With Brian Beers, President at Prenlyn Automotive

Brian Beers is President at Prenlyn Automotive and the podcast host of Business with Beers. He has grown his small family franchise auto repair business into an enterprise with thirty locations. Brian’s mission is to teach people how to create freedom and build wealth by owning franchises.

In this episode…

For those interested in becoming an automotive industry franchisee, what are some initial barriers they’ll have to overcome? What are the advantages to becoming a franchisee as opposed to starting your own business from scratch? What do franchisors look for in a potential franchisee?

According to Brian Beers of Prenlyn Automotive, the benefits of becoming a franchisee in the automotive industry are numerous. For starters, you join a network of other franchisees who have likely experienced and solved the same problems you may face. Additionally, you reap the benefits of national advertising with known brands offering franchise opportunities. Finally, sellers are more likely to sell to you if you already have franchisee experience.

On this episode of Gain Traction, Brian joins Mike Edge to discuss all things related to franchising in the tire and auto repair industry. Brian talks about the benefits of being a franchisee instead of starting your own business, why you become an attractive buyer for additional stores if you already have franchisee experience, and how franchising in the tire and auto repair can be easier than owning a franchise location in food and beverage. Don’t miss this informative discussion!

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Brian Beers talks about how he resurrected his parents’ automotive business, leading to expansion
• Why Prenlyn’s expansion has mostly taken place in one particular region
• The advantages of working at one of Prenlyn’s franchise locations
• Brian discusses the benefits of being a known franchisee compared to the difficulty of starting out as a family business
• Why franchisors often prefer to sell their stores to buyers with previous experience as a franchisee
• How a franchisee can learn from others within the same brand

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Brian Beers on LinkedIn 
• Business with Beers podcast
• Brian Beers Franchise Coaching 
• Midas 
• Smithers
• Traction Summit 2023
• Mike Edge on LinkedIn
• Tread Partners

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast, where we feature top automotive entrepreneurs and experts and share their inspiring stories. Now let’s get started with the show.

Mike Edge:

Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast. I am Mike Edge, your host today. The Gain Traction podcast is where I talk with top automotive business leaders. Before I get started and introduce my guest today, I’d like to promote the Traction Summit, which is hosted by Smithers. The summit this year is May 23rd to the 25th in San Antonio, Texas, where attendees will have the opportunity to understand and discuss the future of the tire industry, while also networking with fellow colleagues and professionals. This year’s theme is sustainability in tires with topics of discussion, including new materials for tires, reduction in tire wear particles, carbon block, material selection and impact on tire performance, end of life options for tires and more. Smithers has been in the tire testing market since the 1920s, almost a hundred years old, and has a very strong brand for independent expert opinion on tire performance.

Along with presenting leading industry information at Traction Summit, with over 90 years of expertise in rubber testing, Smithers provides custom tire analysis and standard testing to meet your requirements. So visit tractionsummit.com for more information. This episode is brought to you by Tread Partners and the Retread Marketing program. What in the heck is the Retread Marketing program? It is a full scale customer re-engagement program to win back a shop’s best lost customers. It is a one-time, 120-day program that generates a guaranteed 10x return on investment. That is correct, a 10 to one guaranteed ROI. This is no tricks, no gimmicks. These are customers in your point of sale system right now. So what we’re saying is if you invest $4,000 today, you’ll receive a return on those that we targeted, $40,000 that they spent back with you within 120 days. So what are you waiting for? You can email me, [email protected] or learn more at treadpartners.com.

My guest today is Brian Beers. Brian is an entrepreneur, investor, podcast host and father. He is president of Prenlyn Automotive Group, a 45-year-old family run company that operates Midas Auto Repair franchises throughout Philadelphia and New Jersey. He grew his small family franchised auto repair business into an enterprise with 30 locations. Now he is on a mission to teach people how to create freedom and build wealth by owning franchises. He is also the host of Business with Beers podcast. Every week you can listen to, and learn from other successful guest entrepreneurs on the podcast. Brian, it’s a pleasure having you.

Brian Beers:

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike:

Yeah, glad to have you. And I want to learn more about what you’re doing in regards to the franchise space. We get a lot of listeners in this space that think about growing their business. We’ve had some guys on here that have, they’re a 10 franchisee group right now, but they want to grow more. I think we have a lot of listeners that probably could benefit from your expertise. So let’s just kind of start from the beginning. Where are you originally from and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Brian:

Yeah. So, born and raised Philadelphia. I spent four years in Miami, down for college, but besides that, came back. I live five minutes from my parents’ house.

Mike:

You missed the cold weather, huh?

Brian:

Yeah, yeah and the seasons and everyone else. I don’t know. No one was from Miami. No one’s from Miami. At least all my friends, they’re all from New York or Maryland or wherever they’re from and it’s kind of funny but it gets hot, man. You go down there in August, it is hot.

Mike:

Yeah.

Brian:

Anyway. So, my family got started in Midas in 1976. My dad got into the business, he was 22 years old with my granddad and looking for something, kind of tried a bunch of things, didn’t work, and his uncle was up in Boston and it must have been the ’60s and Midas had a lot of success and so they said, “Hey, let’s try it.” And they opened up one location and over the years his brother-in-law joined my uncle and they started buying and opening up locations. And then I joined in 2010 after college.

Mike:

Fantastic man. So this ended up, this was your first real job then too, right after-

Brian:

Yeah, pretty much. I had other jobs, I did like software development and I did some other things. But yeah, I mean it was pretty much. It was like ’08, ’09, ’10 were tough, right?

Mike:

Yeah.

Brian:

On a lot of businesses, including theirs and they’d been in it for 30 something years at that point and they had spreadsheets put together to sell the business. We own some of the real estate and they could sell the business off and they weren’t making anything. I remember seeing tax returns, it was like $50,000, they had six locations at the time and it was tough. And the landscape changed from what it was back in the day, the total car care with low price oil changes and all this stuff. And they were tired of it. So anyway, I joined and I breathed a lot of new energy into it and start networking with other franchisees, traveling across the country, trying to learn best practices and bring those things back and starting to put them in place. And, we started having success, we started growing the sales and then in 2016 my brother had joined and then that’s when we decided to start expanding.

Mike:

That’s awesome. And what influenced your decision to, obviously you seem like you’ve stayed pretty tight in Philly, New Jersey. Was that about design or those opportunities, were they just there? I mean, you know what I’m saying?

Brian:

Yeah, I mean we’ve looked at other opportunities like now, I mean now. So today we have 30 locations and all of our growth has been primarily growth through acquisitions of older franchisees that want to retire and get out of the business. That has been, I think I’m the retirement plan for at least five or six people. And so we pay-

Mike:

It’s good to know though. I mean you know you’ve got that out there, right?

Brian:

Yeah, it’s mostly seller finance deals. We make a down payment and then we just ACH them every month, four grand, 10 grand, eight grand, whatever it is for the term of the loan. We’re buying five, six, seven stores at a time sometimes so, yeah, so we’ve looked at other opportunities, but then if it’s a plane ride away and a different time zone and stuff, I don’t know, that little bit outside our comfort zone to do we want to be scattered all across the country or do we continue to just spider out from here and go, we can obviously got DC, Maryland’s like an opportunity, maybe we can go up north a little bit more. And I don’t know, it’s a little bit easier when it feels like you can drive to it.

Mike:

Exactly. I agree. And you feel like you can keep your hand on it. Well what about the personnel? Have you been able to retain most of the people that you-

Brian:

I mean, it’s kind of like we have a hundred percent turnover if you look at the payroll company, but really it’s kind of the last in first out. You’ve got your core group of people who are very stable. We’ve got guys been with us for 30 years, 20 years. We have a lot of tenured people like that but then it’s like that most recent role seems to be the one that we have the challenge sticking with it. But yeah, we have a really good team. We’re constantly looking for ways of how we can add to that but we have good compensation, we have good benefits, we’ve got good… We try to create this good culture.

And I think one of the be benefits of a franchise, especially at our size, is employees get the best of both worlds. They’ve got the national brand, we got Midas, so we have national TV and advertising and all these buying benefits, but then we have local owners. So it’s my brother and I are the two owners, we’re the decision makers. Everything stops with us. So we celebrate birthdays and work anniversaries and I’m in the stores too and we kind of have the best of the local family ownership, but then we also have this national buying power of 401ks, health insurance, all the big stuff. So there’s a big benefit I think for us.

Mike:

You probably give everybody the ability to, they can contact you or your brother.

Brian:

Yeah, we’re on Slack. We use Slack as our communication platform and we use some Teams too, but mainly Slack and so yeah, I’m on Slack, we’re posted up, guys are posting every single day. Tickets, tickets they sell and success they’re having and everyone’s commenting or reacting, like emojis. We try to make it fun. People have a lot of choices on where they work and our kind of value proposition where we try to promote is like, Hey, it’s this kind of fun interactive and the people that are engaged, yeah, they do really well and they thrive and the people that are disengaged and just want to, I don’t know, not be part of it, a lot of times they don’t.

Mike:

Paycheck basically. Yeah. So speaking of your experience with franchising and being a franchisee, you’ve gotten into this coaching and consulting side on that for the automotive people that listen to us and are thinking about franchising, tell us about some of the initial barriers that you think about that they should consider, that they may overlook. Anything out there that sends is an obstacle that you see that’s always or most-

Brian:

Yeah, so I guess for somebody, yes, so somebody who is an independent shop and they’re thinking, Hey, I want to grow this. I want to grow my business, so what do I do? [inaudible 00:09:37] I mean, one option you’d have is you buy out other competitors or you open stores and then you have your own brand, right? Joe’s Automotive or whatever it is. That’s like one path. Another path is you say, Hey, I’m going to convert over to a Midas or a Meineke or whatever other brand and fly that flag and then I’ll look to grow within that system. Those would be the two paths. So why someone, I guess, would choose one path or the other, why they would choose the franchise path, there’s a couple reasons. Number one, I think it’s the quickest, one of the quickest paths to growth. In our business, especially in the northeast here, real estate is extremely hard to come by. Good, prime locations, we need 4,000 square foot, major road six bays or whatever.

And all those spots are corporate locations or franchises. And so for an independent to come and say, Hey, it’d be so expensive ’cause you would’ve to buy non automotive land, turn it into a shop and then zone it right. It has to be zoned and all this stuff and so it becomes a bottleneck for people that want to grow. It’s a bottleneck for us, even within a franchise. But once you’re in a franchise system, and especially if you have older neighboring franchisees like we’ve done, those shops are occupied by other Midas franchisees, they want to sell it, it has to stay a Midas or has to stay a Meineke or whatever it is and so that creates then these opportunities to be able to take over these locations. And so I think that’s a huge benefit.

Mike:

[inaudible 00:10:59] talk about that on your last podcast, didn’t you?

Brian:

I might have.

Mike:

Yeah.

Brian:

Oh yeah, yeah. I was talking about… Yeah, so what I was talking about was there’s some people that want to buy an existing shop or buy an existing franchise, and it’s very hard to buy an existing franchise because like 95% of franchise, doesn’t matter if it’s automotive or home healthcare or cleaning, doesn’t matter what it is, our sold franchisees sell to other franchisees. And so every single one of my stores of the 30 I own now, one of them was listed publicly and we even had a first shot at that and we didn’t want to pay the price that he wanted. It went public, he couldn’t sell it in the time that he needed to so it came back to us and we bought it at a discount. So for someone and an outsider, it’s really hard to break into a franchise system because all these transactions are happening, but they never hit the public. You never know about it.

So the recommendation I have for people if they want to grow within a franchise system is like, do whatever you need to do to get your foot in the door at that one location. That might, in a lot of cases, that’s like a new location or a new franchise. But then once you got your foot in the door, then you know, you create the relationships, you network with other franchisees, you go get, join the different committees that you can, you go to the meetings and then you start talking to people and letting them know, Hey, when you’re interested in selling, please give me a shot. And that’s what I’ve done tons and tons of times. I mean even have, I have multiple emails out to people even as of today in other markets saying, “Hey, whenever you’re interested in selling, I hope that we’ll be your first contact” and in most cases, I’m the first contact and I’m a lot of times the only contact if we want to get the deal done.

Mike:

That’s awesome. Well, and you set example with the audience here today, the one where, on your podcast you had said something about, because everybody can relate with selling a home.

Brian:

Yeah. Okay.

Mike:

[inaudible 00:12:46] yeah.

Brian:

Yeah, so I like to relate to selling your home, and this goes to the franchisee, to the outsider. So if you’re selling your home and you want to sell it to a first time home buyer, what you’re going to experience, most likely, is younger people coming in, they want a million inspections to the home, all the different things. They’re going to have their uncle and their cousin and their brother and all these other people walk through and then they’re going to nitpick all this stuff. They’re going to come back with this laundry list of things that they want you to fix, before you sell it. And then their mortgage has to be cosigned by four different people. And you have no idea if this thing’s going to close. And you might have lost other buyers during this lockup period. I think for some people selling a home, that’s what they’ve experienced, or you’re selling your house to this older married couple who is downsizing, they already have the cash to close in 30 days, they’re going to have like a light inspection, they’ll get handle all the repairs. It’s super easy.

And you might be able to get more money from that first time home buyer but the headache of it all, is it worth it? And so a lot of times franchisees view outsiders as that first time home buyer. They’re going to put the franchise itself under the microscope and their franchise and if they don’t really know the business model, they’re going to question a lot of things. And then the franchisor has to approve them, net worth, liquidity. They got to go to training, they got to do all this stuff, these background checks. And at the end of the day, all that stuff, you might get to the finish line and it falls through. The franchisor decides, “Hey, this guy’s doesn’t meet our culture and we don’t like him.” And then you’re back to the drawing board versus [inaudible 00:14:15].

Mike:

It’s mentally exhausting.

Brian:

Yeah, and it’s tiring. So for a lot of people when they want to sell their business, especially the ones I’m buying. When they want to sell, they want to sell. They just want to get out, they want to retire, they want to go do the next thing, they’re going to move, whatever it is. And they’re like, I made this joke, but they’re like, they’re not looking to maximize some like ROI or some number on a spreadsheet or anything. Really they just want to pass their business off to somebody who that they believe will take care of their employees and will do a good job. And so in a franchise, it’s easy to establish that reputation as somebody who takes care of their employees and is a good performer. And at least in Midas, a lot of the information is shared. And so that’s how we’ve been positioned and that’s helped us got a lot of deals versus that outsider, there’s a total stranger, it’s totally unknown. There’s so many unknown factors. And so franchisees are going to exhaust all existing other franchisee resources first before they list.

Mike:

Ah, I think that’s a great way of looking at it and I love the way, I mean, look man, there’s no risk for you the way you’ve done this and you reach out to all these people and you know somewhere in the next 2, 3, 5, 10 years, you’re going to have these people calling you back because they’re ready to check out and you’re already in the franchise. So you make it easy on them.

Brian:

Yep, so for somebody, so maybe somebody who’s younger and has a shop and it’s like, Hey, do they want to convert it? It’s a question for them of what’s their growth path to, and do they want to convert? And some of the other benefits of being in franchise, number one, I mean we kind of talked about, but there’s this, you can grow a little bit faster because of this built-in, existing kind of potential sellers already. The other part’s like the community aspect of it, instantly you become part of this community. And some of my close friends are just other Midas franchisees and we’re all a similar age and we’re all growing our companies to similar sizes, and we’re all dealing with the same issues of staffing and margins and whatever, payroll issues, all the different things. And so we get on text chains and we can help each other out and there’s four of us or so that are all 10 plus units, 15 plus units and growing and so otherwise you’re kind of on your own. If you’re [inaudible 00:16:29].

Mike:

You’re not alone. You’re not alone. And whatever you’re facing, you can call each other and say, “Man, what are you doing?”

Brian:

[inaudible 00:16:34], have you ever dealt with this? And most… There’s nothing that one of us hasn’t dealt with already. And so I think that’s a big part of it. And then ideas are created and shared and best practices and challenges. We can pair P&Ls and say, “All right, well he’s making this and I’m making this, and how do you get your payroll at x percent?” And all that stuff, you know, you can join, whatever, the training ATC or whatever in these training groups and you can go through things, but it’s different when it’s friends of yours and you know, you see each other every couple months at these different meetups and in the bar and whatever. It’s like you’re part of this thing.

Mike:

So obviously I know what people think. I mean, just I did back in the day, but you’re thinking you value it enough to pay the royalty.

Brian:

Yeah, 5%. The other 5% goes to advertising, which you got to spend money on advertising to get leads.

Mike:

Right, so-

Brian:

To get to phones to ring and all that stuff, so in my mind it’s 5% of our sales and I mean, I can open up a new location and I have sales on day one. If it was Beers Tire and Auto, nobody knows that, right? And yeah, I could save the 5%, but I wouldn’t have 30 locations. Maybe we’d have five maybe and it would be tough. So I think I can go faster and I can go bigger and then I can go better in a lot of ways. And once you own enough stores with a market to, you really can control the reputation. I mean, I own almost all the stores in a pretty good track here in the Philly area, and there’s a competing franchisee, but there’s the reputation side of it.

Midas, as a brand, as a reputation, what people think. That’s sometimes the other component that maybe people, you know, you have a lot less control over because something happens in Georgia or California could potentially affect me but at the end of the day, a lot of people’s reputation is driven by their local experience. And if you own enough stores in a certain area, you can control that local experience. So it doesn’t really matter what happens in other parts of the country.

Mike:

And the differences too. I mean, you’re not food. I mean the franchises have had those food recalls, things like that, whatever. I mean, it’s automotive and like you said, it’s more localized. If somebody’s had a good experience there, it’s not, I guess what I’m trying to say is if somebody with Midas had a bad experience with their brakes in California, they’re not really going to hear about it in Philly. Now-

Brian:

Yeah, exactly.

Mike:

… yeah. I agree. So if someone wanted to be in touch with you, we’re, we’re kind of running out of time, but if someone’s wants to get in touch with you and talk to you about, “Hey man, I may want to convert my business to a franchise” and get in touch with you, how does that work and how can they reach you?

Brian:

Yeah, a couple ways. If they’re on Twitter, I’m very active on Twitter @brianbeers and that’d be a great way if someone’s there. I have a number too they could text. It’s (215) 703-8665. So anyway, some can reach out there and I’m happy to help talk about the different franchises that are out there, kind of pros and cons, costs. I also help people get into non-automotive too so even if they were looking to get into another type of franchise to diversify or whatever, I help people with all that type.

Mike:

And also brianbeers.com, right?

Brian:

Yeah, yeah. My website, brianbeers.com. That has all the links and stuff and you have my podcast [inaudible 00:19:53].

Mike:

And Beers is spelt like the beverage. B-E-E-

Brian:

Yeah. Multiple. Multiple drinks, yep.

Mike:

There you go. Well, so we’ve hit a little segment here, I like to jump into. This is just for fun, but Brian, tell us maybe one of your funniest stories in business, or maybe it was in customer relations or if you want go self-deprecating, if you got something embarrassing, you [inaudible 00:20:17].

Brian:

Yeah, I mean it was embarrassing for a while, but I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift and so I’m working in the shops and I’m like, I was hell. I do the best I could to help like pull cars in and out and I’d be like, “Oh, I don’t know what to do.” [inaudible 00:20:32].

Mike:

You’re shimmying somebody’s car in and out.

Brian:

Yeah, I’m just like, “Oh, just put it in neutral and just like, it’s on a hill, we’ll just coast out of the shop.” So anyway, we went out and found a $2,500, I think we paid, Ford Ranger 2001 and it was this great little work truck and yeah, I learned how to drive a stick on that, and then I bought a Mazda 3 or whatever, this was years ago so I could drive it every single day. And then that was pretty embarrassing, go into a dealership and wanting to try and buy a stick shift car and you barely know how to drive it. I’m sure the other guy is more nervous than I was.

Mike:

I’m sure [inaudible 00:21:07] exactly. That’s a great story. I appreciate you sharing.

Brian:

Right now. I’m fully proficient though. I did it for years.

Mike:

Well, that’s a good story. It’s self-deprecating one because anybody that’s learned to drive a stick understands that beginning process, especially, like you said, being on a hill. That’s the nightmare, right?

Brian:

Yeah. Yeah. Now it would be fun. Now you can just sit there rocking back and forth and just up and down and then make my wife throw up.

Mike:

All right, so another tough question. What is your all time favorite book?

Brian:

Yeah, so I mean, have a ton. I’m a pretty big reader, a lot of Audible, but the one I’m really enjoying right now is called The Power of One More. It’s by Ed Mylett.

Mike:

Okay.

Brian:

So if you haven’t heard of it, I mean Ed Mylett’s like, he’s an entrepreneur. He is a motivational speaker kind of guy now but anyway, he’s got a really big podcast and anyway, this book is all about, you take that one more step, that one more call, that one more email, that one more lift if you’re at the gym and the idea that it’s like that 1% better a day compounds into these crazy numbers. And so that’s what it’s about. And I think that’s kind of how I live my life too, is a lot of it’s like, what’s that one more thing I could do? Or that one more call or that one more connection I can make.

Mike:

Oh I really like that.

Brian:

You know, to continue to move it forward in all aspects of your life and not just work, but personal and-

Mike:

Yeah.

Brian:

… physical and everything else like mental.

Mike:

I heard that reminds me of a cool story. I heard Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about just world-class athletes and what makes him get there. And he was given a story that he got the chance to sit down with Muhammad Ali one time and he asked him, he said, “Well, tell me about your workout.” I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this one. He said, “How many pushups and sit-ups do you do a day?” And he goes, “Well, I really don’t know.” And he goes, “How do you not know?” And he said, “Well, I don’t ever start counting until it really hurts.” And I thought that’s pretty cool. I mean, you know what I mean?

Brian:

Yep.

Mike:

Because we all like to brag about where we start and then how many we got in or whatever but he didn’t start counting until it hurt.

Brian:

‘Til it mattered, yeah. So that’s the message we have with our guys. How can we get one more car in? How can we do one more? How can we sell one more thing? We’re being consumer financing, so how do we get one more job finance? And so I think sometimes if you break it down, you think in smaller increments, it’s a lot more manageable than having this massive goal, right? You’re like, oh, how am I going to do X? But that one more, we can get one more. Everybody can get one more and then-

Mike:

I love that. I love that.

Brian:

… you build it. Anyway. Great book. I’d highly recommend.

Mike:

Well, Brian, thank you very much for being part of Gain Traction podcast, it’s been a real pleasure.

Brian:

Yep. Cool. Thanks for having me.

Mike:

Absolutely. And to our listeners out there, thank you for being part of our podcast today. If you’d like to recommend a guest to us, please email me at [email protected]. We take all inquiries and we take them very seriously. ‘Til next time, be safe. Have a great day. Look forward to seeing you again.

Announcer:

Thanks for listening to the Gain Traction Podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.

• Brian Beers
• Business with Beers
• Gain Traction Podcast
• Mike Edge
• Prenlyn Automotive
• Tread Partners

Transcript