1. Opening Scaling Tension
Growth adds decisions faster than it adds leadership capacity. Each new location, hire, and system routes another approval, another question, and another status check back to the founder, and the business can only move as fast as that one person can process them.
Tim Vogel, co-founder and CEO of Scenthound, has watched that pattern from both sides. His membership-based dog wellness company grew from a single mobile grooming business to nearly 180 locations in five years, after a 15-year buildup that most people never see. His view of what limits a business like this is blunt: the leader is always the bottleneck.
2. The Hidden Constraint
Vogel describes the constraint in two parts. The first is structural. As the leader goes, so goes the business, which makes the founder the limiting factor in how quickly the company can grow. The second is behavioral. Founders typically carry a fundamental need for control, and that need means everything has to flow through them.
That control instinct has a compounding cost. Every function the founder keeps becomes a queue, and the queue sets the pace for the whole company. Vogel’s advice starts with self-awareness: educate yourself, and keep people around you who can point out your blind spots.
3. The Operating Shift
The operating principle is that a founder can only get comfortable letting go of a function by keeping visibility into how that function performs, without being the person doing the work. Letting go is not the hard part. Letting go while still seeing the results is.
That turns every handoff into a systems question. What does the reporting look like? What does the accountability cadence look like? What operating system runs the business? At Scenthound, the answers are an operating system, reporting built on lead and lag indicators, and a meeting rhythm Vogel calls the heartbeat of the organization: the faster you want to go, the faster the heart has to beat.
4. Execution in Practice
Three insights from the conversation turn the principle into decision-making frameworks and execution systems.
Run the business on an operating system that turns a vision into weekly work. Scenthound has run EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, since before it franchised. It starts with where the company wants to be in three years, then reverse engineers that into this year’s goals, this quarter’s rocks, and a 13-week sprint where each week has a defined contribution. In Vogel’s words, it coordinates a lot of complexity into a simple, executable model. The company is now moving to Scaling Up, which adds financial planning and strategy. Daily huddles by team and a weekly all-company huddle keep the cadence continuous: what moved a rock yesterday, what moves one today, and what is stuck.
Hire people who arrive preloaded with solutions, then verify the claim. Vogel thinks of the entrepreneurial journey as a trail with different sections, and he looks for someone who recently traveled the section the company is about to enter. The risk is hiring a polished pitch. His method for reducing it comes from the book Who: validate the results through previous employers. Ask for the name of the last supervisor, ask the candidate to spell it, and say that you will request an introduction at the end of the interview. He calls it a truth serum. Fit matters as much as expertise, so culture gets the same discipline. It comes down to what you reward and what you tolerate, because tolerated behavior sets the example for everyone else.
Build infrastructure ahead of growth, and keep asking what breaks next. Scenthound aims to stay a year or two ahead of what the system needs in training, support, and technology. Vogel explains why with a statistic: only 16 percent of brands that franchise get past 100 units, and only 5 percent do it in under 10 years, because many outgrow their infrastructure and a vicious cycle follows. His team asks what breaks next at 200 units, then 250, then 300. The second requirement is capacity. Vogel notes that every day he runs the largest company he has ever run, so he brings in people who have been there before: a capital partner, and new C-suite members who can say what broke next the last time.
5. Leverage Outcome
The result is not a founder who works longer hours. It is a business where the founder’s attention goes to the decisions only the founder can make, because the system shows how things are performing and the right people own the functions.
Vogel’s closing point is that you cannot build a really big business if it is all about you. Tight command and control means everything comes through the founder, and everything slows down. His alternative is to put a great system in place, bring in great people, let them work, and keep challenging with the right questions. He describes the Scenthound team as disagreeable people trying to surface the truth, with a rule that silence is disagreement.
Leverage here is capacity. The 15 years behind nearly 180 locations went into finding product-market fit, running experiments across the first locations, studying franchising, and building the infrastructure that lets growth happen without routing through one person.
Connect With Tim Vogel
To learn more about Tim Vogel and their work:
Website: scenthound.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/timvogel/
The Immediate Move
The constraint in a growing company is leadership bandwidth, not effort. Structure matters more than hustle here. Transfer ownership of a function only when you can still see how it is performing, and make sure the person who takes it has already solved that problem elsewhere.
Start with one function. Define the reporting and the accountability cadence that would let you step out of it, then name the owner. Each handoff done this way reduces cognitive load, replaces control with visibility, and protects the time you need for decisions only you can make.
Watch this before you hire your next support role.
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Full Podcast Transcript
Hello and welcome to another episode of Scale Smart Grow Fast. I’m your host, Adrian Green, and today I have with me Tim Fogle. Thanks for joining me, Tim.
Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to the conversation today.
Now, here on Scale Smart Grow Fast, we talk a lot about building a business that is scalable and it doesn’t depend on you for every decision. That comes down to systems and the right team, and that is what Tim is going to share with us today. He is the co-founder and CEO of Scenthound, a membership-based dog wellness company that started with one mobile grooming business and now has more than 170 locations open across the country. Tim, let’s get into it. So can we start with the origin story of Scenthound and the moment you realized routine dog care needed this repeatable, scalable model?
Yeah, so once upon a time, I decided to take the entrepreneurial lead. my wife and I sat down, we did this kind of life by design exercise. you know, we asked ourselves if we could live anywhere in the country, where would we want to live, if we want, if we could do any kind of business, what kind of business would it be? And so we ended up moving to South Florida, which was not a big popular choice in the early 2000s. and we started a pet business. And it was a mobile dog grooming business and really kind of At home services were really starting to take off at that time. We had just gotten a dog ourselves. So we’re falling in love with our dog. And so we moved to Florida, started this mobile dog grooming business. And it was really about, I don’t know, it took me about six months to realize, shit, what have I done? This business is hard. It’s not very scalable. There’s there’s a lot of challenges with it. And that’s really what began began our journey. So we didn’t we no longer are in the mobile dog grooming business, but that’s where we started. And That’s where we started to really identify a lot of the problems with scalability in that specific kind of business model. We then pivoted to opening a retail location. We went to one of the larger grooming schools in the nation. We bought their curriculum. We integrated it into our retail location because one of our biggest challenges was finding and hiring qualified groomers. And so we ultimately came to the conclusion that we had to make them ourselves. And so we started making them in our retail grooming salon. While running the mobile business. And we grew that for a while. we got to a couple, a couple retail locations, a ha a fleet or a handful of mobile vehicles. And then there was a moment. I was actually walking my dog in my neighborhood. a new neighbor had just moved into the neighborhood. He was walking his dog. We started talking. He asked me what I did. I told him I owned a dog grooming business. And he said, That’s great. I’d get my dog groomed, but he doesn’t need grooming. He I’d use you, but I don’t need my dog doesn’t need grooming. but I could see that his dog had some health issues. The nails were d knuckles were disfigured because he hadn’t clipped the nails. He had a he could smell his dog’s ear infection. And that’s when it dawned on me wait a minute, all dogs need care, but not all dogs need haircuts. And grooming’s really around haircuts. So I went out and I researched, how many dogs in this country need haircuts? And you and I looked at the top ten breeds owned in the country, and only one of the ten needed a haircut. So there was nine other dogs that never would think about going to a groomer, think like a boxer or a pit bull or something like that, but does need that regular care. And that that was the the dawn of the moment, which was like, wait a minute, routine hygiene is actually much more important than haircuts. Haircuts can be a part of the routine hygiene, but it’s not the focus of it.
Right. I think there’s a lot of wisdom there. First, it’s that, you know, you mentioned you you you had this big plan, everything looked great on paper, you made these life changes, and then you realized that it wasn’t exactly as you imagined. And I that’s so common, right? That’s so common in the entrepreneurship world because things look great on paper, and then you get into it and you realize there are new problems that you have to solve that you didn’t think about for starters, right? Or it’s not as scalable as you originally imagined. And I love to. how you took that initial business and you’ve kept the the the string of it right like that we’re serving dogs all of that but you’ve evolved it and that I’m sure was a lot of work you know not as easy as it as it looks from the outside
Well, it’s really interesting if you actually study the entrepreneurial journey, there’s a tr there’s a common trajectory all entrepreneurs go on. And so in the very beginning, that’s when the the excitement is most high and you’re most enthused about what you’re gonna do and you’re gonna go conquer the world and you have a tremendous amount of confidence. And they call that peak the peak of Mount Stupid. And the reason they call that is because you don’t
Ha ha ha.
know what you don’t know, right? So you really start this business from A place of really a lack of understanding of the complexity of what you’re about to undertake. And then from Mount from the peak of Mount Stupid, you pretty quickly progress into the valley of despair. And the valley of despair is where, shit, what have I done? This is not what I imagined. This is way harder than I I first thought it was going to be. I don’t really, I didn’t really know about all this other stuff. And that’s the point in the journey where you either make it or you don’t make it. And then you’ve got to make a decision on, okay, I’m gonna I’m gonna dig in and figure this out. And they always they often say, like you just said, the business you start with often isn’t the business you end with. And that’s because there’s learning that happens along the way. And so you slowly need to work yourself out of this valley of despair up into prosperity. And the prosperity, the peak of prosperity is never quite as high as the peak of Mount Stupid. So your excitement never gets cause
Ha ha ha.
you just know too much at that point, right?
Right.
But that’s we’re in the business of helping entrepreneurs on the entrepreneurial journey in a de-risked way because everyone who comes into our franchise system honestly goes through that journey where that excitement level’s here, then they’re like, whoa, this isn’t that easy. There’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done. And we’re here to support them, we’re here to train them, we’re here to coach them. And then they slowly work out of it and they get to a place where they have a really well positioned, high functioning business.
Yes, and I I agree, like that is a good great way to play it. I don’t know that I’ve heard the phrase Mount Stupid before, but I like that.
Yeah, it’s a little offensive, right?
No, I think it’s fabulous. now for yourself, what were some of the tough inflection points as you moved from, you know, being a local service as you were to being a franchise, right? Where you have this franchise. That’s a big a big transition. What were
Yeah.
some of those tough points you had to work through?
Yeah, so I think there was a couple a couple pieces here. One is first of all, finding a scalable business and a product market fit. And, you know, there’s there’s often a lot of false stories out there about these overnight successes. And I and I believe the real entrepreneurial journey takes time. And we were in that product market fit for a decade. We’re really getting a deep understanding of the industry, what people really needed, having all of those learnings, going from mobile to retail. Then from retail to this new concept, which was, a 10-year product market fit cycle. So that was one piece, which is all that adaption, pivoting, and adjusting. Then when we realized we had a scalable business and scalability around simplicity and repeatability and portability, well, then what do you do? You want to scale, right? And so there are a bunch of different mechanisms in which to scale a business. And we did a lot of research around how do we go about scaling it. We ultimately landed on franchising, but we We went in with our eyes pretty wide open that we were creating an entirely new business. So our our existing business was going to be the product. The new business was going to be a franchise business, which is a wholesale different business. So that was the next big inflection for us is okay, we are going to start a new business. We need to learn how to run this business. We’re going to learn need to learn the pitfalls of this business. And so we spent a couple of years really studying. franchising and what are the challenges franchising and talking to franchis owers and getting involved with people who had franchised before and understanding the challenges they had so that we could avoid some of those challenges. And so we spent a couple years after product market fit, we spent five years then tweaking that to make sure we had the right thing. We opened five, almost six locations six locations at the very end where we ran hundreds of experiments. Then we went and learned franchising and then we franchised and Our franchising s has been a lot of has has been a real success journey because we’ve gone from kind of zero to almost a hundred and eighty locations now in five years, which is pretty
Wow.
unheard of, but most people don’t realize there was a 15 year buildup to that. And that that’s really the
Right.
real story, I think.
Mm-hmm. Well, and something you hit on a lot there is time. And I think the reason a lot of entrepreneurs or business owners struggle is because we may be the sort of people that once we decide something, we want it yesterday, right? And
Right.
That’s our culture also with things like Amazon, where you can get order something online and have it delivered the very same day, right? We have a culture where there’s a lot of instant gratification, right? DoorDash, you don’t even have to do the driving to go pick up your food or go sit in the restaurant. It, you just order or do other things. It shows up at your door. And you’ve talked about 10 years of planning, right? Five years of looking at and researching franchises specifically. You know, there’s a lot of a backstory there that then makes it maybe look like an overnight success. because you’re not seeing, like you said, the 15 years behind
Right.
the scenes.
The analogy the analogy I love to give is okay, let’s say we want to have a kid. You can get pregnant, but you can’t have a kid tomorrow. There’s a gestation process. No matter how much you want to have that kid tomorrow, it’s gonna take you nine months to get there. And I think the same is in the real world where maybe a service or entertain us, but to actually grow something, to build something, it takes time. There is a gestation process. And I think that’s one of the One of those flashy, sexy things that’s sold out there that isn’t really true. And I think it’s pretty harmful to the entrepreneurial world to set some of those expectations by showing some of these unicornish weird exper things that happen that are one in a billion. But the reality is the rest of us are out here following the regular physics of the real world, right?
Right, exactly. I think that’s a good point. Now, one of the things with franchising I know is that, you know, a lot of on business owners, they’re stuck not franchising, not growing, because everything depends on them, the founder. And you in order to franchise, you had to figure out how everything could not depend on you, right? Not depend on a founder, how it could really be systemized. And I’m curious what were some of like the core systems or frameworks you had to put in place to make it scalable like that.
Yeah. So I, one of the things I learned, through working with other entrepreneurs and through working with coaches is the leader is always the bottleneck in the business. So they always become the limiting factor. So as the leader goes, so goes the business. So there’s a couple of pieces to this. One is you’ve got to really educate yourself and you’ve got to have people around you that can help point out your blind spots. And, you know, a lot of it comes around control. The fundamental need for control that founders typically have means they become the bottleneck because everything’s got to flow through them, which they then become the limiting factor in how quickly quickly the business can grow. So that means you just need to start letting go of functions. The only way you can get really comfortable, in my opinion, with letting go of functions is still having visibility to how those functions are working without actually being the person doing those. So what is the system or process that’s gonna allow me? To still keep my finger on the pulse of what’s happening without having to do anything. So what does the reporting look like? What does the accountability cadence look like? What is the system that you’re running? And so that’s one part is is there some kind of operating system in place? And is there some kind of reporting, lead indicators, lag indicators, so you can see how things are actually performing? I think the other part is bringing in people that are preloaded with solutions. So somebody who actually knows or has Figured out how to solve the problem you have or has already been there. So I think about this entrepreneurial journey as a trail. And there’s different sections of the trail that you’re going to travel as you go along on your business. Each section requires something different. And finding someone who’s just recently been on that section of the trail in another company and then want to come back to your company and then guide you down that trail is the ideal thing. So hire people preloaded with solutions. And put them into the infrastructure that’s got this system of accountability, meeting rhythm, processes, those two things together is for us been the winning formula on how to continue to scale, even though what got us here is no longer the things that are going to get us to that next phase because it the business requires something different.
Right. I think those are great points. I love the the systems, the transparency, right? So that or you can have faith that everybody is doing the role properly. That’s huge for being able to hand off things and and have trust. And I love your idea of like, let’s bring in people who’ve already been there before, right? Who’ve already backed walked this path.
Right.
Now the challenge is doing each of these is a lot of work in and of itself.
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So I mean I can speak to that a little bit. So yeah, so I I think
And so yes, tell me how you did it.
the operating system is actually the most important piece of it. So we’ve from the very beginning run a system called EOS, which is entrepreneurial operating system. There’s a great book out there called Traction, or another one called Get a Grip, which are both kind of tell you about kind of how to run this system. And this system basically helps you kind of Forecast where you want to be three years out, and then reverse engineer it how to get there. So what do we, what needs to happen? If we’re gonna be here in three years, what needs to happen this year? What are the goals? How do we need to, what are the things that need to be achieved? Okay, if we’re gonna achieve those things this year, what do we need to do this quarter? What are the the the the main important rocks that we need to achieve this quarter? And then if this is my rock I’ve got to achieve, how do I reverse engineer that into a 13-week sprint? So every week, if I did each part of it, How do I actually get this this rock done? And so that then coordinates everyone in the organization towards what are the key things we’re doing to achieve the long-term vision that that we ultimately have. We’ve actually been operating that for since before we franchised very successfully. And we’re now recently moving to a new system called scaling up, which is kind of EOS, but a little more advanced because it brings in financial planning and strategy and stuff like that. So so an operating system I think is really. the foundation to how you’re going to coordinate a lot of complexity into a simple kind of executable model.
Mm-hmm. I I like that they coordinate a lot of complexity into a simple executable model because that’s that’s exactly what we want. We want something that can handle all the situations, has the complexity, but and yet we don’t want to deal with a bureaucratic system on a day-to-day basis, right? Where we have to check a lot of boxes just to get, a basic thing done. So very, very well said. And then how have you found
Yeah, thank you.
it wins to, as you said, bring people who’ve, been down this path before into the business to lend their expertise? I love the idea of outsourcing. I think a lot of business owners do, where you bring somebody in or, you know, hire something out that is well done. And the challenge I find is that there’s a lot of people who are, let’s say, all hat and no cattle, right? You believe their sales pitch and then you find out that you are overpaying for what you’re getting. Or maybe not getting that expertise that you wanted. So, how have you been able to successfully bring into your team, like you mentioned?
Yeah, so we’ve made all those mistakes, by the way. And it is it is challenging sometimes to because you don’t really know until you get them in. And so the best way for us that we found to de risk that is they actually have to have had the experience where they’ve been in a company that has gone through that portion of the journey and achieved the things that you wanted to achieve. There’s a great book by Jeff Smart called Who, which talks about a hiring process that can actually de risk for that a little bit, where You ask specific questions. It’s there there’s some truth serum pieces in there, but it comes through really validation of the things that they’ve done through their previous employers. And one of the tricks in it is hey, what’s the name of your last supervisor at your last company where you achieved these things? Can you spell it for me? I’m gonna ask you a bunch of questions, but at the end of this interview, I’m gonna ask you to make an introduction to him or her so that I can ask them those same questions. And that instantly puts them in the spot of okay, they’re gonna verify the stuff I’m saying right now. I better tell the truth. And it is a and it is a really great truth serum. So that process is super helpful to help de-risk someone that’s actually been there and done that. I think the second part of bringing people in preloaded with solutions is they’re also preloaded with culture. And so maintaining your culture while you’re bringing in these new resources is a big challenge. And you gotta make sure that you’ve got someone that’s coachable. Flexible, has the growth mindset that is open to adopting a new culture. And so I think culture is also really the consequence of a series of practices you put in place. so you know, do you have a daily huddle? Are you connecting with your why? What are your value systems? And I think at the end of the day, culture is really only made of two things. First, what you reward. So am I rewarding and catching people doing things the right, the right way? And more importantly, what do you tolerate? And I think this is where most people get it wrong is if you tolerate the wrong behaviors, then that sets an example for everybody else. So you’ve when you have the wrong behaviors, you have to instantly correct it, make sure that everyone understands kind of how you operate here, what your value system is, the why behind you do th why you do things. And if it’s not a right fit for them, that’s okay. But this isn’t the right place then. And then you can liberate their futures for something that’s better fit for them.
Right, exactly. And so I like that last piece there because firing people is challenging, right? Every business owner is gonna tell you that, you know, that’s not their favorite part of the job. And yet when we have that framework or that mindset, like you said Tim, and I’ve had to, like if somebody’s getting fired in my business and I imagine yours too, there’s a really strong reason and they’re not a good fit and when like you said, we are freeing them up or liberating them to go find a place that is the right fit for their skills and abilities and for where they wanna be.
It’s a real disservice to people to hold them around while they’re trying to live in a different culture that doesn’t fit with the culture you actually have. And so I don’t think in inherently anyone’s bad or wants to do a bad job. It’s just they need to find the right fit, the right culture, the the right alignment for what they’re doing. And I think you’re doing someone a real disservice by tolerating some of these things because you’re ultimately delaying their kind of ability to be in an operation that is a good fit for them, a place where they really could flourish. So that I think I think that’s a more of a mindset, which is nobody’s trying to do anything wrong. You just need to find the right ingredients to bake the cake.
Right. And I I am thinking of a time when we baked a cake and we had swapped salt and sugar and it did not go well. And that’s I think
Yes.
a a great metaphor for having the wrong person in the organization.
Well, I I I tell you, we actually use that analogy a lot because we’re a franchise business. So we spent, that five plus years perfecting the recipe for this business. And when you bring in franchisees, they’re oftentimes really kind of accomplished, highly functioning individuals. They’ve been, you know, executives in other companies. They’ve had a lot of success. And so when they come in, they’re like, I’ve baked my own cake before. You they look at your recipe and they’re like, I think I should switch the salt and the sugar. And then it screws up your recipe, right? And so the the the the mentality we have here is okay, guys, you what you bought was the recipe. We’re gonna support you in baking this amazing cake from this recipe. We don’t want any comments about the recipe. We don’t want you to think about changing the recipe until
Right.
you’ve baked the cake, you’ve tasted the cake. Once you’ve baked and tasted the cake, I want to hear everything you need to see you have to say about the taste of that cake and what could make it better. But not until then, because until you’ve baked your first cake, you don’t really know what you’re doing in this setting with this environment. And so that’s a big that’s a big thing we have. But the best ideas come from franchisees. They just don’t come from franchisees before they actually have done the thing and really experienced it
Yeah.
for the first time.
Great. I think that we could continue down this cake analogy for a lot of specific examples. I’m thinking how things
Yeah.
bake differently at different elevations and everything like that, and that could be, you know, all the things. But
Right.
let’s move on. One of the things I really wanted to hit on with you, Tim, is I know with Scent Hound you have remote team members, right? You’ve got a team in addition to the franchises, you’ve got your own, let’s say, corporate team that’s located in various places, which brings its own unique spin on. On business leadership and everything like that. I would love to hear how you have made it win with a remote team.
Yeah. So, as an entrepreneur, I think one of my superpowers is I can feel momentum. You just know when momentum’s happening, when things are going. So I really struggle with remote work because it’s harder for me to feel momentum and that collaboration and the stuff that’s happening. So I’m just gonna right up front, it’s been a real struggle for me as we’ve gone more and more remote and the world has changed. I prefer people to be together. I think there’s magic that happens when we’re together in person. Now, with that being said, we put a series of practices in place that help us better coordinate and collaborate, even though we’re remote. So we do a daily huddle every single day in every single location, but also at corporate. And we do it by team and we do cross-functional team based on the day of the week it is. So I might be with the dev team one day, or I might be with the marketing team another day. And the huddle has some really basic pieces to it. what did I do yesterday to move a rock forward? What am I doing today to To move a rock forward? What am I stuck on? What am I grateful for? How do I have a value? Do I have a value shout out for somebody else? And that really connects us on a daily basis. Once a week, we’ve got an all company huddle, which has got a slightly different structure, but shout outs, big wins, keep everyone a lot updated about what where what our progress is on the big bets that we’re making. what are our stocks? What are the, what are the, what are we hearing from the system out there that we need to pay attention to? What are the Call-out warnings, what are the big successes of the system? So those are really that’s a really good kind of system or practice we have in place to make sure that we’re staying aligned and and connected. And I think of when you think about a meeting rhythm, I think of the meeting rhythm, it’s almost like the heartbeat of the organization. And the faster you want to go, the faster the heart has to beat. So I really love the daily huddle because it’s a cadence of continuously aligning and continuously connecting. That then keeps us all rowing the boat in the same direction.
Right. No, that makes a lot of sense. And with the rowing the boat, I think of like you have the cockswain and they’re calling out all the time. You don’t want them calling out just once every five minutes, right?
Right.
Or you think of like once a week kind of thing. I love that. Now, another aspect before I want to get into the customer experience, but first I have one more question about, you know, the big picture franchise leadership, and that’s cultivating ownership. You know, you have this business that’s been your baby for at least what it sounds like at least 17 years. Right, the 15 years up to a couple years franchising. And then you have all these people who come in, right? Your your different employees or contractors at the corporate level, and then also the franchisees. How do you cultivate people really having ownership of their role and of the impact they’re making in the business so that they are you know acting like owners?
Yeah, I think the why behind everything we do is probably the most important. And so the role I’ve been filling more and more lately as I get more and more competent people in in is storytelling, really helping people understand the vision, where we’re going, why we’re going there, why is it important, what’s the impact that we’re having? And I think that generates buy in mission driven organization. So our North Star is we enrich the connection between people and their dogs. Well, what does that mean? We’re actually in the business of helping people live happier, healthier lives. And the science backs it. If you’ve got a dog in your life, on average you live longer. If you have a dog in your life, on average you have lower blood pressure. Dogs have so much of a positive impact on our health and mental wellness that having a dog in your life that you’re emotionally connected to is a is a really positive impact on our communities and our in our in our country. With that being said, If I’m emotionally or empathetically connected with my dog, I’m gonna care better care for my dog. So the consequence is I take better care of my dog. My dog’s gonna live a happier, healthier, longer life as well. And so that’s a pretty cool mission to be on. So every time a dog parent comes in and we’re helping them connect with their dog by keeping them clean, keeping them healthy. There’s more snuggles, they’re on the furniture, about educating them every single time they come in because we give the scent check, skin, scent is an acronym, skin, coat, ears, nails, teeth, the five core areas dogs need care. You get a scent check every you’re like, is I’m a good dog parent. Am I doing the right things? So that why behind it then I think generates motivation because, man, of course I want to do that. Of course I love my dog so much. Of course they love their dog so much. Why wouldn’t I wanna do that? And one of the reasons we decided to franchise is I wanted an owner in that local community because with 180 some locations now coming on. If we had far flung management teams, it’s a lot harder to really get that level of ownership. But if it’s literally your business, you care about it in a much deeper way. And so that was one of the kind of the impetuses for us to franchise. And so my job is to continue to connect our team with why do we exist? Why are we doing this? It’s not yeah, money is a consequence, abundance is a consequence, it’s an outcome. But the why behind it, why are we doing it is to help enrich people’s lives and to help dogs live happier, healthier lives. That’s a pretty cool mission to be on. And so if if and this is the culture thing, if I give a shit about that, then I’m gonna take ownership for what I’m doing. Right. And so getting people that really care about it is actually critical.
Mm-hmm. Right. And keeping it front and center, so that they recognize the impact that their work is making, whether or not they’re interacting with the dog themselves or not.
Right. Absolutely.
Now looking ahead, hold on. I wanna the question I lost it in the list, but so cut that out, John. But I think I’m really excited about this question. Looking ahead, Tim, you have had, like you said, pretty blockbuster growth for the last couple of years. What is important? Maybe it’s some systems, some you know, more impact on culture or shifts. What’s the most important thing you think to sustain this rapid growth while you protect the quality of the business?
Yeah, so there’s there’s a couple things here. One is we’ve always stated that we wanted to be a year or two ahead of where the system needed us to be infrastructure-wise. So training, support, technology stack, all the things working in the right way. We’ve done a reasonable job of that. In the beginning, we were much further ahead as the business really started to grow. We’ve had some back and forth. And so we’ve continued to bring in people preloaded with solutions to help kind of keep the infrastructure ahead of where the business needs us to be. Which is one of the main pitfalls in franchising is I’ll give you a statistic. Only sixteen percent of any brand who ever franchises gets over a hundred units, and only five percent do it in under 10 years. So that means oftentimes people outgrow their infrastructure. And then franchisees aren’t happy, then they don’t validate well, which means more people don’t come into the system, they stop opening them, then unit economics go down, and there’s a a vicious cycle that happens there. So I think building infrastructure in advance is really critical and knowing having the foresight to know what is the next piece that it actually is gonna need. and so we ask ourselves the questions all the time. When we hit 200 units, what breaks next? When we hit 250 units, we hit 300 units, what’s the next thing that’s gonna break? When do we hit capacity? Where’s the the leak gonna start to spring? So we need to think about those things. The second thing is you need the competencies and the capacity to actually build those things. Because every day I show up is the day I’m running the largest company I’ve ever run. That means I haven’t been there on that next section of the trail. So I need to bring people in that have been there before because I don’t know. I need and so we’ve partnered, we partner with a capital partner. We brought them in specifically because they’ve done this before with other businesses and they can help guide us. They also help validate us so that we can attract a much higher caliber individual. So in this last year we’ve brought in a couple new C-suite members who have done this before. And so we look to those new members a lot to say, what broke next for you guys when you did this before? What do we need to think about? What are the challenges? And so I think those are the two big pieces that really need to be, you need to be on top of and need to think through as you’re growing rapidly.
All right. What I am hearing, Tim, in all of your answers too is that you don’t have this ego as the co-founder and the CEO of I’m the one who’s gonna come with all the answers. You are all about bringing in other people who’ve been there before, who’ve already been on this path, who have the answers, so that it doesn’t depend on you and you’re not the bottleneck.
Right. that is that that is that kind of that previous statement, which is the the the founder or the the leader is the bottleneck to the business. And so you can’t grow a really big business if it’s all about you. I don’t I don’t think successfully. I haven’t seen it. So, if it’s if it’s this total tight grip command and control, then everything comes through you. That means that everything gets slowed down. So instead, you’ve got to bring you’ve got to put a great system in place, bring great people in. And then let them do their things and learn from them. be critical, be a critical thinker, challenge, ask, you know, the right questions. Make sure the parts are coordinated so that the everybody’s working together. Have thoughtful debate. You know, I really think of us as a a group of kind of disagreeable people, all trying to surface the truth. So it’s not like we’re trying to beat each other, we’re not trying to win. We’re just trying to get to the truth. And we say our mind. We say, like, I don’t think so. I’m gonna call bullshit on that. And s and it’s not about me, it’s about okay, what do you see that I don’t see? And let’s have that conversation and let’s that battle to get to the right to the right answer.
And I think that r for my mind, that r recalls back to like being mission driven. If you care about that mission, then it’s not about, hey, I’m just gonna say nothing. I’m gonna agree. I don’t wanna like cause drama here because you you’re no, instead I’m gonna do whatever needs to be done to best serve that mission.
Yeah. We also have a saying which I love, which is silence is disagreement. So if you’re quiet, then you fundamentally disagree. So we we call that person out. Okay, what didn’t you agree about on this? And then it calls it brings people into the fold and helps really make sure that you’re sourcing the best possible insights and and opinions.
Right, exactly, because that’s you know, like one plus one equals three, right? That’s synergy when the sum is greater than the
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
parts because we can all build on each other. I love that.
Right, right.
Well, Tim, I’ve loved learning about CentOwn and about how you’ve gotten where you are, about your wonderful business tips that you shared with our listeners. Now, if somebody would like to connect and continue the conversation, what’s the best place for them to reach out?
I think there’s a couple of different places. So if you’re just looking to be a better dog parent or you want to need a little support and want to outsource some of that help, go to scenthound.com, see if there’s a location near you. We’d love to help you and your dog live a happier, healthier life. If you’re interested in the entrepreneurial journey and you’re starting at Mount Stupid, we’ll help you with that. Sentham franchising.com is a place and w we have kind of this recruitment process where we take you through a really deep evaluation to make sure. You’re the right fit. Our job is to de-risk that adventure for you. Or if you just want to have a conversation about entrepreneurship, check me out. My name’s Tim Vogel. Check me out on LinkedIn. Reach out to me. I love having conversations with other entrepreneurs.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Tim, for everything you shared here. And for our listeners, I think there are so many takeaways from Tim here. I know one of the things I’m taking away is that the founder of a business needs to be willing to spend some time researching. They need to be willing to bring in the right team members, and they need to be able to have these repeatable systems and clarity where they can see how their team members are doing and have confidence that helps them hand things off. Those are some of my takeaways. I’d love for you to share yours in the comments below. And then join me again next week for another episode of Scale Smart Grow Fast.