On this episode of Level Up Show, we have the pleasure to speak with Kim Daly, the founder and host of Kim Daly TV. As a renowned franchising expert who has helped many individuals to break free from the corporate rat race, she is a guide to those who want to take control of their lives and build something they can be proud of. In this video, Kim Daly shares her valuable advice for new franchise owners. According to Kim, franchising isn’t just about owning a business; it’s about being passionate, motivated, and driven. She encourages new franchise owners to dream big, commit to their goals, protect their headspace, and most importantly, have fun catching the momentum. Kim’s expertise in franchising and her infectious energy is sure to inspire new franchise owners to step out of their comfort zone and chase their dreams. So, whether you’re an entrepreneur, investor, or a stuck 9-5 professional, Kim Daly’s and Nick Lopez’s advice and insights can help you take control of your life and become a successful “franchisepreneur”.
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I am honored to have this guest, the great Kim Daly. Welcome to the show.
Nick, thank you so much for having me. You are the great Nick Lopez.
I have been such a fan of all of your content. I love the Daly Coach. What is it exactly?
I go by KimDaly.TV but I’m called the Daly Coach.
I butchered that up and down but that is all right. It doesn’t change the fact that I love your content. I can’t tell you how many times you will post something and I’m like, “I was thinking that. I think that all the time.”
It is on different sides of the equation but we are in the same business.
For those that don’t know, I know Kim wouldn’t say herself but she is one of the top franchise consultants in the country. It shows the pedigree, expertise, talent and everything I admire about you. Many other people admire you because you’re such a great leader in franchising. It is an honor to have you on. With that being said, I’m curious. What got somebody like Kim Daly, this amazing icon and legend that has me nervous to talk to her on the level of show, into franchising?
I don’t know if you know who Stan Friedman is but he has a podcast called Franchise Today. He introduced me to the expression, “How did franchising find you?” I’m like, “That is such a great question.” Nobody wakes up and says, “Yes, I’m going into franchising.” How did franchising find Kim Daly? It is through a classified ad in the newspaper. This is a true story. It shows my age. You say pedigree and all these things make me a top consultant. I say years of experience and lots of trial and error.
There are two things I wanted to be when I was a little girl. One was a motivational speaker. I grew up in the Miss America pageant organization. I always had the heart to be an influencer before Kim Kardashian was even an influencer. I always wanted to be a role model, help other people and inspire other people.
My father gave me a book by Dr. Denis Waitley called The Psychology of Winning. He gave me that book when I was about fifteen years old. I remember sitting on my bedroom floor, devouring that book. I knew right then and there this was my purpose. I wanted to learn this stuff and I wanted to be able to teach it to other people. How does one go on to be a motivational speaker?
I was a straight-A student. I did what straight-A students do. You become a science major. You decide you are going to go to medical school, become a doctor and help people by being a doctor. After undergrad, I answered a classified A in the newspaper for a summer job and it was for a franchise consulting company, not the one I’m part of but that was my first entry into franchising.
I knew I had found my people when I found franchising because this is an entire industry of people helping people. Every single day people wake up to realize their dreams. There are people all around you to support, coach, encourage and influence you. It is not a backstabbing, clutter-climbing and out-for-yourself world. Franchising is a place where collectively, we know we are stronger together. I had found my heaven. I broke off because, as every good franchise owner thinks they know how to do it themselves, goes on to become an entrepreneur.
I did that because I don’t need a franchisor. I did that for several years only to realize, “I’m going to find myself a franchise. This trial-and-error stuff is hard. I need the support of other people.” All the things I have been helping people realize in terms of connecting them with franchises for the last several years are all the things I lived as an entrepreneur. I said, “There is got to be an easier, faster and better way.” There is. It is called franchising. I have been a consultant for many years.
You have so much pedigree and experience. Whether it is a franchisor, the trial-and-error that goes into being a franchisor and establishing the systems and process and competing in the marketplace, you have done something similar in terms of leveling up, trial-and-error and navigating this matchmaking profession that you do and that I admire you for and many people do. I’m curious. How have you helped people to level up through franchising?
When people come to me with the dream of owning a franchise, most of the candidates I work with don’t even understand the full value of what they are going to get by investing in a franchise. The magic of what I do for people is to bring clarity to their dream. People say, “I know a little bit about franchising. I know a lot about franchising.” They think they do but it is not until you get in, explore a franchise and begin meeting the people in the franchise who can breathe life into the business plan.
It is more than looking at a franchise disclosure document and deciding, “This is the investment I can afford.” How do you know that by looking at numbers on a piece of paper? You have to be in this relationship where the people who have created the system can breathe life into those numbers and show you in the real world how they come together.
My coaching with my candidates is just that. They come to me with a dream to explore or own a franchise to somehow change their life. Maybe they don’t even know if franchising is the right option for them. There are different options in front of them but oftentimes I can help them see that they can be, have and do anything they want if they find the right franchisor to guide them and the right franchise system to take their goals and dreams and live those dreams. That is how I help them level up.
I never thought of it that way how the brand would give life to the business plan. That is such a neat way to think about it.
People behind the brand give life. When I’m talking to candidates, I say, “What is a brand?” A brand is a consistent consumer experience. It takes a lot of leadership to be the leader behind a brand where every store or territory is independently owned. It takes a clear, big vision, a lot of money and patience. You are like, “You are preaching to the choir, Kim Daly.”
It takes leadership because you got to get all of those franchise owners who have their goals, dreams and thoughts. You got to corral all of these personalities and lead them down the path to get them marching to the same beat. Everybody is delivering that brand experience with consistency to their customers. That is no easy feat, which is why franchising is not an easy thing to do or achieve.
You’re helping people realize their dreams by helping this idea of their dream come to life through the people that make up all these interesting, awesome and unique brands and businesses you would never even think are franchising. You are helping folks to navigate and realize, “I never thought about it from that standpoint.”
Let’s use your story, Nick. When you were a guest on my show, you said you went to college and had a lot of big bills to pay. You realized you could paint houses. You could paint a lot of little houses or big houses. For you, painting houses was a means to an end. Another way to say what I’m saying is that business is the means to an end. It is who you align yourself with.
You have a vision for how you want your life to look. We find the franchise that is the vehicle that can drive your life personally, professionally and financially to the new place. Painting helped you see that you could get from where you were in college, paying those bills to graduate without a lot of debt. It was the vehicle that got you there.
In a franchise, you are also partnering with people for that journey. You don’t have to go it alone and figure it all out. You are not reinventing the wheel. You are not sitting, struggling and trying to work out all of the problems on your own. You have a franchisor and other franchisees. Collectively, we are better together. It is more fun and satisfying.
I consider FranChoice to be my franchise because we have a consultant agreement and we pay royalties. We are trained and supported by a corporate office. I live the life of a franchisee. The best part of FranChoice is the people. That is why I have been here for many years. They say you become the five people closest to you.
I want to be like anybody at FranChoice because they are all high-level, top-performing, amazing people. Even as I have grown my business and achieved amazing levels of success, there are consultants at FranChoice that are brand new but if they are given an opportunity to share how they do what they do, I guarantee you I can learn something from them.
The leadership at FranChoice or Lime, there are different founding stories. That leadership personality permeates throughout the organization. From my standpoint, seeing that play out, the neatest thing has been seeing Lime become far beyond myself. At one point, it was just me. Now, it is what you said, “The people.” Culture kick strategies butt every day. Seeing that live out, you are speaking to it. Why am I passionate about what I do? You have spoken a little bit about it but what do you think creates that passion for you day in and day out?
My passion comes from my drive, which comes from my goals. I always had my dad when I was little. He always inspired me to dream big. In a lot of circles I’m in, I’m the biggest dreamer. That is sometimes the dumb part of me and sometimes the magic part but I am not afraid to put myself out there and pronounce to the world some of the ostentatious goals that I have.
What I have learned is that if you get 100% of your goal, your goal is way too small. I would rather get 60% of a massive goal than 100% of a small goal all day long. In the course of my life, I’m going to end up so much further along by getting only 60% than by getting 100%. If you are franchise owners, let’s put it in practical terms, would you rather have first-year franchise owners all aiming for $1 million and landing at $600,000 or aiming at $300,000 and getting $300,000?
You are only going to rise to your level of expectation. If you don’t expect it, you are not getting it. I’m sorry to say. The bigger you are expecting, the more you are going to get. It is the law of attraction. It is how the universe works. You got to dream big. My passion is driven by my goals. The drive is an internal thing. I’m competitive with myself. I don’t have high expectations of other people. I have high expectations of myself.
I know that I was put here to achieve amazing things. I want to achieve every single one of them. I don’t want to leave anything before I’m done. That gets me out of bed every day. My heart for God gets me out of bed every day to serve other people. I’m not money motivated. Money is the measure in our world. The measure I want is the lives changed and the people I can touch and inspire.
Some of the best people I have helped in many years of consulting are people that couldn’t afford to invest in a franchise. I decided to invest my time with them for 20 or 30 minutes and teach them a little bit about franchising, what it would cost and when they would be ready because maybe by inspiring somebody’s dream at that level, they will remember me when they get there and they could call me back.
Maybe they will remember how somebody breathed life into a dream they had, even if they never are able to achieve that dream. I will wake up for that all day long every day. That drive and passion come from that. It comes from my big goals. I’m clear about what I want to achieve. That drives me and motivates me to serve and help other people live their best life.
I’m almost speechless but so much of what you said was making me go, “Let’s go.”
That is how you and I are instant friends. There is so much opportunity in the world. It is our humanness that limits us. I go back to my parents. They blessed me with such a firm foundation of faith in my life. Being able to believe in what you cannot see, that is faith. Faith is loyalty to the dream. I’m loyal to my dreams. I want every single person to dream.
I made a video not too long ago. I have KimDaly.TV, which is the single greatest thing I have ever done in my life. It is the most fun I have ever had. My YouTube channel was born out of the pandemic. I used to travel around the country and host live events. That is how I would get people to want to work with me as a consultant. When I couldn’t get people together, I had to figure out a new way or die. I invented myself on KimDaly.TV. It is the best adaptation. I’m so grateful for 2020 for that outcome. I probably would have got there but I don’t know when.
We are here and it is fun. I don’t know if you have ever had these moments but I have had two big moments in my journey of being a franchise consultant where you find yourself smack dab in the middle of your dream. You are not just dreaming the dream but you find yourself in the middle of living the dream. I had that experience after our tenth video shoot. It was in January of 2023.
In the middle of saying whatever I was saying on the camera, in my mind, I was having this other conversation with myself about being fifteen years old and having the dream to be a motivational speaker in all the years when I was young and in college trying to figure out, “How does one get to be a Tony Robbins or be on a stage and motivate people? I don’t want to be living out of a suitcase. I don’t want to have to travel all the time. I didn’t want to have to do that.” God works it out.
We record Kim Daly videos in my house, Nick. I’m not going anywhere. I’m sitting here living my dream and God worked it out to where I get to do it from home. How crazy is that? I wish I could remember which video but I made a video that night after the cameras were off and saying things. By sharing this, it is not, “Look at you, Kim Daly. You are living your dreams.” It is not that at all. It is to inspire people to dream. If I didn’t have the dream, I couldn’t be living the dream. If you are not dreaming with clarity about what you want, you can’t wake up in the middle of it and go, “I’m here.”
That is a dream and a lot of work, effort and moving existence to the law of attraction for you to realize that moment, “It was such a journey that led up to that.”
That dream started when I was fifteen. It is a dream that I wasn’t trying to figure out how to make it happen. One of the things I have learned along the way of this faith journey is the best things in life do come to you. You do not have to find them. Dallas was a big market for me for many years as a consultant. I wanted to bring a camera crew to Dallas, go into the physical franchise locations, interview these people I had met when they were in career transition and help them achieve this dream of owning this Supercuts or MAKO.
I had this guy Adam, who is my producer for KimDaly.TV. He flew with me to Dallas and did that. That was in 2017. God knew that 2020 would come and Kim Daly would want to start KimDaly.TV before Kim knew it. I already had the right people in my life. God was bringing it all together. The dream to be a motivational speaker was what I was always destined to do because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was born to be a franchise consultant but no one says that. That is not what I was saying. People are like, “Do you own franchises?” I’m like, “That is such an insulting question. 1) This is a franchise. 2) This is what I was born to do. Can you not see that? I want to inspire the dream in you while I live my dream.”
As you are talking, I’m thinking, what was a surprising realization that you might not have had once you got into franchising and living out your dream?
Franchising, in general, is that truly anybody can achieve their dreams with the right franchise. Maybe you don’t have the depth that I have. I remember early on in my days of being a consultant before I realized that it is not my job to play God with people’s lives. I’m thinking, “This person should not invest in a franchise.”
I have one person specifically in mind. That person is then a multimillionaire. Thank God I didn’t hinder the guy’s dream. I remember thinking, “Is this guy the right guy?” He found a franchise that he used to change his life. He is one of the top-performing franchises in a system with over 900 franchisees. He is consistently in the top 25 performers.
The most surprising thing is that a franchisor and a consultant can never know who is going to go on to become the one. We think we can. We look at the resume. We get to know them. We think, “These people are going to crush it.” They go out and barely get by. They decide to sell their business after eighteen months. Some people were like, “I don’t know.”
What does that mean? What it means is that it is the people’s internal drive, the clarity of their vision and their intention. Why are they doing it? What is motivating them to get out of bed every day? If you connect the right, most powerful why with a good leader like Nick and with strong tools, the rest is history.
I can’t tell you how much I have seen that play out. What an insightful thing to say, Kim. You can’t rule out and play God, whether somebody can make their dream come true and be given the opportunity.
It is hard for candidates if they are reading this. Oftentimes, you see them wanting to use an earnings claim to figure out how much money they are going to make or hearing from 1 or 2 owners who aren’t doing well and deciding, “People aren’t doing well. I shouldn’t do this.” The hardest part of what we do is helping those people understand that what anybody else has done, doing or will do has zero impact on what you can do. What you do is up to you.
I became bold in telling my story around that because I was an average performing consultant for eight years at FranChoice and I did one thing. This was back in 2011. One year later, I was a history-making franchise consultant. I have spent the last decade at history-making plus levels driving it to new heights. What can’t be done can be done. It is done through my mindset. If I can do that, you can do it. Don’t limit yourself based on an earnings claim or what you heard anybody else doing. You get a clear vision and powerful why. You get in there and give yourself the grace of time, patience and trial and error.
Even though Nick’s program or any other franchise may be proven, if it is your first time owning a business, you still have your trial and error. You still have your path to grow. The only way to do it is to go down the path. You cannot know it all before you say, “Yes.” Get yourself in the arena, make some mistakes, see what works and see what doesn’t work and keep refining it. That is the only way to do it.
It sounds like you had a turning point where you leveled up in your career.
I did. It is called divorce, Nick.
You leveled up.
As some would say, “I was running from the tiger. I was running from myself.” I was going to prove to myself and everybody I could make it. It was my first year in 2023 of being divorced and being a single mom. I had to get busy and figure life out for myself. I put my head down. I stopped arguing about my limitations, making excuses and focusing on what anybody else was doing. At that point, no one talked about what people were doing in our industry. I set a big goal for myself because that is when I’m at my best. I shut up. I go to the trainer at the gym. He was like, “Show up and shut up.”
That is what I did. I didn’t doubt myself. I laser-focused every day. What is funny is I didn’t have numbers to play with or a plan of how I was going to achieve this financial goal but I knew I could and I didn’t doubt it. Every day I came to work, I focused on my goal and I did not talk against myself. I still remember the day. It was a few days before Christmas. In the fourth quarter, I was getting close to achieving this legendary history-making goal for myself. I didn’t know it would be a history-making goal for anybody else at the time.
When you have a big dream, don’t tell anybody. If they tell you, “It has never been done,” you are going to talk yourself out of it. Keep it to yourself. I remember the CFO, in the end, said, “Add it up.” I remember him calling me and telling me. I was $4.28 over my goal. I remember the feeling in my body of the power of our mind. When we ask, it is given, always. The main thing is we have to not resist. We have to open ourselves to receive. I asked big and stayed open. I opened myself to receive every single day.
Once you do something once, you can believe it because faith doesn’t believe in what is seen. It is believing in what is unseen but I can believe it. I also had numbers that I could study and look at. I could make a plan from those numbers. I wouldn’t have to be a one-hit wonder. It didn’t all have to be on faith. That is what I tell my first-year business owners. In the first year, don’t try to have every I dotted and every T crossed. Be clear about what you want and what you are worth. Wake up every day being the owner worthy of that dream and watch it come to you because it will always come 100%. Ask and it is given.
For a new franchise owner, dream big, be willing to put in the work, commit to it, put your head down, protect your headspace, catch onto the themes, build that momentum and have a lot of fun in the compounding season. Kim, it has been such an honor to have you on the show. I know your time is so precious. Thank you for sharing it with me. Anyone who is reading, if you liked it, please like, subscribe and share. The Daly Show, I highly recommend it. Check it out. As always, get live.
Kim Daly has been helping entrepreneurs, investors, and stuck 9-5 professionals take control of their lives and step out of the corporate cycle by investing intelligently in the franchise businesses and become “franchisepreneurs.” She is an international best-selling co-author of Franchising Freedom and the founder and host of the Kim Daly TV YouTube channel.