Edward Terry, CEO of The Shutter House, carves a profitable home services niche.

Edward's  franchise is simple - you only need one person, maybe two, to get started. It's low cost and in high demand.

Edward Terry's Ten Close The Deal Mindset Success Quotes:

1. "Experience is one of those challenges that you can't easily overcome. You just have to go through it and learn."
2. "What we did know was we had a concept that needed to be franchised, but we didn't know what to expect once we had that franchise packaged."
3. "In life, you have opportunities presented to you all along your path. It’s just whether you take those opportunities—and not all of them are ones you should take."
4. "I think I took the right opportunities because I love where I am and what I’m doing."
5. "The ideal candidate for any franchise is someone who has decided they want to take charge of their life, stop working for someone else, and believe in themselves and their abilities."
6. "Franchising is about modeling a successful concept, packaging it, and finding people to replicate it in other territories."
7. "When I drove home after deciding to take the leap, I looked at all the businesses around me and realized every one of them started with someone taking a risk and believing in themselves."
8. "If those people could do it, it’s possible. And if it’s possible, then I should go out and do it for myself."
9. "If it doesn’t work, you can always go back to collecting a paycheck. But once I made the leap, I never looked back, and I couldn’t imagine relying on someone else for my income again."
10. "The most rewarding part of franchising is continual learning—figuring out what works, where the support system needs to be, and growing stronger together with your franchisees."

Close The Deal Audio Player:

Show Notes with Edward Terry - The Shutter House

00:00.95

ewell smith

Disruptors, I want to welcome you to a special episode of Your First Franchise. And I've got a guest named Ed Terry. He is the CEO and the founder of The Shutter House. I want to welcome you to the show, Terry. and I appreciate it. Ed, hold on. My roommate from college is named Terry.

00:19.74

Edward Terry

Yeah. Oh, don't, don't worry about it. and My, my kids are all Terry's and so I've got Alexander Terry Collins, Terry military, and all of them have last names for first names.

00:22.92

ewell smith

nu

00:30.62

ewell smith

Okay. I'm going to start it over.

00:32.25

Edward Terry

Sure.

00:32.74

ewell smith

Okay.

00:33.33

Edward Terry

No worries.

00:33.63

ewell smith

We'll let it run.

00:34.89

Edward Terry

All right.

00:35.04

ewell smith

Okay. All right, Disruptors, I want to welcome you to a special episode of your first franchise. I'm with Ed Terry today. He is the the founder of The Shutter House.

00:47.30

ewell smith

And Ed, I want to welcome you to the show.

00:49.93

Edward Terry

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

00:52.35

ewell smith

Now, your your brand is very unique. It's very, very niche. But before we dig into that, and also it's in high demand, especially in the coastal communities. Of of course, it works inland as well. But we're going to come back to that in just a second. I want to ask you, how how many years have you been in business?

01:10.71

Edward Terry

Total I've been in business for over 25 and yeah, I've been in the space for 30.

01:13.94

ewell smith

For 25 years. OK.

01:17.65

ewell smith

Okay, 30 years. Okay, so you got just a little bit of experience. um yeah What would you say is the biggest challenge you've ever faced in your business and how'd you overcome that?

01:20.98

Edward Terry

A little bit.

01:29.48

Edward Terry

Well, I think probably the the biggest challenge is just information and experience and experience is one of those challenges that you can't easily overcome. You just got to go through it. You got you got to learn and and ah you know anything that sells related um you learn.

01:49.47

Edward Terry

from just time in that business.

01:51.72

ewell smith

Mm hmm.

01:52.28

Edward Terry

you know I find learning product information and ah and information about how things are made to be pretty simple, but it's the experience in particular, ah the experience of of franchising a business and not knowing anything about franchising.

02:09.30

Edward Terry

you know And being new to that has been a challenge, yeah.

02:09.40

ewell smith

So that's been that's been a challenge. Yeah. And I work with a lot of emerging brands and people have an idea what they're getting into and it's nothing like what they thought. It's challenging. There's the legal piece of it, getting the financial disclosure documents done. And there's the marketing side of it, which you you use broken networks and you do your own marketing to get the word out, but that's a process and it takes time to develop that.

02:38.63

Edward Terry

It does. And, you know, what we did know was we knew that we had a concept that needed to be franchised and we we planned very carefully for it.

02:45.43

ewell smith

Yeah.

02:48.82

Edward Terry

But we didn't know what to expect once we had that franchise packaged. Well, then the next question and next challenge is what do you do with it?

02:57.13

ewell smith

Yeah. Okay, so let me ask another question, then we can start diving into your franchise and your background a little bit because your background is so extensive and specific to this niche. But who and what are you grateful along that 30 year journey that helped you get you where you are today?

03:14.02

Edward Terry

really Really, my experience, you know, I find God's path for people is is usually ah pretty interesting.

03:16.39

ewell smith

and Okay.

03:22.44

Edward Terry

So I started out in software engineering and ah worked for a shutter manufacturer, helping them get more efficient and more productive and more profitable and ah fell in love with it and decided that from there I would start a distribution company.

03:35.72

ewell smith

Hmm.

03:39.65

Edward Terry

And so I started a distribution company with nothing. And ah now I have customers all over the world. and And then the next challenge, I decided the franchising.

03:51.21

Edward Terry

So if if I look back 30 years ago, this is not where I would have seen myself, but all of the experiences, the software background, the sales background, um the manufacturing background has all brought me to today.

03:56.58

ewell smith

Yeah.

04:05.77

Edward Terry

And i'm I'm very grateful for the people who have taught me those lessons along the way.

04:11.04

ewell smith

Yeah. And, you know and know, you never really quite planned that path. Just the right things fell into the right places.

04:18.93

Edward Terry

That's right.

04:19.05

ewell smith

and But then you had to work at it once you decide that's good for me.

04:22.62

Edward Terry

Yeah, I find in life that you have opportunities and these opportunities are presented to you all along your path of life. It's just whether you take those opportunities and and not all opportunities are opportunities you should take.

04:36.51

ewell smith

Yeah.

04:36.60

Edward Terry

And that's what's really challenging, right? When you're young is knowing which opportunities you should and shouldn't take.

04:43.84

ewell smith

Yep.

04:44.39

Edward Terry

and ah And I think I took the right ones because you know I love where I am. I love what I'm doing.

04:48.64

ewell smith

Mm hmm.

04:50.59

Edward Terry

And so I'm very grateful for that.

04:53.16

ewell smith

So let's talk about the business background you had before you started franchising because that's that's really the foundation of why your your brand is so solid going as an emerging brand going into the marketplace and the the depth of experience you have in this space. um tell us but i mean you You have a huge business in the United States and overseas. Tell us a little bit about that. Just give us a snapshot of what that looks like.

05:20.15

Edward Terry

Yeah. So with, with my distribution company, you know, for the past 20 years I've sold to builders, architects, homeowners, developers, uh, both on the commercial and the residential side. And usually they buy from me because of the level of expertise they get. So these, these are people a lot of times that are searching online for a product that they don't have access to locally.

05:49.24

Edward Terry

They don't have any good information locally. And so they find me online and they find a guy who knows what he's doing, knows what he's talking about and make sure their project's done the correct way and make sure, you know, they, I have a very high success rate of people who I've been selling to for 15 or 16 years and they buy from me because it's always right. It's always the way they want it. And the biggest challenge they have outside of ah selecting the product and buying the product is they don't have anyone to install it.

06:21.78

Edward Terry

And so a lot of times I'm training installation over the phone, ah telling them how you know to install it.

06:21.90

ewell smith

Yeah.

06:28.07

Edward Terry

It's usually a five to 10 minute conversation. It's not extremely difficult, ah but that led me to franchising because you know obviously the next thought was, well, the customers are asking me for installation and turnkey.

06:41.33

Edward Terry

And they've been asking me that for 20 years. I need to try to find a solution because So I started looking and there was no franchise in existence that did what I did. And which was interesting because on the interior, you have lots of shutter companies and people that will do the window treatments on the inside. But on the outside, you have very ah little people. It's hard to even find anybody if you're in, if you're in Atlanta or you're in Dallas, Texas or Nashville, Tennessee, or New Orleans, Louisiana.

07:13.47

Edward Terry

it's hard to find options. And you know to take it a step further, our company is a little unique because we don't just have options. We have every option.

07:24.11

Edward Terry

So ah we don't just have one type of material.

07:24.10

ewell smith

Hmm.

07:27.61

Edward Terry

We have 14 different options for materials and styles. And and so ah the price range can vary. And we have a solution both with price and also with the custom customization that we can do with different materials that simply does not exist anywhere in any city.

07:48.74

ewell smith

Wow, okay, so that tees up the conversation for the for the franchise piece. So you saw the franchise as a way to scale your business beyond what you've been able to do to this point. ah What does it look like for somebody who's considering their franchise? And what are the products, ah you you alluded to it, you got 14 different materials, the the shutters are made of, what is the product range? Because I know you do some interior, but mostly exterior.

08:18.66

ewell smith

to describe the the the the offering and then we can um unpack how the franchise itself functions.

08:25.81

Edward Terry

Absolutely. um So, you know, we've always operated ah since I was first started out in some capacity locally doing retail, doing full service turnkey. And you mentioned scalability. And so that was really the biggest challenge was, you know, within a certain territory there locally, if you're servicing that, there's only so much business. But if you can model that and package it,

08:54.94

Edward Terry

and then find people to run it and manage it, then you can produce that same model all over the country, which is essentially what franchising is.

09:05.75

Edward Terry

As far as the products we offer, exterior shutters kind of gives us the competitive advantage because there's no other franchise that caters to exterior shutters.

09:17.18

ewell smith

Wow.

09:18.31

Edward Terry

There's no other there's no other business in existence that caters to exterior shutters. ah But in addition to that, as you mentioned, we have interior shutters, shades, blinds, motorization, everything for inside the window and outside the window.

09:29.26

ewell smith

Mm-hmm.

09:34.88

Edward Terry

ah We also do shutter hardware.

09:37.35

ewell smith

Okay.

09:37.52

Edward Terry

So ah a big part of our business is shutters that are going to be on hinges and their own hinges either to use them to close ah during in a storm or close for other reasons for privacy or um

09:46.40

ewell smith

Mm-hmm.

09:52.29

Edward Terry

They're up there for aesthetics. So a lot of people, I'd say 95% of the people who put them on hinges are not ever going to close them. They just do it for the looks. They do it because that's kind of creating a curb appeal.

10:04.63

Edward Terry

So exterior shutters, shutter hardware, interior window treatments.

10:04.69

ewell smith

Right.

10:09.39

Edward Terry

And then we also do pergolas. So we have pergolas that have louvers that open and close at different parts of the day for your outdoor living space.

10:12.61

ewell smith

Oh, wow.

10:17.61

ewell smith

That's nice.

10:18.69

Edward Terry

We we also do exterior motorized shades so you can close in your patios, get protection, whether it's protection from the bugs or you just want privacy from the neighbors.

10:30.58

Edward Terry

We have exterior solar shades and we also have exterior awnings and they're motorized as well, um which pretty much people will use on the window to protect from sun certain times of the day.

10:35.50

ewell smith

Okay.

10:43.53

ewell smith

Okay. And in the storm shutter, it's storm shutters and decorative. So people understand, but the majority of your business, what would you say? It's decorative or Okay.

10:54.04

Edward Terry

I would say yeah so probably less than five percent of our overall business is going to be storm related.

11:01.65

ewell smith

Okay.

11:01.74

Edward Terry

ah Most of our business is going on custom homes where shutters are kind of the icing on the cake. They're kind of the final piece. Then this where the architects are trying to make a statement um or on homes where ah people have wood shutters that have rotted and and it's time to replace them.

11:13.94

ewell smith

Gotcha.

11:21.46

Edward Terry

They're tired of having to do that maintenance. And so they come to us for maintenance free, exterior shutters. A lot of people are fixed mounting their shutters, but our higher ticket items, you get into the higher ticket items when people are using hardware because it's a lot more custom and those those tickets seem to be a little bit higher.

11:41.37

ewell smith

Okay, and yeah you were just here in New Orleans and we we met up in New Orleans talking about all this. The the way people um do the business, that was interesting to me.

11:53.24

ewell smith

it You're mostly business to business, is that right?

11:57.71

Edward Terry

Um, on the exterior side, you're going to be more B to B, uh, on the interior side, you're going to be, and with the outdoor enclosures, you're going to be more B to C.

12:01.40

ewell smith

Okay.

12:08.58

Edward Terry

So it's, it's kind of diversified, which is also nice because if one side is maybe takes a dip for a couple months, the other side's usually not the other side's usually, you know, pulling the train.

12:08.93

ewell smith

Gotcha.

12:12.50

ewell smith

Yeah.

12:19.19

ewell smith

yeah

12:21.18

Edward Terry

And so to have both B to B and B to C is an advantage. The clear advantage on the B2B is that that tends to be done through networking, which doesn't cost you anything except your time to reach out and make those connections. And and that's what I love about B2B.

12:40.22

ewell smith

And you're they're connecting with primarily architects and home builders or the other areas as well.

12:44.98

Edward Terry

Yeah. Yeah. There's lots of ways that you can attack it, but you can go directly to the custom builders and normally the architects will

12:52.35

ewell smith

who

12:55.32

Edward Terry

Find out that you worked on the project and they'll say, Hey, I got two other projects for you, or you'll have an architect.

12:57.93

ewell smith

Okay.

13:02.37

Edward Terry

And he heard about you from another architect that you're doing work for that happens to us a lot.

13:06.75

ewell smith

Okay.

13:06.81

Edward Terry

And then that architect is working with four or five builders. And so it just starts to multiply.

13:13.92

ewell smith

Now, your business model is really simple for somebody to get into. What does that look like? Is it is it owner-operator, or are they bringing in and a manager in? And how many people do they need to get started?

13:25.40

Edward Terry

Well, the the nice thing about the business is that you can run it without having a single W2 employee if you want to.

13:32.11

ewell smith

OK.

13:32.46

Edward Terry

And that's nice. It's nice to have that flexibility. You can certainly start out um doing both the sales and the installs yourself. I think it works best with owner operator and maybe that owner operator grows and says, you know, I'm going to put a guy in place of me and I'm going to go develop this territory over here that's you know, an hour away and I'm going to develop a second territory and a third territory.

13:58.58

Edward Terry

I think it's difficult probably to do it as a semi absentee, unless you're planning on being involved in the business, you know, at least half of the time.

14:09.39

ewell smith

Right.

14:09.75

Edward Terry

But, um you know, we're we're open to talking to people, but we certainly if we find something that's not a good fit for someone, we're not going to put them in that situation.

14:18.52

ewell smith

Okay, and what does the investment level look like? to I mean, this is a relatively low investment level for someone to get into this business.

14:27.08

Edward Terry

It is. It's under $100,000 all in.

14:30.55

ewell smith

Okay.

14:30.64

Edward Terry

um you know you can so you can Obviously, you could you could do add-ons and you could go over that if you wanted to, but you can be in this business for around $97,500, which is a low investment.

14:42.46

ewell smith

Okay.

14:44.35

Edward Terry

and it The business is is based off high margins. and so Not only is it low investment, but you're making high margins. You're able to make those high margins in some areas where ah you might find that that your margins are really kind of higher than they are maybe in in our area here just because maybe the the cost of living is higher there.

15:07.88

ewell smith

Mm hmm.

15:08.70

Edward Terry

And so you know what we've seen like in the Northeast is some people are selling at full retail where in the South where we are, we might be selling at a percentage off of retail.

15:13.54

ewell smith

Mm hmm.

15:19.23

Edward Terry

And so, but um the margins are high. they They can be in some cases ridiculously high.

15:27.39

ewell smith

Okay. All right. up so So what does the revenue side look like for someone coming into this? I mean, you're you're still in an emerging brand, but you've got you do have an I in my team.

15:38.06

Edward Terry

Yeah,

15:39.19

ewell smith

You have some numbers that you can reference.

15:41.70

Edward Terry

yeah so we are an emerging brand. ah we We started offering franchises 14, 15 months ago. We currently have four locations operating. um we We have numbers from our prototype um and the prototype numbers are based on a cost plus model, but but based on a franchise model and the way the franchise was packaged, you know, the margins run anywhere between 35 and 40%.

16:16.48

ewell smith

Okay.

16:16.90

Edward Terry

Now this year in the 2025 FDD, we will actually have numbers from our first awarded franchise.

16:18.95

ewell smith

Mm-hmm.

16:25.58

Edward Terry

We'll have his numbers and we'll also have the numbers from the prototype will be converted into a franchise model.

16:26.92

ewell smith

Mm-hmm.

16:32.60

ewell smith

Excellent.

16:32.80

Edward Terry

ah where we'll have numbers from them and also ah from our other two franchises ah that are relatively new as well.

16:42.59

ewell smith

And what markets did you, I mean, you've got going along the Gulf Coast. I know that in Pensacola area. What other areas are you, are you, are you getting going?

16:50.68

Edward Terry

Currently we have a location in Daphne, which is, that's the corporate location, the one that we started five years ago.

16:57.47

ewell smith

It's after Alabama.

16:57.88

Edward Terry

um And then we have Pensacola, that was the first awarded franchise. And then after that, we awarded Nashville. And then we awarded, ah or we didn't award, we actually placed a guy who'd been in the business for 30 years in Auburn, Alabama.

17:15.05

Edward Terry

And so he's covering, ah he's got that territory.

17:15.41

ewell smith

Oh, uh.

17:18.07

Edward Terry

And at the beginning of the year, ah we are talking to franchisees that are ready to to get started and get off the ground in New Orleans, ah Huntsville, Alabama.

17:30.15

ewell smith

that

17:32.86

Edward Terry

and ah in Pennsylvania.

17:35.26

ewell smith

That's awesome. And New Orleans would be a great market. That's my backyard, as you know.

17:39.07

Edward Terry

Yeah, New Orleans would be great.

17:39.38

ewell smith

um So this is the beauty of working with an emerging brand. They're working directly with you. You're getting to know these folks.

17:49.65

ewell smith

You're personally meeting with them so because you're you're vetting them as they're vetting you. ah What type of support are you providing to those folks?

17:59.46

Edward Terry

So it It depends on what's needed, right? So the guy who's in Auburn, Alabama, he doesn't need anything. He's been doing it for 30 years. ah The guy who's going to, or looking to purchase Huntsville, Alabama, he's been running retail and doing interior and exterior shutters for 25 years.

18:08.98

ewell smith

Mm-hmm.

18:18.37

Edward Terry

He's not going to need a lot of guidance, but he's coming to us because he wants to do more than he's doing.

18:18.53

ewell smith

Wow.

18:23.95

Edward Terry

um And let's just talk about, for example, the franchise owner that's in Pensacola. Um, you know, we were very hands-on, he was our first one.

18:35.33

Edward Terry

We were very hands-on with him.

18:35.47

ewell smith

nice

18:36.65

Edward Terry

He did almost $400,000 in his first 12 months, which is crazy because he went from nobody knew the name of the company to all of a sudden he's doing huge projects all over the place.

18:49.37

Edward Terry

And, and now I look at him 14 months later and he does not need me much. You know, I get the occasional text from him and, you know, he'll continue to have my guidance throughout.

19:01.63

Edward Terry

um Then you have the new franchise who opened in November in Nashville, Tennessee, and just got off a call with him a little while ago.

19:06.63

ewell smith

huh.

19:10.90

Edward Terry

We have weekly calls that go an hour to an hour and a half, and um he's still learning, learning the landscape. ah where' We're going through this together. I'm seeing you know where he needs help, where he doesn't need help.

19:24.51

Edward Terry

And so you know franchises that come on right now as an emerging brand,

19:29.77

ewell smith

Okay.

19:29.83

Edward Terry

You do have the ability to do that. And that's some of the stuff that that I'm learning too. When I said earlier about the experience is really kind of the biggest obstacle to overcome.

19:34.70

ewell smith

and yeah

19:41.29

Edward Terry

I'm learning kind of what our support system needs to be. We're going to be there. But the question is, in what capacity do we need to be there and what is effective? And we're learning that as we go as an emerging brand and where we have deficiencies, we're working to make that stronger.

19:58.44

Edward Terry

and ah and and where people need more support, we're working to get them support. So it that's probably one of the most rewarding parts of this is just the fact that it's continual learning for for me as a franchise.

20:12.65

ewell smith

Yeah.

20:15.20

ewell smith

So as you scale and you bring more people in, what makes the ideal candidate for you? Because so people understand who are considering a franchise, they're to edify, to provide some edification there for them. They are, they, a lot of people think they're coming in and they're buying a business. That's not the way this works.

20:38.26

ewell smith

They're coming in, they're investigating, learning about your business, but you're doing the same thing with them, and there's gotta be that chemistry, that cultural match for the two of y'all to work together, especially since you're working so closely with them. What does the ideal candidate look like for you?

20:56.15

Edward Terry

You know, I know you know this, but that's that's one of the questions that you get most in franchising.

21:01.48

ewell smith

Mm-hmm.

21:02.23

Edward Terry

Every form you see, every every directory that you're asked to put information about your candidate, they all they always want to know what is your ideal candidate. and And to me, what it seems like is the ideal candidate is the same for all franchises, right?

21:17.71

Edward Terry

I mean, it's somebody who has decided they want to take charge of their life. They've decided that You know, they've worked for someone who made their schedule long enough. They they believe in themselves and their abilities to to be independent, to provide an income for themselves and their family.

21:37.03

Edward Terry

To me, that's the ideal candidate because the ones that we've talked to so far that have not decided ah to become a Shutter House franchisee

21:39.20

ewell smith

Okay.

21:49.73

Edward Terry

What's holding them back is themselves. It's not, it has nothing to do with the brand. It has to do with they're not ready. They're not at the stage where they're ready or they're, they're nervous about it.

21:55.57

ewell smith

Mhm. Mhm.

22:00.55

Edward Terry

And you don't want to push somebody to do it. So you want to be delicate about it because you don't want somebody to make a mistake. If they're not ready and committed, they're not going to be a good candidate.

22:11.61

Edward Terry

So I think the ideal candidate is the same for all franchises.

22:12.10

ewell smith

That's right.

22:16.07

Edward Terry

I think what it comes down to is. is what is it that they can find themselves being passionate about?

22:19.69

ewell smith

Mhm.

22:24.26

Edward Terry

Is it selling flowers? you know is it Is it selling milkshakes, making milkshakes and making people happy that way? Or you know a lot of people have interest in home improvement and they have they they like that.

22:37.52

Edward Terry

That's what gets them going. Or maybe they have a background in construction and home improvement. And I think that's where you kind of figure out what your fit is, but you got to start with somebody who's ready to own their own business ah when you're looking for a candidate.

22:52.16

Edward Terry

And some of them I've talked to, they're just not at that stage. They might be, and and I want to be there when they're ready to, ah but the ones that do, you know they they just need to do they need to investigate and do the research on the brand that they're getting involved with, and they need to make sure it's something they can be passionate about for the next 10 years of their life.

22:56.97

ewell smith

Yeah.

23:14.57

Edward Terry

And so I think that um for us, it would be anybody that sees the beauty and and sees how rewarding it would be to take and transform somebody's house.

23:27.74

ewell smith

Mm hmm.

23:28.72

Edward Terry

Because interior shutters and exterior shutters make the biggest difference in a house.

23:28.77

ewell smith

Yeah.

23:33.68

ewell smith

Yeah, simple.

23:34.14

Edward Terry

ah Painting is another thing. I love painting. I love painting a house because literally within three hours, you can make a difference in that room. It looks completely different. It doesn't look like the same room at all.

23:43.91

ewell smith

Yeah.

23:45.07

Edward Terry

And shutters are the same way on the outside of the house.

23:48.53

ewell smith

Absolutely. Absolutely. What is the vision you have for the business going forward?

23:55.96

Edward Terry

Well, I want to grow, I want to grow slow. I don't i don't want to add 30 units a year. That's not really, I don't think that's sustainable. Uh, really, and even if we could sustain adding 30 units a year, I just don't feel like it would be responsible right now. I want to, what we're going to do over the course of the next 12 months is, is strengthen our infrastructure, strengthen our training system, uh, kind of perfect it with these next three franchises that are coming in. You know, we're going to turn around in February and, and most likely have seven locations.

24:35.36

Edward Terry

after less than 18 months.

24:37.30

ewell smith

That's awesome.

24:37.67

Edward Terry

And that's a lot. And it's going to be, we're going to have one that's going to be long distance. It's going to be in Pennsylvania. And so that's that's going to present some more learning opportunities for us.

24:48.00

Edward Terry

And I want to, I'll know when it's right, but when I feel like our infrastructure can ki withstand it, then I'll open that up. But I really want to see by the end of 2025, I think a good number would be between 15 and 20.

25:04.59

ewell smith

ah Okay.

25:04.80

Edward Terry

ah franchises and I think closer to 15 probably is where I'm headed.

25:09.48

ewell smith

That's a sweet spot for you. All right. um What would be your top guidance, now you've been around this for a little while, what would be your top guidance for someone considering your franchise? Be it Shutterhouse or any other franchise?

25:21.35

Edward Terry

The top guidance. I think it's got to be somebody who is willing to work independently, somebody who is is is driven. independently. I think it needs to be somebody who can set goals for themselves and achieve them. I think it needs to be somebody who um has ah good communication skills, can communicate what they're thinking. I think that's a plus. um But somebody who's driven and somebody who who finds a lot of reward

25:57.80

Edward Terry

in ah in achieving those goals that they set for themselves. I think that's huge.

26:01.96

ewell smith

Yeah.

26:03.44

Edward Terry

And you know i would i would just I would say this, anybody who's listening, who's thinking about owning a franchise, I would say this, that when I decided to go out and not receive a weekly paycheck and to provide that for myself, um I drove home.

26:22.72

Edward Terry

I had pretty much come to the conclusion after much deliberation that I was going to go ahead and try it. And I drove down the street and I looked around me and all I saw were businesses.

26:37.04

Edward Terry

And I thought to myself, each one of those businesses took somebody taking a risk and and believing in themselves and stepping out and doing it. Those are independently owned businesses that I'm driving by right now.

26:50.05

Edward Terry

And if those people can do it, it's possible.

26:52.86

ewell smith

Yeah.

26:53.52

Edward Terry

And if it's possible, then i should then I should go out there and do that for myself. And ah and if it if it's not right, then I'll go back to collecting a check at the end of the week and you know lesson learned. And the truth is I never looked back after that ride home that night. I never looked back and I couldn't imagine having to rely on somebody else for my check at the end of the week again.

27:17.47

Edward Terry

so

27:18.62

ewell smith

That is the perfect place for us to button this up. Folks, if you're interested in the shutter house, get in touch with me. I'm working with Ed and his team, and we'll get you started. Visit yourfirstfranchise.com, yourfirstfranchise.com, and we'll get you started on the process. Ed, I want to thank you for your time today. yeah youve yeah i see I see a ah bright future for you guys.

27:44.18

ewell smith

And I think you will hit that 15 unit mark this year, myself. So I appreciate you.

27:49.44

Edward Terry

Thank you. I appreciate that.

27:50.65

ewell smith

All right.

27:51.24

Edward Terry

Thank you. Merry Christmas.

27:52.45

ewell smith

And Merry Christmas, too.