From Data to Direction: Mike Skitzki on Franchise Performance Coaching with AI

Hey everybody, today I'm joined by Mike Skitzki, longtime leader in the franchise space, both on the development and operation side, and currently, what is it, Mike? Almost five years as COO of, Goldfish Swim School, is that right?

Just coming up on my fifth year, absolutely.

You know, Mike, you've been a thought partner to Harmonyze for years. You've really introduced us to, the realities of coaching at scale and, the concept of bringing clarity, in a growing franchise like Goldfish Swim School. You're a friend, to me personally and someone who I feel like I've learned a lot from. You have phenomenal relationships with your franchisees, with your vendors, with your

peers with your team. think you're an incredible communicator. So, awesome to have you here, with us. But for those who don't know you and don't know your background and your experience, if you could share just a little bit about your career and, how you got here.

Yeah, absolutely happy to. And, gosh, thanks for the nice, introduction, Gary. And, the, the feeling is mutual. I've certainly enjoyed, working with you and, our friendship and our professional relationship as well. For me, long time about 25 year, franchise guy.

First part of my career was primarily in, service-based businesses. The last, two thirds or so has been in membership based businesses, boutique Fitness, boutique beauty, and, most recently here with Goldfish in children's services. I've had some, fabulous mentors, over the years, able to work with four different IFA Entrepreneurs of the Year, so have learned a tremendous amount, from those friends and mentors in the industry. Looking forward to the conversation here, today.

That's awesome. Maybe we start with, what I said before, which is that, you were one of the earliest voices pushing us towards delivering clarity to franchisees. You were one of the first voices saying, you know, dashboards, reports, procedures, more of that, wasn't it.

It was lot of data, but not a lot of clarity. So I guess the question I'd like to ask is, when did you realize that, to drive clarity for coaches, franchisees, frontline teams, it wasn't just more data.

Yeah, it's a, it's a really interesting question. And first off, wrong with dashboards, nothing wrong with data. I think all of us make better decisions with data in front of us. But the data or the dashboard itself, it's not, there's no inherent value in the dashboard.

It's a tool. It's a, it's a means, it's a means to an end. If I think of Goldfish, our mission here is to help kids be safer in and around the water while making their experience golden. In order to achieve that mission I need more kids in the water.

I need to grow my membership at my schools. And so far as I know, there are only exactly two ways to grow that membership. I can have more kids start taking swim lessons or I can have fewer kids stop taking swim lessons. So in order to achieve my mission, I need lots of kids in the pool, more kids starting, less kids stopping. Through that lens, you could argue the only reason I need a dashboard or data is to help me drive that growth and achieve that mission. And argue that my franchise business coaches, my franchisees... they don't really want dashboards or data; want help growing their business, growing their enrollment, making the business healthier and achieving that mission of, you know, helping more kids being safer in and around the water. We got to a point where there was so much data and it was, you know, perhaps starting to get towards something that felt like data for data's sake, instead of talking about how are we using all of this information to drive growth and achieve our mission, it started to feel like we were just talking about the data

and, the dashboards. And that's, where I started to feel a little bit uneasy and really where, you know, some of our conversations started.

I guess I'm curious, you know, looking at data for data sake, I like that. You know, how did that manifest in conversations with your coaches, with your, you know, your conversations with franchisees, what does a data for data sake conversation sound like?

It sounds like, the incoming question is, " do you have a report that me X?" You know, can I see, you know, a dashboard with this piece of data? What's the average, of something? And then if my follow-up question is, what would you do with that information if you had it? If there's a good, clear, immediate answer, wonderful. If there's not, we're moving into the real of data for, for data's sake. And when you start hearing, you know, crickets of the, what would you do with that information if you had it, if I had a magic wand and I gave you that information right now and we knew it was entirely accurate, how would that change your business?

How would that impact decisions that you're making? What could you do, you know, today that information? How is that gonna help you get more kids in the water? How is that gonna move the mission forward? How is that gonna make your business, healthier? If there's not a good answer to that question, then you gotta ask, well, gosh, then why?

Why am I going after that data? And what, was really interesting from the beginning about Harmonyze was, you kind of asked me the question, well, what if we just skip the step of the dashboard when I first heard that, it made me really, really uncomfortable, but thinking about, these two things in tandem, if my dashboard is, not really helping me answer questions, and if there's a tool out there that can help me answer these data questions consistently without that intermediate step of a dashboard, then that starts to get pretty interesting.

So that was kind of the, you know, makes sense, right... the goal is the action on the franchisees part, right? Not an understanding from the franchisee. It's to actually, to your point, the ultimate goal is to get more kids in the pool.

Yeah. The action is what am I gonna do now with this information? That's true of the franchisees and also from my point of view. And I saw it first with my franchise business coaches. Looking at the coaches or consultants, first and foremost, I believe that a great franchise business consultant is someone who can build a great relationship with a franchisee, can understand the franchisees needs and be a consultant, a coach, a partner to help them work through, you know, work through the, the, the growth of their business. Along the way over the last couple of years, we said Hey, all of these great folks on our team with these great relationship and interpersonal skills, I now need you to also be data analysts. So now you know, there's a, there's a couple of challenges with that. One, my great FBC may or may not be a great data analyst. My great FBC is going to have an opinion, is going to have a perspective, is going to have, you know, a context that she's coming from.

And, you know, my FBC, who, spent the last 10 years in sales and sales training for a large mobile retailer to our own devices is first going to see data through a sales lens. My FBC, who is a general manager of multiple Goldfish Swim Schools and multiple boutique fitnesses, is going to first see data through a lens of the eyes of a general manager. Not right or wrong, just different. So now I have great franchise business coaches, and I'm saying instead of focusing on the relationship, the training, identifying and sharing best practices and driving human connections, which only a human being can do... I was saying go be a data analyst, which you may or may not have ever been trained for.

And I'm getting different results based on that human perspective and that's a tough position to lead from.

So it's not just, the skipping of the data analysis, but it's also to make sure that there's lack of variability, for the franchisee experience, right? Where there's a common voice coming from Goldfish Swim School about the data, about what works, about how they can be better rather than a, you know, a bit of an unknown.

For sure. And I thought, a year ago I would've said, yes, a common voice from Goldfish, Swim School is what we need to get to. What's been really interesting is having a third party, having an AI powered consistent voice has done some really, really interesting things for us.

So with a dashboard, if I have a dashboard and I ask my FBC go review the data with, with one of my, franchisees. Inherent in that conversation, I have set up an us them dynamic. Like I've set up a conversation for somebody to be right and somebody to be wrong.

So the FBC looks at this data and says, Hey, miss Franchisee, here's my analysis. I'm looking at your leads, I'm looking at your conversion rate... I don't think you're very good at sales. Now, my FBC's gonna say it much better than that, but that's, that's their opinion on the data and that's gonna come out. franchisee's gonna have an opinion as well. She may or may not, agree, with the FBCs interpretation and before there can be a conversation around business, this human dynamic has to take place of you know, on some level, who's right, who's wrong? How are we interpreting, what are we doing with this data?

And now we've really moved far away from of the things that makes franchising great, the collaboration, the best practice sharing, the working together. And at some level we're kind of arguing about data, and data definitions. When we introduced Harmonyze and we introduced the AI analysis,

the really amazing thing that happened that was totally unexpected is now I've got this third party, almost independent analysis of the data coming in, and instead of my, business coach and my franchisee sitting across from one another, deliberating the data. They're sitting next to each other, like partners, like, like true franchise or franchisee partners, and they're responding to the analysis, the insights, the action items, coming from Harmonyze are. And may or may not like those insights, and that's okay, but they're on a team together and can say, gosh, you know, this is real, this piece of data is really insightful.

This action item really makes sense. Let's have a conversation about what we do with that. They may together look at another piece of data and say, you know what? This kind of misses the mark or the AI doesn't have the right context here, or that's a weird conclusion that it came to. That's okay too. My franchisee and my FBC are sitting next to each other working together, responding to, that unified voice not coming the franchisor.

It's, you know, in some ways, I think in a really powerful way, this impartial third party that's, delivering some insights and action items.

Interesting. So it's a, it's almost a, rather than starting from a clean slate and trying to understand the data because there's a synthesis, it's a response to a collaboration in response to something that is complete, that is more than just data that has action items, that has context. Which to your point, right, it, it's not always perfect, but it's something that is near complete and is something to respond to.

That's exactly it. So it's in one place, the franchisee and the business coach can see data. They can see, of data, the implications of that data and potential action items, and then have a conversation around how do we feel about that. What do we want to do with this information, that we're receiving, it starts to move us closer back to that relationship and that business conversation. So for example, I was saying earlier with, you know, armed with a dashboard, if we're talking about, increasing sales, the conversation might be something like, you know, gosh, you know, Mr.

Franchisee, I'm looking at your dashboard, your conversion rate, you know, is below, you know, system average. You need to improve sales. Franchisees says, well, there's, more to it than that. And, you know, there's some back and forth. And a long way to go before you get to some coaching or some tools or best practices

we can implement. The, Harmonyze tool in one place can show the franchisee and the FBC, conversion rate on your event leads, your organic leads is in line for what we would expect for those type of leads, but your conversion rate on digital leads is lower than it was this same time last year, and it's a little bit lower than your peers. And here are some training resources that can help improve your conversion rate. Now the franchisee and the FBC, can ingest that information together. And the question from the FBC is, does that sound right to you? Does that resonate with what you're really experiencing in your business? And if the answer's yes, wonderful. We're on the same page. We know we've got an opportunity and that FBC and that franchisee are able to talk about solutions and how we move forward. If the answer's no, that's okay too. Franchisee might say, gosh, no. That doesn't really resonate with real world. There's some other context here, you know, that, that's really important. There was a long holiday, you know, the, the, you know, how could the computer know that I was, you know, closed for five days because, I needed to have extended maintenance and I gave my team the time off. Who knows what happened. That's okay too. They're responding together to that, then input in that context.

I guess, you know, you're closer to the franchisees than me. How do you think they'd respond or, how do you think they would describe their current interactions with FBCs post Harmonyze? How has their experience changed of the Goldfish brand?

I would love to be able to talk about, you know, the pro, the franchisee, and the fact of matter is I have 60 or so franchisees. I've got 60 different, human beings, and they're all, partnerships and different perspectives and as you'd expect, we've had a wide range of reactions from everybody. The theme that I've seen, most often. And it's really fun to do this in person. When we were first introducing the Harmonyze tool, it was around the time of our owners celebration. I had the chance to show the, the, the tool to, a number of

of franchisees, face to face and get their reactions, firsthand. In that setting, you chat with franchisees, a few of us sat down over breakfast, a few of us sat down over a you coffee in the morning and said, Hey, I, I wanna show you

this new tool and explained a bit of the Harmonyze executive summary. And then emailed it, to them on their cell phone as we were, you know, sitting there across the table. We were having a conversation and they opened up the email and we're reading the summary and, you know, we were talking. They got quieter and they leaned in and they got quieter and they lean and I lost them. And it, it just could kind of see kind of the eyes opening up and reading through and watch that, that contextualizing, you know, kind of happen got some version of, they'd come back outta the phone in the report and you look at me again and say, "most of this seems spot on with what I'm experiencing." There's an interesting outlier here or there, but most of this is spot on with my business. And yes, there's an opportunity here that I've identified to or, yes, this really highlights something I've been thinking about, but I haven't quite been able to articulate. I want to zoom in on this, this labor ratio. I want to zoom in on this conversion rate. I've been looking for a way to talk to my team about, you know, what's been happening with win backs. This is validating, you know what I've sensed in my business. But it's now taken it a couple of steps where there's something, you know, that I can, that I'm able to, to do with it. And that's, you know, that sense of, this is good context, couple of edge cases always, but the, big sense of what do I need to think about as my business is right? And now we've got a, now we've got a place to start to, to start a conversation.

And, you know, the, for context for folks, right? We, we aim to give three big items to franchisees every week on where they should focus. And it's validating that, you know, even if everyone finds at least one to work on that week. Whether it's validating something they've already been trying to get across their team or it's something new, a lot of what we talk about is how to make sure, the AI is giving something that's actionable real time and

creeping into the human aspects of franchising. You know, I guess how do you, you've been quite skillful in deploying this in a way that it feels like it, you know, the interactions with franchisees have become more human, not less. I was wondering if you can speak to that quickly.

Those are some conversations that I've had with some of our franchisees where, the Harmonyze report tends to be by design, the tone is relatively direct. It's matter of fact but a good way. It kind of strikes me as, like an old fashioned, unbiased news reporter reporting the news in the best, best possible way. It's direct, it's facts. It's not sugarcoated. Here's what's going on. And the action item, the directions are really high level directions intended for a business owner, to look at, to be able to say, yeah, I, you know, agree with this, this observation, I agree with this analysis. I need to spend some more time or ask my team to spend more time on, sales conversion rates or, or what or what have you. Here's some training resources and now, the owner of that business takes that next human step to communicate that to her regional managers, her general managers, and then, you know, ideally putting together a plan around, how do we address and respond to this insight. What this tool is able to do is it gives, senior leaders, franchise owners, FBCs data, context, tools, resources, and now as an owner, I can use that to inform my decisions about how I want to have a human interaction to guide my teams in the most efficient, effective way possible. As an FBC, I can take that information to determine which franchisees am I interacting with. To learn more about a best practice, which franchisees am I interacting with, where sharing a best practice is gonna have the biggest impact and how do I direct that relationship.

I believe used well strengthening and giving this more time and energy and focus around those human relationships, but certainly not replacing them.

And, you know, we see a range of folks, use the software differently in terms of how much they. Give the reins over to AI and it's going directly to the franchisees versus approaches like yours where, you know, there's really an intermediary layer of the FBC who's doing that interpretation and almost repackaging, right?

Different brands decide on different approaches there, and we support all of them.

So we do have today, the Harmonyze reports are going to the franchise business consultant and to the franchise owner, and then in Goldfish our owners typically have regional manager or an operating, you know, owner, and then who's then responsible for multiple schools and then the general managers who are running, each location.

So in our model, the report, the data is really optimized for the franchise owner, you know, that person who's the financial decision maker for the business and has that highest level of, of kind of strategic responsibility and the franchise business consultant. It's designed for those two, the owner and the FBC, to then kind of put their human relational skills to work on, you know, how do we now take this information and use it to focus and get the most out of our franchise or franchisee relationship. And, then you cascade that information down, using those human relationships to the general managers and the frontline, and staff who are running the schools. In our particular instance, I, I've coached the team where we think it would be a miss skip that human step, you know, to just think we could say, Hey, frontline employees, hey general managers, the all knowing AI said you should do X.

So here's what you need to do. We still have a very important role here to interpret and respond and process that information.

And you know that FBC in that translation layer, right? The goal of changing the FBCs job to be solely focused on, not data analysis, but how can I help you get through this roadblock, whether it's the franchisee, the owner of the frontline staff, whoever it is, it's the role of FBC as a coach and a live consultant, which is that human aspect, right?

And I think it's more of a return than a change. And that, you know, for, you know, years and years and years, the strength of, you know, I believe the, the, the franchisor franchisee relationship is just that, it's that relationship.

It's learning from each other, it's interacting, with each other. The FBC needs to be out there and they've gotta get out and interact, face-to-face with the franchisees and with their teams. The data informs how they do that most effectively. And indeed the, you know, the tool like this has allowed me to expand the span of control for my FBCs so they can be more effective with more franchisees and spend more time with those relationships, which is really their inherent superpowers anyway. Returning them to that focus where I, I think not only are they really strongly suited as the particular human beings they are. But where the franchise model is really best suited to have, you know, your consultants or your coaches, interacting face to face with, those owners and their teams.

The return to the human aspect, not the kind of evolution too. I'm still in that. Mike, in the last, question or segment here, I'd love to just, have you tell folks about the results you're seeing, right? The outcomes that you're seeing for franchisees, for FBCs, for the brand, holistically with this adoption of

what you know is human in the loop AI, right? AI that understands the data, understands the context. Can you walk us through that a little bit?

Absolutely. I'm happy to, and we are it is hard to believe. My goodness, not even a year into our, our rollout here. So just kind of context on, you know, this, the, this answer, you and I are, are talking here. It's the, very, very beginning of December. Gosh, the first version of Harmonyze, seems like it's been part of our lives forever now, but it was really April, May when the, the, the franchise business consultants first got their hands on it. We went through, you know, a number of iterations, over the summer, we started to, to show it to franchisees, at that conference that I told you about, was in the very end of, of September. And it's just over the past, few weeks that we've started automatically providing these insights to all of our franchisees every single week.

The data set right now is relatively young, still, relatively small. We're less than a year in. That said, some pretty extraordinary results already. First off, and fabulous for us as franchisor, inarguably has helped the, the effectiveness and the efficiency of my franchise business consultants, tremendously.

So if I look at the mix of hours that they are spending. More time face-to-face, talking with franchisees, in schools, in the field, leaning into relationships, substantially less time prepping for meetings, preparing for those conversations. So they are in Goldfish Swim Schools, not in Goldfish Swim spreadsheets, which is exactly where I want 'em and where I need 'em to be. So that's been absolutely fabulous. Early on we've had some good indicators that we are indeed starting to see, you know, some of our key metrics, around, things like, conversion rates, time and level length of stay metrics or, new entries into the program.

You know, those big metrics I talked about at the top of the conversation are indeed starting to turn and, and heading up, you know, a good, a good healthy direction and, and starting to, to, to accelerate, not everywhere, but that overall trend is certainly there. And for being, a couple of weeks in with, you know, our franchisees seeing this every week, you know, a couple of months, couple of quarters in with our, our FBCs using this to focus their time and attention.

Those are really good results. So as we look forward into the new year, I think we're gonna have, you know, some, some really powerful trends that we can tie back directly to the impact of these tools

I can't wait. Uh, 2026 is big year for Goldfish, big year for Harmonyze and yeah, just really excited for all of it. Mike, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time, with us here. I know we're a little over time, but thank you.

Hey. Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks Gary.