Freedom Within the Framework: Matt Ericksen on How Great Brands Balance Consistency & Autonomy

Everybody, welcome to today's webinar Super excited to have one of my favorite people, one of my favorite operators, on with me today. It's Matt Ericksen, who is the VP of Sales & Operations at Griswold. Matt's had this unbelievable rise in the franchise industry. He started at the store-level leadership.

He's then gone on to oversee operations across, this massive, large national network. He's done it all in home care, healthcare, managing large teams, multi-unit teams. We were just talking about the fact that he's still in the field and engaging with franchisees. He's been unbelievable at establishing process and rolling that out to scale, which is what I asked him to come on today to talk about, which is why process matters more than people think.

Matt, so excited to have you on. Thanks for being on. Really, really excited to dive into it

Yeah, likewise. Thanks for having me on, and, forward to our conversations. So where do you wanna start?

Well, maybe let's start with your background, right? I, I know you well, but for those who don't know you, if you could give a little bit more of that background and how you've grown in that process role

Sure. Yeah. So I mean, my current position, I've been with Griswold now for about five and a half years. And, it's been an absolute blast, and I currently oversee a variety of, responsibilities, everything from, account partnerships and, operational compliance to our franchise business coaches, and, help developing new, support strategies, everything from like the new guide program for Medicare and so forth.

And just, I like to say like, on the forefront of innovation, so everything with AI, you name it. We've had many conversations around that. But, led to that role is, I started off at the, the ground level, really, as a scheduling coordinator about fourteen years ago with a pediatric home care company.

Epic Health Services. Worked with them for a bit and really, was in the trenches there learning firsthand, really the deep end, pediatric home care, home health care. Did that for a while, ran large teams there in a few locations, and then joined a BrightStar Care franchise owner.

Really, that's when I got into franchising. But it helped an office start from scratch. So no revenue, no clients, no caregivers, and really had to reverse engineer what I knew from a large operating system, into how do I do this with nothing, with a blank slate, right? So a very exciting ride.

And I would like to say, you know, having had experiences on both sides of the coin, felt like looking back really equipped me well for the role I'm in now and, being able to provide support to our awesome franchise owners.

I love that. Maybe that BrightStar is a, is a good place to start 'cause, you know, you started at the ground level, like you said, and what I've heard from you and others is that there's this process of kind of establishing the fundamentals. But then as you start growing, and I think you do grown your career as you've grown with brands that have grown, operationally it starts to get challenging, right?

The same operations that you're doing at a small level suddenly get harder. They don't scale linearly. Why do you think that is?

I think there's... It's not just one reason. And I think you always have a few factors at play, with that. You have the, I would like to say the competency and the personality strengths and weaknesses of the individual, of the individual franchise owner who's an independent business operator, has entered into a partnership with that franchise brand.

I think it's also the res-- it's a dual responsibility in that. It's, it's the owner as well as the franchisor. How, how flexible is the franchisor within the terms of the relationship, to enable them to grow and to navigate those growth challenges, but also to support them. And, and what we see and what I've known to be true both personally and then also from having to provide the support, is that it-it's...

You can prescribe all the SOPs, workflows, resources, and vendor partnerships possible to a franchise owner, but sometimes the most often and, and, and required support is developing what's between your two ears: emotional intelligence, leadership, management, you know, how to understand and how to navigate conversations, things that are not as easily prescriptive, know, on a piece of paper or, or over technology.

It, it's learned behavior that has to be taught, and it's not easy to teach sometimes. I think that's a... Those are the challenges that most frequently, stymie growth and the ability of a franchise owner to scale the team from just being starting off as a central piece, the heartbeat, you say, of the business, them having to ultimately step back and entrust their baby to their number two, to multiple number twos, you know.

And that is a, a challenge in the, the leadership development of that franchise owner that, sometimes people are like, "You know what? I'm good." people just don't want to let go, or they wanna, buy themselves that job per se. So I think, you know, there's a variety of reasons, but a lot of those, I think it's, it's the stuff...

It's those intangibles, it's the soft skills I think are, are the biggest factors that are not talked about enough in this, in this relationship.

Interesting. I like that, kind of what's between the two ears of the, the franchisee. So help me understand that, right? Maybe that's something that a founder does intuitively early on is that coaching, that relationship building. How do you even begin to stand up a process around this, something as unique as each franchisee and what motivates them and what their goals are?

Well, you know, for us at Griswold, we, my team and, and I, and the entire everybody at home office, part of our discovery day process very early on is understanding what their why is.

Mm-hmm.

Under-- What are their motivations, right? And, and we have a specific type of individual like we like to bring on board, that has a, a motivation beyond the financial incentives of the business, right?

There, there's the passion to deliver excellent service to our families and our caregivers. And the why is the anchor, and understanding that is what gives us the ability to then tap into, different support mechanisms and, and strategies, all aligned with their why to intrinsically motivate them

That's kind of where I often see people as, you know... I, I've talked to so many brands where they have, like, the archetypes, right? And they're like, "All right, I have the thinker, the builder," and whatever it is. But that seems like a distillation of what you're saying is something that's really nuanced, right?

So how do, how do you capture the nuance of the individual without trying to bucket them into an archetype or some other framework that then doesn't allow for flexibility?

Yeah, I think it starts there is don't over, over-engineer the process at the franchisor level. Don't, don't build in such a narrow lane that you eliminate creativity and the passion of that franchise owner, right? And, and I think that's where, you know, you, you have your guardrails, you protect the brand identity and, and you protect the strength of the brand. You know, being able to find that, I like to say Goldilocks spot, where is there's that balance in how do you encourage that passion, creativity, and drive of the owner without, overcomplicating the process to the point where you eliminate and you, and you erase that passion of theirs

How do you find that Goldilocks? And maybe you can say it's an ongoing refinement and sometimes you bleed a little bit too hot, a little bit too cold, and then you, you find the in between just right. But how do you calibrate that?

I, think you, you have to look at-- I think it, it calibrates differently based off the, the top. Are we talking about sales strategy? Are we talking about referral source marketing? Are we talking about operational processes? You know, there are certain operational processes that have only one way that they can be done legally.

There-- and there's no... Owners may try, "Hey, you know what? I think I can innovate here. I think I can be creative here." And we have to coach and, and say, "You know what? It's a very narrow lane here." You know, where let, let's, let's, let's redirect that energy and creativity. And, here, let's talk about another area where maybe that might be able to be better utilized, say in, in your referral source networking and strategy conversations, right? And a much wider scope there. And so I think it's, helping to manage expectations and be transparent on where, their energy, creativity, can best be aligned, within the brand guardrails, without at the same time, you know, beating them up on it, right? You know, owners are... You know, there's gonna be a certain amount of passion and, and focus that they're gonna have, and a lot of times it's what's right directly in front of them.

So they may not be able to see the bigger picture that you or the coach oftentimes do and live at, at a different level there. And being able to help bridge that and help them understand, okay, this is where, this is where we can collaborate and coexist in that creativity, between you as the independent owner and the fr- and the, and the franchise model that you bought into and partnered with. And this is where we gotta, we got to the line. This is, this is where we need to be a very specific definition on or follow a specific gui-guideline. You know, happy to break down all the why behind that, and let's get in... But, you know, let's, let's take... Tackle that, and then I'm, like, really excited to talk to you about what your creative thoughts are on, you know, your innovating and your referral source strategy in your market.

That's it

Really balance that... Balance... We don't wanna, we don't wanna burden them with too strict of rules, but help them redirect the energy at the same time

Well, it sounds, it's cool. I like that, right? It sounds like there's this... There are a few things that are unique that I'm hearing, right? One is, what is the operator like? Second is, what is the operator's goals? Then you have, what are the realities of their local market, right? You're talking about referral strategies or whatever it might be.

And then the final thing is going to be, what can they reasonably influence and not? You're saying there's a few things like maybe regulatory or maybe brand consistency that you guys are not willing to negotiate, which makes sense because you are a brand and you do matter, you know, we're in a regulated space.

But then there's this vast area of things where they have degrees of freedom, right? And, and it sounds like you're talking about the referral strategy as one of them, but all of these different things. How do you-- And now maybe this is for your coaches, but how do you create a process that marries all those things of the individual, their goals, their local market that are unique for each franchisee with the massive space where they do have creativity, they do have leeway and levers to pull on?

It's a good que- And, and this is where I really... I enjoy the team I work with. We put together an awesome, awesome group o- of franchise business coaches with each very unique backgrounds of-- a- and expertise. And, and it's from that, that, It starts with the coaches a- and en- and encouraging the coaches, leveraging your unique experience, traits, a- a- and competencies, and use those to connect with your owner. You know, open up on your, your strengths and weaknesses and, and, and have transparent conversations with them about theirs. But you know, have those honest conversations. It starts there, right? Is, is, is, is being, being transparent with each other in that coach to the, the owner relationship, 'cause that's where the real, the-- where the real engagement and the real differences happen or the, the changes, right?

In, in their strategy. And what we encourage the coaches to do, what I think everybody at the home office is really good at, is, is just understanding where-- what's the vision of the franchise owner? And within the brand guardrails and guidelines, right? Is, let's get them there. L- Let's, let's find ways to say yes and, and keep it, keep it broad there, right?

Let's find ways to say yes. Let's get-- Let's keep them excited about their vision for where they wanna take their Griswold location, and how they, they take the vision of Gene Griswold, our founder, which we promote heavily within our culture, and how do they execute it locally at their level? That's...

You have to keep the passion alive in that franchise relationship. Otherwise, you create robots that are not go-- that are gonna cr-- that require a higher level of dependent guidance not scalable when you're signing twenty-plus locations a year for the last couple of years that we've been doing.

You have to create independent thinkers that are passionate, creative within the confines of the brand to protect the brand strength, right? And I think that's kind of a high level. It, it's not over-engineering it. It's not over-systematizing to where I have a multi-- you know, a hundred-page, do's and don'ts list.

It, it, it's, it's... You know, we live by, we live by the culture, we live by the guidelines, and, w- we ask questions when we're in doubt. But we really want owners to embrace and, and really wake up every day excited to run their business

Interesting. I like that piece about not over-engineering. So my question for you is, what do you systematize? Right, you, you-- obviously, I think you're, you, you have a good thesis for when to not over-engineer or over-prescribe. But also, the reality is even if you have all rock stars on your team, they need to work together.

They are managing a huge scope. You need visibility into that. So how-- what systems are you creating for your coaches?

Yeah, absolutely. And so we've broken up, We, we take an approach of a regional-based role. So we, all our franchise business coaches, Well, we actually hire them based in, in the, the region they're at. So I have a West Coast, coach that's based in Arizona. I have one in the Midwest out of Nebraska, and then I have another coach, here in Pennsylvania. And so, and so we have to have those systems. We have a hybrid team of h- of in-office and remote, and that absolutely requires the systems. And what we, what we look to is we look at, like, what's the topic? Are we, are we, are we rolling out a new program? Are we rolling out a new initiative? Is it a new national account?

Is it a new strategy coming from our marketing team? And it's being intentional with asking what, what... From the provider, from the, the franchise owner perspective, what do they need to be successful? So before we just run and haphazardly launch some- into something, what we have to ask, "What does, what does the, the franchise owner need from the, the basic operating documents to support that process?" And then second of, how well-informed are my coaches on the strategy, the communication strategy, the support strategy, you know, the escalation strategy on that particular initiative? And we do particular things, like we'll do train the trainers. So if we're rolling out a new national account partnership, we've recently gotten heavily in, you know, involved with a lot of guide partners. And so we'll have our guide partners host the coaches and train them in the same session all together on the key points, initiatives, and how... On our support strategies, so that they leave there back to their in- regions, and they can run their regions with the same guidance, with the same understanding of how we're gonna be delivering support for that particular initiative.

And we back it up with, basic FAQs, one-pagers, quick access documents that are easily, in our internet to our coaches to ensure that at any time, if there's any question on a support call, that they have the basic documents for... Available for themselves fall back on. And that even includes, we're using AI agents.

So we use co-pilot agents that we build on our internet. You know, if you need a quick an- in- you need a quick fact or it may... Whether it's obscure or just a general one on a national account or a Griswold brand, say hex code, right? You can go to our agent, and those coaches we're, we're creating rapid fire access to lot of information, in a very defined kind of path that's gonna be the same answer every time.

So that way, our coaches, no matter what, are always saying the same thing without having to connect or constantly having to, double-check with each other.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of a tooling and a guidance for your coaches. The thing I'm curious about is what happens when it's not something that's ultra-prescriptive, right? And I-- the re- a good framework for this is how oftentimes I hear coaches talk to franchisees and say that you need to be doing more leadership, or you need to be back there, you need to be ch- double-checking, right?

And it's, it's a hard thing to measure. It's not, you know, implement this campaign or, you know, roll out this resource. It's a little more intangible and hard to understand. How do you track progress against those tougher goals or those tougher action items?

Yeah, and that's a great question and one I really love and I'm passionate about because I think this is where it goes from just being prescriptive for the position to really where somebody can elevate to an art. And, really I think the best coaches can do this is they can... They're good storytellers, they, they make the information come alive, and they are able to connect it, the why behind, you know, "Hey, this is why I need to talk to you about leadership development." and I just had this conversation with a Roots & Branches owner I had to go visit is I had to explain that. I, I had to tell him, I had to, I had to prescribe and, you know, on, on the fly a, a story about lack of leadership development in your market is directly correlated to the lack of financial performance that you are seeing, and helping to essentially, I like to say peel back the layers of the onion. Through the story is peeling back the layers to understand the ripple effects of when you are a passive owner, when you are not involved in the development of your staff, and the accountability of those staffs, of the ripple effects of that, of the lack of that, effort or oversight or accountability, how it ultimately leads to where the current financial position is. And when you can be a good storyteller as a coach, and I think a, a good storyteller just as a leader in general, you know, your ability to influence change and to inspire people is significantly improved in, in your position to achieve the outcomes that are mutually beneficial

I love that. That's awesome. Are there any other skills that you think are, I wanna say uniquely human or uniquely necessary in a good coach? And then I'll ask about operators later, but, you know, storytelling is great, maybe relationship building, but are there any others that no matter how much, you know, AI agency where I build for them, they're still gonna have to have this skill and it's a core competency?

Yeah. Yeah, I think you have to be, know, I, I think it's... You have to be vulnerable, right? There's... You, you have to... You can't sit on your high horse, you know, a-a-and project an air of perfection or just, you know, you're talking down to an owner or talking at an owner. You know, I, I, I think it's a, it's a, it's a trait of a strong emotional intelligence, that somebody can display vulnerability and, allow themselves, to be that transparent with a-an owner because again, it's a partnership, and we have to remind ourselves of that. And somebody that is a good storyteller that also can be vulnerable can weave together a power nar- a powerful narrative that's gonna help them connect with the, the franchise owner and their teams about, you know, ju-just to retain that human element, you know, in the conversation, and not that we're... Not, not evolve into just a robotic prescriptive, know, "Do this, do this.

Hey, we haven't talked in a while, but you do this," right? It's more we're building those remote relationships across the country

I love that. What about the other side of the partnership, the operator? What are the attributes of a operator that make them the most coachable or the most willing to be guided to better outcomes and therefore the ones that are most successful?

Yeah, I, I think it, it, it's... W- there's a lot there that I can unpack, but I think the one that best serves any provider, any franchise owner, no matter where you're at, is insatiable curiosity. And that can manifest itself in different forms. That we see that curiosity come out when they, they question a policy, they question the status quo.

We love that because it's whenever I hear the, the phrase, "We've always done it that way," I cringe because I know immediately we are not competitive if, if, if that's the answer, and the only way that's challenged is through that curiosity. And that curiosity unlocks creative opportunities. It creates, a, It, it, it ac- it helps the owner access a higher level of, stu- that student mindset and, and just constantly learning and absorbing information. And a more informed and more aware franchise owner is gonna be a more productive and more successful franchise owner

It's such a, it's such a good framework for analyzing, right? If you can't answer with a why that is both here and now and present and rational, then you don't have a good why at all.

Yeah,

Matt, I'm curious, we have listeners that run brands, we have franchisees, but on the brand side, they're smaller, but also some that are larger than, Crispell.

How, how do you think about, and what is your advice around maintaining consistency across coaches, across operators when you have so much nuance and so com- much complexity across that? And I think that's something you've done well, is find ways to establish consistency where possible. And if it's a framework, if it's an example, however you want to take that question.

Yeah. I think it's... And one of the things, has really helped me kind of create a framework to unpack, that is, I was at a franchise business review offsite a couple of years ago, and I, I heard the founder of Zoracle speak, on her five stages, the five profiles. And that to me was game changer because to answer that question is you have to under- you, you...

The franchise brand has to have strong situational awareness where the brand sits in their, in their franchisor and the brand's growth phase, whether they're a startup brand in stage one through they are the power player in that industry as a franchise brand, right? The, the guardrails to consistency are gonna manifest themselves in different ways. On, you have a much more collaborative relationship def- with creating that, that consistency through a, a partnership with those early franchise owners that are gonna help to build that brand identity, and collaboration is a key, key factor. You can't just push it down their throats as an emerging brand because you're...

That you need their help. It is a much more equitable relationship early on because they are gonna have to help you define guardrails because they're the ones practicing on a daily basis. And as you grow and scale your units, not scalable to ha- from a bandwidth standpoint. You know, in order...

You know, the ability to hire enough franchisor staff to have that equitable relationship, it's aspirational, and I think it's something we're constantly in pursuit of. But financially and from a time standpoint, it's not realistically achievable. As you scale and there's more questions and, and there's more processes that have to come into play to keep other elements of the business going, franchise communication needs to evolve.

And oftentimes, it goes from being that more a democratic process of the founder of the brand going back and forth with those early, those early franchise owners to more the coaches then having those conversations and building more of a, kind of support do you need from us? Okay, here are some of the resources that you asked for."

Right? And it just continues to evolve there to really into a more formulaic approach. And it's important that as that, as you... The, the brand scales, it, it... You... The formulaic approach is necessary to maintain that brand identity and to, and to be... And, and the most important thing I, I look at is, are we giving every franchise owner the same excellent coaching no matter what, right?

And it has to be formulaic at that when you get to those larger sizes in order to pursue our goal of fantastic coaching and give them that great experience What you can't forget there at that scale and that much larger size, can't forget the human element. You can't forget patience. And you have to remember that everybody is an independent, creative thinker with their own individual skills and, and, and different competencies that we have to respect and embrace no matter how busy we may think we are. You have to keep in mind what matters most is this is a individual franchise owner that's independent, has different attributes of an entrepreneur, and we have to keep that in mind as we're applying the Formulaic approach in a much larger system, because the brand is only as strong as your most disgruntled franchise owner. And we want to create promoters across a brand, and we're really proud of what we've done with our brand to that degree

That's awesome. Matt, thanks so much, man. Appreciate your time. I know you're a busy guy. Thanks for carving out a half hour to chat with us. Always the last question, if people have follow-ups, they wanna get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

Sure, absolutely. So I'm active on LinkedIn, so you can find me, Matt Ericksen, via LinkedIn, and then matt@griswoldcare.com is my email. And, feel free to reach out. Happy to engage with anybody with any questions

Awesome. Super appreciative. Thanks, Matt

Yeah, likewise, Gary. Take care.