The Franchise Marketer Podcast

Jim's Group sells around 1,200 franchises a year, and almost every new franchisee in training has watched a video or listened to a podcast before they arrive.

Joel Kleber, CMO of Jim's Group, sits down with Tim Beanland to explain the content system behind those numbers.

Joel calls this the Franchise Trust Engine: enough video and podcast content online to answer any question a prospect has, at their own pace.

You'll hear why most franchise testimonials look like hostage videos, why nobody at training credits the info pack for their decision, and where prospects research a brand before they ever enquire.

Joel explains why franchise leads ghost after the first call, why content made the sales cycle longer but produced better candidates, and why franchisors chasing direct ROI on every dollar end up with low-quality leads.

He also covers zero-click marketing, 460+ Jim's podcasts doing the pre-selling, and what content has done for Jim's franchise sales since 2019.

If your franchise leads keep going cold, start here.

0:00 Why franchise testimonials fail

2:09 What 100 trainees watched first

5:19 The research loop before enquiry

8:26 Content and the sales cycle

12:34 Why franchise leads ghost you

15:30 The bottom line numbers

Most franchisees pay into a marketing fund and never see what it returns. Bob McKays's clients see it location by location, and some see 5x on their 3%.

Bob is founder and CEO of McKay Advertising, the agency nicknamed the franchise whisperers for US food brands, and host of the Franchise Whispering Podcast.

He joins Joel Kleber, CMO of Jim's Group, to explain how his team ties media, creative and loyalty marketing back to point of sale data.

You'll hear how the activation bridge works, why a US restaurant competes with 25 to 60 others inside one mile, and why every location runs its own campaign instead of one national push.

Bob makes the case for the CMO as the CEO of the future, at a time when plenty of people say the role is dead.

He explains why franchise marketing roles turn over so fast, what a new store launch does to build first party data, and why he refuses to sell GEO guarantees while the rules are still moving. He also shares how two weeks of cold calls through COVID rebuilt the agency from zero.

If you manage a franchise marketing fund and struggle to show franchisees where the money went, start here.

Jordan started a YouTube channel the same week he started his Jim's Mowing franchise.

Thirteen videos later he is monetised, and when you search Jim's Mowing on YouTube his channel sits second, under the official brand account.

He films on a phone. He edits for eight or nine hours.

He builds his thumbnails in Canva.

Joel Kleber sits down with Jordan's Mowing to go through what a franchisee does with a camera when nobody at head office is approving the output.

Jordan explains why a thumbnail showing him 50 grand in the red outperforms a title about a good month, even when the video underneath is identical and positive.

He walks through his retention numbers, the five hours he spends on a single thumbnail, and the six or seven work enquiries the channel delivered inside three weeks.

Joel makes the case franchise marketers keep avoiding.

The reach your franchisees are getting is reach your brand account will never buy, and your approval process is the reason it is not yours.

If you run marketing for a franchise network, this one is about the title you already know works and are not allowed to use.

Live franchise expos are back, and most brands still waste the money they spend on them. Tim Collett has run the Franchise & Business Opportunities Expo in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne for 15 years, and in this episode he gives Joel the concrete playbook for making a stand actually pay off.

Tim explains why exhibitions are a tool, not a religion, why "everything works if you do it well," and the small things that separate a stand people stop at from one they walk straight past.

He covers pre-show promotion, designing for the three seconds someone spends walking by, why your best franchisees are your best salespeople, and the follow-up step almost everyone drops.

Along the way: why face-to-face is winning back attention in the AI era, how Australia's view of franchising differs from America's, and why he believes the next few years are golden years for the industry.

Learn more at - https://www.franchisingexpo.com.au/ 

He bought his first gym at 21 with money a member fronted. At 24, he became franchisor himself and inherited a near-legal mess with unhappy franchisees.

Sam Waller, CEO of Stepz Fitness, joins Joel to give an honest account of the franchisee-to-franchisor jump and the decade-long turnaround that followed.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Timestamps:

0:00 The model change that fixed the business

0:42 Meet Sam Waller, CEO of Steps Fitness

1:59 Starting as a franchisee at 21

4:42 Taking over a troubled business at 24

6:49 The marketing fixes that worked

7:43 Building the hybrid gym model

10:03 Teaching franchisees to spend on marketing

11:44 The on-brand video debate

16:36 Why franchisee posts drive enquiries

19:52 Too much disclosure scares prospects

20:49 Brand vs the personality behind it

21:30 Changing culture over 10 years

30:02 Handling negativity head on

31:49 The hybrid model explained

34:52 The website pricing mistake

37:37 Back on every first sales call

39:23 The founder-led marketing advantage

43:00 The plan for 100 gyms by 2035

45:36 Recruitment leads and spend

49:10 Filming video with franchisees

51:54 Going public and building a personal brand

55:15 Why content solves everything

Most franchisors expect leads after two months of posting. Amrit Dhaliwal waited three years. Now serious prospects watch 30 hours of his content before they ever inquire.

Amrit is the CEO and founder of Walfinch, a UK home care franchise with around 40 locations and a target of 200.

He started as a franchisee in a different brand in 2012, sold that business, then launched Walfinch in December 2019, weeks before lockdown.

Known as The Walking CEO, he runs the Walking With Walfinch podcast, wrote the book Time to Thrive: The Home Care Revolution, and posts hundreds of pieces of content every month.

In this episode with Joel Kleber, Amrit breaks down how a founder brand actually drives franchise recruitment, why it takes three years to work, and how he competes against brands 15 times his size, budget, and age.

What you will learn:

Reverse benchmarking. Find what competitors do badly, then get great at that

Why the real problem is almost never the system. It's lack of volume

How to start a personal brand when you are shy or hate being on camera

The three places franchise revenue comes from and where to spend your time

How content gets prospects to a no faster, and why that is a win

Why founders who do the reps themselves beat agencies and brokers

What Amrit learned about data and franchisee profitability at the IFA in the US

If you run a franchise brand and you are still hiding behind an enquiry form, this one is for you.

Chapter timestamps

00:00 Activity beats waiting for the phone to ring

00:50 Meet Amrit Dhaliwal and Walfinch

01:25 From franchisee to founding his own brand

03:42 How Walfinch differs in UK home care

06:26 What a founder brand actually does

08:30 Reverse benchmarking your competitors

11:00 Why a personal brand takes three years

14:17 Where a shy franchisor should start

17:35 Building trust and AI search presence

20:23 Interviewing your own franchisees

22:29 How prospects self qualify online

24:10 Getting people to a no faster

28:24 The real challenges of scaling

30:50 Delegating slowly and painfully

35:09 Highest leverage activities to grow

38:47 Why the real problem is lack of volume

40:00 What he learned at the IFA in the US

44:46 The content trust layer, UK vs US

47:19 Do the reps yourself

48:46 The future of his personal brand

Guest links for Amrit Dhaliwal

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amrit-dhaliwal-a436445b/ (search Amrit Dhaliwal QFP)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amrit_walfinch

YouTube: Amrit the Walking CEO

Walfinch main site: https://walfinch.com

Walfinch franchising site: https://walfinchfranchising.com

Book, Time to Thrive: The Home Care Revolution

Recorded live at Digital Marketers Australia 2026, this is Joel Kleber's keynote on the Franchise Trust Engine, the content system behind Jim's Group's growth from a 10-year plateau to 8,400 new franchisees in 6 years.

Joel walks the room through the 10-part framework he built at Jim's Group, now Australia's largest franchise network at 5,800+ franchisees across 50+ service divisions.

He covers founder personal branding with Jim Penman, the live Ask Jim Q&As that lifted franchisee training numbers within weeks, the in-house media team that became the highest-ROI hire in the business, why YouTube is now Jim's Group's number one recruiter, and how franchisees generated over 1 billion organic views in 12 months.

You'll hear why transparency outperforms targeting in franchise recruitment, the real buyer journey behind every franchise inquiry (YouTube, Reddit, Facebook groups, podcasts, ChatGPT), and the AI tools sitting inside the Jim's Group recruitment stack including Claude Code, Opus Clip, and Delphi.ai.

The full audience Q&A is included at the end.

0:00 Introduction at DMA 2026

1:30 The 2019 plateau

3:00 Jim's Group by the numbers

5:00 The Franchise Trust Engine framework

8:15 Founder personal brand and Ask Jim

13:00 Transparent franchise content

16:30 The real franchise buyer journey

19:00 Building an in-house media team

22:30 Why YouTube became the number one recruiter

25:00 Franchisee-generated content and 1 billion views

29:00 Training franchisees on social media and AI

32:00 Why trust beats lead quality

35:00 AI use cases inside the stack

40:00 Audience Q&A

Newsletter - https://www.franchisemarketer.co/ 

Organic search traffic is collapsing across every franchise category and most agencies pitching AEO and GEO packages do not understand what they are selling. Madeleine Zook calls it exactly as she sees it.

In this episode, Joel Kleber sits down with Madeleine Zook, co-founder of Catalyst, former CMO across 11 franchise brands, and a current franchisee herself.

Maddie has worked with 20+ franchise brands and thousands of franchisees over the past two years, and her view on what is actually working in franchise marketing is sharper than most.

Joel and Maddie cover why organic form leads are dropping 30 to 60 percent year-over-year, how zero-click behaviour is changing the buyer journey, and why most agencies selling SEO and AEO packages to franchisees are running the same playbook with a new name.

Maddie explains the 12 to 15 impression rule every franchisor needs to know, how to properly audit your marketing vendors, why optimising for trust beats optimising for cost per lead, and where AI is going to cut real fat in franchise operations.

You will also hear her take on why Gemini will quietly win the AI search race, why the US franchise broker model has become the Wild West, and the two ways early franchisors get franchising completely wrong.

If you run marketing for a franchise brand, this one is a must-listen.

TOPICS COVERED

The 40 percent drop in organic search traffic and what it means

Why AEO and GEO agency pitches are mostly BS

How to set vendor guardrails and audit suppliers properly

The 12 to 15 impression rule for franchise buyers

Optimising for trust over cost per lead

The reality of AI in franchise operations

Why websites will be obsolete in five years

Hosted by Joel Kleber, CMO of Jim's Group.

I enjoy talking to founders. I have massive respect for people who have an idea and go out there and create it.

That's exactly what Bryan Shankman did with Lead Truffle.

This is a video episode if you want to see it action, check out the YouTube channel.

Learn more about it here - https://www.leadtruffle.co/

99% of Jim's Group franchise buyers say video influenced their decision. This is the system that made that possible.

This solo episode breaks down the Trust Engine method, the six-step content framework built at Jim's Group since 2019.

Since implementing it, the network has grown from around 3,700 to 5,800-plus franchisees, sold more than 8,863 franchises, and accumulated more than 15,000 pieces of unique video content across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and podcast.

The episode covers why franchising starts from a position of low trust in Australia, why stranger opinions on Reddit and Whirlpool forums genuinely shape buying decisions, and what to do about it.

Each of the six steps gets a full breakdown: setting up the right platforms, building a content arm, using the founder's personal brand, running a franchisee podcast, hiring a dedicated video person, and empowering franchisees to create their own content.

There is also a frank discussion on franchisee-generated content, how it produced an estimated 1.5 billion organic views at a local level, and why strict brand control is the thing most franchisors get wrong.

If you run marketing for a franchise brand, this is the framework worth writing down.

Subscribe to www.franchisemarketer.co

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Introduction1:00 Why franchising has a trust problem2:00 The numbers behind the method3:30 How it started with Ask Jim live streams4:30 Step 1: Setting up your platforms5:00 Step 2: Building a content arm6:30 Internal vs external videographer8:00 Step 3: Founder's personal brand10:00 Step 4: The franchisee podcast12:00 Step 5: Hire a videographer14:00 Step 6: Franchisee-generated content16:00 1.5 billion views from franchisees18:00 Brand control vs content freedom19:30 Jim's Group content numbers