PSP was on the verge of bankruptcy.

When I went to PSP, the first and only thing I asked the board is, I said, look, I will implement a strategy.

We will be successful.

You have to give me a year.

Don't ask me to cut salaries.

Let me do what I need to do to make this company successful.

We started to see the sales increase.

We started to see the engagement in the stores increase.

Customers started saying, this place is different.

There's something about it.

We've kept that philosophy for the last 13 years.

It's always the last place we go to.

It's never the first place.

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Hey there.

Leave the Team Nation welcome back to another big episode today coming at you with Chris Roland, who is CEO of Pet Supplies plus, the nation's leading pet retail franchise with more than 730 locations across the US.

He also serves as the CEO of its sisters, of his sister brand Wagon Wash, a dog grooming and self wash specialty retail franchise.

And previously, catch this, Chris was an executive doing big things over at PetSmart.

Yes, that pet smart, where he built over 700 stores.

So he knows how to design and create the ultimate store layout that will resonate with the most of the neighbors, which is, by the way, the term that pet supplies plus uses for its customers.

That's right, neighbors.

And his leadership skills led to other pet smart employees back in the day, joining him and growing the wildly successful pet supplies plus brand man, Chris, welcome to lead the team.

I mean, we're, y'all, this is, this is going to be fun because Chris, you know, is interesting.

First of all, if you hear his, his, you know, your background, you really climbed and rose the top of corporate, but you didn't stay there.

You could have stayed there in that world and, you know, really taking that path.

But you said, no, I need to go build something totally different, totally different world.

Really hoping the same customers, the pets and the families.

Why do that?

Well, there's a lot to that story.

Like, like any, like lay it on me.

There's no direct line, but I'll tell you, you know, the Reader's Digest version here is I joined PetSmart as an assistant store manager, to your point, clawed my way up to president of Pittsburgh, Canada and Puerto Rico, and then became, and then took over all of the us operations as well as Puerto Rico and Canada.

So once upon a time, there was a whole lot of people that reported up in through me.

A lot of responsibilities, multiple countries.

It was a lot.

But like all stories, there's a downside.

I didn't have the best balance in life.

And that's certainly a tag phrase that everybody likes to use these days.

I am the epitome of not having a good balance.

And so went through a divorce when I was at Petsmart.

And that was when I realized I probably need to get my priorities straighter.

I won't say straight because I do think work is very, very important and it certainly allowed my children to have, you know, things that I never had.

With that said, I realized that there was a period of time.

For about two years, I was flying back and forth every other weekend to Canada from Phoenix, Arizona.

And I said, this is not the way to be a part of your kids lives.

So I managed to find pet supplies, plus, so they found me and after a year, wait, joined them.

And great things have happened.

Now.

The benefit was they were closer to my family up in Canada at the time.

They're based in Michigan.

So I was able to pick the kids up from school and do a lot of things that I wasn't able to do for a lot of years.

Joined them as senior vice president of operations and within a year became CEO.

And we really haven't looked back.

So I can honestly say I found a better balance in life and was able to say, what I told the board when I joined is eleven days out of 14.

I'll be all in, 24/7 doesn't matter.

Three days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, every other week.

It's all about my kids.

Don't call me.

We sell dog food.

It's not that difficult.

And it's three full days with my kids.

And I will tell you, one of the best things that ever happened, in hindsight, was a divorce.

Because I am now able to shut down for three days every couple weeks.

And just focus on the kids.

So I think I found a much better balance of work life.

Unfortunately, it was costly and painful to get there.

So it is what it is.

Well, congratulations on making the move.

That's a big.

So what I'm hearing it, Ben, is a lifestyle decision ultimately, yeah, 100%.

It still seems, though, like doing what you're doing now in some ways is harder, but maybe less demanding.

I mean, I don't know if it's.

It's like.

That's what I'm hearing.

Because you're in a more entrepreneurial model, right, where you're talking to entrepreneurs and those aren't familiar with franchise.

Right.

It's.

You're.

You're dealing with teaching people how to run business, giving them a model, and in corporate, you're more managing thousands of people.

So culturally, it couldn't be any more different, to your point.

So when I actually first joined PSP, I was brought on board to grow the business through a corporate growth structure.

Within 90 days, I went back to the board and said, this is a bad strategy.

I think we need to focus on franchising.

And I walked them through all the reasons why.

They were a little bit thrown aback, if you will.

That's not what they wanted me to do.

But I truly felt there was a niche here that we could capitalize on and it could become wildly successful.

The thing that we struggled with with PetSmart was, to your point, it was all about top down, do this, grind it down to the stores and get compliance.

Compliance is a big, big word.

And I said the beautiful thing about franchising is if you try to force compliance, you're not going to like the answer.

It's really allowing entrepreneurs to do what they love, love what they do, and be successful at something that they can put their handprints on, if you will.

So it was really around empowering local franchisees to take a solid model and take it to the next level and truly become, you know, America's favorite neighborhood pet store by saying, we're going to have systems and processes behind the scenes to help make it easier for you.

But we need that passion.

We need that, you know, you want to be part of the community, you want this store to have your name on it, and you want to stand out in the community.

And so that was the direction we went, which was very different than saying every Saturday at 02:00 every single store is going to do this.

We're not interested in your opinion.

We're not interested in your ideas.

We are in franchising.

You're trying to herd cats.

You're trying to say, okay, how can we help you be you?

But I'm not going to force you to do almost anything because you've gotten to a point, you've made this significant investment.

You want to be the owner, you want to be the driver.

You just want somebody to help you be successful.

Wow.

All right, so taking a look at both these, you mentioned your kids.

What's the advice that you would give the ill, say, the up and coming generation on approaching business entrepreneurial life versus climbing the corporate ladder life.

Yeah.

This is a very relevant conversation.

I'm having it actually 02:00 today with my daughter.

She's looking, her and her fiance are looking to buy a business in Florida.

She works for a large firm right now and loves what she does.

He works for a large firm as well, and he's fairly happy as well.

But what they've realized is he especially wants something that he can build that can be his, that he isn't being directed, that, you know, he can put all of his entrepreneurial spirit into and be as big as it can be or decide the lifestyle that they want.

So I just had this conversation a couple days ago.

We're going to continue it this afternoon as we start talking about financing other things.

But it really was around, you know, if you can truly do what you love, love what you do, that's a huge part of success.

If you work for a company versus being an entrepreneur, there's a lot of people you have to, quote unquote, please to keep working your way up the ladder.

There's a lot of things that you're going to be asked to do that maybe you don't feel is necessarily right for you, right for the customer, right for the business, whatever.

But because of your status in the company, you know, you have to do it.

An entrepreneur can truly put their passion behind their business and they can do what they believe is right.

That works for them personally, but also hopefully works for the end user, the customer.

And I really think if you can allow yourself to be a risk taker and you're a hard worker and you're, and you're genuinely, if you have at least average intelligence or above and a good work ethic and you listen to your customer, I think by and large you're going to be just fine.

Wow.

All right.

So building out, you said a lot of things interesting in there.

One was you said, allow yourself to be a risk taker.

What's your perspective on risk and business leaders and careers?

So I wish I was more of a risk taker, but understanding that, I grew up in a household, five boys.

My father worked in a plant for years.

I hated it every day, going to work every single day for 32 years.

But he had to do it because he had commitments.

Once he had child number three, four, and five, jumping off and doing what he loved, love, what he did was just not an option for him.

So growing up in that household, I saw that, and I felt terrible for my father every day he went off to work, and I said, I'll never do that.

Unfortunately, I fell into the ruthen.

I've got into a job that I loved but wasn't entrepreneurial, and I was pretty good at it, worked my way up the ladder, and so it kept becoming more and more and more difficult to walk away.

So what I've told my daughter, the perfect thing is be a risk taker.

When you're young, it's a lot easier than after you get married and have kids and you have other commitments.

So she's young.

They haven't got.

They haven't, they're not married yet.

They don't have children yet.

I said, so what if you fail?

If you fail, you have your whole life ahead of you.

Failing at 50 takes a whole different level of risk than failing at 25.

You can always fall back on the parents and say, hey, I know you don't want me to live in the basement, but cut me a break here.

I need a year to get back on my feet, and who cares?

So the biggest thing is you have to take the risk.

I just think that the later in life you wait to take that risk, the chances of you doing it becomes far less likely to happen.

I will say our model works perfectly on the risk takers later in life because franchising does give you a little bit more of a protective envelope.

It's a little less entrepreneurial.

I mean, let's be clear.

You're running under franchise rules and what have you, but at least it gets you there.

If you truly want to be an entrepreneur and start your own thing, I would highly recommend doing it younger than older.

I love that.

A lot of things unpack there.

One, yes, taking a risk while you're younger.

Some people say, well, Ben, I'm early in my career.

I'm trying to climb the ladder.

I want to do the right thing, and I want to build my resume.

I think 20 years ago, 30 years ago, I could see that a little bit more than today because the workforce has changed a lot, and what people look for on resumes and leaders have changed.

And I think if you've gone out and tried to start a business and it didn't go that well and it failed, that gives you a powerful story to share with leaders, to, to really speak to leaders about.

And I think people respect the failures a little bit more than they used to.

I think there's a number of things there.

I think, number one, that you're spot on.

You know, when I see somebody come across my desk and interview that they've tried something, immediately I feel, you know what?

This is somebody that if you can channel that type of entrepreneurial spirit, can really help your business.

They can think outside the box.

They're, they're already an independent thinker, and that's huge.

You know, the fact that they failed, I mean, businesses fail, not a big deal.

I would, I would never hold that against them.

So I think, I think you're spot, you're spot on everything you said there, you know?

And I also think the other thing is with young folks, don't there's value in going through that job.

There's value in getting promoted within a company, but at certain point that value starts to diminish.

So you do need to understand some basic business rules and philosophies and how to work with others and how to, you know, how to pull together a p and l, how to read, you know, how to do your own analysis.

All of those things are helpful earlier in your career.

But at some point after a few years, which is exactly where my daughter's at now, after a few years of working in the corporate, corporate life, you know, the benefit, the incremental benefit of those learnings probably starts to wait a bit and it probably becomes more about the company and the specific skills that you bring to that company versus the other way around.

Well, there used to be all these articles about, oh, man, you had a gap in your resume.

Like, what were you doing in these couple years?

Like, you know, they want to be, well, we want to see your assistant manager, then manager, then director, then vp and that nice long curve, and maybe get a couple of different companies on there that brands that people know, and then he can become CEO.

But now people are like, okay, yeah, you got some experience, you took a risk, you came back, you moved around, and, y'all, it has changed.

And like, I have a 13 year old daughter who, you know, we talk about business and this is my conversation with her now.

It's like, hey, you think it's exciting to take a risk and to think about that and get your experience and leverage it in different ways.

And that can be a beautiful thing and variety.

I mean, I, you know, I was fortunate in my career between PetSmart, mostly PetSmart, that I was able to jump around multiple departments every year or two.

So I got a good broad based knowledge of a lot of different departments.

Had I been more focused in one area and just continued that career path in that area, I would be far less successful in my current role of challenging different leaders in, in their businesses.

So I do think, you know, whether you stay in a business, try to get into different departments, whether you jump to different businesses or to your point, whether you jump and do your own thing, all of those are going to incrementally help you much more than staying on a, what I would call a traditional career path of, you know, the next step.

The next step, the next step in your current.

In your current chosen profession, if you will.

So, thinking about risk, thinking about failure out there, do you have a favorite failure that you like to talk about or a twist in your career that led to your six on the road?

Yeah, it happened with PetSmart, where I got to, as part of the executive team, was doing very, very well, went through the divorce, and the individual that I reported to at the time was probably not the most understanding in terms of my commitments with the kids.

So it was truly a, you have a big job, you need to do this, this and this.

And why are you flying up to, you know, Canada this weekend?

Why do you need to leave Friday morning?

And I said, well, remember, that's where my family is.

So I slugged it out for quite a while, and then I realized, okay, this is not an individual in this case who has a strong belief of work life balance, which is, it is what it is.

But more importantly, the thing that really struck me was it was about the executive team.

It was all about how do we grow our bonus, how do we make ourselves enrich ourselves?

And I was in charge of operations at the time, and I was very focused on how do we help our stores be successful?

How do we help the team members that are face to face with our customers?

How do we empower them?

How do we give them the tools, give them the compensations to make them successful?

Well, the problem with that is when you add up 1500 stores times x number of employees, call it 45,000 employees, that's a big cost.

And I understand that that's always the easiest place to cut.

That's always the easiest place to go to, to say, we want to make this quarter's earnings.

So operations, do your thing.

And I, every time they came to me with that ask, I felt it was the wrong direction for the business.

I felt it was the wrong direction for the customer, for our team members.

So when I went to PSP, the first and only thing I asked the board is, I said, look, I will implement a strategy.

We will be successful.

You have to give me a year.

Don't ask me to cut salaries.

Don't ask me to do anything that historically your finance brain tells you to do.

Let me do what I need to do to make this company successful, and I will give them a ton of credit.

They never pushed me on any of it for the first year.

And we started to see the wheels turn.

We started to see the sales increase.

We started to see the engagement in the stores increase.

Customers started saying, this place is different.

There's something about it.

And I will tell you, we've kept that philosophy for the last 13 years.

It's always the last place we go to.

It's never the first place.

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I gotta chill here in that.

That's a feel good story right there.

And it's.

But I know that was not easy to do the cuts.

When you have to do the cuts, you're being told, and then going to the board and saying, I'm not gonna do that because there's no lack of pressure to hit the numbers.

And so what do you do in the moment when they're like, well, you said they didn't come back to you.

You start, I guess you, Stephen Covey, seven habit.

You, you began with the end in mind.

I.

And you're like, I'm not doing this.

Well, in fairness, there's, the story behind the story is, when I was made CEO, we were on the verge.

PSP was on the verge of a bankruptcy.

So the decision was, do we hand this company back to the banks and call it a day?

Because it was going, it had significantly gone backwards in the previous two years.

And so I was a, you know, I hate to say it, but I was kind of a last, last chance, effort.

Can we.

Can we get this thing turned around?

Let's see if Chris can fix it.

Yeah.

And I felt it was pretty easy, to be honest.

I said I could see what we're doing wrong here, but it's going to take a little time, so I might need a little air cover.

So had they not been.

Had it not been a.

This is a last ditch effort.

I don't know that they've been as understanding, but they were kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place and said, okay, we hope this works.

And if not, we'll just continue down the path that we already think we're going to go down.

And.

And fortunately it worked.

But really, the reason why it worked is because we did have some franchises out there already, and it was the same philosophy with them.

It was, I want you guys to be successful.

I want you to love what you do and do what you love.

I'm not here to tell you what to do.

I'm here to empower you.

I'm here to help you.

And at the end of the day, if I empower and help you and you bring the passion to the business, to the customer, we're going to love this answer.

And they were very supportive from day one, and I have kept that from, you know, I think the first thing I did was lower the royalties because I truly believe if the franchisees are successful, the board will be taken care of down the road.

You can't take care of the board first and think that that's a good answer.

So, in other words, for the listeners, day one or early on, when you move in, you're like, how can I make this instantly more profitable for our franchisees?

And.

Yes.

And then you're playing the long game.

Yes.

Which is exact opposite of, how do I make this instantly more profitable for the board?

Which.

Which, by the way.

Right.

That's not a fun conversation over a board dinner, by the way.

Oh, gosh.

Hopefully they had some wine at that point.

Yeah, exactly.

Cheap wine.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's.

Well, thank you for letting us into that world.

Right.

It really goes to show, never, what does it take to be a CEO?

What are those conversations like?

And you have to have courage.

You have to, you know, one of the things that I'm curious about is your leadership vision.

So it sounds like you began crafting your leadership vision for pet supplies.

Plus, before you walked in the door, because you'd had these conversations early, you were thinking about it, or did you have to kind of get in there.

And I no, it's funny you say that.

There's another experience that happened to me when I was at PetSmart where I got pulled aside after a senior team meeting that I was the lone voice of dissent around again, cutting store labor.

Didn't think it was the right thing.

I got that.

The opportunity was we either have to have a tough conversation with Wall street or we do what we think is right for the business.

And I said, I think we got to do what's right for the business.

Take the hit and we will emerge from this.

I was pulled aside and told basically, fall in line, you shouldn't, that's inappropriate, blah, blah, blah.

And I said, I will never have a senior staff meeting where I chastise somebody for being the lone wolf and the instigator of the tough conversations or whatever.

So to this day, we say, my senior team meetings, when we invite people in, we kind of warn them that it's full contact communication.

So it's going to get lively.

There's going to be words said that probably are not that appropriate.

People are going to, they're going to be very passionate, they're going to be very vocal, but we are going to know what's on their mind and then hopefully we will make the right decision.

But I have the saying, I have a great ability to make decisions.

I have a really good ability to make bad ones.

Help me not make bad decisions.

That's your job.

Wow.

And so when you come in with that strategy, what did you notice where, like, was your team ready?

Did it take time?

No, they definitely were not ready.

It was a culture of people would just, the CEO would make decisions.

People would shake their head.

They'd leave the meeting and they'd have sidebar conversations around what a bad decision this is.

And that was it.

And so luckily, I was part of the team before, and I was able to say, I'm well aware of how this team operates and this can't continue.

Now, to your point, it took several months of getting them to open up, and there was a lot of direct conversations around.

Okay, I quote, unquote, set you up in this conversation.

I don't even believe what I just said.

And yet none of you are challenging.

This is a problem.

This is a problem.

I honestly need your full, honest feedback.

Like, we cannot be successful if we don't, you know, Phil Francis was the CEO of PetSmart.

He had a great saying that I have stolen and used and made it my own.

And that was when you have, in our case, almost 800 stores in Petsmart's case, 1500 stores.

Whatever the case was back then, there's no such thing as a small mistake with 1500 stores.

There's no such thing as a small mistake with 750 stores either.

So our job is to avoid the small mistakes, avoid the big mistakes, which is a little mistake multiplied 750 times.

And guess what?

If you have some small wins along the way, you're going to like the answer, avoid the big pitfalls and have enough little wins, and you're going to like the scoreboard at the end.

Yeah.

Because your little wins get multiplied across those stores exactly once you share it.

That makes so much sense now.

I love this idea of, you know what?

I'm going to say something so just crazy in my meeting just to see if anyone's going to challenge it.

Absolutely.

If they're doing it.

So do you remember the time you thought you were right going into this meeting, not, not the test, but the, and then finally someone challenged you, but yet you're like, no, no.

I mean, even I'm right, but I, but it's good to be challenged.

Do you, do you remember that?

Oh, I mean, you know, that I can honestly say that happens every month because I am not as close.

And this is another philosophy I have, especially at PSP.

I have town hall meetings every month where I get up in front of the whole team and we talk about, you know, the business, obviously.

But one of the things I tell them is, you know, everybody here adds value to the business.

Some of you have such unique value.

You're the only person that truly understands what you do.

If you think because I'm the CEO, I'm going to make a better decision at something that affects you and your job personally, and I have, I have a better sense of that than you do, then you are way, way, way giving me way more credit than I possibly can deserve.

So to your point, there are many times where somebody in merchandising marketing, it is a perfect example.

I'm not an it guy by any stretch, and I will throw out some crazy idea.

I'll say, why don't we.

And my favorite line is, why don't we just do Xdev?

Which drives a CIO crazy, because he'll come back with, nothing is just x.

And I'm like, no, I know, but in my mind it is because I'm a simple thinker.

So there are many things that I'll throw out on a monthly basis and there will be a lull in the conversation, and I already know it's coming.

Somebody's trying to decide who it is.

It's going to say, that's a really dumb idea, and here's the reason why.

But they have come to understand that.

I will say, yeah, that actually was a really dumb idea, but that's why I'm not in it.

Or that's really a dumb idea.

That's why I'm not in marketing.

I know enough about all of them to have a point of view, and sometimes that point of view is just really wrong.

Oh, so good.

So we've hit a lot of good things.

A useful thing.

Talk about risk taking.

Talk about that with your team.

Talking about running your, I think interacting, running your meetings, mindset.

A lot of good stuff there.

I want to take a step back because I had some questions around this.

Why pets?

You got, I mean, you look at like, on LinkedIn, like you go to Chris's.

We know everything's like pet, pet.

Like, you have been doing this a lifetime.

So I got into pet.

I was at a discount retailer in Canada.

We went bankrupt a year after Walmart came up.

Walmart just hammered us.

And so that wasn't a fun experience, but it is what it is.

Petsmart came to town, recruited me before they opened.

I started way back down in my career again and had to work up the ladder, which was fine.

But I will say whether it was Petsmart or whether it's pet supplies, plus, having watched my dad struggle for 30 some odd years doing something he hated, there has never been a day in pet that I haven't loved what I do.

I really do love what I do, whether it's in the office or visiting stores, seeing the passion.

It's a great industry.

I mean, let's be honest, there's not many industries that have 30 plus years of year over year growth.

So it's a very solid industry.

We don't go through a lot of those, you know, here's a downturn.

It's not the auto industry.

We have heyday and then you're in the toilet and then you're up and down.

It's a consistently strong business.

Our job is to keep up with the demand.

Our job is to do a little bit better than the guy down the street.

But it really has been.

I've loved what I've.

What I do and I do what I love.

I've had lots of different job offers and I've entertained some of them.

And it's interesting, after walking through corporate offices, talking to boards or doing, or walking through their business models, I always came away going, this is not something I could ever love.

I could.

I might be okay at it.

I might be good.

I might be able to help the company.

And frankly, in all honesty, I could make a lot more money.

But I knew it wouldn't be something I would love.

And therefore, I could never put my full passion and my full heart behind it.

So the big question is, what pets?

So I have an incredibly spoiled ten month old frenchie, a small one.

It took me a year to find her because I wanted a small frenchie that I could travel with.

So she's 17 pounds, and she goes everywhere with me.

She's never home.

So that's on the plane?

Yeah, on the plane.

She'll travel in her dog bag 10 hours a day, no problem.

As long as she's with it.

Doesn't make a noise, doesn't make a sound.

She's a great google traveler, and I have an umbrella cockatoo.

That is our company chief bird officer, who.

She lives with me.

She used to live in the office, and then during COVID she ended up coming to my house, and now she's part of the family.

But I'm looking at integrating her back into the business because I truly want her to represent the business.

She's a fun mascot that people love to see and interact with.

So she's on vacation right now at one of our distribution centers.

So she's being very spoiled down in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

That's where my wife's from.

There you go.

You know, from Orangeburg there a few.

A couple months ago, her reunion, her high school reunion.

All right, so things about the pet business that would surprise people.

Like, for example, which is the most fastest growing pet segment of pet stuff.

Well, for the last ten years, services have been an amazing business for anybody in the pet industry.

Services being grooming.

Grooming, pet wash.

And when you think about.

So you think about the pet industry, it truly does follow the humanization of pets.

You know, whatever people do, pets do.

Eventually, people want their pets to have that same experience.

So whether it's the electronic.

The electronic segment, you know, monitoring your pets, watching your pets, you know, where's your pet every minute of the day?

Is it being entertained?

Is it watching tv?

Can you automatically feed it from home?

All of these things.

Because, let's face it, everybody's lives are very technically based now.

So is their pets lives.

That's a big one.

But services is another one, because think about it.

How many people cut their own grass, shovel their own driveways?

Now, in some cases, make their own food?

So it's logical that 20 years ago, people used to wash their pets in the bathtub at home.

Now they take them to a groom shop and say, you know, do your magic.

Yes.

They don't do much of that stuff for themselves anymore.

Wow, okay.

And which, which animal, so you got, yeah.

You have, you have cats, you have dogs, birds, reptiles, fish.

Which one do you think is the most?

I'll say.

Or which one's growing at the fastest right now?

The good news is, I always say in our meet the team days, where our franchisees come in, prospective franchisees, dog is king.

Dog has been king for 2030 years.

Dog is going to continue to be king.

Nothing against the cat lovers out there.

That's second in line.

But, I mean, it's hard to play catch with a cat.

It's hard to put them in a dress and take them out shopping or take it to.

So your dog, you can interact with, you can spend a lot of money on them.

You feed them, they eat more.

So dog is always our biggest part of our business.

There's not a lot of cats that come through pet wash or grooming, and then everything else falls down really quickly.

I mean, the fish segment is still a pretty decent size.

Reptile is growing like crazy.

Small animal and bird.

It's kind of, you know, it's kind of seen its heyday 20 years ago.

Still.

Still some pet and bird and small animal lovers out there.

But it tends to be a cycle that you go through in early childhood, and most people grow out of it.

Why reptile?

What's going on in a reptile world?

To stimulate.

The biggest thing about reptile is, number one, more variety.

So they're, you know, for those who are into it, I mean, you, reptile used to be a lizard, right?

Used to be a little gecko.

Now it's the snakes.

Now it's the arachnids.

Now it's, you know, so there's a lot more to the reptile category, number one.

Number two, they're easy to raise, so they don't need a lot of attention.

Your snake doesn't need to be cuddled that often.

Some cases, you can feed them once a week, some cases once a month.

So they really are an easy pet to take care of.

They're a little different for people that want to have that, you know, shock factor for lack of.

But, yeah, the party that shows up with the red, that would, like the snake on their arm, I'm like, please do not come to my.

In my house with that thing.

Right.

Which actually, snake used to be the big shocker.

Now it's the, you know, the tarantula that they're crawling on their shoulder or something.

So if you had to get your crystal ball out, which I'm sure you do periodically, what is the future of the, of pet, of pets look like?

So I think you're heading down a path.

So on the, on the food side, I think you're heading down a path of a lot more individual choice, people wanting to, you know, I find it entertaining because you have pet companies, food companies have been out there 30, 40, 50 years, have been formulating the best diets, and yet because of the Internet, because of all the stuff that social media people believe, that knowledge can't possibly be good enough.

I can make a better meal at home in my kitchen.

So I think what you're going to see is probably more of the grocery effect where you can go in and you could forage and potentially make your own pet's diet versus just buy a bag of dog food, I see that coming in some future.

Okay.

You're certainly seeing a lot more in the fresh frozen, that type dry, freeze dried categories.

People moving a little bit away from the, just the brown kibble.

But, you know, the other categories, it's just going to continue to follow the humanization.

So whatever people get into, I mean, you'll probably see dogs hang gliding here in the next five years.

My dog's bored at home.

My dog wants to go on a hang, go on a hot air balloon ride or hang gliding.

There you go.

Exactly.

My dog's bored.

Yeah, yeah.

We love our shit, too.

Three years old, two and a half years old.

Great.

And I love what y'all are doing.

So putting sort of bringing this full circle, man.

We talked to, we talked pets give us a lot of insights on that in the industry and what's going on there.

Franchise versus corporate.

Thinking about your career in a lot of different ways.

Talk about risk taking.

Great insights on it.

Why pets in general?

Risk you took.

What's your parting thought for our listeners?

Feel free to take it any direction you want.

Because of my, as I think about my career and as I think about my personal life, there's a lot of things I would do differently.

And I have this conversation all the time with my kids.

The mistake I made was thinking, so, first of all, I'm smart enough to get by.

I get along with people generally, so that helps.

And I grew up in a family of very, very hard workers.

I took the hard working to the extreme, and that's not healthy.

What I explained to my daughter is if you're a hard working, smart employee and you put in a good solid eight, 9 hours, you are already going to be a superstar.

You don't have to do 1213, 14 hours a day like I did because there's more and more people that are putting in six to 8 hours a day of average output that you're already going to be a star compared to them.

The only thing you are the difference between a nine hour day and a 14 hours day at that same output is you burn yourself out.

You give up a whole part of your life, your family, that actually helps you to become a better employee.

If you have a supportive family network at home, you're going to be far more valuable to the company at the end than somebody who's going through a lot of range of emotions with, in my case, divorces or upset families or missing kids, graduations or whatever.

So work hard, give whatever company, whatever you do, give them a solid workday, whether that's 8 hours, 9 hours, whatever.

There's people that probably think it should be six, but I won't get into that debate.

And then when you go home, put that same effort and energy into your family and you will be much better rewarded in the long run when it comes to your entire life.

So much wisdom and it reminds you of something we talk a lot about, of, hey, we.

We give a lot to our clients, to our employees, and we nurture those people, but we've also got to take the time to nurture the community that supports us.

Absolutely.

And that's the family, that's the friendships, the pets.

Be with your pet.

Right?

I mean, absolutely.

And I think some companies are focusing too much on trying to make work a trying to take the work out of work.

They're trying to make employees love coming in every day, love, you know, whatever.

At the end of the day, the example I use, I have a brother who's an accountant.

I could never have been a happy accountant.

I might have been able to been accountant, but I would never have been a happy.

If you don't love what you do, I can't.

It doesn't matter how amazing the company is, you're never going to love it because you're doing the wrong job.

So my job at the corporate side is to give you an environment for you to grow, for you to flourish.

It's not to make you love what you're doing or love coming into work.

It's hopefully not a barrier to that happening.

What, where your true love and passion is probably going to come from is what you do when you shut down for the day.

Yeah.

Enjoying work, the perks, instead of the old lipstick on a pig thing, all the free coffee, and being able to bring your pet to work.

That's nice.

But you got to enjoy at least somewhat the core of the thing.

And finding that alignment early on is going to help you.

Absolutely.

Wow, Chris, thank you for a fun and entertaining and educational interview today.

It was great spending time with you.

Thank you so much.

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