Scouting for Growth John Hewitt: How CEOs Building Their Empire
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to John Hewitt, a true pioneer in the tax preparation and financial services industry, having founded and scaled two companies to over $500 million in value - Jackson Hewitt Tax Service and Liberty Tax Service.
Throughout his illustrious career spanning 55 years, John has always kept sight of his driving purpose – to change lives. He takes pride in having a monumental positive impact on franchisees, employees, and customers. We'll be exploring his strategies for scaling successful empires, overcoming barriers, financing growth models, and more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- One of the key ingredients is that you have to get buy-in from everhyone involved. You have to have a dream that’s fairly accurate then get your employees, customers, vendors, investors, etc to buy-in to where you’re going.
- As a franchisee, one of the things you want from your franchisor is consistency and quality. Whoever offers the worst service in your system will determine what your brand name is worth. We call every customer and ask them how we did, which no one else does, in the franchise world, they send and email, text, or send them a survey. It’s been great for us because not only do we police our brand, but our customers love to be called and asked how we can improve our service to them. Plus, we get higher staff retention and get more referrals.
- Anything that’s systemic should be able to be provided by software and computers. We divide issues up into ‘tip of the iceberg’. If it’s something that is systemic – an iceberg – we’re looking for a solution to it, if it’s just a one-off situation then we don’t build systems or use software for it. I’ve been doing it this way since 1981, making things expeditious and consistently high quality.
- Train your staff so they can go anywhere and be successful, but treat them so well that they want to stay. It comes from creating a culture and an attitude in your organisation, and the attitude starts with employees first: If you want your customers to be treated well by your employees you have to treat your employees well, you have to listen and be loyal to your team and build a team of a people with a great attitude. You can’t teach a great attitude.
BEST MOMENTS
‘There are two major parts of growth: The amount of money you spend, and the amount of money you take in, you always have to make sure they’re balanced.’
‘I’ve been in taxes for 55 years: There are only 2 certainties in life: death and tax, it’s recession proof.’
‘In the pet industry we’ve seen young people in the past 10 years delay having children. Sometimes I ask if they have children and they say: “I have 2 dogs, those are my children.”’
‘Brand loyalty is such a cool and important thing to have which is why my company is called Loyalty Brands.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
John Hewitt is a visionary entrepreneur renowned for founding two of the largest tax preparation companies in the United States - Jackson Hewitt Tax Service and Liberty Tax Service.
As the pioneer behind the "Hewitt" in Jackson Hewitt, John grew the company to over 1,300 offices and $483 million in sales before selling it in 1997.
Undeterred, John founded Liberty Tax in 1997, rapidly expanding it to over 4,000 offices in the U.S. and Canada. By 2012, Liberty Tax was one of the top 100 largest retail organizations in North America.
Now John is applying his strategic prowess to investing, John helps entrepreneurs build their own empires as CEO of Loyalty Brands. Guided by ambition and faith, he continues to compete - and win - on an extraordinary level.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.