From Military Officer to Franchisor: How Allan Young Built Art of Drawers

Allan Young, CEO of Art of Drawers, began his career in the U.S. Army, where he honed his leadership and problem-solving skills as an officer. After completing his military service, Young’s entrepreneurial spirit drove him to explore various business ventures, ultimately leading him to the world of franchising.

In a recent episode of the “Meet the Zor” podcast, Young shared with Nick Powills, founder and publisher of 1851 Franchise, how his military background and early entrepreneurial experiences shaped his approach to building successful franchises. Young also discussed the challenges he faced in the custom shelving industry, the lessons learned from his previous businesses, and how those experiences have driven the rapid growth of Art of Drawers.

A summarized transcript of Young’s interview with Powills has been included below. It has been edited for clarity, brevity and style.

Nick Powills: First, we’re talking Allan, then we’ll get into the brand stuff. I like the people side. So, Allan, tell me your franchise story. How did you accidentally fall into franchising?

Allan Young: I accidentally fell into franchising. Most people don’t grow up wanting to go into franchising unless they have a parent in it. I never thought I’d be involved in wooden shelving. I was a serial entrepreneur, having started 14 businesses before high school. My guidance counselor told me, “You can’t be an entrepreneur; you need to work for big companies.” This was in 1988 when “entrepreneur” wasn’t a cool word.

I ended up joining the Army, got an ROTC scholarship, and became an officer. The Army, especially as an officer, is very entrepreneurial. They give you a mission, and it's up to you to figure out how to get there. All the planning you do can go out the window once you get to the battlefield, which is a lot like business—plans can be disrupted by external factors.

After leaving active duty, I returned to starting businesses. I launched a home automation company after 9/11, which did well, but I sold it after a couple of years because it wasn’t something I was passionate about. Then I started an indoor air quality company, which I was passionate about. I did $1.3 million in my first year with 37% net profit. But then I got deployed. I sold the business, but I learned the hard lesson that I was the business. When I went to sell, I got an earn-out instead of upfront cash, and the buyer went out of business in four months.

Before deployment, I did some consulting. A small company in Richmond with five employees hired me to create a plan for expansion. They wanted to franchise, but I talked them into a dealer model instead. After deployment, I joined the company and helped them open new cities like Chicago, Milwaukee and Atlanta. We implemented systems and processes and, after about a year and a half, I realized we had developed a franchise model. So, in the fall of 2008, we began franchising.

Powills: Tons to unpack here. One is the lessons you’ve learned in life. They weren’t failures — they were roadblocks — but you recognized them and that helps you coach first-time franchisees through the same roadblocks. Like, “I’ve been there, trust me, I know what I’m talking about.” Is that your superpower?

Young: Yeah, I think — and I would call them failures. I’m a big fan of failures. One of our core values is “celebrate failure when we learn from it.” I either learn from my failures or by observing others. I think I fail better than most, and I’m good at adjusting. In the military, I learned: plan, rehearse, execute, then review what went well and what didn’t, and adjust. It’s a continuous cycle of plan, execute and adjust.

That’s huge for coaching franchise partners. The systems are there — it’s about following them. But the real challenge is the fear of failure. That’s what makes people freeze. Most failures in life are private — if you don’t get into law school, no one has to know. But failing in business is public. The fear of failing publicly is a big struggle. So, I coach a lot on what’s happening mentally. That’s the most important thing when starting any business.

Powills: I hear September 11th, 2008, deployment — major shifts. You talk about your plan being worthless, no one caring about it. Does knowing what those events felt like change your perception going into COVID? And obviously, your business probably skyrocketed during COVID. Did that change your approach?

Young: Yeah, I think you have to adjust quickly. Starting a franchise in Fall 2008 was fantastic because we grew. We were an Inc. 500 company in 2009, ‘10, ‘11, and the number one fastest-growing home service franchise. We thrived for two reasons: When the economy gets difficult, more people franchise because they’ve lost their six-figure job and are figuring out what to do. Also, during a recession, people stop gutting their kitchens and do smaller, affordable upgrades, which worked in our favor.

We did well during that recession. Pivoting was essential because the only world we knew was a recession. Companies that got comfortable in easier times struggled more. Going into COVID, or any difficult time, we’ve learned to adapt. Right now, AI is huge. We’re doing the hard work to adopt it because five years from now, if you're not embracing AI, you're going to struggle.

Powills: You see Art of Drawers as a business, but when unpacking your journey, we’re talking about an entrepreneur and a leader. Do you think about what’s next and how many extensions of this you could have?

Young: No, because I’ve done that before. I started too many companies. Focus is critical now. Part of the story is that this is what’s next. Art of Drawers has been franchised for less than a year. I started franchising ShelfGenie in 2008, and we grew it rapidly. By 2016, we had 250 locations and thousands of people in the field, but innovation slowed to a crawl. Rolling out even a simple product addition took six months, which frustrated me.

I looked at Toyota — they started Lexus by upscaling the brand, taking the same car and making it better. That was the playbook for Art of Drawers. We planned to take the top-performing ShelfGenie franchise partners and award them Art of Drawers, like how top Toyota dealers got Lexus dealerships. But a couple of years into this, Neighborly wanted to buy ShelfGenie. My partners and investors had been in for over a decade and wanted to exit, so selling was the right thing to do.

We had spent $5 million on a tech package, a CRM [customer relationship management] system that runs everything and allows us to scale quickly and efficiently, letting franchise partners focus on growing their business. We licensed that technology to Neighborly, but we own and continue developing it. We’ve upgraded everything since then.

Powills: I looked at your website, and your story is phenomenal. I’ve always believed that people sell brands, not the brands themselves. I would bet on you, the jockey, not just the business, which could change many times. When I see “Bring Art of Drawers to your area,” it doesn’t say “why you” or “why now.” It feels much bigger than that. You’ve invested in a tech stack to make it impossible for someone to enter this business category. And look at what you're offering for the same royalty percentage that others charge — your support structure stands out.

When I watched the franchisee video, they talk about the support, but it's just first names, even yours. I want more of their stories. I want to connect with them online, to see their journey. Also, your website says “How We Work: Our Customer Journey.” But is that also a franchisee journey? From deciding to leave a job, to designing a new life and business plan, going to Discovery Day, and enjoying the business — that’s the franchise process. You could use that customer journey as the franchise journey. Any feedback on these observations?

Young: That’s good feedback. Our franchise opportunity page could definitely improve. We outsource our franchise sales to a company I trust — I did the same with ShelfGenie. I believe that when you start franchising, you can only be great at either selling franchises or supporting them. We focus a lot on working with consultants.

But those are good points for people early in their franchise journey. I talk to them on a founder’s call, but that’s later in the process. One thing we stress is that when you start a business, your first problem is always a sales problem. I love solving that. Then, the next day, you wake up with an operations problem. It’s a pendulum swinging between sales and operations.

We handle all media buying, ad placements, digital marketing and creative work. We track everything down to the penny in our CRM, so we know exactly where leads come from. We can dial in and out of marketing campaigns. When leads come in, our sales support center schedules appointments for franchise partners and assigns them to installers. We train the installers, and they handle the job. Franchise partners only need to focus on recruiting, training and coaching their designers, who are commission-only contractors. If you want to handle all operations, we’re not for you. But if you want to grow your business with backend support, that’s where we shine.

Powills: I love what you said about choosing either to sell or support. You outsource the sales side, and that’s a message worth highlighting. Many high-growth accelerator brands in the last two or three years have focused on sales but lacked the infrastructure behind it. When that happens, you put people’s life savings at risk.

Young: Yeah, that’s a big problem. The ones that struggle most with that are brick-and-mortar brands. They sell a lot, but they can’t get locations opened because of a lack of infrastructure. Our average time to open is 32 days. We help franchisees find a small store space quickly without signing long-term leases. Their only capital expense is building a home show display, and we help with that.

The key is getting people open quickly, successful quickly and cash flowing quickly. We can do this at scale, whether it's one or 10 franchise partners a month. The goal is not to outpace our ability to support, and we’ve been careful about that. We’re building out our team to make sure we don’t fall into that trap.

Powills: I keep listening to you and looking at your title. You use "founder," but I don’t like that title for you. I think of something bigger, like "Chief of Scale," because "founder" doesn’t seem to match how your brain works. Does the word "founder" connect with you, or is it bigger than that?

Young: I think founders have a lot wrong with them that becomes their superpower. We’re difficult to work with and extremely driven, so it resonates a little. My official title in the company is CTO — Chief Troublemaker. But I do like "founder." I have three roles in my company:

Culture — I spend a lot of time on it. We hire and fire based on culture and values. I talk to every new employee for 30 minutes about our culture and values. If they align, it’s great; if not, it won’t last. The same applies to franchise partners.

Vision — I talk a lot about where we’re going and what we’re doing. No one else will do this for you as the leader.

Ideas — I come up with 20 ideas a day, but only one is usually good. My team, especially my COO, figures out which ideas are worth pursuing.

Powills: Maybe that’s your “why you” right now. If I landed on your website and it said, “We built the plane, we’re going to show you how to fly it,” I think that’s an interesting place.

Young: So, I’m hiring you to do my website. Good.

Powills: So, let’s end on this. If a candidate’s watching this to this point, what else do you want them to know about?

Young: Like I said, we’re looking for a very specific person. Every time you buy a franchise, you have to consider what your day-to-day will look like. It’s not about cutting hair, grooming dogs or custom drawers. It’s about what your life will be like. We’ve built a system where, if you focus on recruiting and training designers, we handle the sales process. You’ll be recruiting people who don’t do this full time — interior designers, professional organizers — they self-generate sales and run some of yours. That’s the main focus.

If you can do that and let us handle everything else, a day in the life looks like: “I’ve built a great team, and I’m going on vacation for two weeks.” We can approve your sales and assign them to your install partners who handle everything. When you come back, you won’t have an inbox full of dread. That’s the lifestyle we’re offering. We’re looking for empire builders — people who want to build a large system with the territories we provide, not buy a job.

Powills: The magic in your statement is that with many franchisors, you buy into the brand, but then you have to become an expert in HR, supply chain management, build-out, real estate — it just keeps going. But you’re saying, “Let’s keep you focused on where you can impact your outcomes and financial dreams as much as possible, and let us build the scaffolding around you.” That’s part of the magic of your business, and I think it’s awesome.

Watch the full episode above or on YouTube.