LINDORA FRANCHISE INFORMATION

1851 Franchise: How did you accidentally fall into franchising? How did your franchise story start? 

Lou DeFrancisco, President of Lindora Franchise: Just like you said, I fell into it. I feel like I got lucky falling into it. First of all, I always tell people it's really important to figure out what you're passionate about and then figure out how to make money at it, and it was no different for me in my personal life. I graduated with a physics degree, of all things. Don't ask me why — I didn't go into that field after college. I went into IT consulting because it was a job. Like many people out of college, I just took a job because I needed one. And over time — we're talking four or five years — I found health and fitness.

I had a good friend of mine that talked me into leaving my IT job and going to work for him. That was what I would call today a boutique health club. Single location, that was it — not a franchise. It was a health club that specializes in personal training and physical therapy. And I give a ton of credit to him — an early mentor for me — because he recognized we were friends first. He recognized I wasn't happy where I was at. He tried to help me move on and find something that I would enjoy, and I did! I fell in love with the world of health and fitness. I was in that for four or five years. As for me personally, I'm a learner — I've known that about myself for a long time — so I wanted to keep learning, keep growing personally and professionally.

That one location wasn't ever going to be more than one location. It's actually still in existence today as one location, which is great. And I did the old — this was early 2000s — Craigslist search for a job and came across a posting for a director of franchise support. And I was like, “Oh, that sounds interesting.” It was a fitness franchise. It was looking for someone that knew how to operate in a fitness environment, but on the franchisor side, so I went for an interview and, like they say, the rest is history. 

1851 Franchise: As you've been doing this, what wows you the most about franchising? What still disappoints you?

DeFrancisco: What I'm still impressed with is the varied, wide variety of backgrounds that people have coming into a franchise system and that they can be successful. People will ask me, “What makes a successful franchisee?” And what I've developed as an answer over time — it took me a while to develop this — but the common themes I've found with people that are successful in any of the franchise brands that I've operated: One, you're passionate about that vertical or that modality or that industry. Two, you can execute on systems. That's really important. You have to be one of those rule followers. I'm going to stay in between the lines. I'm going to go out and execute on these marketing and sales systems in particular. And then three, and this is probably what I always tell people is the most important,  you have to be a leader of your own organization.

So as the brand president of whatever brand it happens to be, I can't run your business for you. I can coach you on how to find real estate, negotiate the lease, and go through construction and pre-sale and marketing and sales and how to recruit, how to train. But at the end of the day, it's your business. You have to make the ultimate hiring decisions, set goals, hold people accountable, make the ultimate firing decisions if that's where you have to go. And I'm still really impressed with the wide variety of backgrounds that come into a franchise system and that they're successful. It doesn't matter that you come from the corporate world or you've owned a business before, you haven't owned a business before, whatever it may be.

Lindora, the brand I'm operating now, is a medical service business. You don't have to have a medical background. You don't have to be a nurse. You don't have to be a doctor to be successful. You need to know how to run a business at the end of the day, or you need to have the ability to learn how to run a business. So that always impresses me and part of my job that I love is I get to meet prospects and talk with them and help them figure out, “Is this the right fit?” I love that part of my job because what I've also learned over the years is that franchising is not for everyone. I worked for a franchise in the past that was focused on selling to sell. [Lindora’s parent company,] Xponential [Fitness], has done a great job of delivering an educational process for prospects and giving them multiple touch points; we actually went to even more of an extreme with Lindora because of the questions that we were getting around medical services, weight loss medications, and the medical legalities of what we do.

So we really go above and beyond in trying to be as transparent as possible and educate as much as possible so that we don't get to that place down the road. It doesn't happen right away. It's, you know, two years down the road, three years down the road, like, “Oh, I just wasn't cut out for this. I'm going to get out and go do something else.”

1851 Franchise: Give us the state of the brand. Is there this urgency to get scale faster than normal because of the category and the attractiveness of it? 

DeFrancisco: We're super excited about Lindora. We have been looking at different wellness modalities over the last year and a half, two years, and for one reason or another, never pulled the trigger on anyone else, and then Lindora happened officially January 1 this year. Lindora is a unique business model; I think it was just kind of serendipitous that some of these other brands didn't work out because now we have this opportunity to leverage Lindora, which is a 50-plus-year-old company. It's been around since the early 70s and has this history of weight loss programs and utilizing weight loss medication. 

As I said, I've been in health and fitness for 20-plus years. I've always been passionate about personally living a life of being careful and conscious of what I put in my body, moving my body, etc., and I've been in this world of health and fitness where the problem is you're just not motivated enough. You're not disciplined enough. That was always the mindset of those in the health and fitness space, of those that were overweight or obese, like, “Oh, you just need to work out more. You just need to eat less calories,” which over the last bunch of years, we're finally shining that light on research that shows it's more than just discipline.

Different people have different DNA, and we're all wired differently, and we're just — I'm not an expert on this yet, I'm still doing a lot of my own homework — but we're just scratching the surface on what these new weight loss medications can do and where they can go, which is really cool to be a part of because, like I said earlier, I'm a learner. I like learning new things, so this typically is a medical services field. I've been in health and fitness, and I categorize Stretch Lab as wellness, but I've been in that field before of personal training, physical therapy, acupuncture and massage. I've been in those worlds, and the difference is that with Lindora, it's a medical services field, so there's a medical legal component to it. Once a franchise prospect gets over that hurdle of, “Hey, we have a vendor that handles all the legal compliance stuff for you,” once they understand that, then they can start wrapping their brain around the actual business model, which is weight loss and wellness services.

Lindora is a mission-driven company, so that was really important early on to Xponential as they were looking at Lindora. Their mission is to empower people to live healthier, longer lives, so every single person on the Lindora team at Xponential — as well as our 31 locations that we currently have open, primarily in Southern California, and our new franchise owners that have come on board — they all believe in this mission. They're passionate about making a difference in people's lives. 

1851 Franchise: I think there’s an excellent opportunity for internal growth. Is that a part of the game plan, existing franchises saying, “Let me buy into this?”

DeFrancisco: Anytime we launch a new brand, we always launch it to our existing franchise partners and other brands first, and then we open it up to external. And the challenge with growing — we do have a few franchisees at Lindora that were part of the Xponential system previously — but then the challenge when you buy multiple locations and you have a development schedule is that you've got to open other ones, too. So in my past experiences with other Xponential brands, as we've launched them, we definitely have that impact over time of getting more and more Xponential franchise owners from other brands that come in. Sometimes you have early adopters in the system. Other times you're like, “Hey, I'm going to wait on the sidelines and just see how this thing does. And then maybe I'll jump in.” So we see all kinds, and now, with over 3,000 locations open globally across all of our brands, there are a lot of opportunities there. 

We had that vision from day one, that this was going to be a multi-brand parent company, and we were going to have these shared services across all brands. And this was going to be an opportunity to entice one brand franchisee to come over and buy into another brand, because essentially, the operating aspects of it — the blocking and tackling of marketing and sales — are the same. We're utilizing the same vendors on the back end, we're utilizing the same basic strategies, the actual offer is the same. Of course, that call-to-action is going to be slightly different, but the technology behind it — the systems behind following up, phone call, email, text message, all the classic sales strategies — are all the same. They're all replicable across the brands.

1851 Franchise: Is there anything else you want that buyer to know about you? 

DeFrancisco: I'm a big believer in servant leadership. And I also — you'll hear me say often, that I'm a steward of the brands. And I say that because I believe it first. But second, I also want any franchise prospect to know that you shouldn't just be buying into a brand because I'm in the seat today, because I won't be in the seat forever. But Xponential — strong company, multiple brands, strong financially, ridiculously long history — I mean, it's rare that you see a company that's been around for 50-plus years, and we have a vision for it to be a leader in this vertical for another 50-plus years. I want you to believe that the team I put in place and the support we're going to provide our franchise partners is going to be best in class, best in the industry.

You're not going to find anything better anywhere else. And my job is to make sure that continues long after I'm gone. And I hope that gives any kind of franchise prospect confidence that this isn't a fly-by-night, overnight success. “Hey, let's start a website and start offering GLP1 online and it'll show up in the mail and you stick yourself and hopefully we make a lot of money in six months.” We're in this for the long run.

The total investment to open a Lindora franchise ranges from $272,350 to $491,750. To learn more about franchising opportunities with Lindora, visit https://www.xponential.com/lindora-franchising-1851