President of Moran Family of Brands Shares His Journey from Football Coach to Franchisor

An unexpected career change led Pete Baldine, a former college football coach, to take the reins of the automotive service franchise, Jiffy Lube.

“I had no business experience,” Baldine told 1851 Founder, Publisher and CEO Nick Powills during his regular “Meet the Zor” podcast. “Every time a problem came up, it was the transfer of that skill set. What would I do if this was my football team?”

Baldine's journey into franchising began in 1980 with Jiffy Lube, a brand that changed the way Americans approached car maintenance. Originally a football coach with dreams of a long-term career in sports, Baldine was persuaded by his former coach to oversee the first Jiffy Lube store in Salt Lake City. What started as a temporary gig turned into a decade-long career, growing the brand from a single store to over 1,100 locations.

“It was like drinking from a fire hose,” said Baldine. “It was an unbelievable experience with everything that we went through and all the rapid growth.”

Today, Baldine continues to leverage his coaching background to lead and inspire franchisees as president of Moran Family of Brands, ensuring that they have the tools and support needed to thrive.

A summarized transcript of the interview has been included below. It has been edited for clarity, brevity and style.

Nick Powills: How did you accidentally fall into franchising? What's your franchise story?

Pete Baldine: That goes way back, Nick — 1980 with Jiffy Lube, and the story kind of goes like this: I was playing football in college, and all I wanted to do was coach college football. I stayed on and coached at Cortland State University — which by the way, last year was the Division III National Champions — and then I had gotten hired after that to coach at Western Maryland College — which is now McDaniel College. The reason I got hired there was because I played in junior college for another guy who was now the head coach at Western Maryland, so I went down there, and I was coaching. The head coach at Western Maryland came to me and said, “Hey, I'm starting a new business, and I need somebody I can trust to go out to Utah for a couple of months. Would you go during the off-season?” And I hadn’t been out west before, so I was like, “Sure, I'll go out to Utah and check it out.”

Well, little did I know that the business that he was starting was going to be a Jiffy Lube. He sent me out there to run the first company store in the country in Salt Lake City, and then after about a month, he started calling me and trying to get me to stay with the company, and I said, “Jim, that wasn't our deal. I'm a football coach.” But he's a better salesman than me and he won the debate, so that was the end of my coaching career and the beginning of my franchising career.

We went from that one store in 1980 to 1,100 stores 10 years later, and it was like drinking from a fire hose. It was an unbelievable experience with everything that we went through and all the rapid growth, we learned everything about everything. Jim is now 87 years old, and I still try to talk to him once a week.

Powills: That's awesome. So, a bunch of things that I want to unpack from the start of that story. So, you take this corporate job. I assume franchising isn't in the cards on corporate unit one. It's more like, I have this business concept that I think can work, and at that point, is it a disruptor brand? Are there brands that are similar, or is it — like, how is he even jumping into the category?

Baldine: It was totally a disruptor brand, because you had a gap of a few years just before that where you did this transition from the two-bay gas stations — had a mechanic there and did your maintenance work in the neighborhood — and then all those went away with the high-volume pumpers. There was a period of time there in the mid-to-late 70s where it was hard to get an oil change because all those places were closing down and they were becoming high-volume gas stations with convenience stores, and so it totally disrupted because there was nothing there. Now, our founder had the foresight to say, “Hey, we've got to get there first with the most because other people are going to copy this,” and he did that. Before we had any really significant competitors in the quick-lube industry, we were probably at 400 units by 1984 and that's when we started seeing the copycat models coming.

Powills: Are you feeling entrepreneurial along this ride at all, to say, “How do I get in as a franchisee?”

Baldine: Oh, yeah. I had those opportunities many times, but my boss continued to block them and keep me on the corporate side. I was the guy who learned the business from the ground up, and so I was the operational guy that they relied on the most. Other guys in the system had done that — they started out on the corporate side and then ended up as franchisees. There were a number of times when I had that opportunity, and he talked me out of it.

Powills: I'm sure you've reflected back on this, but to have a football coach mentality, I mean, ultimately, you've got to figure out a way to have empathy and no empathy at the same time to coach players into getting the most out of them and building teams. I would imagine that skill set is what translated nicely over to the role you're in because you're doing the same franchisee thing, being hard, but fair, and giving them the confidence that they can do this.

Baldine: Nick, in all honesty, if I didn't have that coaching background and that sports background from my whole life, I don't know that I could have survived in the business world because the first couple of years, that's all I knew. I had no business experience, right? That's what I knew, and every time a problem came up, every time a situation came up, it was the transfer of that skill set. What would I do if this was my football team? How would I solve this personnel problem? And so the first two years until I got more experience, everything went back to that coaching mentality and that helped me succeed. All those skills were really transferable and applicable to what I was doing.

Powills: I would imagine most brands that struggle actually miss that quality because if you think about the whole life cycle of a sports coach, you have your cuts. You're selecting your players. You cut them, and that happens with candidates, too. They're not going to make it. They don't have the financial means or the cultural means, so cut them.

Now you've developed your team, which ends up being your franchisees, and now you have a multitude of different personalities that you've got to get to blend together and be focused on a singular goal. What you’re doing, whether conscious or not, is accessing the competitive nature of being a coach and the structure of it. If I think about brands today, when I hear, “My franchisees suck,” well, they suck because you don't know how to coach them, and you're not willing to get down to their level to make them better. I imagine that early on and all the way through your career has been a huge asset.

Baldine: That brings up an interesting point because the first couple of years, I was in the company store side as we were growing company stores, and then as we started bringing on a lot of franchisees, they brought me over to the franchise side. Then we had this evolution of going from single-unit franchisees to big multi-unit franchisees, and the level of support that was required for those multi-unit franchisees was very different from what it was for the single-unit franchisees. I was the guy that they pulled in and said, “Look, you've got to help all these multi-unit guys figure it out.”

Powills: That's a huge task in itself. One more question on the digital side. Obviously, franchising was a different time in the 80s and 90s. This is before the internet makes it possible. Right now, we can have this online and people are watching it. Exposure had to be word-of-mouth, expositions (which was the gathering spot), newspaper and traditional advertising. It had to be in bootstrap, but to go on that rocket ship of a growth means obviously franchisees are making money, and you're continuing to disrupt, and the brand is being protected. When you think about the culture and the rush of that, is that gone from today's franchise world? Can that ever be replicated in that sort of cultural way?

Baldine: I don't think it's gone. The first couple of years that we were growing with franchisees, it was really the friends and family model. Our founder was somebody who was a self-made millionaire by the time he was 38 years old, and he got back into the game with Jiffy Lube. The network that he had built was where we found our first group of franchisees, and then their networks. It just kept building on everybody's network, but the initial push was friends and family, and I think you still see that today with a lot of the emerging brands.

You see an emerging brand, and their first franchisees are people who get excited about the model or believe in the founder and want to ride those coattails because there's been success there before. I think it's easier today because of the internet. We have so much more in the way of communication than we had back then, so I think that actually makes it a bit easier.

Powills: Yeah, but also more competitive. Take the friends-and-family model, and this is the sadder part of franchising. Sometimes a brand that hasn't proven out the structure, the coaching and the level of economics can still award franchises to people based on the passion, and then if the business viability is not there, those people lose their life savings. That's part of the exposure because nobody knows what franchising is until you get into it. There's a lot to be educated on the topic. I think about your career. If you would have been a professional athlete, you would have been a single-team guy. You would have just lived out your whole career with a single team. You're obviously a loyalist, and you stay committed to this side of business, so you had to fall in love with automotive the same way that you fell in love with football. What has kept you so dialed in for so long and not feeling like you have to jump around and make the grass look green?

Baldine: Yeah, that's a great question, and I think that the answer to that is I've basically worked for three companies my whole career. Jiffy Lube, Safelite Autoglass — it became Safelite after a couple of different acquisitions that I went through, but Safelite — and then Moran Family of Brands. Yeah, automotive is great, but that's not the driving force for me. The driving force for me is what we're able to do with franchisees and helping people who want to be entrepreneurs — who want to start their own business — and being able to provide them with a successful platform that allows them to do that, and then being able to support them through that life cycle.

Then also, you talked about the longevity, also being able to help them exit with all the equity when it's time for them to exit. I just had what was a highlight for me — 23 years ago, I sold the franchise to a guy down in San Antonio, and he did really well. He made a lot of money over the years. Probably 20 years ago, he called me, and he was mad that his landlord was going to raise the rent. I talked him into buying the property, and he bought the real estate. Six months ago, I sold the business for him to a new franchisee, so it was a 23-year relationship. That's what turns me on, that kind of thing. Now, by the way, he decided that he really didn't want to be retired, so he's doing some operational work for us and opening up new stores. That's awesome.

Powills: That's the story of franchising, right? Just hearing that story makes me think of all of the wasted opportunity that franchisors don't celebrate the resale. The resale and the exit of a franchisee means proof the story worked. You have a guy that grew his family's wealth through the tools that your business created for him, and at the end of it, he got to walk away with a retirement amount that made it so that he can do what he wants. It's like, let me just have more franchisees.

Baldine: Exactly. To me, there's just nothing better than that. It's not automotive, per se.

It's that. It's being able to help franchisees get in and have that success and do what they want. Yeah, there's pain through the process a lot of times, but you're there to help them through those pains and help them get past them and move on to bigger and better things.

The resale thing is not a bad thing. Most of the time, in our system, I think we have a very unique situation in that I've got 33% of our franchisees that have been in the system for 20 years or more. Sixteen percent of them have been in for 30 years or more — that's off a 15-year agreement. That means all these guys that fall into that category are on either their second or even third franchise license agreement. To me, that's a huge success that we have that kind of longevity.

It's also my responsibility to make sure that when they do want to retire, I'm able to help them do that. I'm able to help them find a buyer and help them negotiate the deal and help them get out when it's their time. That brings it full circle. It's great that you get franchisees in your system and you grow your system, but they need to be successful while they're there, and they need to be able to get out when they want to get out.

Powills: What I would encourage is to play back what you just said. There's a few things that I expect. Part of what I listen to in this is, what's the standout from any business? What I'm hearing is, the widget ends up being automotive, but the widget's irrelevant. You're a brand around coaching and getting the best out of people is in the widget — whether it's football or it's automotive, it doesn't matter.

You could add a restaurant brand to the family of brands, and it would do the same thing. When I land on the site, though, it's a successful run for the family. What I just heard — when you start off at 33% have been in the business for this long, and you go through the chart of the people — Moran is family. The word “family” is the key word. It's not that it runs in the family, but you are family. The franchise you're staying in, I think that's important, but here's the other thing. I've been looking at your site for the last week or so. If I were you, not that you want to make this monumental change of your core values around drives, but I would change “E for Enthusiasm” to “E for Exit,” because what you're doing is so big.

Baldine: You know what? Nick, we didn't update the website yet, but we recently just changed the “E for Enthusiasm” to “E for Engagement.” Engaging with the franchisees, right?

Powills: I just feel like when brands use the word “family” loosely — and obviously it's a part of the DNA — but that number, that's actually the number I would probably lead with. I don't care about the 120 plus franchise locations. That doesn't matter. Almost 50% of our system has stuck it out with us this long and gone through the renewal of a franchise. That's huge. That's huge. I love it.

Okay, so give me kind of the state of the business today, just in case someone's watching this. Obviously, you're hearing your philosophy, but what's the state of the business?

Baldine: Yeah, so the business, financially, it is a great business to be in today. There's some key dynamics about our industry that are driving it that are really significant. Number one would be the age of the cars on the road today, which is at 12.5 years old. That's continued to grow. Probably 15 years ago, it was seven years old, and now it's 12.5 years old. People are not buying new cars like they used to. They're fixing the ones they have. They don't like the fact that they have to have a five-year, $800-a-month car note, and those things are helping us. The technology in the cars today is another factor that really helps us. They're complex, and you have to be up to date from a technician standpoint and a computerization standpoint and have the skill to be able to diagnose these cars today.

Fifteen years ago, somebody came in, and they said they had a transmission problem. You'd drive it around the block a few times, and you'd say, “Yeah, it's not shifting between second and third transmission.” You can't do that today because there's several different things that might be completely unrelated to transmission that might cause it to not shift between second and third.

You've got to stay on the cutting edge with technology in this business, and we do that. We have a tremendous tech department that provides technical support to the franchisees. We also realized years ago that we had an advantage that some of our competitors didn't have — because of what I was just talking about with the technology and the diagnostics blending together so much, you really don't need to specialize. In the 80s, everything was specialized. Transmission shops, brake shops, tune-up shops, quick loops — you name it, right?

What we did was we went more of a one-stop shop. We had Mr. Transmission and we had Milex Complete Auto Care that were both stand-alone acquisitions. We decided years ago that we could put the two of those together under the same roof, have both franchises in the same footprint, teach the franchisees how to handle the throughput and how to do both. What that does is it creates a one-stop shop where we can do everything to the customer's car, but even more importantly, what it does is it gives us the frequency of use where people are coming to us three to five times a year, which allows us to build that relationship and build a trust factor with our customers.

Let's face it. People don't know these cars today. When they are told that they have this major repair that's a couple thousand dollars, they're skeptical. It's a mystery to them. If we've done our job of building those relationships with that frequency of use and building that trust factor, we can eliminate that skepticism, and we can build a loyalty between ourselves and our customers. That's our game plan. That's what we do.

Powills: I have a follow-up question, but first, two statements. One, that's why owner-operator, in my opinion, is the secret to this industry, because you have people living in your community who want to be as honest as they can.

The second thing that I'm hearing here is probably often dismissed as a lower-level type of employee, but the tradesman actually has to be much more sophisticated today because of the depth of what's going on in automobiles. The tradesman is probably also contributing to getting the power of the car dealers on the road because their level of sophistication has gone to a whole other level. It really has, and that shows.

Baldine: For a long time, you didn't see that many young people going into the trades, but we're starting to see that change because of the changes in the industry. We're starting to see that, as a tradesperson, they can make a really good income without the debt associated with college. You clearly have to know what you're doing in order to maintain the trust and in order to get someone's car back on the road faster.

Powills: That's right. Do you want the owner to be an operator in these scenarios? Do you want the owner to build these skill sets, too, or are they the salesperson for the owner?

Baldine: We want the owner to be an operator and an owner, not working on cars. We have a few that actually work on cars, but we help them recruit, and we help them train — you really want the right technicians on your team. The owners do not need to be technicians or mechanics.

Powills: If I'm watching this — and my broken record statement is I always bet on the jockey, not on the horse — I'm betting on you. Obviously, you've been there for a long time, and you've built infrastructure, and I'm sure you lead through those same philosophies so that there's a consistency throughout the organization. You can tell me that you're running an ice cream shop. I'm bought in on the coaching side because you can give me the pathway to be successful as long as I listen to what you're doing. If there's anybody that's watched this up to this point, I'm hearing not just loyalty from you, but loyalty from franchisees and longevity.

The only way you stay loyal is if you get something out of it as much as you put into it. Of course, you would quit it if it wasn't working for you. There's a beautiful story beyond this, but if someone has watched this up to this point, is there anything else you want them to know about you that would obviously drive them to get into your website and reach out?

Baldine: First of all, I'd say that it's a very good business to be in. It's a good business model that has very good margins and can really deliver strong profitability, much better than a lot of other models and franchises, quite frankly. I think that the culture issue is a big one. We are awarding franchises to people that are a good fit with our culture. We're not trying to be the biggest automotive franchisor out there. We want to be the franchisor that knows our franchisees well, that knows their husbands and wives, that knows their kids.

It really is a family-oriented culture. We're growing, and we want to continue to grow, but we grow at our pace, to where our infrastructure and our team can maintain that culture very well. What's most important to us, I think, is that we do it right.

Watch the full interview here.