5:02

Kelsey Stuart, Bloomin Blinds Franchise

August 22, 2022

Video Transcript


Speaker: Kelsey Stuart, Bloomin Blinds

Please introduce yourself and tell us why you chose to work with Gerry

Kelsey Stuart: Hi, my name is Kelsey Stewart, CEO of Bloomin Blinds Franchise. We began to work with Gerry, Henley and Launch to Growth primarily out of an organizational need. We're a small family business that has grown into a good sized franchise, but in that growth and in that movement from family to organization, there was a lot of structure and a lot of pieces that we didn't have the experience or the prior knowledge on how to implement within our system. Really clear within a quick couple of conversations with Gerry, there was some insight and exceptional experiential knowledge that he was willing to share with us and that would do a world of good for our company.

Describe your experience with Gerry as a consultant and coach

Kelsey Stuart: Working with Gerry has been great, It's really been a twofold experience. We've had the benefit of his organizational experience where his time spent with other companies, both building and running, is coming through in our ability to scale up our organization and shore up the infrastructure, build out pieces that we didn't even think about. The coaching side has been even more impressive. we are a younger team. Most of the team members have been here less than a year and so we're still getting to know them. And I have repeatedly been impressed by Gerry's ability to see under the surface and begin to recognize talents and abilities of those on the team that weren't readily visible to us. And so that that dual headed focus between the operations and then the coaching, it's genuinely been very, very impactful for us.

What has been the top benefits of working with Gerry for you, your team and franchisees

Kelsey Stuart: so working with Gerry has provided us multiple benefits. First and foremost within the organization and infrastructure of the company, we are this collective of individuals who are willing to jump in and willing to do whatever it takes to make the company succeed. But in the early days there wasn't much structure and there wasn't much of a rhythm or cadence to it all and you could see how we were stepping on each other, everyone's trying to help, but nobody really knew who was doing what or who was in charge of what and so by implementing more of an organizational system, were able to break apart who's responsible for what and who's in charge of which piece and you know, that just adds to the enjoyment and satisfaction of your team members when they know what they're supposed to do and they can see that sense of accomplishment from their activities. And prior to that we didn't, we were just a hot hornet's nest and now we're more of you know, a structured engine where every piece has a part or every part has a piece or a place. Yeah, so organizationally that's been great. On a leadership team level it's been a fantastic growth curve for us. Again, we're a small family company, we didn't come from the corporate world, we didn't have a lot of the organizational systems that corporations often are building through the workplace and, and as leaders were doers, but the skill of leading others has, has been a learning curve and Gerry has been a great coach working our way through that either as a mirror to reflect off of, or, you know, a mentor to bounce ideas and approach. And it's been really helpful in terms of us figuring out what kind of leaders we are and how to really do that within a group setting from the franchisee standpoint, that is coming right around the corner, but our ability to provide the franchise owners with a system to measure themselves against and standards and a way to look at their performance, not only how they measure up, but then how to get better and where the holes are. We haven't been able to provide that in the past. And that is nearing the final stages of development. And so I'm incredibly excited for our franchise owners because they're going to benefit from the system that Gerry's helped us build as well.



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