Today's Guest

Tom Pabin is the founder and owner of Class 101, a company that provides families with expert guidance on the college search, admissions, and financial aid process. Class 101 is a growing national franchisor. In this episode, we explore the opportunities available in becoming a Class 101 franchisee. Class 101 enables students to get into a great college at a price their family can afford. Tom’s career as a business owner and college/financial planner has spanned almost two decades. In that time, he has helped students and families save millions of dollars on higher education. Working with students across 16 states and doing direct consultation with over 20 high schools, he’s helped more than 2,200 students find their way to college and significantly improved their scores on over 6,000 tests. In his spare time, Tom enjoys traveling and being involved with his son’s basketball teams; he is husband to Christie and father of two boys, Matthew and Thomas.

Resources Shared

• Class 101
• Thryv
  

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:                 Hey, hey. This is Gordon Henry at Winning on Main Street, and this week, we're lucky to have Tom Pabin, the founder and owner of Class 101. Welcome, Tom.

Tom Pabin:                        Hi, I'm excited to be here.

Gordon Henry:                 Thrilled to have you. So quick intro on Tom. Tom is the founder and owner of Class 101. His career as a business owner and college financial planner has spanned over two decades. In that time, he has helped students and families save millions of dollars on higher education. In Kentucky, Tom has worked with learners from over 70 high schools, conducting financial aid workshops, one-on-one college planning, ACT, SAT prep classes, and facilitating visits to universities across the country.

                                               Working with students across 16 states, providing direct consultation with over 20 high schools, he's helped more than 2,200 students find their way to college and significantly improve their scores on over 6,000 tests taken. Class 101 is in Lexington, Kentucky. They help students and families navigate the college planning process. The end result, students get into great colleges at prices their families can afford, which should you, our listeners, get out of this episode.

                                               If you've been thinking about investing in a franchise, consider Class 101, a leader in the franchising space for colleges and financial planning. So Tom, welcome to the show. Why don't you start by telling us about Class 101? How'd you get into the college planning space and sort of start your journey with this business?

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah, thank you. Well, I was a financial planner here in Lexington and this was basically 27 years ago, right? And I loved to do that and that was a passion of mine, but what I was really passionate about is hitting the weekends. Not that I could sleep in or go out and party or do any of those things, I just wanted to get to church and do youth ministry because I loved working with teenagers, right? And so, the whitewater rafting trip, all the fun events, the camps and the mission trips and all these different types of things. Well, what ended up happening is, first of all, my mom passed away when I was young, and 27 years ago, my dad got sick up in Ohio. And I went up and spent the best five months of my life with my father, and my father passed away.

                                               So here I am in my mid-20s, and my parents and my grandparents and my godparents had all passed away. So I said what anybody would say, "Life is short." Right? And it was right then and there, Gordon, that I decided to give my life to teenagers. And I took it as my calling, so I started doing youth ministry because what I thought, right? I thought I was supposed to be at church. Well, I did that for about six months. I loved it. It was amazing, I did volunteer youth ministry for nine and a half years. But in the meantime, I met this girl in our youth group named Duran Lynch. She was student number one. Her mom said to me, "Oh, you're her youth minister, help her with this college stuff. She's not going to listen to me. You're her youth minister. Just help her with this and I'll pay you for your time."

                                               So, me and this girl would go to Fazoli's, right? Fazoli's Restaurants here in town. And we'd go to Fazoli's Restaurants and have breadstick and talk about college, and that was student number one. And so, that was August 27th, 1997. And so, that'd be 26 years this coming August. And so, that's where it started. And so, all those numbers you just rattled off was actually just our personal numbers, because what happened was is I started working with all these high schools and all these different types of things. Well, 6, 7, 8 years in, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I've got these people calling me from all over." And now remember, right, 15, 17 years ago was different than the Zooms and stuff we know it as today, right? And I was thinking, "How am I going to do all this?" Well, that's when I decided to start franchising.

                                               So, I ended up having a 10-year model before I started franchising. Who knew that that would probably be one of our keys to success, right, is a 10-year model. Tried and true, systems built, everything was kind of ironed out. And then, it took me five years to get the first five locations, right? And so now, I had a 15-year model, five locations all in and around the Lexington area, Louisville, Bloomington, Indiana, Columbus, Ohio, Eastern Kentucky. That was the first five. Then we did 3 and 3, and then we got crazy and did 4, and then we got 7 and 17 and 13 and 8, and 3 during Covid and 8 last year, and 5 so far this year, bing, bam, boom. Now we have 57 locations in 29 different states.

Gordon Henry:                 Incredible. Well, what a powerful story about how you got started. It really wasn't for the business side of it as much as it was your personal ambition to serve teenagers.

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like what we teach our kids, right? If you're going to do a career, you better do something that you are really passionate about because there's going to be some hard days, right? And those are going to be the days you got to dig in, right? And if you like it that much and it's feel like that's where your calling is in your life and kind of where you need to be and what's most fulfilling, right? Then it's easy to dig in and it's easy to put in that extra work because you love it, then you look up and you got something significant because you put years into it and you just started to get better every day.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, great. So, let's clarify. Is Class 101 test preparation, like SAT and ACTs?

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah.

Gordon Henry:                 Is it helping students with the college application process or something else?

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah.

Gordon Henry:                 What exactly are the services you provide?

Tom Pabin:                        Thank you, because that's a great clarifying question. We do college planning. 90, actually 91% of our business is college planning. So, an individual family's going to hire us, just like you would hire your accountant to do your taxes, right? You would hire us to help your young person, typically as a sophomore or junior in high school, right, and you would help them go through the process of one or two or three years of going through colleges or SAT help or helping them to write their college essay, right, giving them some ideas, or being their editors.

                                               And we do all of that. Now, one of our services out of 10 is ACT and SAT prep. So we do do that, but we're not a prep company. We're not a scholarship search engine and we're not tutors for sure. What we are is we do college planning. So we help the kids go through the process by empowering them, and then we serve the families by making college more affordable for parents.

Gordon Henry:                 Got it. Okay, great. So, let's talk a little bit about the franchising aspect because there may be listeners listening who are interested in becoming part of the organization through franchises. So, launching a franchise concept is different than operating your own business. Let's unpack that. You didn't move into franchising immediately when you launched the company. Why did it take you a while?

Tom Pabin:                        Well, first of all, I didn't know I wanted to do it, right? I had an experience. So we had a satellite office, Gordon, in Louisville, Kentucky. So just one hour from Lexington, and I owned that, right? It was just a satellite office. I'd go to Louisville, we'd have kids there. Well, I had these two amazing ladies that worked for us there, and one left because her husband got this incredible job promotion in Missouri, and the other one left us in a 90-day period of time to go do her dream job, working in music here in the state of Kentucky. So here, I had another location and two ladies that were very passionate. One had worked for me for four or five years, the other for a couple years, never thought they would leave us, and all of a sudden, I don't have anybody there.

                                               Now, I got to work an office that's an hour away. So for a couple years, I actually did that to help our Louisville office survive. So I never wanted that to happen again, right? So how can I do that is have somebody be in charge of it, where they would make substantial amount, a lot more than just an employee or somebody like that working for us, because they would be owner, they would be ownership, they would own, right, that location, that territory. Then, if that would ever happen again, right, it would happen in somebody in that local market that lived there and owned there and so on. So, that's why we started to, that was one of the big reasons why we started to do franchising.

Gordon Henry:                 Right, okay. And as you began to think about franchising as a way for you to grow-

Tom Pabin:                        Right.

Gordon Henry:                 ... How did you, how did Tom Pabin learn about how to build a franchise model? Did you go to school for that?

Tom Pabin:                        No. Right? So if you're, everybody hopefully is familiar with Zig Ziglar, right? So he has a quote, right? So, "If you're not willing to learn, nobody can help you. But if you're determined to learn, nobody can stop you." Right? So we currently have the country's largest college planning firm, right? Our newest numbers, Gordon, are, we have 9,960 kids that have completed our program, right? Went to 850 different colleges and universities around the world and have received $1.1 billion, billion dollars in scholarships. Right? Just absolutely amazing.

                                               I tell you that because we're willing to learn. Now, what do I mean by that? First of all, let me go ahead and say it. I've never been to college, right? But I was willing, I was determined to learn. I've never done franchising. My dad owned a Dairy Queen, right? Growing up, I worked there. But besides that, I didn't have any franchise experience, but I was willing to learn. And so that's what we challenged our owners. We did a call this morning. The first call of July, second half of the year. We did one this morning, right? You know what we talked about? Getting better ourselves. Personal development, getting better within our skills, with assets, a SWOT analysis, right, reevaluating and just getting better. And so, that's been our premise. I didn't know franchising at all. I went to the IFA, I started to investigate franchises. I had some franchise angels-

Gordon Henry:                 That's Internationals Franchise Association.

Tom Pabin:                        ... Yes.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah.

Tom Pabin:                        Thank you. And so, it was about 10 years ago, I went to the one down in New Orleans, and that was my very first one, and I found some franchise angels that helped me out, gave me a bunch of advice. And that's why that mentoring program that you guys are involved in and I'm involved in is such a worthwhile thing, and we love it. So, it goes to show you, sure, you could speed up your process if you're an expert, you went to school for that. That's what we do. We have kids go to college to learn how to be accountants and nurses and so on, and that's a great way of doing it. I just, because of my plot in life, I had to learn it myself, which is another way of doing it. It just takes a lot longer and probably even more money to do it that way, but that's how I did it. So, you can learn and grow and get better.

Gordon Henry:                 Okay. So, let's get into the mechanics or economics of owning a franchise. So somebody's listening, thinking, "Sounds interesting, Class 101. I like working with kids as well." If I'm a listener who's never operated a franchise before, what is the cost of acquiring a college 101 franchise? What's the revenue I should expect? What's the cost of operating it? What's the profit?

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah. So everybody's familiar with franchises because we've all been to McDonald's or stayed at Hampton Inn or, right, went to, in our case, an Urban Air, right? That's part of our sister, one of our sister brands now. So, what you get in a franchise is a system, right? We're 26 years old, and what it would cost you to go out and try to learn this business and do it yourself is hundreds of thousands of dollars. You don't have to spend that, right? You don't have to spend the 5, 6, 10 years learning like I did at the beginning. Why not speed that up? Our franchise fee is 39.9, right? That's what it is currently. And so, for $39,910 to ramp it up, right, to launch it and marketing in the first 90 days. So, for basically less than $50,000, right, now, there's going to be some other costs when you open up an office and do all those types of things, but at the beginning, right?

                                               So we're not a business that you have to have liquid $200,000 in cash in your account. We don't have to have that, right? So that's one of our pluses because we don't have big expensive offices. We got normal offices, six, 800 square feet, we have very low overheads, and we deal with very low numbers. So a franchise is a system that's built, and then we continuously support that franchise, and that's why there's a royalty, right? So franchise people pay royalty. Ours is 8% royalty, right? And so, you pay 8%. So if somebody makes $10,000, they send $800 back to us. They get to keep the other $9,200, right, and everybody's loving life and everybody's successful.

Gordon Henry:                 Okay. And if I plunk down the 39.9, and maybe I think you said there were a little more of startup costs, what should I expect, once I'm kind of up and running and fairly successful, what's a good year revenue and what should I expect to actually put my pocket as profit?

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah. Well, I'm going to deal with averages, right, because specific numbers in stating incomes, right, is just not something I'm even allowed to do, right? Because it's different. And anybody seeking a franchise should look at somebody's FTD, and they probably, if they've been in business for more than a couple years, they should have an Item 19, which is going to show you your kind of, your average unit of volume, right? The AUVs. Right? So our locations are going to do 200, 300, $400,000, right, in unit volume. Now we have some that do more than that, we have some that do less than that, right? But our averages are going to be, right, 200 or 150 or 250, somewhere in there with very low overhead, right? And so that's where you can kind of make your profit.

                                               So, what we do is we have families that pay us, right, to do this college planning, and we recruit 40, 50, 60, 70 new people a year, right? So somebody comes through a week training for us, and then we do a 90-day advanced training, right, for 12 weeks afterwards. And we teach them how to, right, get their founding members, which is their first 15 people in their market. Right? It teaches them how to build teams, and we have what's called the high school manual, what's actually shows everybody how to do college planning. It's kind of all 25 years of our experience put, right, into one manual. We call it our Bible, and that's what we use. And then we do ongoing support.

                                               We actually do three calls a week here, which is a lot, but we want to have opportunities for people to grow and continue. Just like the science says in the back. Every student has an equal opportunity to show how equal they want to be. Well, same thing for franchisees, right? They have an equal opportunity, if they want to make more money, they can. We have owners that do more than that, and we have some that are pretty happy being in the middle of the pack and supporting that with their family. So, those kind of show you some of our numbers.

Gordon Henry:                 Okay. I didn't quite hear the profit piece. You said 200, 250, maybe 300 on the top line, and you said costs were fairly minimal. Could a operator who's doing 200, 250 earn six figures, like a $100,000 or more as a personal profit? Is that possible?

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah, that's possible. You got me in a little bind here, guy, because I can't state exact income.

Gordon Henry:                 Well, I'm wondering, if I'm a guy, I'm aggressive, I want to earn six figures, can I do that with one or do I need to buy two franchises?

Tom Pabin:                        No. Actually, you could do it with one. I actually still own the original franchise, and so I actually, just from experience, just continue to do that, and we've been doing it for 27 years. So, our averages in that location's been $250,000 for the last 25 years, right? That's been our average. So now, we've done over 500, or excuse me, $5 million in college planning right here in the Lexington, Kentucky market by two hundred and some thousand.

                                               One of our biggest locations is in Bloomington, Indiana. Tupelo, Mississippi is a great top 10 location for us. So you don't have to be in LA or a place. You have to go in a place where you want to be able to help kids go to college, help them to make it more affordable. So you're going to find those 40, 50, 60, 70, 100 kids, right? Families are going to pay $3,500, $4,000, $4,500 for our services, roughly. It's more expensive in California, more expensive in New York, obviously. But for most of our locations, that's what we charge. And then we have very low overheads. Most of our overheads are $2,000 to $3,000 a month, right? And that's not including labor of course, so we have very low overheads. So that's how somebody, if you start adding up all those numbers, can make over six figures or be able to do that in our business.

Gordon Henry:                 Great. And I understand there is some help that you can provide potential franchisees in terms of borrowing the money, basically a lender, to the franchisee to help them get started. How does that work?

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah. So what ended up happening with our brand is in April of 2022, we became a part of Unleashed Brands. So they came in and bought the majority of our stock. And so now, Unleashed Brands owns Class 101. I'm still an owner here, I still own stock and stuff in the company. And, so what that enabled us to do is have all these extra resources now for people to, if they wanted to tap into their 401(k) or do different types of things to use the small business administration, the SBA loan, and be able to do all these extra resources to help them to get the funding to pay for this.

                                               Now, hopefully they have that money, right? Because 40, 50, 60,000, that's what we're talking about. And then you would want to have something to live on, right? It's like anything else, it's going to take a while to build up your business. We're just pretty fortunate that we can have a very quick launch and we don't have to have offices in our first 60, 90, even the first six months in our business. We don't have to have an office because we can do things in a variety of different locations or just a regular incubator type of place to launch our business.

Gordon Henry:                 Okay. And Unleash Brands, they own some other franchise brands also oriented around this space of college planner or kids, or?

Tom Pabin:                        Kids, right? So that's what makes us so special, right, because kids here, so what we take care of is the moms, right? You have Neighborly, you have Inspired Brands, you have Empowered Brands, you got all these different people. What Unleashed Brands does is work with kids and moms, right? So they start off at the little gym, right? A franchise even older than mine, right? And so, we own the little gym, and then they can go to a place called Snapology that has 150-ish locations and so on. And then we have XP League, right? And so, XP League is a gaming, right? So e-sports franchise. How cool is that?

Gordon Henry:                 That's cool. Yeah.

Tom Pabin:                        So if that's where your passion is, you can do that. We have Premier Martial Arts, right, which does karate. So kids of all different types of ages can start building confidence in karate. And then, kind of our big starting brand from our leader, Michael Browning, he started Urban Air. And so, Urban Air is part. So we have six brands right now, six locations or six brands, and it's pretty neat to be involved in a company like that. And so now, we have all these resources to help people get funding and do these different things, the whole recruit.

Gordon Henry:                 Right. So somebody who's buying a franchise in Class 101 is really part of this bigger Unleashed Brand sort of family with all these additional resources they can tap into. So that's interesting, that I imagine is a plus for somebody who might want to become a franchisee. Now, we were talking before the show, our company, our show is sponsored by Thryv. Thryv builds a CRM system for franchises as well as small businesses. I know one of the things you said before was that you create a system, and for the entrepreneur who wants to plug themselves into a system and not have to figure it all out from scratch, that's one of the beauties of franchising and of what you offer at Class 101. Part of that system becomes the technology, and I imagine the CRM system does that. Tell us a little bit about what the Thryv CRM system is doing for you within Class 101.

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah, we actually consider it to be two parts, right? Because Thryv originally is that CRM is the marketing piece, right? And it's be able to track all of your clients. I mean, if you're in business, you got to nurture your clients, right? And you got to talk to them. And how do people do that nowadays? Right here, right on your phone. And so, whether it's your phone or email or technology, right? So we start with Thryv. So if somebody had 10 prospects or 30 prospects, we put them into the Thryv system. That's our CRM. Now, that's our CRM for Class 101, right? So that's what we currently use is Thryv.

                                               And so, they help us in the whole front end means, present a marketing, a picture, right? So where they can register and do different types of events, they can schedule different appointments through us, through the system or through the app, right? So that's really nice. And then, we take them to the financial side. So we actually do, we do, actually, also, the second part, the 1A for us is we do all of our financials, right? In other words, our invoicing, our reoccurring payments, if somebody goes on a payment plan with us, right, we do that all through Thryv and Thryv Pay. So it's been a big plus for us.

Gordon Henry:                 Terrific. We're just going to take a 30 second break, Tom, and we're going to be right back with more from Tom Pabin at Class 101.

Thryv:                                  This episode of Winning on Main Street is brought to you by Thryv. The small business management platform that you and your customers will love no matter where you are. Thryv helps you run your business, keep organized, and get paid faster, all from one login and dashboard. Thryv makes it easy for customers to find you online, instantly interact and stay engaged. And with free unlimited support 24/7, there really is no comparison. Go to Thryv.com/pod for a quick demo to see everything Thryv can do.

Gordon Henry:                 And we're back with Tom Pabin at Class 101. Fascinating story about how he built this franchise and concept Class 101, which has helped so many young people and their families get into college and afford to manage their way through. And speaking of that, colleges today, Tom, I don't need to tell you, are super expensive for a lot of people, especially the top schools. What do you do to help students and their families with the cost of college?

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah. Well, the number one thing is the college list itself, right? I mean, it's like shopping at the mall. There's some stores that give more discounts and more sales than other stores that, and so on, so you got to find the right place. Some stores are going to be more expensive, and so same thing with some colleges, right? The higher academic schools are more competitive, so it's going to be a steeper price tag. Now, private schools, just because the school is maybe, let's say a public school is 25 to $30,000 per year, and a private school is 60 to $70,000 per year. But there's a lot of private schools, you can get down to 30 or 40 or 25 and so on, right? So you can kind of cut that in cost.

                                               So sometimes, it's up to the student and their grades. Sometimes it's up to a student where they want to major and what they want to do. But the college list is one of the ways to make college more affordable. The second is helping kids present themselves. We call it the presentation of the application. How we present a student to a college is really important, right, that they have some leadership and they have these great grades. Doesn't mean they have to be perfect, right? But they have really good grades, they got a really solid test score, ACT or SAT, with this outstanding resume with a memorable essay, right? That can help a kid get some extra scholarships or go to another bracket to, hence, make college affordable.

                                               Then we have need-based aid, right? So even though a lot of families we work with are middle class or middle to upper class, we help all types of students, right? No matter where they come from, what backgrounds, what cultures, what religions, what heritage, we help them all right? And so, we're really proud of that. The diversity in our company is a huge part of our growth and what we've done, and our owners and all the students that we're able to help. But some qualify for more need-based aid than others, right? And so we take advantage of programs like QuestBridge or other things like that to help kids go to these very top schools and get maybe a 30, 40, 50, $60,000 grant to make college more affordable.

                                               So that's three of the ways. We actually provide a scholarship, too, that we do here at Class 101 called the 101 Scholar. And that's another way that somebody can apply, and if they have something that they've done outstanding in their community, then they can apply for that scholarship and get that. So, that's four of the ways. We probably have about 10, but we'll keep some of those secrets to ourselves. But that's what we do.

Gordon Henry:                 Sounds good. So, let's talk about the future of Class 101. Obviously you've been signing up franchisees. That's been going great. I took a quick look at your map on your website before I got started with this show, and I noticed you have some areas that you're particularly emphasizing where you could use new franchisees. So, what are the expansion plans for the business?

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah, thank you. We currently are at 57. We'd like to hit 70 by the end of the year. So, that's currently what we want to do. And then hopefully next year, we can get to that hundred and first franchise, right, with a 101. That's really the one I'm excited about, hopefully in the next two years. But we just opened up Chicago. We just got our first location in Chicago, right? We do not have any in Charlotte, right? I mean, we don't have any in New York City. We have one in Boston now. We have two in New Jersey that's been there. Both of them are extremely successful, right? So that's nice, in New Jersey, to have a couple. So we just opened up our first one in Atlanta, right? That can have 10 to 12 franchises because so spread out. In LA, we only have one location. We have none in San Francisco, right?

                                               So there are certain cities, but we're again, 28, 29 different states that we're currently in right now. Most of them, of course, in the Midwest because where we started, right? But we them all the way down to close to Miami, Florida, Conejo Valley, which is in north Los Angeles, all the way to Boston, Massachusetts. But there's still 20 states, 21 states we need to get in. And, so there's plenty of what they call territories or locations available across the country for us.

                                               So even though we're 26 years old, I kind of, because of our new model and our new energy with Unleashed Brands, right, I almost consider myself reemerging, right? Emerging, but now, even reemerging as even bigger and more powerful and more resources than ever with Unleashed Brands, so it's quite the opportunity. There's never been a better time to do our business. They got to be passionate about it. You got to love teens, you got to be a learner. But if you like that, and this is... And by the way, we have the number one company in the country, in the country, for what we call the ROEI, right? And that's the return on emotional investment, right?

                                               Because when you get involved here and you work with a kid for a year, two years, three years, and you go to their graduation party and you see them at their ball games, you go to their plays and their performances, and you get involved in their life and then there's a second kid, a brother or sister, and you're with them for four or five, six years, you get emotionally involved in these families. And you save them a bunch of money on college or they get to go to a school they never thought they'd get into, right? That is so affirming. So, that's why we call ourselves the number one company and return on emotional investment with our brand.

Gordon Henry:                 Yeah, love it. That's really a good way to put it, part of what's exciting about being a franchisee. Speaking of that, are there franchisees yet who own multiple Class 101s? So like 2, 3, 4. Yes? You have that?

Tom Pabin:                        You can buy... We don't allow somebody to buy 8 or 10 at the beginning. We're just not that type of model.

Gordon Henry:                 Right.

Tom Pabin:                        Somebody can buy two or three at the beginning. Typically, they're going to be continuous. You want to buy the next market over, the next city over, something like that. Yeah. We currently, it was actually our people in Indiana, and one of the things I'm most proud of, Gordon, is all my original owners, except for one that just retired, they're all still with us. So our very first owner and our second owner in Columbus, Ohio and Bloomington, Indiana, right? Columbus never expanded, she stayed in Westerville, Ohio, north Columbus.

                                               But our lady in Indiana, then her husband came on board and they bought Carmel, right? Carmel, Indiana, which is a very nice market. Now they have one down in Florida too, so they actually have three franchises. So, we have a group in Dallas that owns one in Atlanta, Rhonda is her name. And so, yeah, so now we're getting people that are developing the team system of working two or three systems, protocols, procedures, starting to get that down to be able to be more of an owner operator at the start, but now more of an owner of different locations and managing teams and doing that.

Gordon Henry:                 Right. Good stuff. We just have a few minutes left, Tom. I wanted to ask you, if you had one tip for business people who may be considering Class 101 franchising opportunities, somebody listening, thinking, "Yeah, that might work for me." What would you say to them?

Tom Pabin:                        I could probably say the advice for any business that they would get into, right? For your business to be unlimited, you have to be fearless, right? I mean, that's just what it's going to be. I mean, you're going to have to do some things that are new to you, right? So you got to be fearless. You got to be able to go in there and want to learn and want to be better and do that, right? There's going to be some rainy days, right? It rains on some people's weddings. That's fine. You grab an umbrella and you move on to your wedding. So that's what you do.

                                               So that's what we do here, right? Even though we have 90% victories, we have an incredible amount of positive stuff that happens to us. Life still happens, right? Recently, we've had an owner pass away. It was my first one in 26 years. Oh, I miss her so much, right? It's just, life happens, right? So that's why having people on your bench, building a team and becoming fearless, but get yourself in financial situation to do it the right way. Become fearless. Find the brand you're passionate about, and if it's Class 101, get in here, let's go to work, let's have a lot of fun. Let's go to work and let's build a heck of a business, and you can do it around your family. You can't beat that.

Gordon Henry:                 Terrific. Just as a way of wrapping up, I'd like to ask you, where should listeners find you and learn more about what you're doing, potentially become either a student or become a business owner, a business operator?

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah. Class 101-

Gordon Henry:                 Dot com.

Tom Pabin:                        ... is basically class101.com is where you're going to see all of our 57 locations. So if you happen to be in some of these, if you're in Dallas, we got seven locations, right? So it's maybe easier to find a location. But go to that website, and remember, this is your kids, right? We do anything for our kids, right? So sit down, have a college starting point. We do a free consultation, and sit down and do that, and let's talk to your kids, right? I mean, that's so important to have somebody else in your life that's a good role model that wants to do that.

                                               Class 101franchise.com is one of the places you can go. It's also on Class 101 where you could see franchise, just do college planning franchise. We're literally the Kleenex of the franchising world in our space, so it's not like there's a lot of other ones, right? We don't have any big competition. There's some regional firms, but we don't have any big competition. We're blessed to be in a space and kind of own and dominate the space, right? So it's nice. We think that we will, we're so far ahead that we're going to continue on at that pace and get up to a couple hundred and definitely be the leading person in this industry.

Gordon Henry:                 Terrific. Well, Tom, first of all, congratulations on your success. It's an amazing story, and thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing the story with us. And hopefully, you'll have some franchisees come out of doing this podcast.

Tom Pabin:                        Yeah. If it's the right time, right time in your life, right situation, love to talk, right? Just open up a window or door. Maybe it's one of our other brands, or maybe it's just a franchise in general. It is a good way of doing it.

Gordon Henry:                 Awesome. Well, thanks again for coming on the show. Great to have you here. And I want to thank our producer, Tim Alleman, and coordinators, the Diette Barnett and Daniel Huddleston. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends and family to subscribe, and please leave us a five star review. We'd really appreciate it. It helps us in the rankings. Small business runs better on Thryv. Get a free demo at Thryv.com/pod. Until next time, make it a great week.

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