What Changes When You Become the Owner? with Bob Chapa of Signarama, Part 2

In episode seven of FranCast by UFG, the conversation with Mandy Roan and Bob Chapa continues as he goes deeper into the realities of ownership and what changes once you officially take the reins.

In part two of the series, Bob opens up about one of the earliest and hardest leadership lessons he faced as an owner, then expands into what employees should start paying attention to if they want to think more like owners. He talks through the importance of learning from failure, understanding the financial side of the business, and shifting from focusing on your own role to thinking about the performance of the entire company.

He also shares why great ownership is less about doing everything yourself and more about building culture, developing people, and helping others grow into bigger roles. This episode offers a candid look at the transition from employee to leader and the mindset shifts that make that leap possible.

Be sure to follow Bob: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobchapa/ and learn more about Signarama: https://signaramafranchise.com/

Stay connected with Signarama on social media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/signaramafranchising

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/signaramafranchising

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/signarama

To email us your questions, you can reach out to francast@ufgcorp.com.

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Transcript

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Chad Palmer 0:09

Welcome to FranCast, brought to you by United Franchise Group. I'm Chad Palmer, and today we're continuing our conversation with Mandy Roan, Director of Marketing for Signarama, and Bob Chapa, owner of Signarama Troy, Metro Detroit. In part two, Bob gets into the realities of ownership, from leading a team and building trust to creating a culture that can grow beyond one person. He also shares a story from his early days as an owner that he's never told before. Let's pick it back up. Enjoy.

Mandy Roan 0:40

What was one challenge you experienced or lesson that you learned that really made you understand the brevity of you are now the owner, you are now running this ship, you now have employees that you are, you know, caretaking of essentially. What was that lesson and how did that impact you or change the way that you were running the business to make it better for the future?

Bob Chapa 1:04

I have to tell you, I have this is the best question so far for this whole entire podcast. And I have a story that I've actually never shared. I've I've never told. And this was from the early, early days of me taking over at our Signarama location. When I transitioned from employee to owner, we had a production employee. Um his name was Edmund, which was a little bit tricky because the original owner was also Ed, but his name was Edmund, and he definitely had a lot of sign experience. He was in his late 50s, uh, knew a lot about signs. He was not a very positive guy. He wasn't really a team player. He just kind of did his job and he was grumpy all the time. And when I took over, you know, obviously my energy was completely different. I wasn't a sit back and watch kind of a guy. I was a get involved, get my hands dirty, help people become stronger and better. And he didn't he didn't grab that very well. I thought that the tricky part was how can I learn to manage somebody? How can I lead somebody that just doesn't really want to be led? And that wasn't actually even the core of the problem. I I remember on a Saturday morning, I was the only one in the shop. I opened up the shop on a Saturday morning and two big monster burly guys walked in the door and they started screaming and knocking things over in our showroom, uh, yelling that they needed to talk to Ed. Where's Ed? Where's Edmund? And I thought that they were talking about the original owner, Ed, but they certainly weren't. They were talking about our production employee, Edmund, who apparently for over two years was producing signs on the side, using our materials, contacting customers, and was producing signs for other other companies that were never even a part of our business. And we were just helping, we were just paying his bills, but he was doing all of this work, and he he had taken advantage of a restaurant, I'll just say, uh, that was very well connected, that you probably don't want to take advantage of. And these two big guys came in thinking that he that we were doing the job, and I I had to immediately step in and say, Well, you know, Edmund works for us, he's just our production guy. I have no idea what project you're talking about. And that was literally the last day that I ever saw Edmund. He he owed them so much money that he literally left the country, he disappeared for years, and I had to deal with this crazy restaurant that had some very interesting connections, thinking that it was us the whole entire time. Um, I I just remember the lesson. I I I mean, it took months really to get through this, but the the hardest lesson was you you really want to believe in people, you want to trust them, but you also really, really have to develop relationships, you have to understand what's going on with them. And and you it's it's not easy to always, it's not as black and white as you might think. There's always there's always more to a story when you start to get that that kind of weird tingly feeling in the the back of your mind about somebody, uh, there's usually more more going on. That was a really tough lesson because I I lost our only production guy. Uh so that that was pretty tricky.

Mandy Roan 4:24

And now you have a paper mache mask from the restaurant.

Bob Chapa 4:27

That is that is true. Uh it was a very interesting Albanian mafia situation that I will I will never forget and I never want to do twice.

Mandy Roan 4:36

I was gonna say, yeah, I I feel like I know a lot of Bob stories, but I did not know that one. Um if you have somebody who's still an employee, they haven't made that leap, or they're really just not sure of what they want to do, but they kind of think they like the idea of ownership. What are some things that they should look for in their work to kind of start thinking like an owner?

Bob Chapa 4:58

That's a great question. So I think I have noticed this a trend in many people over the years that that have been a part of our companies uh that start to exhibit some of the traits of of you know being a great owner. Um as our business grew, and it you know we're we're over 60 people now, and uh what that tends to lean towards for us are high-level directors or high-level leaders, and we're able to kind of build and train and coach people way up, then what ends up happening, um, you start to see who can really be excited about their career path. The people that I have seen around the country that have transitioned from being an employee to an owner, there's always that sort of deer in the headlights first year. They they realize, like, oh my gosh, there's way more to this than I thought there was. And then as long, as long as they put in the work, as long as they keep showing up day after day, all of a sudden it clicks. And I get a phone call, and they say, Bob, you were absolutely right. Uh, I needed to focus on our marketing, I needed to do some local networking and go to all the the local chamber events. Uh, I all that work I did four months ago is starting to pay off. I just landed a $20,000 sign. It's the biggest order we've ever had. And you can really start to see like the foundation is being rebuilt in them. The traits to get there are people that uh I what I have noticed, people that refuse to uh refuse to get frustrated or upset from failure. Instead, they take failure as a way to learn something or to have a big conversation. You can still be upset, you can still be, you know, a little bit bummed out when you lose a big opportunity, a big deal, or when you have to deal with an upset customer for something. Those aren't really great things, but if you figure out how to spin that around and learn something from it or to make your business better, though that's when the transition to becoming a really good and even a great owner tends to happen.

Mandy Roan 7:00

So, seeing all the different sides of business ownership from an independent shop that your parents ran to seeing working in a franchise and then eventually owning it, what were some of the key differences in those businesses that you that you noticed or identified?

Bob Chapa 7:15

Yeah, I think the the biggest difference between sort of the three different environments that I've been a part of from a from a small business perspective is really the the confidence or excitement of what you're really capable of. Um I I do know many independent sign shops, many, many all over the all over the United States. And some of them have really big picture plans and big picture goals. But generally speaking, independent sign companies that are not a part of a franchise system, they they already sort of have a ceiling in their mind of what they want to do. They want to be the the strongest in their local city, or they you know they want to be really good at vehicle wraps. So they sort of create a ceiling of what their business will be. And then when we start to look at a new franchise or a sort of a young early in its stages franchise location that that is is either just opening or maybe it's a new owner taking over, an employee is taking over, at that point, the biggest difference that I see is the ceiling is completely gone. There, there are so many Signaramas in our family that do crazy big things in every different possible direction, every part of the sign industry that there is no ceiling. There's no limit to what a new Signarama can do. So when employees that have a lot of sign experience and background transition into becoming owners, they are already a little bit excited. They're sort of on steroids because they know what some of the bigger stores are doing and what they're capable of. And then in my instance, becoming that owner, and then now with a couple decades under my belt of that, I think I just realized that not only is there not a ceiling, but I am literally the person putting the fuel on the fire. Like I am the one that creates the excitement and the energy and the passion and the reason that everybody just gets up and kicks ass every day. Like I I love that. So my biggest part of my job is just to build people and to motivate them and coach them and train them up. And um, I to be honest, I don't really get to do very much with signs anymore. It's sort of a running joke now at the office. They don't they don't ask me about projects, they sort of they don't even report projects to me anymore. Um, but they know that my my impact on the company and on our staffing and our recruiting is way bigger than me worrying about did an install get done on a Thursday morning, you know, an hour from the shop? That's not where they would want my brain at this point.

Mandy Roan 9:51

So we know business ownership is not for everyone. What advice would you give to employees who maybe are not ready to take the leap to business ownership, but they want to take on more. They want to take on more responsibility, they want a promotion, they want something to kind of give them something to work towards. What advice would you give them?

Bob Chapa 10:11

Great. I think uh the advice that I would give to an employee who's kind of ready to get to the next level, who has the excitement, has some passion, and the confidence, I would tell them that they should have a little bit more knowledge of the finances of the business. I I usually I can't even think of an example where an employee transitioned into an owner and they were a little bit more intimately involved in the payroll costs and the cost of goods, and they're usually a very good employee in their core area. And that's a great way to leap forward. If if somebody is thinking about it or they are having great conversations with their current boss that owns the business and they're thinking about a transition and being involved, starting to sort of dig in a little bit to the costs and understanding that is a really great way to not only build your confidence, but to make sure you feel like you're making a great decision. If you're gonna buy that business, you should understand the cost of payroll a bit. You should understand, you know, your rent might be really high, it might be really low. You you should know sort of how those things impact the end of the month and the end of the quarter and the end of the year. That is that is the best way to leap forward. If you have that part when you take over, you're most of what new Signarama owners or franchise owners worry about is the finances right away. That first year, that's everything is driven by concerns and stress about finances. So if you get that part checked off the list ahead of time, you're in great shape.

Mandy Roan 11:43

As an employee, what was your favorite part of the job?

Bob Chapa 11:48

I think as as an employee, when I worked for Ed and Joanne as an employee, my my favorite part of the job was uh helping them see that everything that they were trying to accomplish and figure out was possible. Uh the truth is they they had big ambitions and you know they're very, very loyal and just incredibly honest. I mean, they they would always take care of anybody, always perfect, complete strangers. They would want to take care of them. And showing them that that we could build a sign company in our market that took care of every business, every restaurant owner, every you know, every law firm, showing them that their vision of how they wanted to build the business was absolutely possible. That's what kind of drove me. That's what got me excited. And I just kept I just kept overperforming. Every every chance that they gave me to make a business happy or overwhelm somebody with excitement about their sign project. That's what I did. And uh it it built it built customers for life. I I still, all of these years later, I just told my wife driving down the freeway just this week, we passed by a company that I I personally designed their logo 27 years ago, cut out all the burgundy vinyl, put it on their vans. They do have an updated logo now, but it's still a customer. It all these almost three decades later, we're still doing graphics for that customer for an office supply company that sold us pens and paper, and I ended up convincing them to do graphics on their van. So yeah, it's it's really, I think it's all about the experiences, you know, creating creating really great positive experiences for customers.

Chad Palmer 13:31

If today's episode got you thinking about franchising in a new way, be sure to join us for future episodes, is that's what this podcast is all about giving you a behind the scenes picture of franchise ownership. Thanks again for tuning in to FranCast brought to you by United Franchise Group. We really do appreciate you being part of the conversation and look forward to having you back for the next episode. Until next time, I'm Chad Palmer. Thanks for listening.