Leadership Lessons: Multi-unit operator helps guide the next generation

Name: Kim Freid
Title: Franchise Owner
Company: Apex Leadership Co.
No. of units: 19 Apex Leadership Co.
Age: 52
Family: Husband and 7 children, Joshua, 25, Keegan, 24, Kira, 22, Jilly, 20, K.J., 18, Kadie, 11, and Jeddy, 5
Years in franchising: 12
Years in current position: 12

When imparting valuable parental advice to any of her seven children, Kim Freid may get a joking response of "OK, Apex Kim." As a multi-unit operator of Apex Leadership Co., she's all about teaching students to "be proactive" and "go the extra mile," so it makes sense that the catchphrases would pop up at home.

Through Apex Leadership Co., Freid and her team help elementary and middle schools in California raise approximately $10 million each year. Funds have been used to expand access to the arts, music, technology, and other programs. Fundraising is crucial for schools affected by budget crunches, but Freid says Apex's leadership programs are where the magic starts.

"That is the number one reason I am in this business," Freid says. "Beyond raising funds, Apex's core mission is to build leaders within the next generation of students. Hearing feedback from teachers and parents who say that their kids are still applying our leadership lessons after the team has left their campus warms my heart and reminds me that I am in the right business. Changing the way these kids look at the world makes all the difference to me."

Freid gets emotional recalling a story of a student asking one of her team members for an extra bracelet with the theme of "Never Give Up." The young girl revealed that her mother passed away a year before. The student wanted to give her father the bracelet to help him stay strong.

Freid was introduced to Apex Leadership Co. more than a decade ago when she served as chairperson of the fundraising committee of her children's elementary school. Apex helped raise more than $26,000 but left a larger impact with its leadership-driven curriculum for students. Students, teachers, and parents all had positive things to say about the program.

Fried shared her feelings with the corporate leadership team and told them their programs should be implemented throughout the country. Apex's founder and CEO at the time informed her that the company had begun franchising the previous week and asked her to become the first franchisee. Though not part of her plans at the time, Freid liked the concept so much that she agreed to operate a territory in San Diego and later in Las Vegas.

"I definitely wasn't looking for anything like that, and I just fell into it," she says. "I didn't know much about franchising aside from the major restaurant brands. But it was a great opportunity paired with everything I love: leadership, children, and fundraising. I am passionate about raising funds for organizations that need it."

Freid operates 19 Apex territories across California, and over the past 12 years, she's built a strong employee culture that reflects one of her core beliefs. "If the employees come first, they will put the customers first," she says.

PERSONAL

First job: I washed cars around my neighborhood when I was 11 years old. I guess that showed my love of selling and working with others. I later worked at The Gap store at the mall when I was 15.

Formative influences/events: I'm deeply grateful for the unwavering support of my high school swim coach, Brian Metheny. His belief in my abilities and his dedication to my growth played pivotal roles in shaping my confidence and determination to achieve my goals. Now, I want to be that person for other people.

Key accomplishments: We have been named Apex Leadership Co.'s Franchisee of the Year three times. When new franchisees come into the system, they spend a week with my team at the Apex Center of Excellence, where we conduct their training and initial onboarding.

Biggest current challenge: Finding and hiring awesome people is a key challenge. We pride ourselves on having inspiring employees who are going to inspire kids. When I am sitting across the table from someone during an interview, I try to imagine if this is the person I'd want to spend time with my child in their school. We want to help kids reach great heights, so we need to find the cream of the crop in talent. We go through hundreds of interviews to find someone who is Apex quality.

Next big goal: Right now, we have remarkable employees, and we are working on getting them ready to franchise themselves. We tend to find these amazing people within our organization, and we are committed to helping them find an opportunity to carry out the Apex name even further in their careers. Our goal is to help them buy a franchise and work alongside them.

First turning point in your career: Through a temporary job early in my career, I provided referrals for my apartment complex to 22 people in need of housing. My apartment complex took note of my resourcefulness and offered me a full-time job. It taught me that if you are open to helping people, that is sometimes where an opportunity can come.

Best business decision: Covid-19 forced us to stop services, and we unfortunately lost most of our contracts and relationships with our clients. I needed to hire a sales team in response. I now have three wonderful sales reps who have rebuilt our business essentially from the ground up, and they deeply understand Apex's mission.

Hardest lesson learned: In order to fix a misunderstanding, you must help people understand. I have learned this lesson from parents who believe our program is only using students to raise funds. I have found that if we are able to have a conversation with them and invite them to observe a leadership lesson, they will typically end up becoming our biggest fans.

Work week: Right now, I am in more of a coaching role, and I love it. I do coaching calls with my leadership and sales teams regularly and help everyone to achieve big things. I also have found strength in the creative side of the business, so I often help with marketing collateral.

Exercise/workout: I am not great at having a regular workout routine, but I do love to go on long walks.

Best advice you ever got: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I always think about how I'd want something to happen if I were on the other side of a situation, and that's how I try to behave in my daily life.

What's your passion in business? Helping others succeed. I love when there is an opportunity for someone on our team to be promoted. If there is a way to help a team member through a difficult situation, I am happy to do that. My passion is to help everyone else succeed in what they are doing.

How do you balance life and work? I have learned it is important to delegate, which allows me to better balance my calendar with life and work. This did not always come easy for me. In my years in business, I have learned that if you want it done right, you need to make sure to build a team around you who are good at what they do.

Guilty pleasure: Reality TV dating shows.

Favorite book: After Anne by Logan Steiner.

Favorite movie: "Mama Mia."

What do most people not know about you? I love fishing. My husband is from Wisconsin, so we vacation there, and that's where I learned to fish. Ice fishing is my favorite.

Pet peeve: Greed or selfishness. I hate it when people are out for themselves.

What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be a party planner.

Last vacation: Monterey, California, in September.

Person you'd most like to have lunch with: My husband's grandma. She passed away before I met her, but I have heard so many amazing stories and wish I had the chance to meet her.

MANAGEMENT

Business philosophy: My philosophy centers around win-win. I feel passionate that you should not be in any business deal that everyone is not winning from. This has served me well.

Management method or style: I am definitely more of a leader. I don't like when people call me their boss or manager. I learned early from my first boss that you always want your employees to love coming to work, and I try to embody this. I feel strongly that if people love working with us and everyone around them loves working here, it's hard for them to want to leave. I sincerely try to make it the best place they can ever work.

Greatest challenge: Managing employees who may be going through personal problems and if that impacts their performance. I want to be compassionate and help without sacrificing the quality of our services.

How do others describe you? People say that I'm generous, that I have a lot of grace, and that I am extremely busy.

Have you ever been in a mentor-mentee relationship? What did you learn? I have a mentor I meet every Friday, and we always argue about who is the mentor and who is the mentee! We both learn a lot from each other.

One thing you're looking to do better: Create more opportunities for my employees. We want to continue to build so that people who are amazing employees don't have to leave. We will do this with more sales and growth.

How you give your team room to innovate and experiment: Our employees give challenges to the kids and encourage them to share. Our staff has the most room to innovate through personal videos they make for the classrooms. They love to be creative and show off what they've come up with.

How close are you to operations? Not very close. I trust the team I have in place. I find that my team is good at the operations of the business. Twice a year, we do a training, and I try to inspire them in areas we are falling short.

What are the two most important things you rely on from your franchisor? Curriculum and technology. They do a phenomenal job in creating a new curriculum each year. They have a theme team that puts together new lessons. They find out what parents, teachers, and principals need. Using technology is important in how we communicate to our audience through emails and text messages. We also want to be forward-thinking and innovative as a company to be able to respond to our customers' needs.

What you need from vendors: Great service. Our vendors supply our prizes for the kids, and if we don't get them on time, it negatively affects our business.

Have you changed your marketing strategy in response to the economy? How? There are certain areas of our business where we used to rely more on in-person interaction with schools for initial sales or training. Now, we are more reliant on webinars since travel is so expensive.

How is social media affecting your business? Social media is a great way for us to communicate what is going on with our programs to parents. Our teams make videos about what we are doing in the schools, which then get shared with PTAs and put on social media. We know people are consuming social media more than ever, so it's helping to get our message out there.

In what ways are you using technology (like AI) to manage your business? We are using AI in some of our communications with clients and in some of our sales materials. Technology in general is such a big part of our business model by how the fundraising links are shared through text, email, and social media.

How do you hire and fire? When it comes to hiring, I am always looking for someone who I'd want to be mentoring my own children. They need to pass that test first. I never want someone to be surprised they are fired. I will give them many warnings and a performance-improvement plan so that if they are ultimately let go, it's not surprising.

How do you train and retain? We do staff training twice a year to make it into an enjoyable, team-building event. We have recently done it with skydiving and wine-tasting events so that our staff is having fun while learning. This has proved effective in creating memories, building a team, and getting people interested in the training we are offering.

How do you deal with problem employees? Our company tagline is centered around building leaders. When I am having an issue with an employee, I am direct, and I want them to know I am trying to make them the best they can be. Tough conversations are needed in order to meet our mission of building leaders.

Fastest way into your doghouse: Disrespecting someone. I hate when people are unkind.

BOTTOM LINE

Annual revenue: $5 million.

2025 goals: Our goal in the year ahead is to increase the schools we serve by 80 across our franchises.

Growth meter: How do you measure your growth? By the number of schools we are serving.

Vision meter: Where do you want to be in five years? 10 years? In five years, we'd like to have each market saturated so that we are serving at least 50% of schools in the area. In the next 10 years, the goal is to build leaders and help some of our staff members get involved in franchising.

Do you have brands in different segments? Why/why not? We also run events through Anython, which is a sister product of Apex Leadership. This services sports teams and clubs and helps raise money outside of schools for other activities and groups.

How is the economy in your region(s) affecting you, your employees, your customers? We are based in California, and it has impacted us with increased employee wages and difficulty receiving our inventory on time due to increased shipping costs.

Are you experiencing economic growth in your market? We are seeing growth with our pledges going up year over year. Our annual average pledge amount has gone up, which is encouraging to see.

How do changes in the economy affect the way you do business? We've had to find areas within our business where we can cut costs. For example, we used to hold a lot of pizza party challenges in the schools, but the cost of buying pizza for a class has doubled. We've also cut back on some travel and had to tighten inventory to make sure we are using what we have efficiently.

How do you forecast for your business? Our goal is to add a new calendar of schools each year in each of our areas. That means signing 16 to 18 new schools each year. With our 95% retention rate, this assures us great growth year over year.

What are the best sources for capital expansion? We have found the best sources for capital expansion for us have been personal savings or leveraging equity in real estate.

Experience with private equity, local banks, national banks, other institutions? Why/why not? We have strived to self-fund our businesses for the most part. However, during Covid-19 shutdowns, we relied on some government resources to stay afloat.

What are you doing to take care of your employees? Employee morale and making people love their jobs are our top priorities. We always try to find fun and creative ways to take care of our team. We have recently started taking our staff on a mid-year cruise to Mexico as a team-building and training event. It's a little bit of training but a lot of fun. We have a lot of like-minded people who work for us, and they become friends. In fact, two couples who were on our teams eventually married.

How are you handling rising employee costs (payroll, minimum wage, healthcare, etc.)? We are doing our best to keep up with the rising costs. We have implemented some bonus plans to incentivize our employees to grow with us. We also have regular brainstorms on how we can cut costs in other areas without compromising our product.

What laws and regulations are affecting your business, and how are you dealing with them? Being that all our franchises are in California, the biggest regulation that has impacted us lately is some stringent reporting requirements. Thankfully, my husband was an analyst at his former company, and he is able to keep up with the requirements.

How do you reward/recognize top-performing employees? We have a bonus structure program for our top-performing employees. We also do a lot of awards through recognition and thank-you gifts.

What kind of exit strategy do you have in place? We plan to exit by having our employees take over when the time is right. We don't know if we will sell, but we will likely always have a hand in the businesses.