Leaving Real Estate for Franchising

Joshua and Ashley Rodgers started investing in real estate while working at their corporate jobs in the Kansas City area. After the birth of their second child, she went home to look after the children and oversee their two, three, and four-unit apartment complexes.

Real estate looked like a solid investment for the long term, but the upheaval of Covid-19 brought unexpected challenges. "When things were starting to shut down, we would get messages from tenants obviously concerned," she says. "They'd say, 'Hey, I saw on the news that people don't have to pay rent right now.' And we were like, 'Well, we still have to pay our mortgages.'"

There was talk at the time about potential regulations on rental property. New rules never materialized, but real estate lost its luster. "We didn't feel comfortable moving forward and growing in that space any longer," Joshua Rodgers says.

His wife had a Facebook friend who ran a Camp Bow Wow. Before the pandemic, she suggested opening a franchise. Besides, they had three dogs and didn't have a good place to board them in their area.

"I'm like, 'Man, we need a Camp Bow Wow, Josh,'" she recalls, "and he's like, 'You're crazy. You're crazy.' This was 2018, I believe."

They visited her friend's business and started boarding their dogs there. Joshua Rodgers agreed that it would be a solid business. They met with corporate but decided the opportunity wasn't right for them.

"We actually decided to purchase an Airbnb in Florida instead of doing our first Camp Bow Wow," she says.

"We didn't know short-term rentals, but we knew we could figure it out quickly," he says, "and it would be a lot easier to figure out than going into a new business with employees, payroll, and everything else."

Then came Covid and the rent issues. They met with the Camp Bow Wow corporate team again in June 2020, and the territory they'd discussed two years earlier was still available.

"It's in our backyard, basically," Joshua Rodgers says.

Building materials were expensive during the pandemic, but they opened for business in April 2022. It turned out that they were filling a serious need. "Within five weeks, we broke even," he says. "I think we broke the corporate record on the fastest camp to break even."

They sold many of their real estate holdings and invested the money into growing the business. They have two locations in the Kansas City area and also purchased three units in Colorado. In June of last year, Joshua Rodgers stepped away from his corporate job to focus on Camp Bow Wow.

While the Camp Bow Wow business is doing well, the pair recently sold the last of their rental properties. In effect, their eggs are in one basket, so it's time to diversify again. They've talked with multiple franchisors in the health and beauty space and expect to expand with a new brand. They're also taking multiple steps to meet whatever the future holds.

"I'm working on getting my pilot's license right now, and we're going to end up buying a plane eventually," Joshua Rodgers says. "That's going to provide another level of freedom that we didn't have before, where we could just fly to our locations and check in on them quickly. It also expands the investment opportunities in other states and other markets. It's going to be interesting."