At the age of 28, Dennis Schooley started his own accounting firm that grew into a consulting business. While his team had expanded considerably and was thriving, he quickly learned that he was overpaying for telecom services. By Brianna Bohn
At the age of 28, Dennis Schooley started his own accounting firm that grew into a consulting business. While his team had expanded considerably and was thriving, he quickly learned that he was overpaying for telecom services. That realization ultimately led to the creation of Schooley Mitchell, the largest independent cost-reduction consulting firm in North America.
For more than 18 years, Schooley Mitchell has served over 26,000 clients and has provided over $380 million in savings. While these numbers are impressive, Schooley explained that the data gathered from those interactions and the relationships formed with vendors are even more significant.
“We have maintained all the information for those clients, which means we have a lot of information that provides a lot of clout and knowledge when we deal with vendors on behalf of our clients. We know how low vendors can go in every circumstance; they can’t fool us. That’s a power that our franchisees have through us to get the best results for their clients,” Schooley said.
And that power continues to grow. Adding eight to 10 franchisees a month and leading a team of over 100 professionals, Schooley Mitchell is a force to be reckoned with. However, as much as the brand has expanded over the years, one thing has stayed the same: the high level of service driven by a close-knit family culture.
“I’m a CPA, so our business has a professional grounding. We don’t deal with tax or law, but we are a professional business that advises business clients. We’ve been doing that since 2004. Even though we’ve grown into a bigger business with 220 franchises and 110 people working in the head office supporting those franchises, we’re still very much a family business,” said Schooley. He runs the business with his wife, Beth McMillan, and has two sons who work in the business as well.
With such a large team, Schooley Mitchell is able to provide top-of-the-line support and training to franchisees, who do not need a background in the brand’s eight expense categories, ranging from utilities and merchant services to eSignature and fuel needs. “Our only job is to help our franchisees make more money,” Schooley said. “We have a commitment to lifelong learning, and we demonstrate that in so many different ways. We have an initial training course; we then assign every franchisee a one-on-one coach and mentor to help them through their daily business, and we have additional training through webinars, virtual presentations and annual conferences.” In addition, to pivot during the pandemic, the brand created a robust distance-learning platform that continues to benefit franchise owners.
There are several other advantages that franchise owners can tap into immediately. For instance, there are no restricting territories, so franchise owners have access to clients anywhere in the United States and Canada. Also, every client has a minimum of a three-year contract with the brand, so there is a predictable cash flow. Retention rates are high as a result of the brand’s marketing tools too.
“We’ve got really unique relationship-building tools, and when our franchisees use those tools, they have clients for many years,” Schooley said.
If you are interested in a fully-scalable, recession-proof business, get in touch to find out more about franchising opportunities.
Brianna Bohn
Contact: schooleymitchell.com, fd@schooleymitchell.com, 888-311-6477