Welcome to the inaugural episode of DevBros.
Joshua Schure and I sat down to talk about how franchise brands actually buy technology - and websites in particular.
After years in franchising, you start to see patterns. Decisions aren’t made purely on features. They’re influenced by growth pressure, internal politics, budget constraints, legacy thinking, and sometimes the simple reluctance to unlearn what’s always been done.
In this episode, we get into:
- The RFP Dilemma: Do they actually speed up decision-making, or are they just a safety net?
- The Tesla Effect: What happens when a brand finally moves to modern infrastructure and why it’s hard to go back.
- The Truth About Growth: How the pressure to sell units can lead to underinvestment in foundational systems.
- Fractional Leadership: When does bringing in a fractional officer work, and when is it just a band-aid?.
Tune in below for our unfiltered take:
Transcript
Mark: There’s no secret. People are going to work with who they want to work with. It’s not just the technology. It’s the team.
Mark: Welcome to the inaugural episode, ladies and gentlemen. I’m joined here by Joshua Schure and my lingering cough. I got sick about eight days ago and it’s still here. Let’s get into it.
Mark: Joshua, you’ve been here for three months. We’ve known each other a little over a year, maybe two. What are you excited about lately?
Joshua: Chief among what I’m excited about is getting back out on the circuit. We have the Super Bowl coming up, which is the IFA convention. After learning a ton about what we do, how we do it, who we do it for, and why we do it, it’ll be cool to get out there again from both the technology and relationship standpoint.
Mark: What about personally?
Joshua: Personally, I’m a crazy guy. In my old age, I decided to try some new things. I have a bachelor party and a wedding coming up. I’m tying the knot in April. And you’re going to get whiplash when I say this, but I’m going straight from Vegas and IFA on a red-eye to my bachelor party, which is either the greatest or the worst idea in the universe.
Mark: Bro, you don’t give a [bleep]. This guy loves to party.
Mark: Okay, being real for a second. We’re websites. But more broadly, we’re in the franchise digital marketing ecosystem. What’s one thing that surprised you about websites now that you’ve been closer to it?
Joshua: The biggest surprise is how resistant some brands are to unlearn what they think they know and move toward an architecture and future that’s better for the network. It’s like people avoiding the doctor. “I feel fine. I don’t need to go.” Then you wait too long, and something pops up. That’s what it feels like. I’ve also seen that some website offerings are cheaper, but archaic.
Mark: You’ve been involved with websites for a decade. When you see what we do for a franchise brand, are you like, “Yeah, duh,” or were you shocked by the complexity?
Joshua: I’m not fully in the weeds on every technical detail of integrations and launches, but the answer is still “duh.” If you set things up to be a well-oiled machine, it’s not something you have to worry about constantly. It’s not set it or forget it, nothing is. You still have to keep an eye on things and keep content fresh. But it surprises me that everyone doesn’t just go toward “let me get what I pay for.”
Mark: How do you see pricing affecting the conversation?
Joshua: Like everything else, there’s a cost to both corporate and the franchisee when consuming a technology solution. It’s rare that corporate says, “We’ll cover this.” Something gets passed through. In websites, that’s usually the hosting and management cost for each location. Where I’ve seen sticker shock is on the location side. “How are my franchisees going to pay for this on top of everything else?” They’re trying to deliver a tech stack that gives franchisees the best chance of success. So how do you balance it? That’s the tension.
Mark: What’s something in franchising that’s made you laugh recently?
Joshua: The funniest thing right now is “strategic partnerships” and referral agreements. Sometimes companies have dedicated people for it, but have you ever really heard of a partnership program where everyone is truly excited, where it feels mutual and bidirectional? Usually it’s, “What are you going to give me?” and the other side is, “What have you given me?” We get calls like, “We’d love to be involved with you. You have great clients. If you ever have someone interested in XYZ…” It’s rarely enticing enough on either side to become a truly functional partnership.
Mark: So what makes you laugh?
Joshua: That everyone thinks everyone is going to work for free and drop everything to help someone else. If people asked themselves, “If someone offered this to me, how interested would I be?” things would look different. A lot of people don’t follow “do unto others.”
Mark: Business funny. Everything else is too gray-area to air. We’ll wait until episode four. You’re cancelled.
Mark: Is there something new you’ve learned being on this side of the fence, mainly around websites?
Joshua: It’s hard to say without sounding like I’m brown-nosing, but we really are client-first. You and I talk about growth initiatives and all that. But even today, the question is, “What’s most important as we think about solutions and go-to-market?” You said it and I agree. The brand has to be happy. Make the brand happy. We’re not starting every meeting talking about exit plans or valuation. It’s more like, “Is everyone happy? What do we need to keep an eye on? What are we going to do next?” It gets personal too. We care about the people.
Mark: What do you think about all the RFPs flying around in franchising?
Joshua: It would be great if every company always had a chance to compete, but it’s not realistic. We’re in a bunch of RFPs right now, but we’ll still hear at conferences, “We just ran an RFP,” and we’ll look at each other like, “Why weren’t we involved?” It comes back to awareness. In franchising, people look at badges first. “Where are you now?” Everyone shifts around. Even when brands are evaluating technology, there’s no secret. People are going to work with who they want to work with. It’s not just the technology, it’s the team.
Mark: Do you think the reason there are so many RFPs is procedural? Like leadership wants to show diligence, “We didn’t just pick a favorite.”
Joshua: I think it’s checks and balances. A CMO or VP might say, “We’re having challenges. We’re outdated. We need to be future-proofed.” That pushes a brand into shopping mode.
Mark: Do RFPs speed up decision-making or slow it down?
Joshua: If a brand is used to RFPs, it speeds it up. Otherwise it’s like walking through an outdoor mall shopping for furniture. You love something at Pottery Barn, then you love something across the way, then you find something unique in a mom-and-pop store. At the end you’re like, “Wait, what did we even look at?” An RFP puts everyone through the same questions, creates a scorecard, and then a number can speak. If someone wins 93 to 92, it becomes easier for leadership to say, “We went through the process. Procurement ran it, or a consultant ran it. We’re going with the numbers.”
Mark: I’ve been obsessed with the emerging and mid-market lately. Bigger brands have an IT director and leadership in place. We win those deals. But in mid-market, I keep wondering who we’re really selling to. There are CMOs with titles, but not always the authority. They might run an RFP, but the decision still lands with the founder after the homework is done. I’ve seen it about five times last year where there’s a whole RFP and the CMO gets let go shortly after. I don’t think the CMO was wrong. The issue is there’s another decision-maker running the business based on the bank account. I know that person. That was me for 16 years.
Mark: I keep going back to the idea that buying a website should feel more like buying a car. There’s something in that.
Joshua: Buying a car is one of the biggest purchases people make. House, car. And then you buy an iPhone or a Tesla. Once you buy an iPhone, unless you’re one of the weird Android people, you don’t really see another way. Same with Tesla. You get the experience and you’re like, “Oh, I get it.” You buy it off your phone. No dealership. Insurance included. You didn’t pay for gas this week. That’s the kind of “I get it” moment we want with DevHub. Once you buy a DevHub website, you understand why it’s DevHub and not what you’ve been doing for the last ten years.
Mark: One deal we didn’t win last year, the founder said, “I’ve been doing websites for ten years. I’ve never heard of anyone charging a license fee.” And it’s like, “Well why do you think you keep switching your website every two years?” Because it gets old. It’s never old with DevHub.
Joshua: It’s like someone who’s eaten pizza their whole life and opens a pizza shop. Why would they look at franchising if they’ve never thought about a licensing fee? But they’re going through the pain of building something that isn’t turnkey.
Mark: I’ve had it happen where I said everything and it was still, “No, I know better than you.” That happened again at another conference. A guy told me he spent $60,000 to rebrand everything. Then he said he was going to do his website. He was willing to pay more for the brand redesign than the website, which is the thing that delivers leads and the thing the AI models will read. You’re going to pay less than a graphic?
Mark: And I sympathize because I was that guy. I would never have let anyone sell DevHub besides me. I would never have let anyone do our marketing or put out our messaging. You get to a point where you do. That’s why we win bigger deals. Those brands have leadership and a team. In emerging and mid-market, leadership is still onesie-twosie. They don’t have the team to run the play. Giving up a chunk of money feels harder because they know how hard it was to earn each dollar. But it goes beyond money.
Mark: Let’s talk about mid-market and emerging systems. What’s their number one priority? One word.
Joshua: Grow.
Joshua: They want to sell. They want to grow. If that’s the focus, they aren’t sitting back saying, “I have the time to make sure everything is a well-oiled machine.” They’re thinking, “I need to sell 30 more units this year.” They’re running all over the place while also keeping their existing franchisees from imploding. That leads to cost cutting. It also leads to vendor consolidation because they don’t want multiple bills and multiple partners. Sometimes best-in-class is better, but they don’t think the time is justified. Then you layer in additional cost.
Joshua: What makes us different from agencies is we do one thing. We do one thing and we do it really, really well. And those aren’t my words. That’s what I heard from your clients before I joined.
Mark: We see a lot of fractional leaders in franchising. Does bringing in a fractional officer work?
Joshua: It works unless you bring on the wrong fractional officer.
Mark: If it’s a perfect fit, why let that person walk out the door?
Joshua: Three reasons. One, you want them short-term because they can get things done, but you’re not sure they’re the right cultural fit long-term. Two, you can’t afford them full-time. Painful truth. People bring in fractionals because they can afford them for a period of time at a non full-time rate. Passion has to be aligned. If someone isn’t passionate, it shows in the results. The fractional leader has to believe in the brand and put their stamp behind it.
Joshua: If they do their job well and the focus is growth, eventually you might outgrow them. In many cases, it shouldn’t be more than a year because they should almost be hiring their replacement. Not milking it. That’s not in the best interest of the brand.
Mark: If we’re talking about a fractional growth officer, there are use cases. Give me one.
Joshua: If I’m brought in to help an emerging franchise grow fast, what motivates me isn’t just commission. It’s that there’s an actual outcome. An exit plan. “If we get to 250 units, we sell for X. You have equity or warrants. Based on performance, you get paid Y.” That’s a real time frame. Also, early-stage systems can’t sell the dream without the infrastructure to launch what they sell. A strong growth fractional can be longer than six months because the sales cycle matters.
Joshua: If you’re talking about a fractional CMO, there should be a defined period where you build the strategy, implement it, execute, and it works or it doesn’t. Either way, that person has done their job.
Mark: The more I learn about business, the more I realize it’s measurable. There’s a human element, but goals are measurable. Either it happens or it doesn’t happen. Some fractional engagements feel like vague goals. “Fix this process.” “Clean this up.” “Pick the right vendor.” That can take forever. How does it align?
Joshua: That falls back on the brand. The brand should know why they’re bringing someone in. If a fractional leader is speaking word salad with no measurable goal, that’s on the brand. It should be: we need to get to Z, we bring in someone who can do that, they present a plan, and there’s a time frame.
Mark: If we were sitting here a year from now, what would I have had to do for you to feel DevHub was a great decision?
Joshua: Fully transparent, we all have bills. Monetarily it has to make sense. This is your company. It’s your baby. It’s not mine. If I’m not sitting in something with equity, part of it is: was the year worth it financially? Because we’re all selling our time.
Joshua: But it’s not only that. How has the experience been from a relationship standpoint and a growth standpoint? Am I doing work that’s rewarding and helps me grow into the next thing? What relationships have I made? What credibility have I built as a trusted advisor? How have I helped the company’s good name? A year from now it’s: how and where has Joshua Schure grown?
Mark: Do you feel lucky?
Joshua: I did when I was betting on wildcard weekend. But honestly, we’re all lucky we’re here today. Every day we wake up, we’re lucky. I don’t understand why some people aren’t here tomorrow that we’re here today. I don’t get how any of that works.
Mark: True last question. What do we actually name this podcast?
Joshua: DevBros.
Mark: I’ll roll with it.
Joshua: I could think of other names, but the vision is that we’re two different, entertaining personalities. There’s only so much talk about websites people want. Our lives and passions go beyond that. That’s what people care about. If they need our help and they know who we are, we’re recognizable in the industry, but not everyone knows us or what we do. I’d love for it to get a little Seinfeld-esque and cover topics people find entertaining and engaging, and bring our franchise community in to talk about everything.
Mark: Every year someone breaks bones skiing. I’m like, “Yeah, I really want to go skiing.” Jesus Christ.
Mark: Josh, let’s wrap it. Anything you want to close it with?
Joshua: No. Until the next one.
Mark: Well done. I hope you enjoy my White Men Can’t Jump hat. One of my favorite movies. What’s your top three?
Joshua: Mine are basic. The Godfather, Interstellar, and maybe Forrest Gump.
Mark: Interstellar is interesting. Most people wouldn’t put it top three.
Joshua: After I watched Interstellar, I didn’t believe in aliens anymore.
Mark: Okay, I’ve got one for you. Vanilla Sky. I could watch it so many times. I still don’t get what it’s about. I think it’s one of the best movies ever made.
Joshua: That’s so interesting. I still don’t know what it’s about.
