Jesse Keyser started as a Little Caesars franchisee with his brother when he was in his early 20s. Today, he owns 32 Sport Clips stores, six Oxi Fresh Carpet Cleaning units and is opening his first Waxing the City.
Jesse Keyser thinks there are two types of people: simplifiers and multipliers. As a multi-brand franchisee, he calls himself a multiplier.
“Simplifiers like to reduce friction and make things simpler. Multipliers want to take someone else’s idea or system and grow it,” Keyser said. “I like taking someone else’s idea and saying, ‘This idea would do well here, here and here,’ and then execute and open them up.”
Keyser bought a Little Caesars franchise in his early 20s with his brother Charles on the advice of some entrepreneurs at the dot-com startup where he worked. “While I had some really strong leadership abilities, I didn’t really know anything about running a business,” he said. “Franchising was basically going to teach me how to run my business.”
He’s since sold off his Little Caesars restaurants, but today owns 32 Sport Clips salons, six Oxi Fresh Carpet Cleaning locations and is opening his first Waxing the City next year. He also owned Ideal Image and Valpak Marketing locations.
Keyser owns the St. Louis development rights for Oxi Fresh. The cost to open an Oxi Fresh location ranges from $53,775 to $83,380, according to the brand’s franchise disclosure document. Multi-unit operators pay a discounted franchisee fee for each additional location. The average unit volume last year was $162,260.
Operating a diverse franchise portfolio comes with its struggles, but Keyser said he’s prepared the company internally to support business operations. Each store has a general manager, Keyser said, and he employs area managers who oversee five to 10 locations. He has a full-time controller and his brother handles back-office operations.
“Don’t go into a business unless you’re very sure about who your ideal customer is and who your ideal employee would be for that concept,” Keyser said about evaluating new brands.
As a multiplier, Keyser has a strong focus on employee retention and recruitment. “Relationships matter the most,” he said.
One example is from his experience as an Ideal Image franchisee. When he operated medspas, he hired nurses to perform services. “We’re a very calm environment. … We’re not overnights, we’re not holidays and everyone’s going there for an elective service,” he said. “That’s a different type of nurse or nurse practitioner than someone who enjoys the emergency room. Even though, on paper, they’re the same person—they’re not.”
Knowing your ideal candidates prior to signing a franchise agreement is key to success, he said.
“We have always recruited, and we’ve always been staffed very well with people that we want to work with,” Keyser said. Even if a Sport Clips is fully staffed, he’s still looking for potential recruits, in case he’s looking to grow or loses a couple of employees.
Keyser said acquiring businesses is easier in the franchise space compared to non-franchised concepts. When he buys a store from a franchisee, he needs to know two things: the cost of rent and its net sales.
“I can take those two pieces of information, plug them into my pro forma, and I can tell you how profitable at that volume my store would be with that rent,” he said.
If he decides to buy a Sport Clips franchise from another operator, the transition is made easy because Keyser can pick up where the former owner left off. Sport Clips’ AUV, per the FDD, was $533,445 in 2024. It closed 23 net stores last year, ending with 1,837 salons.
As a longtime franchisee, Keyser knows the problems other operators face because he’s dealt with them as well. In September, Keyser met with members of Congress alongside the International Franchise Association to advocate for small business owners like himself. He’s one of many salon owners who fought to get the same tax credits that restaurants and bars get. The change was included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed this year.
“Every salon now, every barber shop, every spa—they know that they get the same rebate on their employee’s tax tips that restaurants and bars get,” Keyser said. For him, that equates to about $10,000 per location.
Keeping a sharp eye on profit and loss reports has led to success for Keyser. He compares each P&L to his fellow franchisees and compares this year’s reports to the same time periods from the previous year.
Keyser keeps relationships at the forefront of his mind, whether that means relations between employees, customers or fellow franchisees. “We keep an eye on the metrics and we also invest heavily in the human capital,” he said.