Over 100 million views from one franchisee

⏳ Read time: ~6 minutes

This week: why we let 5,800 franchisees post whatever they want, and the case study behind it. One Jim's Mowing franchisee. Over 100 million views.

I was talking with Lauren Clement, the Brand Navigator, who speaks at franchise conferences about personal branding.

Lauren says the same question comes up at every conference.

What do we do about franchisees and social media?

Most brands pick one of two answers.

A free-for-all, or total control.

At Jim's we picked a third. We call it FGC, franchisee-generated content.

You've heard of user-generated content and employee-generated content. FGC is the franchisee version.

Our video team is one person, Charles, behind the camera.

Plus me.

There's only so much two people get through.

Our franchisees are out there all day.

They're local.

They're the experts in what they do.

They know exactly what to film.

So we push them to do it.

We train every new franchisee on it and show what is possible, IF they want to use it.

1 billion+: organic views on franchisee social accounts in the last 18 months

256,000: followers on one franchisee's Facebook page

50,000: followers on the Jim's Mowing Facebook page

Pool care, dog wash, mowing, cleaning. All raw phone footage. All free.

People like watching the local guy do the job more than they like watching a corporate account.

A lot of franchisors still hand out templates and post the same thing across 10 locations.

Social media doesn't reward the same post ten times anymore. It wants unique content on every profile.

We have 5,800 franchisees.

Get 1% or 2% doing this at the level we want, and you get a billion plus views across your network.

People message our franchisees directly to ask what being a franchisee is like.

New franchisees tell me in training: "I've been following this guy on Instagram. I sent him a message, then I talked to the franchisor."

The franchisee has done the selling in the DMs, and head office never saw it.

Here is what 1% looks like.

Shuby is a Jim's Mowing franchisee. I pulled his full public Instagram history for the franchisee content course I am building.

Every reel. 833 of them, using Apify with MCP via Claude Desktop.

123.2 million views. One franchisee. One phone.

No agency. No ad spend. No camera crew.

He posted his first reels in October 2024.

2024: 555 median views per reel

2025: 1,913 median views per reel

2026: 34,868 median views per reel

A 63x improvement in under two years.

98% of his views came in 2026. His first 15 months produced 2.1 million. He now does the same in a good week.

October 2025: 40 reels a month, 872 median views.

July 2026: 75 reels a month, 64,010 median views.

His median climbed for eleven straight months. No single video made him. He posted more, and the videos got better at the same time.

His strongest hook shows the most avoided, unnoticed spot in the yard. Shared guilt beats spectacle.

Every one of his top eight reels runs 12 to 18 seconds.

His top four did 14.1 million, 10.8 million, 10.8 million and 9.2 million views.

Past 20 seconds, his median views drop from 35,628 to 5,067.

Past 30 seconds, 804.

A second mowing franchisee in our study shows the same pattern.

Shuby has 15,783 followers. His median reel reaches more people than follow him.

Other franchisee accounts in our study have 221,000 to 256,000 followers. Their median reel reaches a fraction of their audience.

He uses the same boilerplate caption and the same hashtags on every reel, winners and flops alike. The video does all the work.

How many Shubys are sitting in your network, waiting for permission and a 15-second rule?

Joel

PS. His median reel in 2024 got 555 views. He kept posting.

I helped grow Jim's Group from 3,709 to 5,800+ franchisees with content. Not agencies.

One hour on the right problem changes your franchise growth. Leads going cold, building a video library, getting franchisees on camera. You pick.

$400 AUD for 60 minutes.

I run workshops and talks for franchisor teams, marketing teams and franchisee events. Reply with what you need.