…A Better Place to Go…
Across 13 states from northern New England to west Texas, you can find Royal Thrones. Owners Bill McClure and Jack Sisemore, Bill’s longtime partner in various companies, started the business in 2016 and have divided that immense swath of the lower 48 United States into their 4 current service divisions. McClure explains: In all of our areas, we have partners. We do have employees, but in each region, our partner there leads in optimizing the service system to make sure all the customers are happy. Bill took time recently to provide ALW readers with a closer look at the Royal Thrones history and current operations.
RoyalThrones.com Leadership and Business History
When Jack, Trent and I started the company we had already been partners for many years in other businesses. I started out owning some funeral homes. My dad was in the funeral business, so I was familiar with it. The business we’re in now is a great industry. It’s fun to run it, and I’ve met many wonderful people in this business.
Jack and Trent have been in Amarillo in the RV business for many years. I still own other companies. I have a couple of online businesses. One is a coffee company called Coffee.org, and a flower company, Bouquet.com. (Our daughter, Ellie, started Miss Ellie’s Coffee Cakes and Coffee.org, 15 years ago. Coffee.org ships literally thousands of her coffee cakes. Last week we sent 80 coffee cakes to some of our pumpers’ former and future customers.) Anyway, neither one of us [Jack nor Bill] ever worked for anybody else. We have both had family businesses. It’s the way we were blessed.
Starting this company was Jack’s idea. He called me and said, ”Hey, I like this business. Do you want in on it?” We could see this industry had a lot of growth opportunities. It’s in its infancy stage. I see it through the lens of an industry that is at that tipping point — that stage of growth where it’s ready now to take off. So, I especially enjoy being in this business during this time.
I’m older, so I can remember a time when people wouldn’t have dreamed that everyone would now have a cell phone in their pocket, or use laptops, or even send faxes. This business has grown like wildfire. It’s because people are having lots of weddings at their farms and ranches and other outdoor spaces.
They have everything they need there, but they don’t have restroom facilities outside. There is also a lot of construction, a big events industry, and many emergency applications for rental restroom trailers.
RoyalThrones.com U.S. Service Areas
In the north corner region, Royal Thrones and our partner (Mike Acquiviva) operates the New England business, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, (northern) Connecticut, and the rest of the surrounding New England area. For example, we have about 18 to 19 trailers in Kennebunkport, Maine; it’s a summer market. In our Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana region, we’ve had our partner Rusty Donohoo for the past year and a half. He’s doing an outstanding job building that area. Jack’s son, Trent, is a partner with ownership in the Dallas / Fort Worth, and Amarillo markets, and I’m in charge of the Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma region.
We’re always looking for partners in different states who want to get into the business. They have to have a little money to get going and, above all, be the right kind of person for this business. People can say they have a good game, but we vet them out. And today we have great partners.
When we consider new partners for the regions, we look for people who are aggressive, striving to achieve and most of all hungry to succeed. It’s a great opportunity for them and us. We’ve talked about doing licensing agreements or franchises, but the partnerships have proven to be a good ownership structure for our company.
How Do Royal Thrones.com Partnerships Work?
Our leadership team takes care of all the marketing, advertising, and management support materials for the partners in the individual markets. We work with our partners to help them figure out whether the market they’re in is scalable. We work together with them by visiting as needed, and by phone and email for daily communications.
We decide who needs to go, me or Jack, when a partner needs someone to go and provide some in-person support. We have friends in all the markets we serve. They’re people we can depend on. We’re happy to refer them in those markets for work with our partner there or to deliver related services that we’re sometimes asked for but that we don’t provide.
The Extraordinary Growth of RoyalThrones.com
We offer from 2-stall to 10-stall trailers (restroom, ADA, and shower trailers). We’re very fortunate to have new equipment. We sell our used equipment every 2 to 3 years. Optimus Industries builds our trailers to our specifications. We’re very proud of them. After these 8 years in operation, we currently have about 60 trailers in our inventory. [They also have a lot of field service vehicles across all the regional locations.] We have about one to three vehicles in each partner’s area to pull the trailers and do other work. We do have a new pump trailer, but it’s not a normal part of our fleet for each region. We contract with a local pumper in each region.
There are ADA units in several locations. We’re buying more. That is one thing we’re getting more and more calls for. They take a special effort in setting up and cost more. We see that as being one of the key features for further growth. We’re asked to provide those, for example, to Walmart, Home Depot, Dollar General, and many other locations across a number of states.
Our team does provide some emergency services with the shower trailers. Fire departments use them for wash-down in some cases. In addition to calls for emergency services, churches use them for camps, like summer camp. And, we supply them to venues producing concerts where they use them for the band, if they require showers on site. And we get calls for a variety of other needs for showers and/or restroom rentals. (We just finished the Rolling Stones concert, Luke Bryan and a couple of other major concerts recently.)
We’ve probably got 15 people working in the company, including the regional partners and Jack and me. Our families are in other businesses, but our children are an important part of our business too. Everybody jumps in when we need extra help. We know we can count on the family members to step up, so we look to them, and they’re there for us.
The pumpers we call in each area we service are not partners, but we consider them partners in an important sense. We are partnering with them to get the job done.
We know we’re in the right place and doing the job right when people say, “I’ve never seen anything like this; it’s nicer than my home bathroom!” When you still hear that today, that tells us we’re also in the right stage of this industry’s development to scale a company.
RoyalThrones.com Service Operations
We’re just busy delivering for the customer and talking to the customer. It’s not the usual service business. Our perspective is that we’re Royal Thrones! We’re in it to do the job right. I want everything in our units to be flawless. For example, we want the steps to be so white and clean looking that people will ask, “Where did these restrooms come from?”
When someone calls, if you care about providing the best service, you answer the phone. I require that all the partners do that. They’re all dedicated, so everyone is enthusiastic about that. If you have a question, if you’re looking for pricing, we make sure someone answers your call and helps you. People appreciate that.
A lot of customers call at 7 am or 6 pm. People in cities call us for emergency service. I answer their calls when they come to my phone. That’s our service way of life. We answer the phone, and from that point forward, we are going to take great care of the customer.
I’m the managing partner. My job is to take on the marketing websites and infrastructures as regional operations emerge and help develop the management systems with the partners. I also run our existing Midwest operations. And – I answer calls when they come to my phone.
Royal Thrones Challenges and Plans
One of the challenges that you always face when you start a new company is getting ownership of the domain name you need to succeed online. We had to buy ours from someone, and then we had to go through the legal process to get it trademarked. We understood the importance of that. You’ve got to start with a good business name and you must own the domain name.
To stand up a new regional operation, we bring on a partner, let’s say Royal Thrones of Montana. We build the website, maintain it, handle the advertising, and give him a successful operating model and a ready-made platform – Royal Thrones. He’s starting with everything he needs for success. If the new partner is strongly committed, he or she will do a great job for the customer and succeed long-term in the partnership.
We get everybody together as needed to work on issues and planning. We just got together with Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Oklahoma partners in Tulsa to talk about how we can improve. One key is to keep plenty of boots on the ground. That means keeping people who provide our service talking with people who are going to be renting equipment from us.
It’s not who you might think it is. Wedding planners do rent our units for events. But, the tent rental people, the facility managers, and others are key contacts too. At any large commercial facility that has a restroom that is down, the facility manager rents the trailer(s) from us, so the partners have to do research. You’ve got to know who to talk to throughout each area.
For broader-scale planning, we want to have partners on the West Coast and southeast Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. We believe those are good markets for us. We’d like to have some in Michigan and Tennessee too. We cover Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. We have clusters of units in strategic locations, so we can subsidize growth efforts by loaning trailers to a partner in an adjacent region as needed to help that partner scale.
Advice for Industry Newcomers from Bill McClure, RoyalThrones.com
The advice I would offer is about the principles we operate from. Whether you run a small hardware store or a restroom trailer rental business, you have to like the customer. You have to want to talk to that customer like a friend. The pattern of interaction is different to develop those kinds of relationships.
Some have suggested that we should have an answering service or more buttons people can choose when they dial our phone number. You know, “Push 1 for restroom trailers. Push 2 for something else you need, etc.” But, you don’t get to help the person calling very well that way. It doesn’t as easily allow you to go any deeper to develop a good relationship with the person.
I’ve learned this in other companies too. When people are looking for something they need, they’ve got to be able to talk with someone who can help. When our team answers the phone, it lets them partner with the customer to help them get the right solution. The key is to cultivate relationships.
Reflections on RoyalThrones.com
In the past 8 years — with the pandemic through the middle of those years — Bill, Jack and Trent have grown Royal Thrones from 0 to 13 states and an estimated 60+ trailers and service vehicles on the road. Those include restroom trailers of all sizes, shower trailers, a tank truck, and additional management and other field service trucks throughout the 13 states. There is much to credit in the organization for its extraordinary growth in that short time.
The Royal Thrones sensational growth rate speaks for itself. The passion of the Bill McClure and Jack Sisemore leadership team further indicates the business’s potential for continued rapid expansion to become a nationwide player. From the company’s stringent requirements for consistent quality in pristine rental units to their equally strict requirements of customer-centric communications, everything is optimally presented for rental customers and prospects.
The company also provides a unique, value-added Rental Guide that customers can download from the website. Per Bill, it explains things for people to give them an idea of what to expect of our services. It helps them plan by explaining how much space you need, what type of water supply you need, the requirements for power, which depends on winter or summer rental, what it takes to put the trailer by their building, etc. Another great customer-focused idea from the core partners.
By the time people see the beautiful upgrades in a Royal Thrones rental restroom, like the vessel sinks, sleek, unique wall decor, appealing color schemes, and more, (even perhaps the industry’s most attractive logos on the glimmering trailers), they already know that it really is “a better place to go.” Yes, the company owners are funny too.
Overall, it’s fair to say that the McClure and Sisemore business vision stands out in the industry. Their regional partnership business ownership and management structure may be one of a kind in the portable restroom rental industry. It appears to offer the most inspiring, empowering model for entrepreneurs who want to participate at that level but are stopped by entry barriers like large upfront capital requisites, online business development resources, sufficient industry knowledge, a convenient information exchange network, and/or a well-resourced physical operations support apparatus.
The powerful system that Bill McClure, Jack Sisemore, and Trent Sisemore have built for Royal Thrones offers an exceptionally instructive operations and service model for the industry. Their highly effective and scalable organizational template suggests a better way for many to become entrepreneurs in the United States, at least in our particular service industry.
For more information about Royal Thrones, you can call (800)-721-7640, or visit royalthrones.com anytime!