Strategic Changes Led to a Successful Center Ownership Transition for Sylvan Learning Franchisees Mark and Jennifer Bellestri

When Mark and Jennifer Bellestri learned that a Sylvan Learning in Highlands Ranch, Colorado was up for sale, they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to franchise with the supplemental and enrichment education brand. Jennifer got the inside scoop on the sale thanks to her role as the center director for a Minnesota Sylvan Learning **franchise, where she’d worked for 23 years. The timing was perfect, as the Colorado center’s previous franchisee wanted a career change and Jennifer and Mark desired to move to Colorado.

The Bellestris** purchased the Highlands Ranch center in October 2018**.

“The bottom line is that after 23 years of working for Sylvan Learning, my wife was still as excited and passionate as ever about the results the brand delivers to families and students,” Mark Bellestri said.

The Bellestris, who still keep in touch with the previous owner, later expanded and purchased the brand’s nearby Littleton franchise in June 2019. In addition to the two brick-and-mortar locations, the Bellestris own and operate a satellite location in the nearby town of Parker. They were also recently approved to temporarily take over another satellite location in Colorado Springs.

Operational Improvements

While the Highlands Ranch franchise benefitted from a dedicated and passionate previous owner, the Bellestris took two major steps to improve operations at that location. The first thing they did was to relocate the franchise to the nearby city of Lone Tree, which resulted in an approximately 35% reduction in rent. The Bellestris also implemented a text-messaging application called Zipwhip to help streamline scheduling and facilitate student progress assessments with families.

“Parents can use Zipwhip to text us to schedule follow-ups and assessments,” Mark said. “We’ve also used Zipwhip to send parents photos of their kids during sessions to show them how hard their kids are working. It’s also been an incredible tool for us when there’s a change in schedule or if we have weather-related issues. We can text that information out to families in less than a minute.”

The Bellestris even use Zipwhip to text customers about special offers.

“We’ve emailed our customers about program sales, and we’ll get some responses from those emails, but when we use Zipwhip to text out customer appreciation offers, we will literally get several responses within just two minutes,” Bellestri said.

Community Outreach

Additionally, the Bellestris have done extensive community outreach to get the word out about their centers. They’ve developed relationships with principals, teachers, counselors and more.

The Sylvan Learning leadership applauds the changes the Bellestris have implemented.

“With more than 40 years of experience and more than 750 points of presence across North America, it has become quite common over the past few years to see original Sylvan Learning owners retire or move on and pass the torch to a new franchisee,” CEO John McAuliffe said. “Mark and Jennifer Bellestri are two of those franchise owners who came in, made the center their own and have been doing an amazing job in their community as the local face of Sylvan Learning.”

Franchisee Advice

Mark’s primary advice for prospective Sylvan Learning franchisees who are thinking about purchasing an existing franchise is to review the ratio of the center’s rent cost to its revenue. He noted that the two biggest costs for an existing Sylvan Learning franchise are rent and labor. Beyond these factors, financial success is often based on a franchisee’s willingness to get out into their communities, he said.

“If rent is more than 15% of the existing revenue, you need to see if the landlord is willing to negotiate the lease rate and/or see how long you have left on that existing lease rate,” he said. “The fact is that if you are significantly above that 15% of the gross revenue for paying for rent, it will be very difficult for you to make money. The rent at the first location we took over was 27% of the gross revenue, and the lease was up in six months. Our goal was to negotiate with the landlord but that didn’t work out, so we moved.”

Bellestri also noted the benefits of purchasing an existing center. For one, systems are already in place and community relationships formed, so the incoming franchisee will have an established community of teachers and students in place and can focus on student progress instead of solely focusing on getting new customers.

“You can look at the pricing model of what the center is charging and determine whether there’s room to charge more,” he said. “You can also look at other expenses and see where you can cut costs. For example, our first location had a water cooler, which I refer to as indirect expenses. By removing this cost and making some other adjustments, we were able to save hundreds of dollars per month in expenses.”

The Bellestris are interested in expanding their footprint even further with Sylvan Learning into territories south of their current locations, as they have formed a great relationship with fellow franchisee Christine Rector, who owns the brand’s neighboring Broomfield location.

“Our goal is to continue to partner with her and do virtual camps and online SAT classes,” Bellestri said. “We say, half-jokingly, that anything north of Interstate 70 will be Christine’s to develop and anything south of Interstate 70 will be ours to develop.”

By leveraging a high business acumen, implementing effective and cost-saving solutions and possessing a genuine love for the brand, the Bellestris were able to take an existing Sylvan Learning location and set a foundation for further growth.