How Joe Dominiak Is Scaling Superior Fence & Rail, With Lessons From 25-Years of Turnarounds

Joe Dominiak has spent 25 years fixing franchise systems that quietly fell apart from the inside out, and he is now doing the opposite at Superior Fence and Rail, the fastest growing fencing franchise in America.

The franchise systems that survive a decade select their franchisees instead of hiring them, treat reputation score as the only top-line metric, and refuse to bolt on operational complexity that ops cannot execute. Everything else is downstream of those three calls.

I sat down with Joe on the Nail It. Podcast to walk through how Superior Fence and Rail (SFR) crossed $1 billion in cumulative systemwide sales in June 2025, hit number one on the Franchise Times Fast and Serious list in 2025, and grew from 36 operating units in 2021 to 123 operating units as of today across 45 states. Joe joined SFR in 2024 as VP of Franchise Operations after 10 years at Taco Bell and Yum Brands, 25 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth at Skyline Chili, and turnarounds at multiple brands inside the ARC Group portfolio.

What surprised me about Joe is how short his playbook is. He runs the same four moves at every brand he joins. The difference at SFR, he told me, is that he is showing up two years ahead of where he normally starts.

Why Joe "selects" franchisees instead of hiring them

I asked Joe early in the conversation why he uses the word "select" when most franchise leaders say "hire" or "recruit." His answer was the most useful 90 seconds of the episode.

He told me about a franchise system he and his wife once joined where leadership shifted to a "if your check clears, you are a franchisee" model. COVID hit. Operators who had no business owning a small business were suddenly trying to run one through a pandemic. The brand collapsed.

SFR runs the opposite playbook. Founder Zach Peyton set hard selection criteria in the early days, and Joe has kept them. The brand looks for self-starters who walk in saying what they are going to make, not asking what is possible. Joe pointed to Drew Raymond, an SFR franchisee who has publicly committed to $19 million in revenue. That is the energy SFR wants on the roster.

Selection runs the other direction too. When the fit fails, Joe and Zack help another franchisee take over the territory and part ways with the original operator. "Speed dating," Joe called it. "Divorce is at about 50% in this country. We are never going to get that far."

I have started running my own version of this filter at NaiL, and it has reshaped how I think about who we onboard as a customer. If you are evaluating a franchise opportunity right now, that selection rigor is one of the strongest signals you can find. A brand that picks carefully on the way in cares about the brand on the way out.

Reputation score, not revenue, is the brand's North Star

Most franchise CEOs I talk to call topline revenue or unit count their North Star. Joe's answer is reputation score. Top line and bottom line are outcomes of a five-star review, not the other way around.

The data backs him up. SFR has over 45,000 five-star reviews across the system. The strongest offices logged more than 250 five-star reviews each in 2025 alone. At Ignite 26, the SFR conference where I spoke about AI in home services, Joe heard one franchisee complain that he "only had 150 five stars." Most single-territory operators in any home service category I have worked with would frame 150 five-star reviews as the headline of a Facebook post.

What I respect about SFR is that the system reinforces this metric on purpose. Pay structures, training, and franchisee scorecards all roll up to reputation score. Joe interviews installers, salespeople, and warehouse staff with one filter: how will you contribute to the score? Candidates who cannot get excited about that do not make it into the brand.

Joe said something that I am quoting back at our team at NaiL: "Marketing cannot market what ops can't execute. And if it's anything else, it's a lie." Spending more to amplify a mediocre customer experience makes a brand smaller, not bigger.

That lesson hit me in a different conversation last week. My mentor Dennis Yu, pushed me to stop chasing new clients and pour energy into amplifying the results our current NaiL customers were already getting. Same lesson, different industry, different decade. Joe and Dennis are running the same playbook from opposite ends of the country.

The three greens that decide if a unit-economic model works

When Joe walked me through how he evaluates any business, he kept coming back to what he calls the "three greens." He has used the same filter at Taco Bell, Skyline Chili, Camp Bow Wow, and now Superior Fence and Rail.

The customer has to want the product and be willing to pay for it. The operators have to deliver it consistently and train others to deliver it. The unit economics have to throw off real profit at the franchisee level.

Miss any one of those three and the system fails, no matter how strong the other two are. A great product with weak unit economics burns out franchisees. Strong unit economics with inconsistent delivery destroys the reputation score. A great team selling something the customer does not actually want is just expensive theater.

SFR passes all three. The product carries a lifetime guarantee. The training and onboarding program is built to get new operators productive fast. And the unit economic model, while Joe stayed careful about specifics on the podcast, is built to put cash in franchisee pockets quickly. He told me that last piece is what attracted him to the brand in the first place.

Why a 123-unit, $1 billion brand still does one-on-one P&L reviews

Most growth-stage franchisors stop doing personal P&L reviews around unit 30. SFR has 114 operating units, 250 territories sold across 45 states, and Joe and Zack still take individual P&L meetings with any franchisee who requests one.

The spreadsheet logic says that is a bad use of executive time. Joe disagrees, and after this conversation, so do I. The 30 minutes spent on a franchisee P&L is what builds the trust that makes a Drew Raymond chase $19 million instead of cruising at $4 million. It is also what surfaces the friction points that would otherwise turn into a quiet exit two years later.

Joe frames it as situational leadership. A new SFR franchisee who closed on a territory last quarter needs a fundamentally different kind of support than Drew Raymond at $19 million in pipeline. Confusing the two breaks both. The system has to give the upstart a structured ramp and the mature operator the runway to stay on the gas.

This is also why Joe runs his "listening tour" the same way at every brand he walks into. He asks every key stakeholder the same three questions:

• Why do you keep coming to work?
• What would stop you from coming to work?
• If you were CEO for a day, what would you change, stop, or continue?

Patterns emerge. The patterns become a 10-year strategy, then a 5-year, then a 3-year, then the next 12 months. Joe ran this same playbook at Skyline Chili to drive 25 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth, and it is the first thing he ran when he walked into SFR in 2024. I plan to run a version of it at NaiL this quarter.

How proprietary tech and AI compound the playbook

Most trades franchises I see run on a duct-taped stack of third-party software. SFR runs on a proprietary platform that handles estimates, proposals, materials, scheduling, CRM, and lifetime customer history.

Joe put it bluntly: "Walgreens is a real estate company, they are a pharmacy second. McDonald's is a real estate company, they are restaurant systems second. We are a technology company, and fencing is just what we sell."

The benefit is that any SFR location can pull up a homeowner by last name and see every interaction the brand has ever had with them, even if a different franchisee originally sold the territory. No "your fence was three years ago, we don't know who you are" calls. The brand owns the relationship for life.

This is also where NaiL plugs in. We built voice AI for SFR's inbound calls so that no homeowner lead gets dropped when the front line is busy. Joe told me he sees AI extending into pricing, job costing, and even a future where a drone maps a property in real time so a homeowner sitting in Cancun can move a fence line on their phone and approve a precise estimate before the install crew shows up.

What he refuses to do is bolt on every shiny feature 123 franchisees ask for. New capability has to fit the existing platform and pass the simplicity test, or it does not ship. As Joe put it, "If they don't work and talk together, they just add complexity."

The 10-brand portfolio play and where it goes wrong

SFR sits inside Empower Brands, a 10-brand portfolio that includes Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, Archadeck, and Bumble Roofing. I had David Bitan from Bumble Roofing on the podcast a few episodes back, and the pitch on paper for these portfolios is always the same: same homeowner, multiple jobs, more revenue per relationship.

Joe was honest with me about why most portfolio plays disappoint in practice. The temptation is to stack brands on top of each other before any one of them is mastered. As he put it, "you fall into the jack of all trades, master of none."

What is actually working at SFR right now is lighter than the pitch deck. Master fencing first. Build relationships with the lighting and roofing operators in the same territory. When you are walking a homeowner's property to install a fence and you notice the gutters need work, refer the Bumble Roofing franchisee down the road. The bundling story will mature. The referral and trust network already pays.

Canada is the other near-term move. Joe confirmed on the episode that SFR has its first Canadian franchisee in the pipeline, with a public announcement coming soon. New territories means more chances to replicate the SFR playbook on the path to a $1 billion annual run rate.

What I want you to take away

If you are weighing a franchise opportunity, treat Joe's playbook as the audit you should be running on the franchisor before they audit you.

Ask how the brand selects franchisees. If "writing the check" is the only filter, walk. Ask what the brand's North Star metric is. If the answer is revenue or unit count instead of a customer-experience score, the marketing will eventually outrun the operations. Ask how the executive team supports a 30-day-old franchisee versus a five-year veteran. If the answer is the same for both, situational leadership is missing.

The brands that compound for 25 years run by Joe Dominiak's three greens. The ones that do not show up at the next Ignite conference learned about them too late.

If you want the rest of the conversation in Joe's own words, watch the full episode on the Nail It. Podcast and subscribe so you do not miss the next operator breakdown. If you run a home service brand and want to see how we plug NaiL's voice AI into the kind of system Joe described, book a Nail demo and I will walk you through it personally.

— George