Keep Faith, Love Family, Conquer Franchising: Clint Lewis Talks Balancing it All

When you think of power couples, your mind typically thinks about Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Kim and Kanye, Barack and Michelle and many more. But what about powerful business owners? Let me introduce you to Clint Lewis. He and his wife DeAnna are successful franchise owners of 5 Wingstop and 4 Fatburger locations. With the hit of the pandemic, they have managed to still rise and continue to be the fortunate business owners they are. Aside from that, Clint is a successful Certified Personal Finance Analyst with 25+ years of experience. With his new book titled Faith, Family & Franchise, he informs and educates us on how he makes it work and how you can too.

Take a read as he tells us how he balances it all.

With the current pandemic still at a high, how have you guys managed to stay afloat of the competition and the pandemic?

Fortunately, with the takeout and delivery option already established as part of our day to day business, when the pandemic hit and we were forced to close in restaurant dining, we didn’t take a huge hit. Because the Wingstop concept has always been about 80% take out our customers were already used to how we operate, so for us during the pandemic we have maintained steady sales and saw a slight increase in sales in some locations. Wingstop still has the best wings in town and our customers are faithful.

With over 25 years of experience in financial planning & wealth management, how do you continue to grow and prosper as a business owner? What challenges have you faced?

With most of us living on a virtual platform nowadays, the challenge has been and continues to be adapting to the new normal of life business-wise and the personal lives of my clients. A lot of people are hurting during this pandemic and we must first overcome loss mitigation before we can talk about generational wealth. One thing I have always prided myself on is having multiple licenses in the area of Real Estate, Insurance, Lending, Investments so I can interchange hats in the same conversion.

You have a book entitled Faith, Family & Franchise recently released. How have these three things helped you become the man, the human being you are?

My Faith is what I know, Family is who I am, and Franchise or Finance is what I do.

And with my wife’s help, I’ve learned how to better balance the three.

Also, in your book, you give 13 lessons for couples to create heart-centered businesses. If you could pick 2 that are extremely important, what would they be and why?

Lesson 6: After the doors are open. This begins to shed light on the importance of being an “Owner Operator” knowing how the effectively manage the day to day. Being a master of your business. From the front of the house to the back of the house. Commonly referred to in the restaurant business as the front of the house as cashiers to the customer and the back of the house with cooks in the kitchen.

Lesson 4: Financial affairs ain’t easy. This is our personal testimony of overcoming financial hardship like bankruptcy losing properties, cars, and closing a store to now having million-dollar locations.

These are the times your passion meets your purpose and the dedication you must have to succeed.

Post the COVID-19 pandemic, what can we expect from you and your endeavors?

We currently own and operate 9 restaurants so we are pretty busy however, we are always researching and looking for other opportunities. Our next project, scheduled to begin in early 2021 will be to build affordable housing in an underserved area of Bakersfield, CA. So we are super excited about that. We continue to do lots of philanthropic projects by way of the community give back and academic scholarships.