IE Dialing In - Giuseppe Grammatico [GG The Franchise Guide]

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Gramatico. And you're watching Influencing Entrepreneurs with Casimir Ward.

Speaker A: After years of teaching entrepreneurship and consulting business owners, I realized that true knowledge comes from the wins and losses of those entrepreneurs. These are the stories of those business leaders. I'm Kasimer Ward, and this is Influencing Entrepreneurs Today. We're here with just Giuseppe Gramatico, the franchise guy. Giuseppe, thank you so much for being here today.

Speaker B: Cass. It's awesome. It's an honor to be on the show. Looking forward to it.

Speaker A: We got a lot to talk about. But what I really want to start off with is a question that's been asked to me in the classroom time and time again. Are entrepreneurs made or are they born that way?

Speaker B: Ah, uh, that's a great question. That's the first time I think I've been. I've been asked that question. I think. I think it's. For the most part, I'm not going to say yes or no. It's more. I think it's in you. You know, it just. You. You want something more, right? You want. You want to kind of challenge the status quo. You want to create something. And sometimes I say born with it because it's kind of into you. With me, you know, my family was in the restaurant business, so I got exposure to it, which actually, that exposure told me I don't want to be an entrepreneur. To find that later, it was. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but not in the restaurants, uh, business. So I think, I mean, talk about

Speaker A: a grind that would scare anyone away from entrepreneurship.

Speaker B: Nights, weekends, holidays. That alone, without getting into anything else was, uh, was tough, you know, just not, uh, much of a social life growing up. But I think it's really into you. Yes, you get exposure and that kind of deal, but I think, um, I think people just are. They. They want to do it, and that's. That's their direction. And you test it out in the job market to find that later. Yeah, I should have just started my own business.

Speaker A: What type of restaurant?

Speaker B: Italian restaurant in, uh, New Jersey. We owned it 40 years, so got, uh, to experience everything from, uh, hey, so and so called out, uh, we need you in. To cooking, to being a waiter, to, you know, delivering catering orders, so to the billing and the finance and the marketing. So I got some great exposure. Didn't appreciate it then, but appreciate it many years later.

Speaker A: Do you recommend people work starting a business with their family?

Speaker B: Man, this is by far. This has been the best two questions to start off.

Speaker A: I might pull a Jerry Springer and have, like, a family member Family member

Speaker B: is going to come in and just, uh, slug me. Yeah, it depends on the family. I will say this. My situation was if we didn't work at the restaurant, we never saw my dad. My dad, at one point, the restaurant was open seven days a week. So working at the restaurant, um, I got to spend time with my dad, which is. Which is really cool. So, um, you know, the negative is that, you know, if you live at home and I was young and living at home, is that if there's an issue at work, you kind of unfortunately bring it home with you. So, um, not a bad idea to, um, get in business with family, but you have to be very clear and put these rail, you know, these guardrails in place to say, you know, we're not bringing work home. There is an issue. It waits for the next day, so it makes it a little difficult, especially if you're living together. But I'm actually. Don't even look for partners. I would just rather run the business myself. Um, you know, there's positives to partnership, but I would just rather not get into business with anyone. So.

Speaker A: So starting off in a family business, do you decide to be an entrepreneur at that point or do you go through traditional school, off to your first full time job?

Speaker B: Yeah, because of the exposure there. I liked entrepreneurship, just not the industry. So I said, let's see what's out there. My parents were unable to go to college, given their situations. They came over from Italy. Um, I'm first generation. Italian was actually my first language. I learned English at the age of either six or seven. Um, so I said, you know what? I want to be the first in my family to go to college. Went to college, got a job on Wall Street. My dad got me involved in investments, met our financial advisor. I'm like, this is really cool. I really enjoy this. So, um, did that for a while. Did really well on Wall street in New York City.

Speaker A: Work on Wall Street. Are you on the trading floor? Are you an investment banker?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I was, ah, a, ah, fully licensed. Um, and right before I was like, you know what? Maybe I was gonna. I was working for Payne Weber now ubs. I said, you know what? I got, I got a call from a recruiter saying, you know what? You can help. We can offer, um, you an opportunity to sell to financial advisors. It's a salary, unlimited cap on commission. And ended up going that route. But then I realized, talking with my wife, she said, you're just miserable. You've interviewed, you've gone to different companies, you've tried different things. Uh, you really want to own a business, why not go for it? We're ready to start a family. The kids aren't here yet. Why not do it now while you can? Uh, we have less expenses and things like that. And that's what I did. I realized it just, the money was there, but it wasn't fulfilling. Uh, I didn't like having 20 managers to report to. So, um, I said, what is out there? I looked at businesses, startups, what can I do? And then I found a franchise coach, which is what I do today. And he said, no, you know, franchising isn't all about, uh, fast, uh, food. Subway was the big brand 20 years ago. Um, there's other options, especially coming out of the restaurant industry. I didn't want food, uh, specifically. And, uh, he opened up the world to franchising and what existed. I was shocked to hear that there's a franchise in just about every industry. And I'm like, man, real quick, just

Speaker A: so I'm understanding your background on Wall street and selling insurance and working as a broker, um, is all selling, right? Literally commission based, like you are, you're making deals.

Speaker B: Yeah. So we're working with them, you know, saying, hey, you know, these are the mutual funds, these are the managed products to add to your portfolio. So it was heavy, heavy sales and it was, um, it was networking and relationship building within, you know, the areas that I was covering. So a lot of sales, I was uh, able to work out of the office in Manhattan and travel a few times a year. But sales was definitely the, uh, big part of our business.

Speaker A: So you have this great background in sales and now you're going to start your own company. So what is that first company?

Speaker B: I will say in sales, I think it's either you're a people person or not. And then there's always strategy and techniques and things like that that can be learned. But if you're a people person, I think, you know, you could be taught tactics and all that kind of stuff. But either you enjoy working with people or not.

Speaker A: Yeah. So going back to that. So you take this background, you're looking for a company to start. Where do you end up?

Speaker B: So we end up investing in a company, um, they're in a building services space. Because when I worked with the coach, I said, he said, what's your background? I said, wall Street. He's like, well, that's what you did. But ultimately, what is this transferable skill set that you bring to the table? I go, what's a Transferable skill set. And he's like, well, what did you do? So sales, networking, things like that. It wasn't actually managing any money. We were providing information on the various products and building those relationships. So he goes, that's a transferable skill set. That's something that's going to work in, you know, different industries, you know, depending on the franchise we find for you. So he's like, well, what do you, what are you looking to do? And I said, well, you know, I got, I'm starting a family. I bring sales and networking to the table, building those relationships. But, but I want something recession resistant. But he said, ultimately the, uh, sales, um, aspect was big because at the end of the day, each franchise company, each franchisor as we call it, has this franchise, um, avatar, who does well in this specific franchise. I was 26 years old or 25 at the time, just got married, just bought a house. So my income was good, but my savings were depleted. So not knowing I was gonna start a business. So, you know, it has to be something obviously that you can get pre approved for, you know, an SBA loan or something like that. So we had to take all that into consideration and sold, uh, that business, uh, back in uh, 2020 and dedicated full, um, time to the consulting business that I'm in right now.

Speaker A: So real quick, what did you do to build that company up? Just to get to a buy into and an exit.

Speaker B: So we built it up quick. You know, we did a, uh, lot of networking. You know, it was, it was B2B. We were working with, uh, other business owners, so property managers and things. Like in 2007, going into 08, economy kind of collapsed. We hit a recession. And I said, all right, we have to pivot who our ideal client is. And uh, we ended up shifting to healthcare. So we looked at industries that still had a need, right? People still needed their dialysis, their surgeries and things like that. So we doubled down and went after those particular markets. Business did well via those relationships and referrals. You know, talk to a broker, we put it out there. And I was shocked at how low some of the offers were. And this was my aha moment after, after doing this a few years. And it was because the business was incredibly profitable. But I was also putting in an incredible amount of time in the business. And the new owners wanted just to throw a general manager to replace me and pull out the, um, you know, the income. And they said, well, after putting in a manager and bonus and this and that, you know, we're not, you're not left with as much as you think. And given the multiples between 3 and 5 was the average, we'll call it 4 wasn't exactly where I wanted to be. So from that point on I realized, you know what, I need to really take advantage of the systems in place from the franchise or because I need to distance myself from the business, I need to work on it so that everything is running without me. So that when a buyer comes in they can really focus on how profitable the business is and how little time I have to spend in the business. If that makes sense.

Speaker A: No, it makes perfect sense. So as you do exit that, you go the franchise route and tell me more about that.

Speaker B: So we sold that, that franchise. I, um, had, um, said, um, okay, what's next? And after the experience that I had and I got into this actually before I sold uh, the franchise, I was proactive about it and became a franchise consultant back in uh, 2018 and said, you know what, I had such a great experience, um, I think I can add so much more value in helping people figure out if a franchise is a good fit. So um, you know, went to one of the most reputable companies that I knew of, Franchoice. Uh, and they uh, are essentially partner with them. I'm an independent consultant, we cover the whole US and Canada. And I said I want to team up with you for the training, the resources and everything else that they offer, which even includes helping to pre screen companies. I want to partner up with the market leader in that space and I want to help other individuals get into franchise ownership because it's a big decision and most people just like myself, we start looking at the hot brands, the top 500 lists and things like that. When we don't even know if franchising in general is a good fit, we kind of just, you know, jump over everything and look at the brands that. The sexy stuff, right, the exciting stuff. When I challenge people to say, let's take a step back, why do you want to even own a franchise? Is it just because you hate your job? Is it, you know, what is it? So we like to find that person's why or candidates why. And then we go into, okay, now that we have a good reason to move forward, what does this ideal business look like? And we spend a ton of time there and from there we look at what's available in that individual's market. Sometimes we find the perfect brands, but they're not available, they're sold out. If they're that good of a brand Odds are they may be sold out in certain parts of the country. So since it is such a big decision, just like buying a home, I really wanted to coach people throughout the process and help them as much as possible. Given my, you know, experience from corporate to, you know, from employee to employer. And some of the mistakes I made, like trying to sell the business and working too many hours to help people just avoid those mistakes.

Speaker A: I'm just being very clear on this. Everything you're doing is looking for those willing to invest in a franchise and just kind of helping them find their, you know, you're a matchmaker.

Speaker B: At the end of the day, we are matchmakers. Someone said, uh, the eharmony of franchising, I heard someone say in a podcast. So, yeah, we're matchmakers. Figure out if the franchise is a good fit. What does the ideal business look like in your own words?

Speaker A: Let's talk on the franchisor side. There's a lot out there that try to franchise their idea and package it up. And some do it well, some do it bad. Since you're able to look from the outside in, what should those companies be doing when they're going that route?

Speaker B: Why the heck would anyone want to invest in this franchise? Ask yourself that question. Do you have a proof of concept? Some franchises have a couple locations, uh, or businesses have a couple locations before they franchise. You know, I always say, you know, it'd be nice if they were in different markets, not in the same state, to kind of challenge it. Does it work on the east coast and the West Coast? There's no right or wrong. Ultimately, it's based off of what you are comfortable with. But ultimately, the potential franchisee, what we call the franchise candidate, is looking. First off, they want the information. If they have a question, they want, uh, questions answered quickly. Um, they want to speak with the franchisor. They want to kind of get a general feeling of the average day in the life of a franchisee and then get to speak with existing franchisees. Now, it may be a newer brand. They may only be one or two franchisees, and that's with an emerging concept, something that's new, that's normal, right? You have to start somewhere. So you may only have a couple franchisees to speak with if you're someone looking to invest in the franchise. But going back to your question, having the financials, uh, in there, what does it take on the investment side, um, to open this business? What are the expenses, the startups and everything? What are the time frames to get open? If it's something that is in um, a brick and mortar food type of, uh, concept, fast casual. How are you helping me? Where am I finding my staff? You know, what does that look like? It's answering those questions know ahead of time. The pain points. Usually it's employees and staff. It's getting my leads, it's marketing. So what are you doing? And a lot of brands will outsource and say we'll handle all your digital uh, marketing and funnel those leads to a call center. From there it is on you and we will help train you in the sales process to close that business. So there's quite a, uh, quite a bit there. We uh, could spend a whole show just on that. But as a, as a potential franchisor, I would say spend a lot of time there. And if the money isn't there, if you want to start slowly, you don't have to go national. There are brands like In N Out and some others that are regional. So you can, it could be just something on the east coast until you get comfortable and then start working your way over to the west coast. So there are different, different or even regional. Just the tri state area where I live in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. So you don't have to go nationally. Day one. So you know, you need funds, you need a good attorney to create that fdd, that franchise disclosure document and always look for ways of improving the system and um, and taking care of all those pain points.

Speaker A: Want to ask you what you look for, what and warning signs. But let's go eharmony. Um, when you're helping someone like me look for a franchise, what are some of the turn ons?

Speaker B: Yeah. So you know, we go back to the basic why do you want to franchise and what's your goal here? Some people are looking to build a family legacy so they're not so concerned about quickly ramping this thing up. Day one, they have a little bit more Runway. Other people, uh, you know what, I'm looking to open up as quickly as possible and potentially flip it in four or five years. Those are going to be different strategies. But I'll ask them, what do you bring to the table? What do you like doing? Do you like sales? Do you want to have a sales role in the business? Where are you located? You know, what's the investment range? We start looking at all those different items because it starts to narrow down the universe. You can get into the multi millions for a single location. For a standalone building, you're getting into trampoline parks and things like that. Your Market's also going to dictate the pricing, where you're opening. Is it in a city, is it more rural? So, but we're going to look at all those things you enjoy in the business and, you know, we'll start, I call them trial balloons. We'll start giving examples because in many cases, most of the people I work with have never owned the business. So I may give an example of a water and smoke restoration business. Well, I don't have an experience there and I go, that's fine. Most brands, uh, don't require experience. They're looking for the skill set. So average day in a life is networking at chamber of commerce events and having a few technicians and a salesperson on staff to help grow the business and obviously complete the business. What about insurance? You get a lot of these questions and I got a good franchisor is going to assist you with training, insurance requirements and even getting licensing specifically in your state, because every state is going to have different laws and different ways of going about getting the license. Regardless, if you're in a roofing business, a painting business or a cleaning business, your role is the same. It's really to have eventually that general manager either right out the gate or down the road so that you can work on the business, decide when to add additional territories and markets, when to add complementary franchises. Maybe you had a roofing business, naturally you can add on a cleaning business because they make a mess. Just making this up so you can look for different ways of growing it, when to add staff, when to add territory and things like that. So we ask for feedback. Without feedback, I can't do my job. Um, I'm good at what I do, but without feedback, if you just say, I don't know, I need to know what you like, but what you don't like. When people see a business like dog waste removal, they think they're going to be the ones going out there picking up dog waste, when that's far from the fact they're having you go out there and really network and not necessarily do the actual work, but maybe stay in touch with the customers. So it's really just gathering that information, giving examples, getting, getting feedback until we have this, what we call a franchise model, which is a summary of what the ideal business looks like. And then we go to market to see what is available specifically in the, in the town that they live in.

Speaker A: After you have that, you have my profile, you know, and I come in and now you got to matchmake me and maybe I've got Ideas like, I want to own a McDonald's, I want to own a Subway, I want to own an oil change stuff. In all you're trying to make, get me the best match. What are some of the things that you look in the franchise itself that you're like, ooh, this would be a really good fit. Or, or more important, this is a, um, uh, a warning sign. Like their franchise package looks good, but if you poke holes in it, you can see that it's not scalable. Or, uh, like, what are some of the, the pros and cons you look for in the franchise itself?

Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, first off, I always ask why? So if someone brings a brand to the table, I looked at this brand, Why? I don't know. Sandwiches. Well, that's really not a good reason to own a business. You know what, what specific do you like about it? I like that there's a line at the door. Okay, so we have something to work with. So you're looking for a business that has high demand, right? Yeah. You know that I didn't think of it that way, but that makes sense. One quick way is show me your financials. If someone is not open to sharing their financials, and we're looking very high level, I don't need account numbers and exact amounts, but you have to qualify, you know, believe it or not, for a franchise, if, if you don't have liquidity net worth to meet the requirements of the franchise. The franchise, uh, franchise, or will not have that conversation. Now, if you're close or you're thinking of bringing on an investor, that, that's a completely different situation. If someone is telling me, you know, they tell me two things. I want to, I need to scale right away. Um, I'm ready to lose my mind at the job, or I just lost my job, I need to start up. And I'm looking at this franchise that offers massage services, like, great, probably not a good fit. And they'll come back and say, well, why do you say that? We haven't even discussed it. And I said, you need to start something up right away. It could take you up to a year to get that location open. And they go, you know what? I didn't think of that. So we look at, uh, items like that as well. Availability is also a big one because sometimes we find the brand, but it's an hour away from where you currently reside. And I don't like to kill deals and say, well, it can't be done, but I'll come back and say, you need to Speak with the franchisor and the franchisee to say how much travel, if it's a physical location or if it's a service business, how much travel is required? Because you may only have to travel in the field once, once, uh, a month. If people tell me they have a sales background but they want to keep the investment really low for whatever reason, you know, I have go tos, I have brands like expense reduction brands that help small businesses cut back on expenses. Some people will tell me financially they're strong. That's not really a number. I need to know kind of what, what it is that you have access to and that helps to scale down the search. And I may come back and say, you know what, based off your financials and you're telling me we should stick with a home based service business, you'll be up and running a lot quicker and the investment will be much less.

Speaker A: A lot of these like getting a figure for what my role is. But let's say I come in and say, Giuseppe, I hear a lot about this franchise stuff, but I got a really good job and I really do not want to leave right now. Am I even a candidate for franchising?

Speaker B: It depends. You could be in that. You know, if, if you are looking to keep your job and kind of dip your toe in entrepreneurship, I always recommend if you could do it full time. That's probably the best route if you can afford it. You immerse yourself in the business. I did that. I left my job. Full disclosure, I didn't like my job, nor the commute. Some people don't mind their job. So. So going back to your question, can you run the business and keep your job? Yes. Number one, you got to factor in a few things. Number one, does the franchisor allow that? Some franchise companies want you to be full time that first year, or at least the first six months to get the business up and running. So that's one thing that I would know if someone said to me, well, I like this brand. They don't allow part time ownership. You have to decide if you can leave your job. Uh, so that's going to be number one. Number two, your investment could be higher. Why could it be higher? You may need to hire an extra employee, an empowered employee, a uh, general manager in place to replace you based off of what your availability is. So I always tell people, run an analysis with a manager. Without a manager. If you were to leave your job, you would have less expense in the business startup and you can potentially pay yourself a salary. So Run the different analysis. Maybe it's not your 200k salary, maybe it's, it's significantly less, but it's enough to get you by the first year.

Speaker A: So in a lot of these, uh, you know, matchmaking sessions, like getting people into a franchise, um, tell me about one that you. You saw that. It looked like it was a mix, but it was. Maybe, I don't want to call it high risk, but you're like, the stars are going to have to align for this to work out. But it took off like that success that you, you even. You probably would have been like, this is a, this is a long shot.

Speaker B: That's a good question. One gentleman, uh, was, uh, that we were. I'm not gonna name names or brands, keep everything confidential, but he was kind of all over the place. And, uh, we looked at brand, you know, he ripped every brand apart. And I said, you know, the feedback you're giving to me, you know, everything. These brands, they check off the boxes, you know, what's wrong? And he's like, I don't like this. I don't like that there's competition. And I go, in reality, you're always going to do research in your local market, right? Every market is different. Competition is not a bad thing. That shows that there's demand. But you could do a simple task like, hey, have you ever reached out to a handyman service? I know I have in the past reached out to five companies. Maybe I heard back from one. So just because there is competition, is anyone actually doing well? Are they even getting to the point of the job, if you even get a call back? So we spent a lot of time. I told him, if you find a brand you like, which he was on the fence with one, he dragged his feet too long. I said, other individuals can look at your market. You're not that far along that the brand has locked in that territory. And what happened was he waited too long. He said, you know, you're right. And by the time he waited a week or two to get back on those conversations, he ended up losing the territory that he was originally looking at. And usually in franchising, you know, you get invited to a Discovery day, or they call it a confirmation day. And that's the final stage where you meet the, uh, founders, the CEO, other franchise candidates, and make your final, kind of the final meeting, and then the franchisor meets as a team and they will formally approve. So, um, that individual dragged his feet, lost out. And we pivoted to another home services franchise that was available in his market. And he's like, I'm not having this happen again. And he completely did a 180. He's like, you're right, I'm nitpicking. Um, I'm completely looking at the negative. After realizing that this perfect business did not exist, he, uh, had moved forward. I think he's in business now. Three years. The first year was that learning year. Never, never owned the business. Maybe owned an Airbnb or two. There was definitely some growing pains. But he's doing great. He's like, I'm doing great. The franchisor has introduced, um, other revenue streams costing him a few bucks between training and equipment. But after that, that returns there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's that, that alone, not having to buy another franchise and just being giving, you know, the, the opportunity to, for, for additional revenue.

Speaker A: Excellent. What about the ones like I. And I don't know if it's a skill set. I don't know if it's a, maybe it's a personality trait flaw. What about the ones where you're like, getting into this franchise is a slam dunk. Somebody goes in there and they just boof it. They don't take advantage of it.

Speaker B: I had a conversation, this is going back about six months ago, and they were struggling. And I said, what are you doing about it? He's like, uh, oh, we're doing this, we're doing that. I go, have you spoken with the franchisor? And they said, no. And I said, why? Why wouldn't you speak with the franchisor? Oh, we didn't want to bother them. I go, you're struggling in a business. It's a franchise. You're getting all the support and training. It's part of the royalty that you're paying. And the franchise, the initial franchise fee. They felt bad bringing that up in conversation. They thought it was frowned upon. And I said, that's their role. Their role is to train you if you are stuck, hey, I'm a phone call away. What's up? You know, what's the issue in this person's situation? Business was great. That's the crazy part. Business was actually phenomenal. He had too many employees. He kind of anticipated future growth and he hired all these people, uh, full time. And I said, well, talk to the franchisor, see what they say. And he ended up saying, you know what? I had the staff for a multi million dollar business. Um, but, uh, we're not even at the million dollar stage yet. So that was it. It was Just the staff was eroding his profits because he didn't have the business to justify. There's a simple calculation for every million in revenue, you need about, hypothetically, two employees. So if you have six employees, you got to be doing 3 million in business. So, um, you know, kind of felt bad. I had another individual that was gung ho, following the system, and then all of a sudden, you know, just the salary kind of overpaying on the. Not overpaying, but paying themselves a pretty hefty salary at the cost of not being able to do the marketing. So when I said, well, where do you think the pain point is? Uh, well, you know, we're not getting enough lead flow to find out later that there was no lead flow because the marketing budget was cut, uh, due to, you know, paying that salary. And I get it, you know, you're getting into business. But that first year, I always say, treat it as a builder year. You want to build a business, you want to reinvest as much as possible, have that buffer to pay your. Especially if you're. You're leaving your job, who's paying your student loans and your debts, your rent, your mortgage and things like that. So you may have the spouse or partner that, that's paying that. You may, you may have the, uh, savings there, but have that buffer. Don't spend every dime you have and have no reserves. So again, I can coach and suggest, but ultimately, I'm not going in auditing people's financials. I'll tell them three to six months, uh, living expense. And whether you take that advice or not, that's on you. But that's what I recommend to everyone. So some people just kind of choke the business and just say, hey, I just don't have money for marketing because I got to pay myself a salary. Some people, um, try out the marketing for a month, it's not to their liking. They didn't get enough leads, and they. They cancel the marketing. Well, that's. That's part of the reason you got into the franchise. It may take a couple months. Maybe we're just.

Speaker A: Marketing doesn't work overnight.

Speaker B: No. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: So you help all of these people looking for franchises find success. What do you do to find your success?

Speaker B: My m. Process is to reverse engineer, figure out what the ideal business looks like and take it from there. I just recorded a podcast that's getting released, a solo podcast, uh, next Saturday. And I talk about reverse engineering your massive action plan, your map, which I stole from Tony Robbins back. Um, something edge. Uh, I Forget. Yeah, I forget. But it was on cassette. I listened to it so many times that the cassette broke. Believe it or not. I, uh, had to buy the program again because, uh, they broke in my cassette player in my car. So I like to list things out. What are my goals, what are my accomplishments? But also something I incorporated a few years ago after reading Atomic. Habits are. What are these habits that I need to incorporate? Because I have some really big goals, whether it be how much passive income I'm looking to create. That's been something I've been working on in other investments that I have. And I throw numbers and I'm just making this up. A million dollars a year. But how the heck am I even getting there? It's a pretty big goal. That's a lot of passive income to generate. You need funds, obviously to invest. What does that look like? So I started creating these habits that I review every single day, which are right next to my goals. So I have my massive action plan. I have the five key areas that I focus on. I have goals, I have the habits right next to it. Um, 20, 20, 25 and then my new goals for 2026. And I review those daily. I think there's something about reviewing that daily. I put it in a Google sheet and it's something I have full access to and that I can edit, I can view at any point in time. And it's something, maybe it's just subconsciously just reviewing it, it really helps. But these are some goals. This is what I'm going to do on a daily basis. And then I get all that information and I put it on my Google calendar so that once I have everything figured out, I know I'm working out. Eight, uh, to 9:00 clock every morning. From 9 to 10 is social media. From, uh, 1 to 3 are my follow up calls. So I have it. Is it always perfect? No. Sometimes a call goes over or I'm recording a podcast and it pushes the timeframes around, but I put it on there and I treat it like an event. I would never miss an event. I would never miss a podcast. But I missed a workout. So by putting it on the calendar it motivates me not to skip it. Right. Treat it like just any other meeting. So I work in reverse. What are the goals? What are the things I want to create? How many individuals I want to help? My goal is to help, you know, a million people will call by the end, um, of my career. Explore franchising. And the keyword there is explore. Not everyone's going to buy a franchise. Historically, maybe it's one in four people that have had a second call with me will end up moving forward with the franchise. But ultimately it's not a fit for everyone. Or it is, but the timing isn't right. So my, you know, my goal is not to push people into franchising, is to educate as much as possible for them to make their own decisions. And that's why we launched the podcast in 2020.

Speaker A: As we kind of come to an end, a question that I really wanted to think from the beginning was have you helped any family Italian restaurants franchise?

Speaker B: That's a good question. Um, no. We work with some, um, franchises in the pizza space. Pizza, I guess, small, small Italian restaurant. Maybe not a full menu, but more on the pizza side. That's a brand we just started working with earlier this year.

Speaker A: Growing up in a family business and you not going that route, has any of your family wanted to come along and do this with you?

Speaker B: Yeah, interestingly enough, you know, we have a family member that uh, that reached out not too long ago and uh, they're exploring different options when they realize what exists out there. And you know, you don't have to have this big footprint. You know, we had a 2,400 square foot restaurant, I think, I think that was the size of the restaurant, not a huge restaurant, but it's considerable. When came to paying rent and realizing that you can have a business with, um, you know, that, that you're paying rent regardless if you're open or closed, that you may have 20 or 30 employees to something that you can run a salon suite, you can run from, you know, you have a physical location but essentially have no employees. They're like, oh my gosh, like, that's interesting. I can run a business without employees or I can run a business without hiring a W2 but have a couple contractors supporting me, they're shocked. So when I tell people like, I own this, this massive restaurant, I have 100 employees versus this smaller business with two employees, people are shocked by that and like, yeah, show me that. You know, I want something a little bit simpler. I don't want the large overhead, I don't want this massive break even of hundreds of thousands of dollars a month just to, just to break even for the month. So once they realize and you don't have to be physically there and open 100 hours a week, they're pretty shocked by that. So, yeah, we've had quite a few conversations.

Speaker A: You're very family focused. Do you sense that you've made or any. They were born that way. Entrepreneurs in your household, besides yourself, we're

Speaker B: going to find out. My son is 18, uh, exploring colleges. Just submitted the applications, and recently we toyed with the idea of a franchise. What that may look like, you know, going directly to college, the franchise business to start, or maybe running them both simultaneously expressed a lot of. A lot of interest there. But we did toy with the idea of, uh, starting a franchise together kind of as a learning experience. But there's definitely, uh, an interest and there's a, There's a spark in the belly, so.

Speaker A: Well, it sounds like he's actually on the same path that you took, so that's, uh, great to hear.

Speaker B: Originally, my son was looking at business and computer programming. So it's like, well, computer programming exists, or will it be all AI generated? And they said, we don't know. We don't know what. It's changing so quickly, Literally day by day. We can't even create a course because it's changing so fast. So it's going to be very interesting to hear. But I said, if anything, you know, you have control. You don't have control of your job. You have control of your business and what that looks like. So if you really want to control things, entrepreneurship is looking better, um, every single day.

Speaker A: Well, Giuseppe, I can't think of a better place to end on just that message. And I do agree with you. In the future, it's not that everyone's going to have to be an entrepreneur, but everyone's going to have to learn to think entrepreneurial. Giuseppe, I really greatly appreciate you being, uh, here today. I really enjoyed our conversation. We'll include all the links to make sure people can, can find the, uh, the franchise guide. And thank you again for being here.

Speaker B: I appreciate Cass. It was fun. Ah, great questions. You stumped me on a few. I had to think there, so I appreciate that. I didn't get the, uh, the easy questions, but, uh, this has been, uh, one of my favorite interviews, so I appreciate. It's been an honor being on the show.

Speaker A: I appreciate it as well. You have a great day.

Speaker B: Thanks. You too.

Speaker A: Thanks for watching. To watch more episodes of Influencing Entrepreneurs, be sure to subscribe on YouTube @Nexigy Education.