Ep 228: Franchising: The Perfect Hybrid Between Employee and Entrepreneur

Hey there, and welcome to Money and You. I'm Michelle Perkins, your host. My search for more fulfilling work led me to career in business coaching, where I stumbled upon a game changing discovery. Money issues often start with our mindset and habits.

You see, our relationship with money is the key to overcoming those frustrating financial obstacles. As an entrepreneur, coach, and problem solver, I'm passionate about helping you create a great relationship with money, because turns out that's the foundation for a limit free life. Each week on Money in You, I speak with amazing guests about all things money, mindset, practical tips, and everything in between. We're here to give you new insights, education, and empowerment.

So money can be one of your favorite relationships. So join us for some lively conversations and let's transform your financial life together. And welcome to another episode of the Money New Show. I'm super excited to be here.

For some reason, it feels like I haven't been here in a while, but that's just me. I have a great guest today and a great topic, So we're talking about franchising today, which I love. I was just telling the guests who's about to be on that. Everyone I've spoken to who has been, you know, successful and loves the franchise world, really loves it, like would not do anything else.

And today's guest has been in his whole life and I think feels that way. And we're gonna have a great show because this is something that you may not have given a lot of thought to, and I really think it's eye opening. I hadn't given a lot of thought to it, and the more I hear about it, the more interesting it becomes. So I am going to just tell you a tiny bit about Jeff shay Fritz.

If you're wondering whether franchising could be a smart way to diversify income or thoughtfully transition out of corporate life, Today's guest brings clarity to a space often clouded by hype. Our guest is strtig franchise advisor Jeff Schaeffert's founder of Franchise Guidance. With over thirty years of experience across multiple sides of franchising, including owning and successfully exiting his own fitness franchise, Jeff has advised hundreds of executives, investors, and career changers on making clear, confident franchise decisions without hype.

Jeff, Welcome, Michelle, Thanks so much for having me on. Yeah, I'm super excited about this conversation. And I feel like, you know, I have had a couple other franchise folks on and every time I leave the show really energized about this whole area, and I feel like it's a little like lesser known, you know, there should be more out there. People are learning about entrepreneurship, and they're learning about how to, you know, be a professional in a company as an employee.

But this is a unique sort of hybrid thing. Why don't you tell us a little about your history with it and what you have found to be so really wonderful about it. Yeah. Well, I love franchising because it is a hybrid.

It's for someone who wants to own their own business, but maybe doesn't have the idea, doesn't have the time to start something from scratch, or you know, just needs a playbook to follow, and that's where franchising comes in. And I've been so fortunate to spend my whole career in the world of franchising. Started right out of college by accident, thinking I was getting into a sports related business because I love sports and ended up as a franchise sales assistant at the Athlete's Foot and moved my way up and found franchising and I love it and been on all sides of the franchise spectrum.

So I've been on the franchise development side for a specific concept. I've owned my own franchise. I had a fitness franchise that I operated, and for the last twenty plus years, I've been helping people who are interested in going into business for themselves find an opportunity that fits how they want to get into the business basically with the types of opportunities that would make them successful and what they're looking for. I love that, and you know, business owners, it takes a certain type of person to be an entrepreneur.

I mean, I think that's just a given. And I like the fact that with franchising, some of the heavy lifting, maybe you would argue a lot of it, I don't know, it has been done for you. And some of that is what was really hard when it comes to entrepreneurship for people to just get off the ground, Like I feel like with franchising, you can build the momentum just that much faster. Yeah.

You know, if you think about franchising versus starting your own business just a having the idea but then coming up with a brand, marketing, who your customer is, how to market to that customer, the technology, the cr system, everything is laid out for you, or. Should be or you shouldn't go with that franchise. Probably everything is laid out for you so that you can step in and yes there's going to be a learning curve, but you can go to training and come out and start operating a business versus trying to figure it out.

So yeah, and there's a lot to figure out. I mean, you know, if you have a big team behind you from the beginning is that may be a different story. But the average entrepreneur has a lot of figuring out to do. And you know, depending too on your financial situation, how much time do you have to ramp something up?

So with franchising, you know, what are some of the expectations for if you're leaving a job, maybe you don't have years and years worth of savings to keep you going for a while. How should people kind of look at that aspect of it. Well, I think there's a few I work with all different types of people. I work with some people that want to keep their job and find a business.

They've got some flexibility. I work with some people that want to leave their job and start a business and focus full time, and both can be great options. But if you're going to start a business and go full time, even though the business is already laid out for you, it's still going to take some time to build income. So what I do is I help them craft a plan to include income is part of the business expense.

Basically, you want to. Make sure that you've got a year's worth of income covered as part of your business plan, so that you're not stressful that the business starts doing well but you're not making enough money and you have to close it down. You don't want to go in undercapitalized. But yeah, there's usually a little bit of a time flow to.

Profitability. And for people who can't afford that, who can't do that, I would say that's when you want to look at opportunities that would allow you to keep your job and build something. Yeah yeah, and then maybe leave your job at some point when you can. Yeah.

Yeah. I like that the options are there that you could do it either way. I'm assuming certain franchises are better than others for people who want to keep their job. And I do want to get into that, but before that, I want to go back to you.

And you know, I feel like people who love what they do, it's what they do aligns with their strengths. I feel like people have certain natural strengths. You know, I'm a big strengths finders fan. And so what do you feel were some of the strengths you had that sort of just aligned with the franchising world that helped you stay with it this long and be successful.

Yeah. Absolutely, thanks, that's a great question. I first of all, I think different strengths for different types of franchises also, but for me, I helping people and I really like business. But I'm you know, I know myself.

I'm not a great operator. I am very. Strong at at business development. I enjoy business, talking about business, learning about business, and really helping people make a change in their lives.

So it's been absolutely a perfect fit for me, this particular business that I do. I couldn't ask for anything else. I mean, it's literally a perfect fit. I'm not just representing one company, so that if I've got a great candidate who wants to do something, but my opportunity is not a good fit for them, I can't do anything with them.

I literally can sit down and help anybody who's serious about finding an opportunity find one that fits exactly what they're looking for. And when you say fit, you know, some of us look for things that maybe aren't actually such a good fit. We think it would be good because we see it out there and it looks successful, or we you know, it looks fun, it looks whatever it looks like. But how do you assess what is a good fit for an individual?

Yeah? I take people through a process to understand exactly what they're looking for, what their goals are, what they're trying to accomplish, where their skill sets and strengths are, what characteristics are most important to them, where their financial parameters lie. And we build a model based on everything, and then I go find franchises that fit that model. But you brought up a very interesting point.

There are a lot of good opportunities out there that if certain people run them. If I ran an opportunity, it might not be such a great opportunity because it's not a good opportunity for me and everyone loves talking about what's the hottest brand or what's the greatest new concept, or everyone loves eating here. This would make a killing. But the reality is, if it's not a good fit for you operationally, that's the most important thing.

Where it doesn't meet your lifestyle goals or whatever, you're going to be very frustrated with the business and it's probably not going to go that well for you. Yeah, thank you for that, because I do think, I mean, we live in such a like trend driven world that I do feel like people are clouded by the success they see, you know, other people having online or in real life or whatever. And you know, I just see that all the time, especially in like the digital world. Here's the formula.

Do this, you'll be successful like me in you know, ninety nine percent of the time. It probably won't work for somebody else. But so I think franchising is kind of fascinating that way because it is about a model and following the model. So the vision is kind of set the you know, I mean a lot of the operations are set up for you, which is great.

So what is the piece of this that is the most demanding for people? Well, you know, I think also that depends a little bit on the type of business it is and the type of person it is. Right, So the great thing about franchising is it is just a system of doing business that a company chooses as it's a growth strategy, so it could go across any business out there really, and so just like any business, some businesses are you know, have different requirements that you would need to be successful, and others have other requirements that would need to be successful.

So I try to help analyze that with the individual. And I would say one thing from a franchising standpoint, I think somebody's got to be able to make decisions. They've got to be able to follow a system, meaning they're buying the franchise because of the system, So you should follow that system. Of course, you might tweak some things once you know what you're doing, but go into it with the idea that you're going to follow that system and that you know there's no certainty.

There's opportunities that can greatly help you reduce your risk, but it's up to you to execute and make the business. The execution piece is sounds like the critical component here, because. I would agree I think that that's the piece that a lot of people miss is the franchise. You want a good franchise and it has to provide, you know, a good system where you shouldn't buy it.

But I would argue that you could take a great operator in an average franchise and have a lot more success than a great franchise and an average operator. Yeah, okay, yeah, I think this is super interesting because I look at myself as somebody who doesn't particularly like to follow a system. So I wonder if I would just be like the whole time trying to like have a better way to do it, you know. So I think there are certain certain folks who are better off like not going there.

You know. I couldn't agree, and I wouldn't even try to sell it any other way to somebody. There are people who want to create everything themselves, They want to come up with everything, they want to run it, you know, a specific way, and those people who are true, true entrepreneurs might feel stifled or frustrated in a franchise. I would argue though that the I would say more people, in my opinion, although I could be wrong doing this for a while, are looking to be their own boss, looking to create their own business for themselves and have have the lifestyle that they're trying to build and reach the goals that they want to reach, and they're not They don't have to have everything created by themselves.

They don't maybe even have an idea of what to do. They're just they're just looking for a way to to build a business and they want to see that there's been some success in this UH specific business and that there's a process to follow to be successful. So so someone like yourself, Michelle, there's no question like you, you might you might be really uh frustrated in that. And when when I work with somebody like that, I you know, I explained to them that that it might not be for them.

I'm not you know, you don't want to try to talk somebody into something and have a bad relationship with the franchise or there's also though different types of franchises in terms of maturity levels and systems. There are some franchises that are a little more flexible, and there's some franchises that. Are really rigid. You know, if you buy uh McDonald's, you're not gonna pick where your meat's coming from, or change the color of the paint.

Or you know, anything like that. But if you got into McDonald's and you were one of the first ten franchises, you probab probably worry able to you know, have a little more. Saying so if you find them, how did people look at that? Like?

You know, McDonald's is so tried and true you can pretty much bank on. If you do things correctly, you will make money. What about the newer ones? Maybe that are I mean, is that a good place to get in or.

I love that question because that is the fifty million dollar question for everybody. There are pros and cons to both, and I love taking the other side of whatever. Whatever somebody says. You know, I think if you want a business where you know everything is laid out and you just need to execute and there's nothing that you need to do but execute.

You might like something like a McDonald's. But if you have a little creativity, if you like the idea of helping to create something, you get in early. You can pick up the phone and call the CEO of the franchise. You're not going to pick up the phone and call the sea of McDonald's.

I think an emerging brand is a great fit for a lot of people because it actually still has a system, but it's got a little more of an entrepreneurial feel for it, and there might be better territory availability, there might be all kinds of things, the risk, the negative. And this is where I could go the other way if you're the type of person who wants to be able to talk with franchises that have been open for five or ten years and understand the economics from their perspective of what it looks like.

You know, three years down, five years down the road, ten years down the road, they might not have any so you have to be comfortable making a decision without having that data. Basically, Yeah, interesting, I never thought about that before, but that is a very interesting aspect of this. So depending on the life cycle of the franchise, you could be looking at at different things. But so, I mean the obvious question, but what are some of the really hot, great franchises out there?

So I love emerging brands and I like them in all all different categories. But I would understand why somebody, you know, it's tough for them. But I think what what you're seeing right now from what is hot or what is emerging, that is kind of new categories that I think has a good long term staying power is longevity and wellness. There are some companies coming out that you don't even see them today because they're selling a lot of franchises, but they're you know, majority of them aren't open yet that in the next couple of years are going to be huge concepts.

And there's so much money being spent now on longevity. It's it's it's really an interesting place to be. But I also love the boring businesses. I love the the service oriented, you know, blue collar businesses, And in those businesses, I feel like the maturity level isn't as important, and sometimes it's even better.

You've got newer technology, newer systems, newer you know, ways to to uh to do business, and there's some really interesting opportunities out there in that in that industry as well. Tell us a few examples. I can, and the interesting I'm not gonna say names because I don't want to do that, but there there are Most people think of franchising as a bunch of fast food restaurants, and. There's so much more uh to it.

So when I talk about boring businesses, like one of my favorite businesses right now, uh. They they basically fix a whole. Bunch of things in commercial kitchens, and they it almost becomes like a route based business, and they focus on all kinds of gaskets and you know, hinges and just things that people don't realize that goes on. But there's inspections that are typically quarterly or semiannually, and they have to pass these inspections.

And ultimately there's not a lot of players that are systemized and have great you know, customer service and what have you that are showing up in helping these commercial kitchens. So there's a huge amount of business people would overlook at because it doesn't sound like super glamorous, but it's a needed service that every commercial kitchen has to has to have. Yeah, I love that. That's a great example of something nobody would think about, you know, and those I mean, that was the interesting thing.

As I started to look into franchising, I realized, I mean, they're franchising like businesses in every area. It's pretty wild. I didn't think about that service products you name it. And I like what you're saying, because I feel like the trades, you know, whatever you want to call it, I call it the trades, but you know, the house plumbing electrical, home repair, all that stuff.

That's a good area for people to go into, especially today, if you know, for a lot of folks. So I look at those businesses and actually there's a lot of franchises that I think fall into this category. But how is a AI going to affect right everything? And I'm sure there'll be robots that can fix everything, but I feel like that might be at.

Least a few years away. Where I think there's a lot of white collar, you know. Mid level, lower level jobs that are going to be able to be done by AI. And so when I look at the scope of what's out there, I think these blue collar jobs or blue collar businesses can be fantastic for you know, if you're coming right now from the coding world and you need to, you know.

Build a business. Who knows what the job market's going to look like. But insulation is going to be needed in a year, you know, flooring is going to be needed, Remodeling is going to be needed. So I think there's a lot of opportunities that might have been looked at, you know, ten years ago.

As maybe. Not as well thought of, I should say, as as some of the white collar jobs that I think you know, in the future, you're going to see that's that's where the money is. Basically. Yeah, I mean I know people in the trades now who make a fortune, so they make way more than cooler executives I know.

But but the interesting thing is, do you have to have a background with that? Can I go by, you know, an insulation company as a franchise. Yeah. The interesting thing franchising is I don't want to say you want to be scared of that, but you as long as you're kind of comfortable going in and managing blue collar employees and you know, looking at a house and having an intelligent conversation with somebody, you're fine.

That's the big difference. You're you know, you don't have to be a roofer to own a roof in franchise, but you have to be able to, you know, deal with the customers, manage the employees. I would argue that those franchisors don't even want somebody coming from the trade because the person coming from the trade. Is really good at insulation.

But can they run a business? Can they scale? Can they grow? So most of the companies I work with, there are some we call them chuck in a truck or you know those types of businesses where you're doing the work as well, but most of them aren't.

Most of them are you're scaling a business, managing employees, putting more trucks on the road that those types of things. Yeah, a lot of business skill that's needed to make this work, especially I want to get back to the whole employee leadership kind of discussion here. But okay, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with Jeff to talk about more interesting things about franchising, So stay with us. Have you ever had a money or career question you really wanted to ask but didn't know who to go to, or just felt uncomfortable even bringing it up.

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If you've got something on your mind, don't sit in the confusion book a spot at limit FreeLife dot com. Calm and let sip and sort it out. So okay, so this is something that I think is, you know, potentially, I think it's a big thing to think about if you're considering a franchise. But you can you're you're the man, so you tell me if I'm right or wrong.

But one of the biggest things is hiring people and leading a team and getting everybody to see the vision and to be, you know, working at their best. That I feel like is a turkey piece for someone who's maybe leaving, you know, a job where they haven't had that situation. I've been behind a computer on their own. I don't know, you know, it could be could be any any situation.

But when I think about franchising, some of the ones that I've thought like, this could be an interesting one, or I've seen them out there. Particularly, I got really acquainted with franchises when I was taking care of my parents because there were a lot of caregiving agencies and home health and all kinds of things that I interacting with. They had a bit of a hiring problem that I could see. And so I don't know, I mean hiring people.

The availability of people out there is pretty pretty important to the franchise being successful. How do you talk about that? Think about that well, I think, first of all, I think that's a great point. So you're spot on first and foremost.

Is that something you're comfortable with because businesses all have different types of employee skill sets that you'd be hiring. And amounts of employees that you'd have to hire. So that particular industry, which is interesting because it's booming again, there was a huge growth curve kind of plateaued and now there's another huge growth curve. But that business is almost more about staffing than it is about getting the business.

There's so many people that need to helpusiness, but people are going to go to the to the agencies that get the best caregivers. And so to me, somebody who would be really good owner in that business would be someone who knows how to lead people, who is comfortable hiring and managing kind of mid level you know, minimum wage to mid you know, a little higher than minimum wage employees and giving them a great work environment, a reason not to leave for a little bit, you know, if someone offers them fifty cents or an hour a dollar more an hour because they're giving them a great culture and of course paying them as well as you can pay them.

But that is a business that I think is a unbelievable business that's challenging, but great leaders can really take advantage of. And that's a perfect example of one that I would love to own, but have a partner because I am not an operation person. I know that I would struggle with you know, twenty twenty five. You know employees like that, but I think there's a lot of people that would do great with it.

Yeah. Interesting. So when you talked about the the franchises in the longevity space and the I think fitness is another one that you've mentioned that is a big one. I know you're in it, but you know that all sounds kind of fun actually, I mean do you find that people are also looking for, you know, where can I enjoy going every day and that I'm also interested?

I mean, I would think fitness. You get a lot of people who just are passionate about fitness, so you do. And when I look at those two businesses, not everything is black and white, but in a senior care business, you have to build relationships with a lot of referral partners. So you want to be out and about doing that quite a bit.

You have to hire and manage and train employees, and you have a lot of employees, and you want to make sure you're you know, doing a great job for your customers and your employees. To me, that's more of a full time job. But a fitness business, and I'm not saying that you're not going to put work in. You can hire a manager that has a lot of passion for fitness.

You might have a lot of passion for fitness and essentially manage managers, keep your job or you know, do some consulting or whatever, because you don't have to be in the gym from Monday through Friday for nine from nine to five. You have to put time in. So I think there are some businesses that are much better suited for manager run versus full time. And if you were a fitness enthusiast and you.

Either had a spouse who you know could run the business, or you wanted to keep your job and build something on the side, that's that's a perfect type. Of a business. Okay, great, So as far as the financial part of this, what are some of the requirements I mean, there's obviously a franchise fee to get in, and there's working capital that you have to come up with for the first or two sure or more, I don't know. So, yeah, what are people looking at when they come and say, hey, I want a franchise?

Yeah? So I work with businesses that range anywhere from about seventy five to one hundred thousand dollars total to two three four million dollars you know for the buy it you mean, yeah, yeah, and everything in between. Okay, Right, so. It's kind of like runs the spectrum.

But let's take something like senior care, which we just talked about. If a franchise fee is fifty or sixty grand for the fee, you probably need another fifty or sixty thousand in working capital just to be able to hire and market and do what you need to do, and that that might be all you need to open the business. Right, if it's a storefront build and you have furniture, fixtures, equipment, construction, you know, you could be four or five hundred, six hundred thousand dollars tope in TOPE and business.

You don't have to come with cash for everything. There's a lot of opportunities for financing. Usually you have to have about twenty five percent in cash or liquid assets that you can put into it. And there's some interesting ways to access cash as well that are available that people don't realize.

And do you help people with that? Is that something that they can I mean, do you give them some ideas for this? Yeah? So that's all part of what I do.

I have. A lot of different resources that I provide to people. And listen, I'm not the accountant or the CPA for somebody, but I can walk through all of the different types of opportunities that are out there for you and then put you in touch with the right people. There are companies so that just specialize in franchise funding, which is interesting.

Okay, Okay, that's great. Yeah, okay, So there's the upfront fee, there's just having enough capital to get yourself going. And then what do you advise people? Do you advise them to take a salary right from the start, like, how do they get this rolling so it, you know, becomes real.

Yeah, I mean again, I do think a lot of it is dependent on how they get into the business. If you're keeping your job, maybe you don't want to take a salary. You just want to start paying down debt or take money and roll it into your next thing. And it might even help you for tax purposes, to not make money to lose money, you know, the on the business as you're growing it a little bit.

If if it is your job and you need the income, then that's a different story. And what I would do is really figure out what you need to live off of for the first twelve to eighteen months and then just make sure that you include that in the business plan, whether it's financing for that, whether it's cash that you have available for that or what have you, just to. Make sure that you're covered and hopefully you don't need it. Hopefully, you know, maybe the first few months you don't make any money, but hopefully, you know, you start not needing.

If it was eight thousand a month, you only need seven thousand and six thousand, you know. But I'd rather see somebody plan for it and not need it than get themselves in trouble. Yeah, no, I love that. And so what you do is you help people figure out what you know, what is a good fit.

You help them identify the options and kind of go down the path. Is that correct. Exactly? So I don't sell any I know a little bit.

About hundreds of franchises, and I know if it's a good match. I know what they should do to investigate it to determine if if it's a good decision for them to move forward. But I want them to work with the. Franchise ors to learn about their business and speak with the existing franchise owners of the concept to validate that it's a good concept and would make.

Sense for them. And so that's that's what I do. I bring opportunities and then I teach and guide people on how to investigate the franchises to make the to make an educated diser. But a'bs something really interesting that I actually had never really thought about.

But it is up to the franchise or whether you get to do this or not. I didn't even think about that. I'm like, you just hand you, you know, hand someone the money and you're a franchisee. But that's you have to be approved in everything.

I mean, they have to want you. Is that the way it works? Yeah, it's it's like you're on date. Basically, both parties need to like each other to go to keep going.

I guess I think that's. A mistake a lot of potential candidates make is that they're buying a car and they can just you know, be as aggressive as they want and pick apart everything and and trying to negotiate the best deal. And the reality is it's a two way street. It's you're going it's like you're going on an interview.

You want to learn about them to see if you'd want to work there, but they want to learn about you to make sure that they'd want to bring you in as a franchise owner. So and the good ones really are tough to to, you know, to get a person. I would imagine I'm smart on their part. How long does that process typically take?

Every everybody's a little bit different, But here's what I tell people. You've got to do a certain amount of homework, and how much time you put into that homework can vary. Legally, you have to have a disclosure document in the world of franchising called the franchise disclosure document for two weeks, and you have to have a franchise agreement for a week. They could overlap, but realistically you could go from start to finish learning about the concept talking to franchise ease.

If you weren't doing anything, you didn't have a job, and this is what you're doing. The quickst I think you'd go is like three weeks, but what I tell most people is it is probably getting into like six weeks to eight weeks. Into the process. You've learned about the company, You've talked to a bunch of franchisees, you've put together business models, you've gone through the disclosure document.

You get to a point where there's not much left to do and you either feel like, hey, this is a really good fit or I'm not so sure. And if you're not well, I shouldn't say that you're never one hundred percent shorre. But if you're looking at going I don't think this is right for me, or I'm hoping there's something better out there, I would tell you to kill it. But when you get to that point, the.

Last step in most franchise ors is what's called a discovery day, and that's where you go out you meet the team face to face, and I tell people, I want you to kind of be pretty sure it's what you want to do. I don't want you to go out there and just get sold. So if you go out there and You've done all this homework and research and everything, and you're pretty. Sure it's what you want to do, and you have a great day.

Right. You know, if they like you, you like them, you'd move forward. If you get out there and something doesn't feel right, thank goodness. You spend five hundred bucks and not five hundred thousand dollars on a business, and so most people take six to eight weeks to go from start to finish and make a decision if it's the right fit or not for them.

Interesting. Yeah, there's so much to talk about. So I mean, if people are listening and thinking, I want to I want to learn a little more about this. I mean, can they reach out to you?

How do you? How do you help people live with that? Absolutely? My website is www dot franchiseguidance dot com.

You can, I guess, sign up on my website to have a conversation with me. You can email me. All my contact information is on there. I'd love to have a conversation with you and see if I can help answer any questions you have about franchising.

I think it's a really great option for people. I really do. I think people should look at it seriously as you know, especially you know, there are a lot of people losing their jobs. There are a lot of people who haven't spent any time thinking what else would I like to be doing?

You know, And that's a whole process. Really, it is not quick. I used to have a lot of people call me and just say, you know, I need to do my resume. I got laid off.

Well, how do you do a resume when you don't even know where you want to go next? Like you know, which is the case for a lot of people. So there is this this process, and I think looking at something like franchising would be a good research. Yeah, I agree, And you said something very interesting there, which is what I talk to people about.

In my process. It's less about hey, I saw this business, it's great, or you know, what do you think about this business? It's more about what do you What do you want out of a business? What do you want to accomplish?

Like three years from now, if you found a business, what would it give you that would make you happy? And lifestyle passion, you know, finances, everything, what's most important. Once you know a little bit about where you want to go to, then it's a lot easier to find the vehicle to help you get there. But if you just start out, I'm not happy with my job.

You know what about a dunkin donuts? You know that that's probably not the right way to go about it. The right way is to figure out what it is that you that you. Want and then let's help.

You get Yeah, I agree. I think that process has to be slower than people like to get to the right outcome. But yeah, it's super interesting there there. We could talk about this all day, but I really just would like to ask one more questions.

What's the exit plan for most franchises? Is there one? Is that important to have? We didn't even talk about growth and acquiring multiple franchise you know, operations, which is a whole other area.

But maybe you'll come back and we'll talk about that. I would love to. We've all heard that's where that's where the big money is. You can't own one, you know, so it's another whole show actually, because.

Absolutely, I mean I think a lot of is again when you know what you're trying to accomplish, But if you want to scale something meaningful with a really nice excess strategy, the reality is is multiple units is and growth is going to be very important. And just like any business, the larger you scale it, the more you're going to get for it. The bigger it is, probably the bigger the multiple well be depending on what it is. But everyone's different.

So if you if you are just looking for something to kind of replace your income, there are opportunities that you know might might be available for you. If you're looking for something that you really want to build meaningful equity and you know, build something that has substantial value down the road, there's opportunities for that. And just like any business, Uh, you're you're able to sell your your franchise. Uh.

The only caveat might be the franchise or has to approve their person just so that they're bringing in somebody who's capitalized enough or you know, it's not an awful fit. But other than that, you know, you sell it like any any business. Yeah, in most regards, it is like any business. From what I'm gathering from this conversation, I mean, the beautiful part of it is that the modelist set has kind of tried and true, and there's some marketing that's already been the bane of most entrepreneurs existence, in my opinion, has been taken care of.

Absolutely, and there should be you know, there's the initial training, there's a system, but then there should be support on that system. There's you know, you have. Issues and problems and concerns or questions or. New products, new services.

Instead of you having to focus on that, you can focus on operating your business and the franchise or can focus on that stuff for you and then assist you with things as. You need them. And the other thing that's neat about franchising is, yeah, but people don't think about this enough either. There's a bunch of other people just like you that bought the franchise, so along with the franchise or that you can get support and what's working and what's not working.

You build relationships with the other franchisees and oh I tried this and it didn't work. I tried this and it did work. So you have you know, dozens to hundreds of other people doing exactly what you're doing every day that you can bounce. I you yah.

Yeah, And the more successful all of you are, the better for everybody, because that just means that franchise is growing and more popular. So yeah, I can see where it could be a real collaborative kind of. Effort. So well, we are out of time, but I am going to just invite you to come back and do a part two on this one of these days, so that would be great.

It's been really interesting. Michelle, Thanks so much for having me again. If anyone has any questions about franchising or you're thinking about wanting to make a change, I'd love to talk with you. And again, you can go to my website.

I would love to come back and talk with you and anytime you want to have me on Hey. Well, thank you so much. This has been really I hope it's kind of heartening for people to hear you know that this is an option for them. So okay, well we do have to wrap up, but thank you so much for being here.

We love having we love to have Jeff on the show, and I love having you the audience listening to the show, so please like, share, leave us a review. All of that helps us to bring great guests like Jeff on the show, so thank you so much. You can find us on all the podcast platforms. You can find us on the Limit Free Life YouTube channel, and we'll see you next week.