2 Stores to 118 in 14 Months: Scaling Boring Businesses - Alex Smereczniak I DSH #1523

Franchising is just a de-risked way to get into entrepreneurship.

80% success rate after five franchises.

50% failure rate for independent businesses.

I own franchise myself.

Like these are like the boring, sleepy businesses.

The ones that make millionaires and build wealth.

If your goal is to be entrepreneurial and to produce cash, franchising is one of the best ways to do that.

Okay, guys, got Alex here from Franzi.

Just flew in now and leaving right after from Charlotte.

Was there a direct route from there?

Yeah, direct flight, in and out, taking the red eye.

We've got Bennett, who's working with us over the summer.

He came with.

Nice.

We're here to.

Busy, busy, huh?

Busy, busy.

We just closed a $2.5 million capital raise.

Wow.

And so we were like, we got to get in and out, get the message out, and back to the grind.

Congrats, man.

So for people that don't know what Franzi's about and why you're raising money for this company, could you explain what's going on?

Yeah, so in the shortest terms possible, Franzi is, think of it as the Zillow for franchise buying.

So you can go to the platform, you can say, hey, I'm from Miami, I've got 200K to invest.

Here's my risk tolerance.

Here's my operational experience and background.

And then we have the most powerful AI recommendation engine and data set in franchising that we then curate your top five, Sean's top five from all this data that we just collected on you

to help you ultimately find the best fit business to buy.

Sounds like a good product because right now, isn't it a little old school to get a franchise if you're interested in one, depending on who you're going with, I guess.

Yeah, right now.

So I think if you've been on LinkedIn, you know, and haven't been approached by someone at some point saying like, hey, Sean, you'd be great as a gutter franchisee or whatever it is.

These brokers will reach out like that.

And what they don't tell you, though, is they make a 60% commission on the franchise fee.

60%?

6-0.

So if you pay $100,000, they get $60,000.

They get $60,000.

So you think in your head, I'm paying $100K for the rights to this business.

But they're probably going to reinvest it back into training and marketing and support for me.

But what you don't realize is, you know, out the door three days later, 60 grand has gone to that broker because it's the wild west.

The brokers have no disclosure requirements.

There's no licensure.

Like, you know, if you were, you and I were to become a real estate agent, you got to take a test and become licensed.

You and I can become franchise brokers right now in this moment.

Like you're dubbed a franchise broker right now.

That's it.

So do you think that's going to change anytime soon?

I hope so.

Because I think people are making the second largest decision in life behind who their spouse is buying a business.

It's not an insignificant, cheap decision.

And you've got some of these actors that might not always have your best interest in mind.

So I hope regulation comes.

I can't believe I'm saying that.

Usually I'm not a proponent of that.

But I think in this case, it's too

lawless and wild west.

And I've seen a lot of people get burnt working with a broker who they think has their best interest in mind.

Well, they say your business partner is your second wife.

Yeah, exactly.

You're going to do this for at least 10 years.

So you might as well pick the right one.

And that's what we're trying to do with Franzi is flip the whole, the old traditional model on its head and just make this way more transparent, way more accessible.

Well, I wonder what the success rates are for franchises.

I guess it depends on the industry, right?

Yeah, it definitely depends.

But so Gallup poll did this thing where independent businesses after five years, over 50% of them fail.

But franchises, 80% of them succeed in that same window.

And so franchising is just a de-risked way to get into entrepreneurship.

80%, you said?

80% success rate after five years for franchises, 50% failure rate for independent businesses.

What do they consider success?

Is that profitable?

Is that certain revenue?

Yeah, like the business has paid itself back and it's achieved some level of profitability.

Got it.

80%.

That's way higher than starting a business on your own, I bet.

Drastically.

Probably 10 times.

Drastically.

Yeah, because I know entrepreneurship lifestyle is, you know, kind of glorified these days, what we do, but it's not easy and the success rate is really low yeah if you throw in a tech start like what we're doing with franzi it's 95 failure rate crazy so high crazy that's what i like about franchising i own franchises myself right it is like these are like the boring sleepy businesses but the ones that make people millionaires and build wealth um it just might not be as fun as what we're doing now or you know going out and building a product and hiring a tech team.

But if your goal is to be entrepreneurial and to produce cash, franchising is one of the best ways to do that.

Look, high risk, high reward.

I say when you're younger, you know, you could take some risks.

As I get older, I want to be more safe with my money as I have a family and start to have kids.

Franchising would be something as I get older, I'd probably be interested in.

Yeah, and there's, and like, it's, people have joked with me, like, oh, what's the one I'm going to make the most money on?

I'm like, it really depends by category.

What are you going to like doing?

Again, you're going to do this for five to 10 years.

If you hate, I don't know, working out, you don't, you probably don't want to buy a health and wellness concept because you're going to have to go in there at some point and be involved in the day-to-day at some point.

100%.

So it really depends on what are your interests and what resonates with you.

Yeah, for me, I'd probably be willing to make 3% to 5% less a year on something I enjoy than to just invest in something and make a little more.

Exactly.

I'm not as passionate.

We have some clients that they want to do something with their kids.

They're like, I want to show my kids entrepreneurship.

Franchising seems to be a good family business we can run.

It's an ice cream shop or whatever it is.

And they've got their kid working the counter.

And

some people are just doing it for that.

It makes money, but it also is a good kind of role model platform experience for their kids to become entrepreneurial.

There's a lot of high-growth franchises, right?

Especially in like the fast food and fast food.

There's one right now that I'm personally really trying to get involved in.

It's called Pop-Up Bagels.

I say bagels funny because I'm from Minnesota, but Pop-Up Bagels out of New York.

They have already sold out the rights from Maine to Florida, all of California, most of Texas, and they're not

selling anymore.

They just started like 14 months ago.

It is like the crumble cookie of bagels.

It's a new flavor every week, new schmears and stuff that they have a huge social media following for.

I think I saw an article about this business.

It's the same kind of craze as there was around crumble cookies.

People lining up to like, oh, they have cookies and cream-flavored smear and a cinnamon bagel.

I guess that kind of thing.

I want to try one because I grew up in Jersey, so I know a good bagel so I've had a bunch of New Yorkers that have had it in Miami because I have a few locations already open that are just like this is like better than a lot of the bagels in New York like the guy who started it knows what he's doing and see that's a major issue he's solving they they pre they use common commissaries to to make the dough and they're using all of the like New York you know limestone filtered water to get that same that's how they're doing New York flavor and stuff on the west coast the pizza and bagels and probably in Miami too they don't hit the same,

not even close.

So, if he's actually able to pull that off at scale, that's a multi-billion dollar insurance.

That's gonna be the true question: is can he figure that out?

Right, Crumble grew quick, man.

I feel like they came out of nowhere.

Now, the bill, the owner's a billionaire, right?

Yeah, they got valued at, I think it was $2 billion a couple months ago.

Holy crap!

I think with Dave's hot chicken, it was just a guy that he knew that the hot chicken concept hadn't taken off.

The tri-light from Ferrisage is no joke.

Medical-grade red and near-infrared light with three frequencies per light, deep healing, real results, and totally portable.

It's legit.

Photo bio-modulation tech in a flexible on-body panel.

This is the Tri-Light from Therasage and it's next level red light therapy.

It's got 118 high-powered polychromatic lights, each delivering three healing frequencies, red and near-infrared, from 580 to 980 nanometers.

It's sleek, portable, and honestly, I don't go anywhere without it.

Hired a franchise team around it, and same thing.

They just sold the Rourke Capital for, I think it was like two and a half billion.

I just saw some video raising canes is growing really fast too they're taking off and his story Todd Graves story is insane he's from outside of

where is it New Orleans I think and when he was trying to get started he couldn't he wasn't bankable he couldn't raise the money and so he moved to Alaska and worked on like deadliest catch type boats like super dangerous jobs to save up enough money to open his first location came back opened it and rest is history man he owns the whole thing it's not a a franchise either.

He owns the whole thing?

All those restaurants are corporately owned.

That dude's going to be, if he's not already a multi-billionaire.

Yeah.

Holy crap.

Shout out to Todd, man.

We've emailed a few times.

He's coming on the show eventually.

That would be awesome.

I'm really excited.

The story is crazy.

Yeah.

I like when fast food owners are like face fronting, like they show the CEO behind it.

There's not a lot of them like that.

Well, another one that's going crazy, too, is these like dirty sodas.

Like Swig is a big one.

It's always like out of Utah, too.

Mormons love love sugar.

Yeah, sugar.

Or you can't drink alcohol.

Exactly.

I went to one.

Or caffeine.

I think that no caffeine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Some of them, yeah.

It's all like crumble cookies, swig, et cetera.

You had me thinking about it with whatever this is.

Yeah, shout out to Magic Mind if they're a sponsor of the show.

But I'm all about natural caffeine, you know, staying calm.

And Magic Mind does a great job of that.

Have you ever had one of these?

No.

Oh, you might have to try it, man.

It's all natural.

Magic Mind?

Magic Mind.

It has no caffeine.

No, it does have caffeine, but it's natural.

It's not from fake fake stuff.

So, Magic Mind, Mental Performance Shot.

I take one before every episode.

Check them out.

Very cool.

But yeah, I went to that soda spot in Utah.

I forget which one it was.

Swig?

It might have been.

It was like a drive-in and everything.

I didn't like it.

Sungary?

Yeah, to each their own.

Have you been to one of those yet?

I haven't been to one, but I see the menus and it's like Dr.

Pepper infused with Janilla syrup and all this stuff.

No, you mix them.

I mixed like Sprite and Fanta.

And like, yeah, it was weird.

But I don't like soda anymore, so it could have been that too.

Me neither.

What's your go-to fast food spot?

So it was funny before we came over here, we were trying to go to the canes, it's like right down the road.

Yeah, it's not open yet.

Oh, it's too early.

So we got dropped.

No, like it's not even open.

The location's not open.

It's on Google Maps, but the location's not physically open.

So we just got dropped up in the parking lot.

We're like, uh, let's go to this.

That's awkward.

What was it called?

Egg?

Egg, woken egg, or something.

Okay.

Mine used to be Chick-fil-A and Chipotle.

Right now, I would say In-N-Out.

Yeah, In-NOUT's fire.

It's hard to beat that.

It is.

Is there any in Charlotte?

There's no In-N-Out.

Damn.

In-N-Out's like Kane's where it's not franchised either.

That's all corporately arranged.

I feel like the franchise strategy, you grow quicker, though, right?

You grow way faster.

Like, you could go from zero to 100 real quick.

Really fast.

I mean, when we opened the laundromats, we had two corporate stores open and within 14 months had sold 118 of them.

Holy crap.

So you can go very fast.

The issue is if you're not smart and thoughtful about it, quality can slip out the door.

and right that's why i think todd graves and the in-n-out family is like so methodical meticulous and methodical about how they do it yeah because they won't even go to the east coast right yet at least

which is crazy whole coast of the country is missing out on in n-out

um i did want to ask you about the laundry mount you you grew that while in college right yeah so i i really got into entrepreneurship in college i moved from minnesota down to north carolina uh went to wake forest and started a laundry and dry cleaning business my freshman year uh and learned more doing that than any class I took in college.

It was just the best experience I ever had.

So you went from two locations, you said all the way to 100 or something?

Yeah, so the one in college I actually sold.

So I started out, we scaled it up, we sold it for like just under $300,000.

So we're 22 years old.

We've got the most money in the world.

It was a lot back then.

Yeah, we think we're like, we can retire now.

But then I go work for EY for a year and a half, Ernst ⁇ Young, and hated it.

I was like, this isn't not as entrepreneurial.

This isn't as fast.

And started 2U Laundry up in 2016 when all the Uber Forex businesses were taken off, like shipped, Instacart, Wag, Rover.

And so we launched in 2016.

Eight years later, we raised over that period $33 million in venture capital.

Jeez.

Scaled to a few dozen cities or so, and then started franchising in 2021.

Well done, dude.

That's impressive.

Did you learn anything of substance at EY?

Honestly, some of the politics is helpful as far as how to navigate people's

different kind of goals and motivations.

Definitely how to speak to clients and navigate some of those tougher conversations with external

facing folks.

But outside of that, it was just really good people to work with, but the work is just so excruciatingly slow and not as fulfilling.

And I think about that a lot.

It's like people spend six figures to go to college, to then go work this job that they don't necessarily enjoy, but they'll hesitate to spend 100 grand on a business.

And that could unlock and change their whole life.

I think a lot of people are scared to invest, right?

Something they grew up with, trauma or something.

I think it's they're scared.

They don't have access.

They don't know where to start.

And so it's just like you get complacent and you stick in your kind of regular rhythm.

And what we've realized with Franzi is as long as you like open it up a little bit, give people a little bit of a nudge, half more than half, like 80% of the things that people are worried about are like the silliest things.

Like, I don't know how to form an entity.

And they're like, dude, we can do this today in like an hour.

Like, where am I going to find a general contractor?

Like, all right, Google, our network, the brands network, like all these things are solvable.

And then you eventually see them almost like working out.

Yeah.

They flex this muscle of like, okay, it's just like start and try.

And it's okay if it doesn't work or it doesn't fail.

I think so many of us have been conditioned our whole lives to like, all right, get good grades in high school to get into a good college and then get good grades in college.

So you go get your Fortune 500 job that we're all just so like, like, I think scared and sheltered of going to take that thing that deviates from that kind of societally pushed path.

And our goal with Franzi, again, is to like, how do we break that mold, give people that chance?

And like, it's, it's fine to go take that risk and go for it.

100%.

Plus, we mentioned earlier, franchising is painted in a bad light in certain circles, right?

With the broker fees.

Yeah, the broker fees.

And I think there's a lot of

you know, brands that maybe haven't done, you know, the level of foundation building that they should have.

And again, our goal with Franzi is to say, hey, this one only has five locations open.

If you're comfortable with that risk, it could still be the right fit for you.

But if you're looking for more, something that's more safe, look at all the other brands that we have on the platform that have 50, 100, 200, 300 units open already.

And again, there's something for everyone.

If you really want to do it and you're willing to take somewhat of a risk and work hard, there's a concept out there for you.

And before we forget, how can people watching this make $5,000 right now?

Yeah, so something we're doing, because, again, it's this easy to open a business and this easy to find a franchise is if you sign up for Franzi, which is free and we provide all this coaching, all these resources, if you go to franzi.com slash social hour, we will give you $5,000 towards your grand opening if you buy a franchise, any kind, between now and the end of the year.

Is there a minimum amount they have to spend on that?

No, and there's franchises that range from 10K to get into all the way up to you know, these swim schools that are $5 million because you're putting six, seven pools inside.

Damn, that's a no-brainer.

I might do that myself.

I might buy a 10K franchise and get 5k back there you go now you got it the 10k one's called oh there's a couple of them but there's one called card my yard and it's these little yard signs that are like happy birthday sean or congratulations for graduation or whatever 10k to get in kicks off 20 to 30 grand a year in revenue damn that's a no-brainer nice little side hustle guys if you're watching this you want 5 000 go get that card business

um

What industry do you have your eye on right now for franchises?

Like any trends you're seeing?

I'd imagine it's it's hard to franchise an AI company, but is there anything you're seeing there?

So a ton of brands are using AI to make their operations way better.

But the categories that I like, food and bev is always like sexy and the first thing to think about, but they're actually declining.

You have to be in the top 5% of food and bev for it to really take off.

The concepts that I like, though, are like home services, these things you don't think about, like window washing,

power washing, artificial turf that we just talked about, Vegas, you know, not allowing people to grow grass anymore that turf franchise is gonna just

destroy it here i mean it's gonna do incredibly well i really like home services i like health and wellness a lot um and then again businesses that are using technology to make things easier for example there's one called um pinks window cleaning they're using drones to help do some of the window cleaning that's cool um and window hero is another one but they're using technology to replace some of the labor or make the booking faster marketing more efficient

And that's the kind of business I think people should be thinking about because it's AI is coming and it's drastically going to impact how all of us do anything.

I wouldn't mind investing in a blue-collar company these days because I know how lazy my generation is and there's a lack of those workers.

You know what I mean?

That, and have you read the AI 2027 article?

Or have you seen this?

No, I didn't see it when did that come out?

I'll send it to you.

But they're talking about how 50% of white-collar jobs are going to be eviscerated in the next like three to five years.

It's already starting.

I'm way faster than people.

That's a lot, though.

50%.

Holy crap.

Like, what are they going to do?

Not a lot of them, because some of them might be too old to do blue-collar, some of them might be too young or inexperienced, right?

So, my thought is: I'm not just pushing franchising here.

It's like, go reinvent yourself.

Go bet on yourself, whether it's short-term rentals or crypto or day trading you start to learn how to do, or become that top 50% that's using the tools in your job better than anyone else, or go buy a business, go buy a franchise go buy an independent business because I think that wave is coming and you have to prepare yourself for it and you have to start I think preparing now I mean three to five years is going to go by quick very quick is this mainly US businesses that are on the site yeah so all US right now we have some brands that have you know locations in Mexico Canada Europe but we're hyper focused on the US right now I think it's one of the best places in the world to start a business to be entrepreneurial I mean it's the American dream right and go Go after this thing that's your own.

And Franzie's just trying to be that advocate and be that guide in a

small section of that space.

Nice.

Which franchises do you own right now?

So I own five locations of a concept called Another Nine.

It's an indoor golf simulator franchise.

No employees, no food and bev, but it's private-based.

So if you and I want to go just play Pebble Beach in an hour, we can go book a room, go play for an hour or so.

It's 30, 40 bucks

versus five hours and the whole commitment.

I love playing golf outside, but not all of us have

a whole day or half a day to give up like that.

It's a whole day ordeal.

So I love those for that reason.

Very passive, no employees, good revenues.

And then that pop-up bagel when I mentioned, I'm like really trying to figure out a way into that one.

Funny to get in that one, too.

Speaking of golf, I heard top golf struggling.

Yeah.

I just saw a video on it yesterday.

The eatertainment, I mean, it's such a huge build-out, super expensive.

And it's mostly just like corporate events and happy hours they were pricing people out too it's super expensive to go there yeah eater tainment that's a i'm gonna start using that word eatertainment yeah i guess when they make their money is it off the food with places like that like what's the margin the bay is actually not crazy right if it's like 50 bucks an hour or whatever yeah but they're hoping you sit there and just eat and drink and eat and drink right um that's a huge chunk of the revenue yeah the liquor i'd imagine is the highest margin yep what about owning somewhere where with a liquor license wouldn't that be pretty good?

Yes, what I like about the another nine thing again is it's BYOB because you don't have staff or food and bev, but most states actually allow BYOB.

People don't realize that.

It's like opening five, ten of these, low employee headcount, good revenues, pretty passive.

BYOB, so people can still

go drink and be social that way.

Okay.

But you don't have to have 30 people on staff.

So you missed the crumble cookie wave.

I missed it.

How much was that one?

Crumble cookies are...

Probably like $100K plus, right?

Revenue or $2 million.

So most franchises charge a franchise fee.

It's like $50K to get in, tiers down from there, the more that you want to buy.

Then you got to do the build out.

So like a Crumble Cookies is probably half a million to

$750K to get open.

Okay, so you won't make that back for a while.

Well, they're doing these crazy revenue numbers.

I mean, they're doing $2 million or so in revenue and kicking off three million.

For each location?

Holy crap.

I love cookies.

The bagel, when I told you, does $2 million average unit volume, 25% margin.

So they're kicking off

half a million in profit a year.

That's insane.

Off one physical location.

Bagels.

Yeah, that's nuts.

Because if you multiply that by 10 locations, that's 2.5.

In probably one state, you could fit 10 locations.

No, if it's off of 10, you'd be doing 5 million in profit.

That's insane, dude.

Some of these guys.

So I know a guy that owns almost 100 McDonald's.

He hasn't stepped foot into McDonald's in like three years he's got a whole team gms a coo that runs everything he legitimately has not been in a mcdonald's in like two years owns a hundred of them yeah doesn't eat it doesn't you know you know doesn't get high off of his own supply

and he makes like

probably like 80 to 90 million in cash flow a year he has two planes He's paid like a fucking NFL quarterback

for the rest of his life and doesn't have to operate them because he's got a team built out.

Now he's just scaled into that.

When I first met him four years ago, he had 46 locations.

So he's doubled in like three or four years.

Why not?

If it's doing well, that's the thing: once you get one or two going, like, that's the hardest part, like anything.

It's that first one or two.

And then you get to the next one, it becomes inevitable.

You just have a team now.

You can go look for three, four, or five.

You get to five, you start to buy up other people's locations.

So now you're buying portfolios of five of them.

And next thing you know, you've got 50, 60 plus of them.

That's cool.

There's another guy I met.

He was ex-like banker.

Started buying butcher shops in New York.

2018, he bought two Orange Theory fitnesses.

Fast forward, what is that, seven years?

He owns 140 franchise locations across

Orange Theory, Dave's Hot Chicken, Marco's Pizza, Pop-Up Bagels, some health and wellness concepts.

So the compound effect gets pretty nuts once you're like five plus.

If you're willing to do the work and dig in and like build an operational team, you can build a massive, massive empire in a relatively short amount of time running the franchise playbook.

How hard is it to get those big brand names?

Like, I'd imagine they have a waiting list or something.

So some of them you can buy like existing or resales fairly, I don't want to say easily, but they're easier to come by.

But once you, you really have to get kind of that reputation almost of, all right, Sean's done this before with five locations.

We now trust that he can do

five of ours.

And so you got to, the hardest part, again, is getting that like zero to five.

you know wave right and i don't think it matters what brand it is as long as you've shown like hey i can operate one of these businesses and I'm good with retail and I'm good with employees.

The other big brands and these hot concepts that come out, they're just looking for some level of operational experience before they just go to the average person.

Which franchise that you've seen had the highest revenues per location?

Chick-fil-A crushes every

average revenue per location last year that they announced in their franchise disclosure document was $9.8 million.

Average, average out of one location.

Wait, that's what, $300,000 a day?

Something like that?

$250,000 a day?

Yeah.

Holy crap.

It is a lot.

Dude, that's insane.

That's not a day.

That would be every.

It's like $30 a day.

Oh, my bad.

$30 a day.

$30K.

Still, $30K a day.

Yeah, that's like, what, 3,000 sandwiches?

They're like $10 each.

Ton.

That's crazy.

And there's one, the one that does the most is right outside of Charleston, South Carolina.

Yeah.

They do like $13 or $14 million out of that box.

Wow.

So 10 mil average revenue.

What's the franchising cost for that one?

So Chick-fil-A is interesting.

Like their franchise fee to get in is only 10 grand.

That's it?

Only 10 grand, but they make you work in the store for six months before you can even like

apply.

Like they put you through this rigorous thing.

They're super choosy.

It is harder to get into Chick-fil-A than Harvard, Stanford, Yale combined.

Holy crap.

Their selection rate is.

And they don't let you own more than one typically.

Wow.

They let a few of their like best operators own like a second or a third maybe why don't they raise the fee though i don't get it they purposely make it cheap so that anyone can do it because they they care more about how good is the operator operator going to be versus how wealthy are they the thing about it you might have this person who will work circles around you and i like they've got this crazy work ethic they'll go 100 hours a week yeah but they only have 10k to their name because they've just i don't know they had a tough upbringing or just didn't ever figure out the right career path good work ethic though Chick-fil-A wants access to anyone.

So, as long as you can come with 10K, they buy the land, they pay for the build-out, they

but they take crazy royalties.

Most franchises, it's like a six to ten percent royalty, they will take 50 percent of your of your cash flow.

That's the revenue, uh, so 50% of the profit you make.

Oh, okay, the profit.

That's still really high, but I guess if you're only paying 10k, though, you're gonna make that back super the average Chick-fil-A franchisee own you know makes like four to six hundred grand a year.

Passives, right?

Well, so no, they Chick-fil-A franchisees got to work in the business.

Oh, they have to be in there.

Chick-fil-A is almost this very abnormal franchise.

Most franchises, yeah, you could hire someone, you can go to the beach, you can have a portfolio of them.

Chick-fil-A is like, if you're going to do this, you got to be working basically as the GM of the store.

You're going to eventually get to a point where you hire someone and get less involved, but the first few years they mandate that you're hands-on in the business,

like really, really taking care of it.

And that's why the quality is so good.

It's so consistent because Chick-fil-A just has this thing dialed in, and they pick the best operators in the world because they can.

Them and In-N-Out have the best fast food customer service I've seen.

It's because they've retained full control for the most.

I mean, Chick-fil-A is still a franchise, but they have so much control more than the normal franchise does.

What about a Starbucks?

Do they franchise?

Corporate-owned.

Corporate-owned.

Duncan?

Franchise.

Okay.

So that's interesting.

Starbucks, I prefer Starbucks over Duncan, though.

Yeah, the quality is just quality, the branding, the marketing, the feel inside.

It feels more luxurious, if that makes sense.

People in the Northeast love their Duncan.

It's like wild how loyal they are.

Yeah, I grew up in Jersey.

It was big out there.

Yeah, nah, Starbucks to me is way better, though.

Yeah, agreed.

Would you ever go with a drink route, like coffee or something like that?

I don't know.

There's a few, like, it always depends on the cat or like the is it a category winner or not for me?

Like, there's a company called Seven Brew right now where it's all like drive-through, quick,

good quality still.

But they are just cranking out volume again.

It's kind of like the bagel thing.

They're doing a couple million a year in revenue, high margin.

Like I would do something like that.

I don't know if I would do like a Duncan, though, because it's just foot traffic is different.

The client is too far different.

There's too many of them.

Because I know Subway's struggling right now.

Way too many Subways.

Subway will sometimes intentionally build a location right down the street from another franchisee and like, all right, which one does better?

We'll shut the other one down.

That's messed up.

So, so messed up.

Yeah, that's messed up.

Yes.

So it's like that sweet spot, right?

You want to get in while it's like on the come up.

Yep.

But you don't want to wait too late to the subway point because then you're too late.

Totally.

Like, it depends on your preference, but like I love getting in somewhat early where they have a lot of the systems figured out, but they still have white space and you can go buy five, 10 of these things and start to build that empire again.

I guess it's also more risk if you're too early because then it could be like a yogurt land situation too.

Yeah, exactly.

If they'd be like too open, you have no idea.

Was this just a fluke or a fad in this area or this location?

Right.

Like, it depends on your risk tolerance.

Some people come in and they love that.

They're like, I'm going to go buy the whole state of Texas and I believe in this product.

I've tried it.

And I know the owners, and they're super good operators.

That could make sense.

But if it's like this thing you're unsure of and you're looking to get into this for the first time, like...

Find something that's a little bit more de-risked and a little bit more stable.

Makes sense, yeah.

Because those claw machines were hot for a bit, too.

You saw those?

Yeah, the claw machines.

Were those in Charlotte, too?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there was a ton in Vegas, and now they're all gone.

Yeah, it's like things are fads, and you got to watch that, too, especially some of these build-outs that are a couple hundred grand to get going.

Like, you don't want to make that kind of bet on something you're not sure of.

And that was always my issue with getting into retail businesses, honestly, was that upfront cost.

Yeah, that's the hard.

I mean, that's what makes retail, I think, that risk reward.

Again, like some restaurants, if you get the right one,

millions of dollars in AUV and potentially profit, but more expensive, and it could be a fad.

That's why I like earlier when you were asking, like, which categories and stuff, home services, it's like you're getting a truck maybe,

a team, and you just go start selling work and it's not a huge risk or as big of a risk or initial investment to get started.

Right.

And everyone needs some of these home services.

Everyone, bro.

Every week I have a new home bill.

It's insane.

You know, my pool just broke.

Like I have to do the roof.

Like there's a pool cleaning franchise.

There's a roof, you know, roof repair franchise, window cleaning.

It's these unsexy, boring things, but they are printing money.

Dude, even cutting the palm trees at my house is $3,000.

Holy shit.

That's probably a franchise.

There is one called Joshua Tree.

Yeah, but imagine that times every house in Vegas is palm trees, pretty much in

the nicer neighborhoods.

So you can make probably millions off one neighborhood, I'd imagine.

Done.

Easy.

You know?

Yeah, so that's interesting.

Well, dude, yeah, we'll link below the offer.

$5,000, guys, if you buy a franchise and that lasts 30 days.

Yeah, if you sign up from 30 days of hearing this episode,

we will put you into the CRM that way.

And if you buy a franchise by the end of the year, we'll put five grand towards your grand opening.

Amazing.

Anything else you want to close off with, Alex?

No, I appreciate you having us.

I think if you've ever wondered about buying your own business and haven't been sure where to start, just give us a, you know, give us a try at franzi.com.

We've got this thing called the Franzi Fit Score.

It's a 12-question survey.

We use AI to then curate Sean's top 10, and then we give you access to free coaching every step of the way.

So nothing to lose.

Go try it out, see what brands get recommended, tinker around on the platform.

And who knows, maybe you'll find yourself leaving your nine to five and becoming an entrepreneur.

Let's go.

Got your Chick-fil-A, guys.

Yeah, appreciate it.

Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe.

It helps a lot with the algorithm.

It helps us get bigger and better guests, and it helps us grow the team.

Truly means a lot.

Thank you guys for supporting.

And here's the episode.