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The Benefits of Franchising vs. Starting a Business from Scratch

The BiggerPockets Business Podcast
46 min read
The Benefits of Franchising vs. Starting a Business from Scratch

You hear the word “franchising”, what’s the first thing you think of? For many people, they think of selling hamburgers, sandwiches, or opening up convenient stores. To franchise matchmaker and consultant Jon Ostenson, that’s just the surface level. There is a whole world of franchising that many entrepreneurs and business professionals don’t know about.

Jon started out working in consulting for Fortune 1000 companies and was slowly introduced to the concept of franchising. Jon found franchising incredibly interesting, as a cross between new business ownership and existing systems/infrastructure. The business model purely made sense.

Now as the CEO of Franbridge Capital, he works with entrepreneurs and franchise owners as a matchmaker, seeing who would work best with which franchise, and vice versa.

Jon walks through some of the key benefits of franchising that other business models don’t have, and some of the dangers for interested entrepreneurs. He also goes through the different franchise business models and some franchise examples that you may have never thought of.

How much risk is in franchising? Does franchising produce better ROI than other businesses (even real estate)? What are the opportunities in 2021 for franchising?

Hearing Jon’s answers may present a whole new world you never knew about, and might even get the ball rolling for you to become a partner in a franchise yourself!

Click here to listen on Apple Podcast.

Listen to the Podcast Here

Read the Transcript Here

J:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Business Podcast, show number 87.

Jon:
You’re in business on your own, but you’re not by yourself. You’ve got a franchiser who are on the sidelines that has entirely aligned interests as you, they want to see you succeed, it’s in their best interest for you to succeed.

J:
Welcome to a real world MBA from the school of hard knocks, where entrepreneurs reveal what it really takes to make it, whether you’re already in business or you’re on your way there, this show is for you. This is BiggerPockets Business.
How’s it going everybody. I am J Scott, your cohost for the BiggerPockets Business Podcast, here once again this week with my lovely cohost and wife, Mrs. Carol Scott. How are you doing today, Carol?

Carol:
Doing so well, thank you. And speaking of thank you, thank you to all of you amazing listeners who are out there doing good for others right now. That is truly one of my very, very favorite things about this time of year. So many of us as entrepreneurs, as small business owners are so dedicated and committed to giving back even more than we get, and realizing this year has been really tricky on people. So we really appreciate all of you who are out there giving, doing it, not necessarily to get fanfare and throw it all over social media, not to get recognition, but simply doing it, doing good because it’s the right thing to do. So thank you to all of you.

J:
Absolutely. I could not have said it better myself, so I’m just going to jump into this episode because that was a great message and I can’t say it any better. Let’s talk about this episode because I’m really excited about this episode. I’ve been asked a whole bunch over the last couple of months about franchises. So many people that I’m talking to want to start franchises. I don’t know if something’s changed, or I’m just talking to different people, or for some reason, 2020 is getting people excited about jumping into new businesses and people are thinking about franchises. So I went out there and I said, “Who can I find that can tell our listeners all about franchising?”
And so I found a guy named Jon Ostenson. He is the CEO of a company called FranBridge Consulting, and Jon is amazing. He is an expert on franchising. Jon is a self-described, he’s a matchmaker. That’s how he describes himself. Basically his job is to help franchisers, the companies that create these big franchises, and franchisees, the people like you and me that want to buy franchises, he helps put them together. So he helps people like you and me figure out the right match if we’re looking to get into a franchise, so what matches our interests, what matches our expertise, what matches our strengths, and our cash position and our goals. And basically he serves as a consultant to help get us into the perfect franchise.
And on this episode, we discuss everything that we need to know about picking a franchise. And we start with, well, the obvious, a lot of us when we think about franchises, we think about food and fast food, McDonald’s and Subway. But Jon walks us through why going into a food or a fast food franchise isn’t necessarily going to be the right fit for a lot of us, especially those of us who are real estate investors and have strengths and interests that lie in other places. And Jon walks us through how food and fast food is one type of franchise, but they’re actually four different quadrants of franchises and how the other three quadrants might be better for us.
And then we jump into the question we all want to know the answer to, how much money can we make if we buy a franchise? How big are the margins? How much profit can we generate? And from there, we talk about the other big thing that a lot of us want to know, can you operate franchise passively? I know a lot of us are really interested in to buying into businesses that we can operate passively and we can do as a side hustle. Can we do that with a franchise? And so, Jon is brutally honest with us about whether franchises can be operated passively or not, how do we scale franchises? Can we buy two or three or five or 10 of them? And how do we do that? Where’s the money come from for franchising.
If we want to start a franchise outside of our area, something 1,000 miles away, can we take over a franchise far from home? Finally, we talk about distressed franchises, is now the right time to be buying a franchise where the owner is looking to retire or the owners of the business just isn’t doing well, and potentially we come in, we buy it at a discount and we turn it around and turn it into a cash cow? So we talk about everything related to franchising, it’s just an amazing episode. If you want to learn more about Jon, if you want to learn more about FranBridge Consulting and what Jon does, if you want to learn about anything we discuss in this episode, please check out our show notes at biggerpockets.com/bizshow87.
Again, that’s biggerpockets.com/bizshow87. Without any further ado, let’s welcome Jon Ostenson to the show.

Carol:
Jon, welcome to the BiggerPockets Business Podcast. We are so looking forward to chatting with you today. So many of our audience members are so very interested in franchising and learning more about that and opportunities for them. So thank you so much in advance for sharing all of your expertise and knowledge with us.

Jon:
Absolutely excited to be here, Carol, appreciate you guys having me. I love the show and look forward to our discussion.

J:
Jon, you are a franchising expert, you’re a franchise consultant and you do a whole bunch of things that we’re going to dig into on this episode, but let’s start with your backstory. How did you get into the franchising world? How did you become an expert? What did you do to get to where you are today?

Jon:
Absolutely. And I feel very blessed that I stumbled upon it. And so my background’s based here in Atlanta, Georgia and after University of Georgia, I went into consulting with Accenture, had a great international experience. That parlayed into some other corporate opportunities that really provided a great run, but like so many, I had that itch to get out of that Fortune 1,000 world. And for me, I wanted to go with a smaller private company, I looked at a lot of different opportunities, ended up with ShelfGenie, which is a large national, really international franchise system based here in Atlanta, custom plot, shelving for kitchen and pantry. And I came in on the corporate side.
So I had the opportunity to come in as president, run all the day-to-day operations. And really during that experience, fell in love with franchising. I found that it was such a better path to business ownership for so many would be entrepreneurs out there, and those that had an interest in that financial freedom and that day-to-day freedom. And what I also found was, a lot of people think of franchising as Subway and McDonald’s and fast food. And there exist this whole entire world out there that frankly, a lot of people don’t know exists and they don’t understand the dynamics behind it. So since then, I partnered with the founder of ShelfGenie.
We spun off as our own entity, brought in another partner. We ourselves are franchisees now, so went from being a franchise org to a franchisee. We’re franchisees across 14 different territories, three different brands, here in Atlanta, all in the home services, property serves the space. In addition to that, spend about 75% of my time on a daily basis on the consulting side. So I represent about 300 franchise brands out of the universe of 4,000 brands. So for someone’s looking to get into franchising, it can be a little intimidating, a little overwhelming to know where to start, who are the good ones, who are the bad ones, everyone’s putting their best foot forward.
What we’ve done on the back end is we have vetted these brands, we’ve landed on 300 that we feel really good about to put in front of our clients. And so I get to play matchmaker, if you will working what’s up my clients in a totally free service with them, I get paid by the franchiser at back end, and really just have a blast. Taking people through the education process, we have a very streamlined way of going about it, and eventually playing matchmaker, bring them opportunities that could be a good fit for them for consideration. I know we’ll dig more into that, but that’s what I do on a daily basis, and that’s a little bit about my background.

Carol:
Great. Jon, you clearly have a wealth of experience and like you’ve said, you’ve vetted all these different available franchises down into about 300 that seem to be the best match for people, if you will. So would you please talk to us a little bit more, why should we consider franchising versus starting a whole new business from scratch?

Jon:
Absolutely. There’s some great reasons, and like anything, there are pros and cons. The cons would be, you do have to live within the lines, and some people may be too entrepreneurial and want to do something totally outlandish with their brand, and that may not fit for franchising. However, in my opinion, the benefits far outweigh the cons. And the benefits that I would see is number one, well, it doesn’t entirely, de-risk the proposition, you’re able to go in with an eyes wide open perspective. Every franchiser has what’s called an FDD or Franchise Disclosure Document. Within that is an intimidating 200-page document, 23 different items or chapters.
Two that we pay a lot of attention to, one would be your item seven, and the second one would be your item 19. That item seven gets into what’s it going to cost? What will this investment looks like? All things in item 19 is how has every other franchise in system performing? What has been their ramp up? What does that look like? What is their average revenue? What’s their average margin? It’s not an indicator of that you’ll absolutely perform to that degree, but it gives you a great benchmarks, you’re not just putting together a performer on the fly. In addition, you get to do what’s called validation where you go in and you actually talk to all the other franchise owners, well, really, as many as you want to understand their perspective, what support have you gotten and are the financials really playing out for you?
And they’re allowed to give you as much information as possible, which is great. So you really go in, it’s not to say that’s the first thing is going in eyes wide open. Number two, you’re in business on your own, but you’re not by yourself. You’ve got a franchiser on the sidelines that has entirely aligned interests as you, they want to see you succeed, it’s in their best interest for you to succeed. And so they have put together this proven model that has been vetted, proven out, and they are cheering for you, guiding you for you, innovating with new products and new ideas along the way.
You also have franchisees in other markets, they’re non-competitive to you. So again, your interests are aligned, the better you perform and eventually exit your business, the more theirs will be worth. And so there’s a lot of think tanks that can happen, a lot of shared marketing ideas, a lot of shared strategies that come with that. And it goes without saying, if you have a brand that has some awareness out there, and you’ve got the built-out playbook behind the operations and the marketing, you’re not starting from scratch, you’re not having to put this together yourself. Instead, as long as you can follow a playbook, halfway decent, it’s just a great roadmap for you.
Now, I will say any good franchiser’s going to give you some leeway to allow you to test in your local market and generate new ideas, you’re not totally living in the silo of following protocol. However, there are some guard rails in place and for good reason. When I was a franchiser, the franchisees I’d say they struggle the most were the ones that didn’t follow the playbook, that didn’t follow the system. So as long as you have that mindset going in, then your odds of success are significantly higher versus a traditional startup.

J:
And that makes a lot of sense to me, I know starting a business from scratch requires a whole bunch of different areas of expertise. You’ve got to be good at branding, and marketing, and sales, and operations, and supply chain management, and all of those things. And I assume that when you go with a franchise, a lot of that is given to you, a lot of those systems are given to you. That said, I have to imagine that there is still some bar that is set for anybody that’s going to go into a franchise, somebody that has no business experience, whatever has no money whatsoever, may, maybe I’m wrong, may not be the best candidate to start a franchise or to buy a franchise.
What is that bar? So if you were going to say, hey, what is the minimum set of qualifications somebody should have before they say, “Now’s the time for me to go buy into a franchise,” what does that minimum set of qualifications that somebody should consider?

Jon:
Absolutely. I would say your work ethic goes without saying, any business venture, you’ve got to have a work ethic, but I’d say what it really comes down to is your ability to hire great talent, retain great talent, incentivize talent. Where I saw a franchise owners fall down when I was on the franchiser side, and again, these were few and far between by and large franchise owners were doing very well, but the ones that did struggle were the ones that maybe came from a middle management, corporate America role and they never had the responsibility for hiring and firing,, and making those tough calls, and not hanging on to someone for a little bit too long and putting up with excuses.
So I’d say, as long as how to interact with people, especially when it comes to hiring and firing, and retaining, and incentivizing, your odds of success are very high even with no background in that industry.

J:
That’s really interesting. And I’d never thought about it that way, that the corporate franchiser or the corporate that’s basically handing you the system, they can provide all the systems and the processes. They can provide the supply chain management and tell you how to get inventory, they can tell you how to turn inventory into product. They can tell you how to deal with sales and cash registers and all the accounting stuff. But the one thing they can’t do is they can’t hire your employees for you and they can’t manage your employees for you. And so it’s a really good perspective that to be a great franchisee, one of the key qualifications is your ability to hire and manage great talent.
I guess that answers my question, that’s the core talent that a great franchisee is going to need is just that ability to hire, and lead, and manage, and run a team. Is that fair to say

Jon:
Yeah, absolutely. Every franchise is different as far as what the needs are, some may need someone that’s more sales oriented, some are very much a transactional oriented business. And so the skill sets, they’re important, and oftentimes, if you have an operations background, you get nervous talking to people and you don’t enjoy the sales aspect, then maybe your first hire is a great sales person that’s going to go to those BNI meetings, that’s going to go to the chamber of commerce meetings. He’s going to get out and form referral partnerships, and do those things that are needed to be done. And so oftentimes, that first hire or first couple of hires, you’re really complementing what it is that you might not be as strong at or frankly, enjoy doing

Carol:
Excellent. Jon, I would love to know even more about this whole concept you mentioned earlier, that often when we think of franchises, we just automatically default to fast food. It’s just for a long time, fast food, maybe I’m incorrect, but I would say, that dominated franchises or what everybody’s perception of a franchise was. However, you’ve been very clear that there are so many other types of franchises in that specifically, your firm specializes in those others. So I’m curious, what are some of the other leading types of franchises, and why do they seem to be a better choice in so many instances than fast food?

Jon:
Absolutely. And there’s nothing wrong with food, I’ll just be candid and say, that’s not my thing. And I don’t have a background in food, I don’t have an interest to have a background in food, I’m not a big fan of inventory that can go bad, and it’s so location dependent, I feel like there are a lot of players out there, some will make it, some won’t. I’d much rather go with a safer investment in a way, and one that’s very understandable to me. And what I found is those that I work with and those that I speak to and interact with, very much are aligned with that thinking. So this is the fun part for me, it’s when I get to expose folks to, “Here’s everything that exists out there.” So I like to think about franchise businesses really in four different quadrants.
You’ve got your simple retail, you’ve got your complex retail, you’ve got your B2C services, to business to consumer, and then you’ve got your B2B business to business. Your simple retail, some of the characteristics there would be, like the fast food concepts. it’s a very large labor pool, very low, skills may be coming in. You’re able to train them up in a shift or two. Obviously, you’ve got the build-out, you’ve got the retail storefront locations, very important, the brand is very important. It’s very much a transaction oriented business. You don’t necessarily have to have a great sales skillset to run this business.
Complex retail, and that second quadrant would be very similar in a lot of ways, a lot of similar attributes. I would say the differentiator there is maybe your labor force has a little more skill coming in or a license or some background. So think about like a Meineke or a Maker, you’re hiring mechanics, or even like a massage, [inaudible 00:16:34] you’re hiring those to have a masseuse license. And so that’d be the differentiating dynamic there. The B2C services, that typically you don’t have to have a retail storefront. You may have a physical location, but that’s more on the back end, it’s not consumer facing.
Oftentimes, these are van based or home-based businesses where you can run remote thinking about the property services market. That’s one that we have an ownership in and are fond of. It’s been a booming $500 billion space with all sorts of segments within it. And home senior care, the silver tsunami is happening. And that’s another example where you’re selling to consumers. Typically, these businesses are less expensive to get into than your brick and mortar retail businesses. You’re also able to ramp up faster, so those would be a few other characteristics. They are potentially a little more sales oriented. it’s not sales oftentimes, it’s much more consultative sales, but then you’ve got to enjoy working with people even more so in that one.
And then B2B services, similarly, you don’t necessarily have a retail storefront, but you’re selling to businesses, that would be the differentiator there. And that could be everything from cleaning and corporate maintenance to payroll and accounting type firms. Now, you think of a business like a Servpro, that’s one that would straddle and serve both consumers and businesses. So you do have some hybrids out there, but by and large, most businesses tend to fall into one of those four quadrants. And what I’m seeing out there today is a lot of interest really in, what would be deemed essential services, where those non-sexy niches that people say, “Hey, I don’t have to have a flamboyant, the next big brand, instead, I’d love to work with an emerging franchiser, discuss some great territory availability that has a proven profitable model, and it’s going to support me.”
But whether that’d be roll-off dumpsters, or whether that’d be a laundromat, or whether that’d be a pool cleaning business, or a roofing company, those are the ones that I see a lot of people gravitating towards, especially right now.

J:
Yeah. I love that. And given that much of our audience is real estate investors who are looking for either a primary or secondary stream of income and maybe considering franchising, you touched on a number of things that would actually make a lot of sense in this business. You mentioned the approach-serve type business. So Carol and I, we own a mold remediation and water remediation business because it’s adjacent to our real estate business. You mentioned roll-off dumpsters and roofing companies, and I imagine HVAC companies. So there are a lot of things that I guess we all tend to gravitate in the franchise world to fast food, McDonald’s and Subway, because those are the ones we encounter in our everyday lives, maybe 30 times a day.
But as real estate investors, there may be some better opportunities for us that are more aligned with our core real estate business. So are there advantages to those types of service business, those B2C or B2B businesses as opposed to the simpler complex retail? Is there a checklist? What should we be asking ourselves when trying to decide which of those four quadrants we want to lean towards?

Jon:
There’s so many different dynamics and factors to go into it. And I do find that some people are wired to say, “Hey, I’d much rather have a physical location.” I had a client at Saturday, we were at the grand opening of her location. She said, “I like having a place that I can go.” Other people say, “Hey, I love not having to sign a five-year lease and put a personal guarantee behind it.” So a lot of it comes down to the risk, and I say, how risk averse someone is, and really how open they are to new industries. So I’d say that’s another factor. A lot of people did not… This little kids say, “I want to own a mold remediation company someday.” But once they say, “Hey, wait a minute, this service isn’t going anywhere, it’s going to be around.”
You can make some money doing it, I’d put my business owner hat, and I like what that day-to-day looks like, I like the types of interactions that we have, the relationships with the insurance companies and such, then that’s… What I like to do with clients is peel back the onion, and we really dig in deep, what do you want that day-to-day to look? How much time can you commit per week? Where are the things you enjoy doing? Don’t enjoy doing that, you want to have on your plate, off your plate over time? Early on, you’re rolling up your sleeves, you’re getting dirty. So I’d say, there’s a lot of different factors that go into that aspect, but it’s interesting, you mentioned on the real estate side, I’ve got a large client right now that owns a bunch of Keller Williams brokerages.
And in his case, he’s saying, “Hey, I’d love to have something that compliments that,” thinking very much like you guys and what you did. And so he’s looking at some house painting franchises, he’s actually looking at that roll off dumpster, one that I mentioned, but some of the other ones that he considered were all in that like appraisers or staging-type franchises too. So there are a lot of different sectors out there that could be a great compliment to real estate.

J:
I love that. I’m going to ask a really blunt question, because I know a lot of our listeners are probably asking this to themselves right now. We know that with a business that we start ourselves and grow ourselves the sky’s the limit in terms of revenue and profit, for a franchise, how much money can we typically expect to make? And I know that’s a loaded question, the answer is all over the board, but in general. So for our listeners that are thinking, “I might want to do this, but can I make a lot of money doing it?” What’s the answer?

Jon:
Absolutely. And I bucketize that into a few things. So one, what does that income stream that you can generate? Is it 100,000 a year, bottom line profit? Is it 200? Is it 300?Those are conversations that we oftentimes have. And what’s been eye-opening to a lot of people that I talk with is, hey, you can make some really attractive margins, especially for me coming from the corporate world where I learned, oh, the EBITDA, end of the day operating margin, post royalty can be between 20% or 50%. That’s very attractive, some businesses are close to that 50%. I’m an investor in a Driveway Repair franchise, and the margins on that business are hovering around 50%. I love it. A lot of businesses though fall in that 20 to 30 range, which is a good paycheck if you’re generating some revenue.
So that would be number one. Number two would be, and I had to remind my wife of this when I went into entrepreneurship is, if I’m making 250,000 in salary versus 250,000 profit over here as an entrepreneur, there are a lot of expenses I can write off. There’s a lot of other dynamics and benefits that I get where it’s not necessarily apples to apples, your benefit as a small business owner. And then finally, it’s something that I remind people all the time because they forget, is you’re building an asset. You’re not just buying a job, you’re not just buying into an income stream, you’re building an asset that as long as you perform halfway decent, you should be able to exit at a value well above what you originally invested.
I’ve got some clients that say, “Hey, I only want to look at resales.” And what I find oftentimes is there’s not a lot of resales out there because people tend to hang onto these businesses. But the ones that I do see are going for four times EBITDA, six times EBITDA, which could be a really nice payday down the road. So you’re building an asset, there’s an investment aspect to it too.

Carol:
Very cool. Jon, who are you seeing with all these different aspects of the franchise, the franchise opportunities? who are the different types of populations that you are seeing having an interest in this? Are there certain demographics that seem to be fairing the best, certain types of people that seem to be gravitating toward this direction? And maybe even if there’s any way we can talk about in terms of this past year, if maybe that has shifted with the way everybody’s just overall life situation has been affected?

Jon:
Fantastic questions. You’ve got millennials, you’ve got Gen X, you’ve got the baby boomers. I’d say historically, baby boomers, that 50 something, 60 something we’re a large segment, they still are, but we now see generation X actually, roughly half of all franchise deals being done, it’s gen X, it’s that late 30s to early 50s segment. And then baby boomers and millennials would account for the other components, and they’re all growing, the sea is rising, all boats are going up. So to get to your question about the types of franchisee, what I see oftentimes, especially this year, there’s fears of the job loss, or maybe someone has lost their job.
So that would be a natural right there that, hey, I don’t want to go work for someone else, maybe I’ve got a little too much gray in my hair to go interview again, I’d like to be a business owner, I’ve always wanted to do that. But then there’s a very large segment too that have said, “Hey, the stock market’s up here at an all-time high, interest rates are down here, maybe only so many good real estate deals that I have exposure to, where else can I invest?” And they were looking for those side income streams. From an investment standpoint, oftentimes they can put in 10 to 15, 20 hours a week, build up over time and then eventually make that entrepreneurial leap into the business.
So I see a lot of that going on, I’m personally in my early ’40s, I’ve got a lot of clients in their 30s and 40s that are saying, hey, COVID’s allowed me some time to sit back, think about the path I’m on. Maybe I do want to make a shift or as we would call it in 2020, a pivot and go a new direction. So I’d say COVID has opened up a lot of people’s eyes, our deals that are being done are up significantly year over year, especially for the past three or four months. Now people are getting a little more comfortable about the vaccine and everything else going on. So there’s a lot of interest and there’s a lot of people buying into that interest.

J:
That’s great. I want to set expectations because I know a lot of people that I talk to talk about starting a business, or buying a business. We talk a lot about buying businesses on the show, which is somewhat similar to buying into a franchise and is probably a little bit further removed from starting your own business. One of the big questions we always get is, what are the opportunities for passive business ownership? So if I buy into a franchise, should I expect that I’m going to be working 50, 100, 120 hours a week for the first year or five or 10? Or is there some way to cut that down? Can I still make decent margins and a decent profit if I want to run a business, a franchise passively?
And I guess leading into that, my next question, but I’ll ask now, because maybe it factors in, but scaling, should I be thinking about buying two or five or 10 franchises the day I buy that first one, and does that factor into my ability to scale and operate passively?

Jon:
Excellent question. I’ll start out by saying, if you’re buying a franchise, it’s not passive, there is no true passive opportunity unless you have your son-in-law that’s going to run the business, that’s signing the agreement with you. Now, there’s some that if you have that strong GM in place from day one, it could be almost passive, but still is not entirely passive. And so that is a misnomer that I think some people have out there, and so I always want to clarify that it takes work. It is a semi absentee opportunity, which does exist with a lot of businesses. It really is how comfortable are you with bringing someone on staff to run that business for you, and at what juncture. Is it pre-profitability? Is it three months in six months in?
So that’s an individual situation, but far as the multiples go, it is very common in franchising to buy what we would call a three pack or a five pack or a seven pack. And so you go in, you’re buying a defined territory, and you may open up that first location or that first territory day one, and then six months down the road, you open up number two, 12 months from now, you open up number three. And so you have a development schedule planned out that make sense to not do it all on day one, but it allows you to really take over a large chunk of the market and have protected territories. From an upfront standpoint, you do get a deal, typically that second territory and third territory is a little less if you were to buy them upfront.
So very, very common to go with that path. And that’s the question I talk with clients about all the time is, would you rather go deep with this one brand in this one sector, or do you like the idea of maybe buying into another business that could either compliment it or diversify from it? And so that’s a strategy to them, that’s what my partner has done here in Atlanta, where we own three different home services businesses, all very complimentary, pool cleaning company, home cleaning company, and carpet cleaning company. We’re able to get a lot of referrals and cross selling on the front end. On the backend, we get economies of scale with the shared services. So it really comes down to the individual and what they’re looking for and what they want their involvement to be.

Carol:
Excellent. I would love to know, Jon, there are so many opportunities, and I especially love what you just said about the opportunities to buy into adjacent different franchises, where you get referrals from each other, where you can share your workforces, all of those shared things to grow even more successfully. I’m curious though, how do I go about getting the money to do all of these different franchises? That seems like a lot of financing would have to be available in some way, shape or form. Can you talk us more through how that works?

Jon:
The costs are just detail, right, Carol? That’s a great question. And that does prohibit some people from buying in. Several paths are very common with enfranchising. And I’ll say a trend I’m seeing right now is a lot of self-funded deals. Again, a lot of people have capital on sidelines and it does have a great home, it’s terrible problem to have, I know, but they’re looking to still fund the deals. So I’m seeing that is a big trend, but SBA loans have historically been a very large component of funding. Right now I will say the SBA process is pretty cumbersome and taking a while and not a lot of fun. So people oftentimes are shying away from that if they can, but that is definitely still an avenue.
Another one that is very, very popular is the 401(k) or IRA rollovers. So we call them ROBS plan, Benetrends runs them, Guidant Financial, FranFund, Tenet Financial. A lot of large institutions run this program that allows you to receive tax benefits by not being penalized and rolling over your 401(k) or IRA to fund the business. And there’s a few steps you have to go through, setting up a C-corp and handling things a little bit different, but it allows you to avoid that tax penalty, to use your retirement funding, which for a lot of people with the price and stock market, is a great avenue right now.

J:
And the cool thing about those ROBS plan are a lot of people think when they’re doing stuff out of their 401(k) or IRA, they think, “Okay, all that money has to roll back in and I can’t touch it till I’m 65.” With those ROBS plans that you talked about, you’re actually required to take a distribution and a part of your salary or a salary every year. So it’s a way to basically use your 401(k) or your IRA to pay yourself money every year to generate income that you can actually live on, it doesn’t necessarily just need to be rolled back into your IRA the way most plans are.

Jon:
Great point, yeah.

J:
Awesome. I know that you do some other types of matchmaking in the franchise world, and it’s around the financing area. So I know there’s another way that people who are looking to get into a franchise, buy into a franchise, can potentially get the money for it. Can you talk a little bit about the other side of things and what you do there?

Jon:
Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, FranBridge Consulting is our core business, the consulting side where we play matchmaker on the business to the entrepreneur. On the capital side, we have FranBridge Capital. And I have to say, we’re early into this, we’ve done a few deals now, but I don’t want to position it that it’s something that it’s not. We ourselves have brought in some outside investors to participate in the franchises that we are franchisees of. And then I’ve had the opportunity now to bring in several investors that are looking for a true passive opportunity. Maybe they want to sit on that quarterly board call, or they want to have that annual shareholder meeting, and maybe provide a little advice from sideline, but they really don’t want to be involved in the business, but they love the idea of diversifying, seeing franchising as an asset class, if you will.
So looking to diversify some of that capital on the sidelines, put it behind. Oftentimes, some younger folks that may be in a position, oftentimes, it could be military veterans that have all the skillsets, great background, but they don’t have the capital on the sidelines to deploy, and so they come behind them. And so I see a huge opportunity there, I will say, we’re in the earlier stages, so testing a few different ways of going about it, but I do see more of that happening on the private side. I’ve got a call at eight o’clock tomorrow morning with some clients in Charlotte, North Carolina, where there was a group of four. Two are very senior in their careers, they’ve got a lot of money to invest, and then we’ve got two young guns that they’re looking to put the money behind.
So it is neat when you’re able to pull that together on your own, but that’s something that we’re looking to help facilitate as well going forward.

Carol:
Wow. There are so many amazing facets to this, and every time you answer a question, you keep dropping all these awesome new, just knowledge bombs. Love it. And I think so many things are so massively eye-opening to our listeners, just something you mentioned there about the group of four in Charlotte, North Carolina, what a great opportunity when you’ve got people at different points in their careers who may have different skill sets and just seeing what they’re able to do together through franchising. I think there’s so many great avenues. That said, there are so many different things to take into consideration you mentioned before, the type of franchise, the adjacent franchises, the financing, working with other people, it’s frankly, a little bit overwhelming.
There are so many things to take into consideration. So I’m curious, Jon, for audience members, do you have just a recommended, step-by-step almost playbook on if one of us were interested in perhaps going the franchise route, where we would even begin?

Jon:
Yeah, absolutely. And in the spirit of franchising, we do have a playbook around this process as well. So we’ve tried to streamline a process to make it as efficient and effective as possible, and it’s really been proven out over time. And what that looks, and there are others out there certainly that do what we do, but the way that we go about it is we have an intro call, get to know the individual and help them understand, is franchising viable for them? Would they be a good fit for a franchise system? Do we see the success based on their background, based on they who they are and what they’re looking to do? So we’re able to help them understand that very quickly.
And then from there, have them fill out a form, it takes about 10 minutes, but it’s things you like, things you don’t like, what is your financial position. It’s confidential, but it gives me a good snapshot of where they are from that. We then spend about 45 minutes to an hour on a call, a consultation call, shed light on a lot of things that we’re seeing out in franchising today, but really the whole goal of that call is to get to know them. So I’m asking them a lot of questions, I’m asking them about… A lot of it comes down to risk tolerance, are you okay with larger franchise or just smaller ones? Here are the pros and cons of each. There’s just a lot of different dynamics that we get into.
From there, I put together a profile of where I see the opportunities fitting for them. I then go out to the franchisers, work to see what territory availability we have for their targeted area. And typically, I’ll start out, I’ve got 15 in mind and then I narrow it down based on territory availability and such, and pick the best four, five, six opportunities for them to consider. So it’s taken us universe of 4,000 franchise bringing us down to a 300 vetted ones down to really a curated sort of four to six on average that I take them through. We spent about an hour on a video call, we look at the websites, I share with them what’s really going on behind the scenes, are they doing a lot of deals? Here’s what the leadership team looks like, here’s what your day-to-day would look like.
Here’s the item seven, what is your all in costs? What are the startup costs and such? And we get into the detail on that with the goal of narrowing it down to two, maybe three at most. And then simply have an introduction call with the franchiser where I introduce them. They have that call, they’re not obligated to a second call, but it allows them to hear about the opportunity from the franchiser’s perspective, who really is the expert. And then if they feel that’s a good match and the franchiser feels it could be a good match, then they’ll then have a series of calls in which they review the FDD, the disclosure document of which they look at territorial availability, in which they go through their brand presentations, ultimately culminating what’s called a discovery day.
And they’re talking to other franchisees along the way, understanding from a validation standpoint, but culminating and discovery day that they then get to meet all franchiser’s team members and such, and ultimately deciding if they want to sign an agreement or not. And I help them along the way, help them with the legal review and the funding side, and just serve as a sounding board, process I love going through and we found it to be the most effective one for someone that’s coming in with an interest.

Carol:
That sounds fantastic, and you clearly have it streamlined so that someone like me isn’t just running around all over the place trying to evaluate all the different components. You have all the aspects and facets worked out into this great streamline system. One of the things that you’ve mentioned several times during that process, as well as other parts of our questioning, you’ve talked a bunch about territory availability. I’m curious, again, a lot of our audience members are real estate investors, and we talk a good bit about sometimes the advantages of being physically in that space where you’re investing, but the opportunities that are sometimes available in remote location, where you’re not physically present.
Would you be able to talk to us a little bit more Jon, about how that applies to franchising? Is it super important that we are physically located in those territories that are available and/or are there still opportunities, or pros and cons about doing a franchise that only has territory availability somewhere you’re not necessarily located?

Jon:
All the above. I’ll give two examples there. One, a client of mine, Nathan Bocock in Columbia, South Carolina, he’s the largest owner of TWO MEN AND A TRUCK, the moving franchise. He operates in about 10, 11 markets, young guy, late 30s, has done very well. But he’s got essentially, I call them his lieutenants in each of these markets. And we’ve actually done two deals this past year together on other brands that he’s brought into his portfolio. They’re in remote markets and he’s got his lieutenants running this, he’s given them some equity and letting them run them. Then he trusts them, he’s raised them up.
But then I’ve got another client here in Atlanta that fell in love with the concept I showed him, it’s called smash my trash. It’s a big old truck with crane arm on the back, and it goes up to roll off dumpsters and smashes down the waste to about one third of the original size and save two or three trips to the landfill. Anyway, I can talk about that business any day, it’s really, really cool one. Anyway, Atlanta was sold out. He’s a 42-year-old wealth manager, wealth advisor here in Atlanta. And he actually made the decision, “Let’s move the family down to Fairhope, Alabama, Mobile, Pensacola.” That whole Gulf area down there where he saw some very viable opportunity, but he was up against a few others that wanted that same territory even down there.
So ultimately, it came down to the franchiser who were saying, “Hey, we think you can do the best job of farming our land if you will in that territory.” And so, it really comes down to the individual, to their situation, whether they’re open to moving. Oftentimes, they’re not, I’d say that’s more of a rare case, but if you have good people, again, that’s where it comes down to. If you’re able to hire good people and you trust them, and you incentivize them correctly, whether it be through equity or profit sharing, then it’s absolutely a possibility to operate in a remote market.

J:
I love that. And often, people might laugh when you think, “Oh, I’m going to move just to start a franchise,” when there’s million possibilities for franchising no matter where you are, but Carol and I, in the real estate space are constantly telling people that if you want to get into real estate, sometimes where you are, isn’t the best place to be for what you want to do. And you have to ask yourself the question, is it more important that I am where I am, or is it more important that I’m able to do what I want to do? And there’s no right or wrong answer to that. And for some people, in some situations, moving is a perfectly viable choice because it’s more important that you get to do what you want to do, not necessarily where you are.
For other people, being where you are is more important, and then you just have to change what you’re going to do. So I think that answer probably resonates with a lot of people that are listening to the show because it’s the same advice that we give to our real estate investors. Make that decision, do you want to be where you are? Or do you want to do what you want to do? And then go from there? Okay. Let’s think a little bit further down the road. Let’s say, I buy a franchise or I buy into a franchise, let’s say, I open two or three or five different franchises, either the same brand or different adjacent brands. And let’s say, I do this for five or 10, or 20, or 25 years.
And at some point I’m going to want to do something different or I’m going to want to retire, or I’m going to want to move. What are exit strategies look like in the franchise world? What a typical people who have been in a franchise for some period of time and decide now is the time for me to move on, what are the options for those people?

Jon:
Yeah, absolutely. And again, if you run it halfway decent, you should be able to sell that business as soon it’s still a viable business. And it depends on the type of business really dictates, it’s not just the revenue in the margins, but what type of business, is it capital intensive? Is there a lot of equipment that comes with the businesses? Is there any intellectual property that would keep competition out of that territory? If it’s retail, is it going to require a remodel or revamping of the team. All those factors play in, but whether you work through a business broker or just buy sell, or you’re advertising in your local community, letting it be known, and the franchiser will help you oftentimes as well.
And ultimately I’d say, the difference between selling a regular business and selling your franchise, the franchiser does have to approve that buyer. Usually that’s not an issue, but of course, it could be if you’re selling it to some crazy that’s going to take their brand and destroy it. I’d say, it’s very typical with one difference being, you get that leverage of the franchise brand, where they get the exposure out there. They may have a lot of candidates that have shown interest in that territory over the years, but it was sold to you, and now you’re able to go back and find an immediate lead list to target.

Carol:
Excellent. Take us into 2021. What are you feeling strongly about? What are the trends you’re seeing? Where does the most opportunity lie? What are the sectors that are going to be doing in your opinion, the best in the world of franchising moving forward?

Jon:
Yeah, since we all know exactly how 2021 is going to play out. I’m sorry not to be a forecaster, but I will say some of the macro trends that we just have to be cognizant of, one, you’ve got this aging population and the silver tsunami, 10,000 people turning 65 every day, that’s not going anywhere. So what are those services that cater to them? Not just the in-home care, but also there are certain fitness concepts that cater to them, there’s certain medical related concepts. There’s certain whether it be wheelchair, ramps and stair lifts, and chairlifts businesses. And so I’d say that’s a category that’s got to continue doing well.
I do think property services and home services will continue booming, it was doing well prior to COVID. In many cases, it’s deemed an essential service, the different aspects there. And so lots of interests there. So I see that continuing to do well. Health and wellness is definitely a space. I mentioned that grand opening Saturday, it was for an IV drip business, and they’re able to administer a COVID concoction, the IV level or cellular level, that fights free radicals, that boost your immunity, that reduces heavy metals in your blood. The focus on health and wellness is only growing exponentially. So what are those concepts that have a unique that can go into that niche and really exploit it?
So I’d say that’s another one. I personally still like a lot of businesses, I mentioned it once or twice now, the roll-off dumpsters. Those kinds of businesses that are non-sexy, that are attracting people right and left. So those are a few, I think fitness will start coming back, everyone wanted to be the next Orangetheory. Boutique fitness was growing exponentially in 2019 heading into the first part of 2020, obviously they faced some road bumps, created a lot of concern around who will be the strong ones, the ones that survive. So I think there’ll be some shifting around there. Definitely see that as an opportunity, maybe in the latter part of 2021.
Again, I know within food, there’s going to be opportunities, that’s just a space that I have chosen not to focus on, so I can focus on these other ones.

J:
Do you ever think about, I’m trying to think the best way to phrase this, economic cycles? So clearly, there are times where the economy is going to be a little bit more favorable to certain types of businesses than others, and they’re going to be other times where economy is favorable to other types of businesses. Do you ever think about where the economy is headed and recommend that people focus on certain types of franchises, or is it more of a franchise is a long-term play and the economic cycles are ultimately going to come and go and so you just play through it? How do you think about that?

Jon:
Yeah, absolutely. I think of discretionary spending, so even within that property services space, plumbing, you’re not going to not unclog your drains in a downturn, but you may choose not to do the home remodel. So that’d be an example there. And that’s why I like the senior space because that’s one that isn’t going anywhere that people have to have that. So yeah, that definitely comes into play, what is discretionary? What is not discretionary? As far as how people think about things, where are those macro trends? And this is interesting on the resale side, from a large standpoint, you’re baby boomers, aging, coming up to age, a lot of them are business owners today.
A lot of them will be selling their businesses. We’ve been really in a seller’s market since 2015. The multiples that we’ve been getting, and typically it fluctuates every five to seven years, but since 2015, we’ve seen small businesses in the seller’s market, we anticipate in the first half of next year to start seeing that change as boomers are exiting their businesses, there’s going to be more supply than demand, prices will come down. So I think there’s going to be a lot of resale opportunities for buyers coming in as well.

J:
Okay. Then that leads me into my next question, I really appreciate this because I hadn’t even thought about that until you just said what you said, but as somebody who might want to buy into a franchise, is there a difference for me, should I be focusing on whether I buy a new franchise in a new territory directly from the franchiser, versus buying out somebody who’s actually exiting the business maybe because they’re going to retire, or they’re having health issues, or they’re going to move, or maybe the operator passed away? As somebody that’s thinking about buying a franchise, what should I be thinking about in terms of whether I go a brand new store routes versus buying somebody out?

Jon:
Yeah, absolutely. The benefits of buying into a resale as I’m terming it and operating businesses, you can probably hit the ground running faster, get to profitability faster, there’s an awareness of that brand, of that business in the local market. The downside would be, you probably are paying a little bit more than you would from a greenfield, startup standpoint. You may have legacy team members that you don’t necessarily want, what did we hire? If it was up to you. So you’re maybe not able to put your thumb prints all over it quite as much. So there are pros and cons, both ways.
I do have some clients, I would say it’s the minority of clients, but I do have some that say, “Hey, I only want to look at existing businesses.” But I do think that dynamic could change, I mean, it’s part of the economic cycle, is part of the coming of age of the baby boomers. I think there will be a lot of opportunity for more existing businesses. And I think oftentimes, those may be more strategic purchases too, where they’re able to bolt it onto an existing business, so maybe more complimentary as well.

J:
That’s awesome. And honestly, I’d never even thought about that, I guess when I think about somebody starting a franchise, you always typically think about, you go to the franchiser, you talk about a new territory and you’d do a build-out and you hire your own team. But I guess for some people, having that, even more of a business in a box where you can literally come into a hired team and in a running store and on day one, you’re generating income as opposed to basically starting up on your own, that’s an option for those that may see that as an advantage.

Jon:
And I was going to mention, you were asking about exit strategies earlier, that’s another one that comes into play often times is, here in Atlanta, that Driveway business, there’s four franchise owners in Atlanta. Well, at some point, someone’s going to say, “Hey, I really love this business, I’m doing better than the rest,” and they’re going to approach the others about buying their business. So when you do have multiple owners in a market, there’s that potential for the merging and that’s a natural exit right there.

J:
Let me ask you one more follow-up question on that, do we typically, or do you typically see or ever see distressed franchisees that are looking to sell because they’re just tired, their businesses aren’t doing well, selling at a discount and somebody that’s really entrepreneurial or more entrepreneurial than maybe a typical franchisee who says, I can come in, I can turn that store around, buy it cheap, and then have an opportunity if they’re really smart and really good to turn it around, are those the types of stores that the franchiser will take over and say, “Okay, let’s start from scratch”?

Jon:
Yeah. In most cases, the franchiser would rather not take it back because that’s something they have to then reflect on their FDD that they especially had a closure, if you will. Now, there are different ways to categorize that, we have to look at, but ultimately, they would love to find another owner. So if it’s a viable owner, that’s approaching them, they’ll oftentimes help facilitate that sale. I stood a deal here in the Southeast with a client of mine that was a resale of a distressed fitness location, was a kickboxing-type studio, and they were able to get it for probably the quarter on the dollar for the equipment on what went into it originally.
They’re pretty much starting at ground zero, but they have the build out and they have the equipment. So I probably painted a little bit too rosy of a picture here today because I get really excited and by and large, you see successful franchise owners out there. There are definitely those cases where ultimately it comes down to the individual, and again, their ability to hire and retain talent and manage that aspect, that if they don’t have that, then those are the ones that may fail, and have to look for a distress sale, if you will.

J:
Awesome. Well, this has been tremendously enlightening, but we are getting to that point in the show, the final segment that we call the four more, and that’s where we’re going to ask you the same four questions that we ask all of our guests. And then the more part of the four more, we’re going to let you tell our listeners where they can find out more about you, and your business, and your services. Sound good?

Jon:
Perfect. Sounds great.

J:
Okay. Then I will take the first question. Jon, what was your very first or your very worst job and what lessons did you take from it that you’re still using today?

Jon:
The very first job would be bagging groceries at local grocery store in [inaudible 00:50:43], but I’d say my first real job was in consulting. It was a large consulting firm coming out of college and ultimately, got into a role that was very IT related and coding, and I did not like it at all, but I learned very quickly how to play to my strengths and serve more on project management side, work with the IT individuals. And so I helped position it and design a role for myself that was neat and that made sense. And the biggest lesson for me coming out of that was, “Hey, stick with it, grind it, don’t quit. Find a way to make it work, knowing that it’s not a forever thing.”

Carol:
I love that. Thank you. Here’s my second question. What is the best piece of advice you have Jon for small business owners, or entrepreneurs, or potential franchisees that you haven’t yet mentioned today?

Jon:
Absolutely. I think it’s easy, especially as a business owner to become very introspective and very focused on yourself and what you’re doing. I think realizing it’s not just about us, but there’s a bigger world out there and looking for ways to give back. And I think businesses that do good, do well. I try to subscribe to the theory, to who much is given, much is expected. It’s a verse from the Bible and that’s how I try to live my life. And I think if you can be a good steward of the opportunity, the opportunity as a business owner, the opportunity of the profits you’re making, the influence you have during the community, then it will be good in a lot of ways, it will be good for business as well.

J:
Businesses that do good, do well. I absolutely love that. Question number three, and this is where I typically ask, and I’m going to ask, what your favorite book out there is for business owners or prospective, aspiring business owners that maybe not everybody has heard about, but I’m also going to give you an opportunity because I know you have a book coming out in the next couple of months. So I’ll give you an opportunity if you want to talk a little bit about what that’s going to be about. And then I still want to hear your best book recommendation for somebody that’s looking to pick up a book today.

Jon:
Yeah. I’m really excited about the launch of my book in Q1. I filtered a lot in the process, you’re writing the book, and I created a fictional tale that teaches a lot of franchise principles. So think of like Patrick Lencioni, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, kind of a similar way. I’ve got three young guys that are interested in business ownership, one decides to go with traditional tech startup, one gets cold feet and stays in the corporate world, and the one that goes down the franchise path. And so it picks up their story every five years along the way and how that plays out with their families, and really excited about getting that out the door.
It’s done, it just has to literally get out the door, last couple of steps possible.

J:
Awesome. Do you have a title for it yet?

Jon:
The Franchise Path.

J:
The Franchise Path. Awesome. We’ll be on the lookout for it. Now, I am going to come back to the question that I normally ask though, if you had to recommend a great business book out there that we should all be reading, what’s your favorite? What’s your recommendation?

Jon:
I’ve re-read this one multiple times, it’s Darren Hardy’s, The Compound Effect, and it’s the whole idea, atomic habits, this is very similar in some regards. It’s doing the little things on a daily basis that really have that cumulative value over time. So small deposits add up to big things, and it’s just a great reminder to me whether I’m parenting my kids, whether I’m doing the little things in the business that I know over time will matter even if you don’t see the results on a daily basis. So that would be my favorite book.

Carol:
Love it. And it sounds like that’s such a great one and so many different aspects of life. That’s fantastic. Our fourth and my favorite fun question for you, Jon is, what is something along the way, so either in your work life or your home life, that you have splurged on, that was totally an entirely worth it?

Jon:
I joined the Entrepreneurs’ Organization about three years ago, EO, and that has just been a great ride. And I wouldn’t say that was the splurge, that was an investment, but we take two retreats every year and one of them is international. So I’ve got seven other business owners in my forum, we get together monthly, and every February, March timeframe, we’ll take a big trip. International. Last year we went to Costa Rica, we got in right before COVID, we were surfing and doing all sorts of scuba diving and such. And before that was Spania. This year we’re headed out to Colorado, so we’re keeping it domestic, but we’re going to take a pretty extensive expedition with some world-class skiers there are back with the Colorado.
So I’m really excited, every trip that we splurge on like that just pays dividends in spades, and you come back with ideas, you come back encouraged and really motivated to get out after that next year.

J:
That’s awesome. I love that, Jon. So that was the four part of the four more, now for the more part of the four more, can you tell our listeners where they can find out more about you, where they can find out more about FranBridge Consulting, FranBridge Capital, how they can connect with you or anything else you want to let them know.

Jon:
Absolutely. We would love to speak with any of you that are interested in learning more about franchising, the different opportunities out there and what that looks like. We’ve got the website, FranBridge Consulting, where you can get some more information, feel free to reach out to me directly. Jon, J-O-N, no H, [email protected]. And I would love to set up a brief intro call and have a discussion and get to know you, as well as feel free to subscribe to our newsletter, it comes out once or twice a month, connect with me on LinkedIn. I love talking about this topic and would love to help in any way.

J:
Jon, this has been amazing. I know a lot of our listeners out there, I’ve gotten questions about franchising all the time, and this was tremendously informative, you basically walked us through the process. And so I hope anybody that’s interested in considering franchising, they’ll reach out to you and they get more information. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your expertise and your knowledge, and your experience, and we look forward to talking to you again soon.

Jon:
It was a pleasure. Thanks J. Thanks Carol.

J:
Thanks so much.

Carol:
Oh my goodness. I know I always say, oh my goodness, but truly, how awesome was Jon in presenting franchising in such a clear way? I especially loved how he really laid out a clear blueprint on how to begin cutting through all the overwhelm that can go along with exploring franchises. And I love that he showed there are all these opportunities for us as real estate investors to look at franchise opportunities that are adjacent to our existing businesses and adjacent to one another to do cross marketing, cross promotions, shared workforces and so on, just so much outstanding information all the way through.

J:
Yeah, absolutely. And I especially love the quote he gave us towards the end of the show, businesses that do good, do well. And it factors right back into what we were saying in the intro here, it’s important for us to be doing good, not just personally, but in our businesses every day, because it does come back to us. Anyway, for anybody out there that is looking to or is considering jumping into the franchise world, I hope you’ll consider giving Jon a call, maybe checking out the book that he’s releasing next quarter, but that was just a tremendously informative episode.
But that said, I think we’re almost done here. Are we done here?

Carol:
I need to go eat some cookies, let’s rock and roll, baby.

J:
It’s Christmas week, it’s time to go to eat some cookie.

Carol:
Let’s do it.

J:
Everybody, thank you for tuning in, have an amazing holiday, whichever holiday or any holiday that you celebrate, have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah. And we will talk to you again next week here on the BiggerPockets Business Podcast. She’s Carol, I’m J.

Carol:
Now, get out there into even more good today. Happy holidays, everybody.

J:
Thanks everybody.

 

Watch the Podcast Here

In This Episode We Cover:

  • The different types of franchising businesses
  • The key benefits of running a franchise
  • The dangers of franchising that entrepreneurs should know
  • What type of profit margins you can make with franchising
  • How territories work when buying into a franchise
  • Taking over an existing franchise or starting a new one yourself
  • How to fund franchises (even with retirement accounts!)
  • The industries where franchises could be taking off in 2021
  • And So Much More!

Links from the Show

Books Mentioned in this Show:

Connect with Jon:

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.