Welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs, the podcast where we speak with business owners and entrepreneurs from around the world and from all walks of life in the hope that something you hear will leave your business a little richer. We’re your co hosts, Vicki and Laura from Two Four One Branding, supporting entrepreneurs as they launch their business to market. It's our favorite thing to do. Well, after chatting to our amazing, fantastic, fascinating phenomenal guests on this show, OK overkill Vicki! If listening to the show is one of your favourite things to do, please subscribe on whichever platform you're listening or watching on now and you'll be notified of the next great episode.
So Giuseppe Grammatico is our guest today. He is the founder of Franchise Freedom. We thought it would be interesting to chat with Giuseppe because there's all kinds of thoughts and beliefs around franchises and it will be great to have this conversation. Giuseppe’s mission is to help unhappy corporate executives become their own boss through full time franchise ownership or to scale up a lucrative side hustle or to build an investment portfolio through some unique ‘absentee ownership’ franchising models. Giuseppe it's great that you can join us, welcome.
Thanks, Vicki and Laura, I really appreciate it. I’m excited to be here.
Yeah we're excited to have you, thank you. I'm very interested in this conversation. I have some thoughts myself, I'm not gonna get into them right away but I do want to ask you, can you explain a little more about what you do and how it all works? Because I think there's a lot of,
people don't understand franchising as a whole, what does it mean? An owner that owns a big business, and then they franchise that out and it spreads across the country, etc. But can you give us a better definition than mine?
Sure, well, I start off with what we do is if you've ever had a job that you just didn't like, and you're looking for something else, and that something else may be a business, that's where we help, essentially franchising is a business on training wheels. It’s something where the infrastructure has been built for you, the systems, the processes have all been built for you so that you can run with that business and I talk about on the show, the unfair advantage you're able to get up and running in as little as 30 days from signing a franchise agreement. So a franchise is really your own business, and that's been a misconception where you own, the franchise company owns a part of it, you own a piece of it, a franchisee, so a franchise owner is someone that has their own legal entity, their own business, and they're essentially buying the licence, the system from the franchise company. So a McDonald's franchisee owns their business, it's 100% theirs, and in return they pay a royalty for the ongoing support from McDonald's and they're offering support, training, helping find employees and that kind of stuff. So a franchise really is that support mechanism and not everyone wants that. So it's really for the person that wants that support system and everything set up. Other people that I talk to like to really create everything from the ground up, including the colours and the logo and the fonts, and that's okay, as well but that's the key differentiator is really having the system and really kind of like I did when I started back in 2007, generating revenue literally day one after training.
I can definitely see what a great advantage that is. As a person who works with entrepreneurs, who is entrepreneur, the startup phase is the hardest, and it could be several years before you're even profitable when you're building from scratch. But my argument has always been: is a franchise owner an entrepreneur, or not? I mean, I want to say not, I want to say it's a business owner, and there's a difference between the two because for me, an entrepreneur is a person who creates something from scratch and does that whole startup thing. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
It's a very good question, and it's not about right or wrong, in my opinion. I think it's the outcome. So it's more of the label entrepreneur. It could be business owner, it could be a consultant, I'm a one man operation, is that truly a business? And actually I did a show on this, and I really said ‘everyone could make the argument and that's fine but really, it's the outcome.’ So what are you going for and with the franchise, the system is built for you. So with a startup, you develop everything, so that's pretty, we know what a startup is. On a franchise, you definitely have some autonomy and how you run the business so that the system is there. So going back to the example of McDonald's since that's global, everyone's heard of it, you're not going in with the intention to add pizza to the menu, unless they have pizza in McDonald's where you live, but in the US we don't have pizza, so you're not going there to change the menu, it's really to say, I'm going to follow the system because my ‘why’ is really to be not too involved in the business so that I can coach my my son's soccer games, which I became a soccer coach, or go to my daughter's Girl Scout and the pottery classes and all that kind of stuff. So, yes, you can become an entrepreneur, consultant, business owner, but at the end of the day, it's what is it? You can call it whatever you'd like, as long as it's getting you to your ‘why’ and that's how I kind of respond to it. But yes, there are going to be absolutely differences between the two.
Yeah, Giuseppe we also have had an episode on this show where we were talking to a very, very colourful chap, and he absolutely adamantly refused to call himself an entrepreneur because he called himself a consultant. It's different strokes for different folks, as you said, a bit of it is semantics. We like to play around with it a bit, obviously the name of the show is Resilient Entrepreneurs so we like to just dig around and be really curious about what entrepreneurship is, and what that leads to. I love your answer, that it's really about the outcome and your why and what is it that you're wanting to achieve. And ultimately, that's why we're all in business. Some people will be in business just to make money, others will be in business to make a difference, to move the needle for other people, to solve problems that aren't being solved by other businesses. So what problems do you solve in your business as you help people understand what franchises are?
So I don't sell anything, it's kind of the line that I use, so the problem I solve is getting people clear on their options. So I am a franchise consultant, that's how I get compensated directly from franchise brands, but in our conversations, not everyone is a good fit for franchising and not everyone's a good fit for business ownership, which is actually the first step and people like to bypass it and go am I a good fit for franchising. And I go, franchising is a business. So let's figure out if business ownership is a good fit. And sometimes, every box is checked off, and there's no funds to invest in the business. So a franchise is going to have a franchise fee whereas with a startup, maybe you can go a little bit less, you're not paying that fee. But I'm an investor, I'm a finance guy prior to franchising, so it's the time value of money and how quickly - will that startup take three years to get up and running? So I always look at it that way. But going back to business ownership, why are you doing it, and if you're doing it just for the money, I usually look for a little bit more than that, because money is definitely important but I also look for this, it has to be sustainable, right? You're gonna be living and breathing this business and if it's just for the money, why not just get a high paying job or go into sales or something like that? This is something you're going to be building, there's going to be resale value at the end of the day, your why is going to be different than my why, it may be to build a legacy for my family and for my kids to take over or it just made it be to make an impact in my community. So, everyone has different reasons, but really, my job is to say, ‘Why do you want to typically leave your job, it's education into ‘if you do leave your job hypothetically, you can keep that job and run a business on the side’, there are options around that as well. But it's more education, it's more your advocate and giving you all the angles, there’s the good, the bad, the inbetween and really making each person we work with decide on their own, knowing what you've heard today, knowing that you can invest $200,000 in a franchise and lose your investment as you can with any other business. Does that scare you? Does that keep you up at night? What will you do not to make that happen? So I like to challenge everyone I work with and once we get clear together that franchising may be a good fit, we work together, and if the money isn't there or the timing isn't right, we put together an action plan to check in every six months until maybe the liquidity or certain debts are paid off prior to making that investment.
So what kind of person is a really good fit for a franchise ownership?
A good fit, so someone that can follow a process, someone that is, we lay it out, we have a process when we work together, it's very simple. And then we introduce you to a franchise company. If you can't follow the process you are not going to be a good fit for the franchise. So for example, when I was working with someone, before having the introductory call with the brand they wanted to talk to all the franchisees in the system, and I go, it doesn't work that way. Technically, nothing could stop you, you could just go online and look them up, but if you want an introduction, it's done later. Why is it done later? You need to be educated on what the business and the opportunity is, and if it's a good fit, why start calling all these franchisees when maybe the brand or that specific business wasn't a good fit. So to follow the process, they're going to ask for financial information to make sure that you qualify and if that's going to be difficult in the very beginning, we've had franchise companies come back and just say, I know you feel this is personal information, but in order for us to help you… kind of like when you're buying a home, what's your budget, you're not gonna say a million bucks or 100 million bucks, it's gonna have to be some type of range, an openness to work with the franchise owner, follow a system, to have some money, a business is going to be some capital involved. So there's going to be a time commitment as well, this isn't a set it and forget it. Whatever franchise you look at, there's going to be a lot of work, regardless of the franchise, to learn the business, hire the staff, go to training and things like that. So it's really setting the expectation, like, this is what it looks like. This isn't kind of you just drop, put money into the fund and then the company runs itself. So really setting the expectation, and then they work directly with the franchise companies and if the franchise companies see any red flags, they'll bring it up, either they'll bring it up to me or directly to that person, And that's not a bad thing by the way, the red flag is, this person is really introverted, they're kind of scared of their own shadow I jokingly say, we really want someone more of an extrovert, more going out there and selling and just the personality traits probably aren't a good fit for this particular franchise. So that's what I like about franchising, they really know who's a good fit for that specific franchise.
And Giuseppe you talked, or I think we talked in the intro about absentee ownership franchising models, is there such a thing? Or are you still very much involved at some level?
Yeah, so there's three levels, there's full time ownership, that's where basically you're leaving a job diving in full time, some franchise companies require that at least initially, to get the business off the ground.
The most popular are what we call semi absentee, and there's so many different, semi absentee, semi passive, and really all that means in its simplest terms, keeping your job and running a business on the side. Now, there are many businesses that fall in this area, but you really have to know what you're looking for in these specific brands, just because they say they're semi absentee, you want to challenge that. And what I tell people is, there's two key areas, the franchisor and then there's usually a manager component. The franchisor is basically what are you offering me to make this semi absentee? So things we see are turnkey marketing, we have an in house turnkey marketing program where you don't have to worry about marketing, aside from overseeing the KPIs and the spend and making sure your ROI is there. And those leads, where are they going to? In the past that were going to a voicemail because the owner was out in the field working, or a manager who was out in the field working so now they're going to a call centre? Again, that's at the headquarters of the franchisor. So what does that do? Well, as far as the investment, you don't need an office, you don't need to hire all these people because you're essentially having the franchisor provide that for a fee, there's going to be a flat fee for that so support is going to be huge. And on the flip side, just as equally, and this is the area I see 90%+ people that I work with, not really look into this area, or forget about this area, it's the manager. The manager is not just ‘Okay, someone running the day to day,’ it's someone running the day to day that knows exactly what your schedule is. So if you are working in an office nine to five and can't be bothered, that manager has to be empowered to make certain decisions, because at 9am they get an email from an irate customer they can't wait until 5pm, eight hours later for a response. So that manager has to be freed, has to be empowered to make decisions and know when they can work with you, what the expectations are. So I think that's the area that's missed for the most part. So those two key criteria make it semi absentee.
Lastly, semi, what we call semi passive is a new area, we see a lot of money coming from Wall Street as an alternative investment. These are businesses that are similar to the hotel industry where there's a management structure in place. So what happens is you buy a home service type of business, you pay an additional management fee, which is typically a percentage of the gross revenue and the franchisor, as well as the General Manager will run the day to day for you, allowing you to own the business anywhere in the country, and will allow you to simply check in, just say weekly or every other week via zoom call, just to check in on things. You still own the business but it's for someone that just really has minimal time to invest in the business. So that's something new, there are few options in that area but I see that area growing in the next couple years. So it exists, but it's kind of like what is the right fit for me, and who's truly out of all these companies, who is, there’s 4000 brands in the US, I don't know about globally. So it's like which are the ones that are truly going to support me given my current situation and that takes time to really go down and do that due diligence.
Do you think it's important that the franchise owner has a passion for whatever it is that they're gonna be going into business with?
No. Not at all. I think I've learned that the hard way. The passion piece, in my opinion, everyone has a different opinion but I feel very, very strongly about this. Passion, I think is, I think people look at it the wrong way. And I'll give you an example. There's a story and I won't name names of brands or anything, but golf for example. There were some executives that worked on Wall Street that were very passionate about golf. They played golf every day, they wanted their own business, so they bought a golf franchise - to never play golf again. So what's the moral of the story? The moral of the story is what business are you truly in and sometimes when you look at the sport of golf, which I'm not a fan of, I know I may get boo’s for that but I'm not into golf, but I'm more of a soccer guy. As far as golf goes, they got into a retail business that worked nights, weekends, holidays, that had tons of turnover, college kids were leaving for college in the summer, they were working extra so they left the sport and the passion that they really enjoyed as their way to really end the day or entertain clients, to something they were doing daily, and they ended up hating the sport of golf and eventually closing that business. So I think that when you look at the passion piece of anything, the passion to me, and this took me many, many years to really kind of figure out was, the passion for me was more of the why, and I put those two together. So the why was spending time with my family, never to miss another event, I became a soccer coach, I have not missed a soccer game, my son's 16 years old, a sophomore in high school. So that was a passion, my daughter’s in Girl Scouts, I get to go to her events. So the passion piece was a combination of my why and what was being achieved from the business and I didn't really care what the business was if it allowed me the time to do that.
But on the flip side, the other part of the passion piece is what I'm doing in the business. So first year, it's tough, you're getting the business up and running. Second year, I'm like, okay, these are the things I enjoy doing, whether I'm in a restoration business, a cleaning business, or the eyelash extension business, I just spoke with someone about that. The role is the same. I get to talk to people, I get to go to Chamber of Commerce events, and really get involved in the community. So I look at passion and yes, it's important, but sometimes your passion, like the sport of soccer is my passion, we go to local soccer games, the college games, if that was involved in my day to day, I may truly lose the passion for the sport, if that's what I'm doing day in day out. Over the years that might, my thoughts have changed, but that's how I look at it. And I'd be curious about your thoughts because it’s an evolving thing, my viewpoints on this.
Yeah, I really respect that. And I think there's a lesson in there for entrepreneurs as well that you don't necessarily have to create something that you are super passionate about, but something that is needed in the community and then you're right, your passion can be what's outside. Which is a lot of people's argument for staying in a job too or, staying in a nine to five where they can clock out at five and go do everything they want to do, their fun hobbies and stuff, and they don't have to think about work until they clock back in again, versus an entrepreneur that's never off. So it's really hard. Yeah. And it's interesting because ownership is different. Because you can own a business and someone else can manage it and it can give you the financial freedom you need to then go and travel, if travel is something you truly love, or like you and I are very much about our kids, and sorry, it's football by the way, I'm just going to correct you, it's not soccer, it's football!
Yes, I know, I know, being in the States and I'm not a football fan either - I'm gonna get boo’ed for that. So yeah, it's Calcio in Italy, we call it, but yes I don't know why football is called football in America.
I'll never understand. There is a reason I have heard a story, I’ve forgotten it now in detail.
I'd be curious to that.
There is a reason, there's a reason. So tell us you wrote a book on Franchise Freedom. Is that right?
Yes.
So tell us about that. What led you to writing a book? That's pretty big!
It’s a book and we did it, it was very eye-catching in mustard yellow as I jokingly say, looking back, I’m like, we could have choosen a different colour. So our service is essentially free. We are paid by franchise companies so there's really no cost to the service offering and how we're able to help people. And I said, some people are just not ready to talk, I noticed that sometimes I'm looking at a particular service and I just don't want to talk to that individual. At this point. I just want to do my own research and read about it until I'm comfortable having that conversation. It's that buyer's journey. So someone challenged me when we launched the show Franchise Freedom as well, back in February of 2020, they said why don't you just get everything out of your head, and create a blueprint for someone so that if, for example, they weren't ready to talk to you, they have an idea of the entire process if they wanted to find a franchise on their own. So be it, they can go ahead and read the book, and that's my blueprint. And the blueprint is not just about franchising, it's about building your team of financial advisors, your attorney, the entity structures, your accountant and how they all have to work together. So we give a lot of advice on successor plans that no one talks about, and who's your backup if you get hit by a car tomorrow, and what happens to the business. So I said, let me get everything out of my head. It's a 48 page read, it's 30 minutes I timed myself, I'm going to create an audiobook version as well. And I said let's give it away for free. We sell the hardcopy on Amazon, but I give everyone the free download on the site. And I want to give everyone an equal shot. You don't have to come from money wealth, you don't have to have a PhD or a college education, let's give everyone the exact same information, arm them with what they need to know and it's up to them if they want to take action. And if they want to work with me, I bring my experience to the table and my connections with the franchise companies and if not, they can easily follow the same exact system and go ahead and do the research on their own. I wanted to give back, it's information I never had so I said why not, why not put it out there. And we get a lot, and usually the feedback I get on the book was, “I loved the book, and didn't pass the first chapter.” They just want to dive in to do it so that seems to be a very common theme is they get excited and they just end up wanting to talk to me anyway.
That is such a givers gain, such a go givers approach and I love that you are very happy for someone to go ahead and do it without you, if that's where they're at. And like you said the buyer's journey, it just whets their appetite on what's possible and you're seeing the results of that. And I also really love that you're making an even playing field and people are starting to know about you because of the book, but they're the same as the person who has $100 million to invest in five McDonald's. Coming from, well here I am in Australia where a franchise is very often, I mean I don't have the statistics but anecdotally, I'd say more than 50% of franchises are owned by immigrant families, because they're buying a job, they have a way to make a living when they land in Australia and it's fabulous, whether it's a fast food chain or 7/11 equivalent, and so this book could help them as well.
And to that point, you don't need millions of dollars like you need with some of these brands. I mean for 100,000 to 200,000 US is a pretty typical range. You can get into a franchise, cleaning, restoration, roofing, painting. The list goes on, I like to kill these myths that you need all this money and it's all fast food. I specialise in the non sexy types of businesses, restoration, crime scene cleanup, things that you wouldn't even think of as a franchise. And I said, why not? I mean, it's not flashy, like McDonald's, but there's no correlation between the investment and your return. The correlation, or I should say the increase in the odds are sustainability, something that's in demand, that's not a fad, that's recession resistant, the list goes on. So why not do something where you don't have to worry about the competitor moving across the street and eating up your market share? It's something where you can really provide value and not have to spend, maybe a fraction of what a McDonald's or shouldn’t knock on McDonalds, but some of the larger fast food chains cost.
You know you've piqued my interest now with that crime scene cleanup haven’t you? What other crazy, wow, interesting, unknown franchises are out there?
Dog waste removal, it's one of the fastest growing industries, it's an industry that gets you into the backyard and then eventually, if you're able to offer additional services like irrigation and fertilisation, but there are franchises around mental health, there are franchises that give back to the community to combat the childhood obesity epidemic, via childhood enrichment offering physical education programs to non public schools.
There is business coaching, eyelash extensions, to the people that like food, there are food franchises that are very simple that revolve around sweets and doughnuts and things like that, that are mobile. So you don't have the landlord to pay, a small staff of two or three employees as opposed to a few dozen employees. And the list goes on. If you can think of the business I think we said there were 70 different industries, you'll find franchises and if there's a business someone can absolutely develop a system. So it's pretty interesting.
Giuseppe, you have your own podcast, it's called Franchise Freedom. I would encourage anyone who is interested in knowing more about this to have a listen to them. For the rest of our episode, I would love to get to know you a bit more and hear your stories of resilience. So what would you consider to be your most successful, your biggest, greatest success story?
The greatest success story is my family immigrated from Sicily back in the 70s. So I'm the first family member to go to college and then go back to grad school. So my success story was, I jokingly say this but my parents would always come back and say, you think you have it tough think about what we had, we didn't speak English when we came to this country and they ran a successful Italian restaurant from 1975 to 2015. So a 40 year run, which is extremely impressive, so the bar is well above, I can't even reach the bar. So my success story is I took advantage of everything they gave to me, where they paid for all my education, the working nights and weekends, which I wasn’t thrilled about working at a restaurant as a high school and college kid, looking back that made me who I am today, I wasn't given anything, I actually didn't learn the English language until I was six or seven. So I really took advantage of everything they gave to me to make this successful business. I sold my last business in 2020, just to launch the podcast and write the book and just focus on my consulting business. So someone had taught me years ago that the mindset shift of ‘what if you fail?’, someone came to me and I don't remember who it was, which really upsets me, I don't know if it was a one on one or in a group conversation, but someone said, I don't know if it was directly to me but anyway, they said, ‘What if it works out?’ ‘What if you don't fail?’, and I get goosebumps just thinking about it because I'm like, Yeah, we always think of what if it fails, but what about if it works out?
Jim Carrey spoke, and I forget, it was at one of the colleges and he said that his father could have been a huge, phenomenal comedian instead he took his boring job as a CPA because he considered that safe. Well, that safe job ended up in a layoff. And he said, I’m probably going to screw this up, but he basically came back and said, Well, if you can fail at something that you don't enjoy and you hate, why not go for something that you really enjoy. And again, that was something Jim Carrey I can quote all these people, but for whatever reason, it was late at night, it was a YouTube video which I ended up watching the whole thing and it was really interesting, and that's why he became a comedian. And he didn't become a comedian just for laughs, he became a comedian to release people of their pain, of their sadness. That's truly what he was doing. That was his passion and that really struck me and it's like, wow, you can fail, I can fail as a Wall Street executive, I could be canned and lose my job tomorrow and left with nothing. So who's looking out for me? Really no one, right? I'm gonna get a little severance, maybe some unemployment in the US I don't even know how long unemployment goes for so why not create something where I'm in control and if I fail, it's on me. But I said, put our life savings on the line and said this has to work, and I just went in every single day and just said, it has to work, and I just didn't even think of what if it fails, I just went in with that mentality and I think that's what made me successful. Anytime I get an email or phone call, I return it, and that's my second piece of advice, which is pretty basic and most entrepreneurs fail at that simple action of returning email and voicemail. You can tell I get a little passionate in that area, but it definitely brings back some good memories.
Can we go back to the beginning of your career and your experiences as an entrepreneur and you talked a little bit about it but tell us what it was like in the early stages, and you just mentioned not having a Plan B, just having that Plan A, but did you have moments like, this isn't for me, talking about failure, did you have those doubts? How did you manage with those?
I went in, when people congratulated me, they said, what is your Plan B? And I said that's a really poor question, why would you ask that? I think that and I look back and certain people, maybe they just weren't intentional, I don't think they meant it in a negative way, but yes, absolutely. There were days and if my wife was here, she would tell you the same where I thought of throwing in the towel, because I'm like, this is difficult, franchise or not, not getting paid for three months, although we had savings aside, and we knew we just have, I'm not going to pay myself the first year worst case and it went three months. Month four, luckily, I was able to start paying myself. But I said, wow even though I knew this was to be expected it was much more difficult. So yes we had some customers cancel or a manager leave unexpectedly and it happens. So there were some bumps and with every bump, I started working with a business coach, and she said, alright, how do we prevent this from happening or not prevent it, we want to make the odds of someone leaving, decrease those odds, but how do we keep them on? How do we incentivise them? How do we have a backup of individuals in the event someone were to leave? Or if we suddenly have to expand? So my coach really helped me. It was difficult because the income wasn't there in the very beginning, it was something new, I went from running a restaurant with my family to being 100% on my own. It was definitely some scary times, there were some late nights and weekends, and I tell everyone semi absentee, non semi absentee, whatever it is, it's a lot of hours to get started. Buckle up, it's a ride, it's a roller coaster of ups and downs and just keep thinking of the prize. The prize was where I wanted to be at. So you needed that reminder, and my secret was my goals on an excel document, I still have it, I upgraded to Google Sheets and I read them every day. It's my goals, where I want to be at for the year, and it's that reminder like alright, it's a little bumpy right now, but this is where I want to want to be and I create some habits behind that as well. So it's not easy. If I told everyone it was easy, I'd be lying to you so just know that it's going to be rocky, you'll get through it, and just look for opportunity. If your head is down in the dumps and you're constantly negative, that's the results you're gonna get so if you could just keep your chin up and talk to people that are energising, don't talk to the the people, the mooshes as we as we call them, they just suck the energy out of you, avoid them. Yes, you may have friends that maybe are a little on the negative side or family members, and that's okay but just focus on those conversations with others that are growing businesses, that have had success, and it just keeps your spirits up.
Yeah, that's really key. And of course our podcast is called Resilient Entrepreneurs.
You have to be resilient to be an entrepreneur.
No doubt, business owner, entrepreneur, whatever you want to call it, it takes resilience to get through. So how do you define resilience? What does it mean to you?
Resilience to me is accepting what is and just moving forward and knowing that you're gonna get some negative feedback, you're gonna have ups and downs and resilience means just basically the power to move forward to get through it. I think in its simplest terms, it's that you have to be resilient, no matter how much knowledge you have, if it was all about knowledge, then our PhDs would be the most successful business owners. So it really has nothing to do with knowledge, but going back to the basics, why you got into this business, no one wants to own a business I think, maybe I'm wrong by that, I think they don't want to own a business, because a business is a risk. It's a lot of work. I had black hair prior to starting, and you can see the whites, I think they need a business. I think the business is the vehicle and that to me is the minor stuff. What's the vehicle? Is it a franchise? Are you a consultant? Are you a startup? Do you own a gas station? To me, these are the various vehicles, and you can own them all. I invest in the stock market, I don't invest in real estate, you pick and choose what you're comfortable at like what Warren Buffett talks about. You do what you know, you stick with it and I think good things will happen at the end of the day. It sounds kind of basic, but it comes down to the basics.
It does, and I think what I like most about this conversation is that you've really shown a different path for people out there who may be looking for something else, may be aren't happy in their current life situation with a nine to five, and they're looking to get out and maybe own a business, run a business, become an entrepreneur, this is a different path. And this is a way to really get to business ownership very quickly with a lot of support and I think that's the piece about franchising that most people miss or don't understand, or they think they're selling out, but what you're getting you invest in a lot of support back. It's interesting in Bermuda, we don't allow franchising. I don't know if you noticed, you mentioned in our pre-talk that you'd visited Bermuda, and there is no McDonalds. There’s no Starbucks.
You’re right, I don't think there was.
Yeah, there's one franchise that got in before the law was passed that stopped franchises for the reason of being a very small nation, keeping normal mom and pop shops and businesses open and doing their own businesses. So it's interesting, and I think I come from that mentality more because of where I'm from. But it's interesting to have this kind of conversation because you've definitely enlightened me a lot. I want to look at it also from the perspective of the one who owns all the franchises that licences, does the licensing, that's a different person. The owner of the entire business licence, you have to have a part two and have that conversation about
The mastermind behind the franchise.
Yeah. Because that's something really like that will take a business from doing well, being successful to multi millions, maybe billions and beyond, right. That's a whole other level. Sure.
We have some clients who we're currently working with who I've often thought once we get these guys launched and really up and running and well tested, definite franchise material. They could absolutely start franchising this globally because their ideas are so unique, it isn't being done somewhere else, they have a fantastic system because we've been working with them for a while, it may well be worth another episode, Giuseppe. I like that idea, Laura.
Yeah, there's some really cool aspects. If there's one takeaway for everyone listening in, the grass isn't always greener - I tell everyone if you are miserable at your job, ‘Oh, let me quit and start a business’ - that is not your answer. You have to do your due diligence, you have options, but maybe it's just a new job. I personally interviewed all over the place and I'm like, ‘Man, I'm a nobody, there's 5 or 10 managers above me, big company, I just don't like this environment, I didn't grow up in that environment.’ So just because you're unhappy with the job, figure out why, is it your manager? Is it the career? Is it a dead end job, and maybe an interview elsewhere? Don't jump ship, do your due diligence, talk to somebody, download the book, if you want to look at franchising or talk, just simply talk and spend the day with a small business owner, because small business owners are great, they wear multiple hats, and they do different things. So spend the day, buy them lunch, whatever the case may be, I think it's the best advice I can give them. And they're going to be honest, they have no incentive to sell you on the business, and they'll give you the good and the ugly. But keep in mind, business ownership is not for everyone, and you need some thick skin, you need to know what you're getting into. You need to realise you can lose money, but you can also change the trajectory of your life and future generations to come. So a lot of stuff there and I just tell that to everyone. When people ask me, ‘Should I own a business?’ I go, I don't know, we've only been talking for five minutes, I don't know enough about you to tell you that. But ultimately, you have to have that conversation with your family, which is what I talk about in the book. Don't just do something on the fly and not tell your spouse, your kids or your family. Let them know because life is going to be different that first year, you're not going to be around for a lot of the things going on. So let them know, make sure everyone's on board and tell them the reason you're doing it.
Perfect, and perfect way to end this episode. Thank you so much Giuseppe. It's been a great conversation.
Thanks, guys. It's a pleasure. Thank you, visiting soon.
