From A to Franchisee: The Podcast for Smarter Franchise Buying

How Much Money Can You Make Owning A Franchise?

• Franchise Business Review • Season 1 • Episode 14

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Host: Michelle Rowan, President and COO of Franchise Business Review

Guest: Eric Stites, Founder and CEO of Franchise Business Review

Summary of How Much Money Can You Make Owning A Franchise?

In this episode of From A to Franchisee, Michelle Rowan and Eric Stites discuss the financial aspects of owning a franchise. They address the common question of how much money one can make from franchising, sharing data from surveying tens of thousands of franchisees yearly. How much you can make owning a franchise varies widely based on factors such as the type of franchise, the business model, and the owner's creativity and management skills. Eric highlights the importance of passion and understanding one's motivations for entering franchising, as well as the need for thorough research and financial planning. They also discuss the potential for wealth building through multi-unit ownership and the significance of creating a strong customer experience. The episode concludes with advice on preparing for financial success in franchising, including reducing personal expenses and exploring various financing options.

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Michelle Rowan (00:51)
Welcome back to the podcast, From A to Franchisee. Today's episode, we are going to answer the very big question of how much money can you make owning a franchise?

we are bringing back our first guest from the podcast, Eric Stites, who is the CEO and founder of Franchise Business Review.

So it's a question that Eric gets and has an answer to. So we had to invite him back to talk with us today. Eric, thanks for making time to hang out with us again on the podcast.

Eric Stites, FBR (01:20)
I the first ⁓ repeat guest on your podcast? I'm curious. ⁓ no.

Michelle Rowan (01:24)
You are the second.

We had Ali Krauss back before you.

Eric Stites, FBR (01:31)
⁓ yeah, she's good.

Michelle Rowan (01:32)
Yeah,

she just beat you by one week. yeah. let's talk about financial data of franchising and how people are going to get at this very complicated question. How do they answer it?

Eric Stites, FBR (01:46)
Yeah, it's a great question, obviously. I always start with the answer to the question, and then we're work from there. And so it's kind of a joke, but the actual answer is $142,000. And what that number is, is we survey thousands of franchisees every year. And one of the questions we ask them is to report on

Michelle Rowan (01:53)
Yes.

Eric Stites, FBR (02:12)
⁓ their their pre-tax income. So what money are they making from the business taking out either as a salary, profits, whatever business owners can classify it many different ways. But they share that information with us. And so the average is $142,000, which for some folks probably sounds great. For others, they would hope to make much more. And what I say is that it's a starting point.

you can't have the expectation that you're going to start a business and make $142,000 year one. That's a very unrealistic expectation and doesn't happen in franchising without, a few, there's a few exceptions if you buy an existing business or, multiple businesses. But, basically, this number is an average across all industries.

franchisees that have been in business for a couple of years versus franchisees that have been in business for 10 or 20 years. So as many of you may know, averages can be misleading. And so it's important to obviously do your homework. And we'll kind of get into how you can do that. But that's really the starting point, I guess is 146.

Michelle Rowan (03:18)
so what I'm hearing from

you is the answer is $142,000 around there. But if you are investing in an existing franchise business versus starting new, that could vary, that number could vary and how quickly you get there could vary. It's also going to vary by the segments of franchising. We have franchises out there that are what people call chuck in a truck, the kind of mobile.

Eric Stites, FBR (03:38)
Yeah, yeah.

Michelle Rowan (03:44)
service type of model. We have brick and mortar, so there's going to be big variances there as far as what you're investing versus what you're making. And then the third thing I heard you say is it will really depend on how creative the business owner is. Because if you're working with a good CPA, you know how to run things through your business legally, but maximize the benefits of owning a business. Did I capture those first three things that impact the number?

Eric Stites, FBR (04:11)
Yeah, I mean,

there's there's definitely ways to, you know, maximize your profitability and income from a business. I mean, the other important thing to consider is that, so many so many people have never owned a business before. So they they think about it from, I get a paycheck each week and, I need I need to replace that income. And as a business owner, certainly we all need, income to live on to. But, there's other

other factors to consider with business ownership, different tax treatments. And also, you're building an asset where if you have a job, you get fired or if you leave that job, you have nothing at the end of the day. Whereas when you own a business, you're building an asset that over time has value and in many cases, significant value. income is obviously important, but it's not the end all.

especially when you talk about like the retail space, some of the wealthiest franchise owners in franchising also own the real estate. So whether it's food or other retail concepts, they own the building as well as the business that's inside the building. And so it's really a way to have multiple, multiple assets, if you will, in your portfolio. And so, maybe your

Michelle Rowan (05:10)
Great point.

Eric Stites, FBR (05:24)
take home income at end of the day isn't as high as, you know, other people make or whatever you're comparing that to. But, you can build significant wealth through other assets as part of your business and again, become very wealthy over time.

Michelle Rowan (05:40)
Great point. All right, so you've been doing this for 20 years now and over 1300 brands I think we've done this with and I'm sure you get asked this question what kind of franchise can people make the most money in? So what do you say to that? I think people's heads naturally go to food franchises, but what else is there? What do you answer that question with if they say what segment of franchising makes the most money?

Eric Stites, FBR (06:03)
Yeah, it's again, great question. And food is not the most profitable, from an income standpoint. we can kind of go through, I actually have the list of kind of the breakdown of the industries in front of me. But, first and foremost, you have to find a business that you're passionate about. Because if you're not excited to get up every day and work that business really hard,

you're not going to be successful, don't even worry about the money piece. You and I have obviously met many franchise owners, some that are very wealthy, and we know they've worked really hard for 10, 15, 20 years to build that wealth. Again, franchising's not a silver bullet to success.

Michelle Rowan (06:47)
Right.

Eric Stites, FBR (06:48)
certainly it's a proven model, but it takes time to get there. And so, you know, I always say, start, start with passion, find something that gets you excited and really even beyond that is, what's the why that's driving you to this decision? are you running away from a job that you hate? Are you

reaching the peak of your career and looking for something more challenging to do? Are you sick of traveling the corporate road and want to settle down in your local community and spend more time with your family? mean, there's many different reasons to invest in a franchise business and understanding, what's that why for you and really doing that introspection of your own self, your own skills?

what may be needed in your community from a business services standpoint. All of those pieces really will help you kind of narrow down when you start looking at different franchise opportunities. what's the best fit? What answers ⁓ your why, if you will. ⁓ Because a lot of people don't really understand how diverse franchising really is. As you know, you mentioned food.

Michelle Rowan (07:45)
Yeah.

Eric Stites, FBR (07:53)
retail, mean, some of the more popular brands, obviously that's what most people think of, Dunkin Donuts or McDonald's and, and that's what the vast majority of folks think franchising is. And the reality is so much deeper than that. There's franchises in every industry you can imagine, travel, pet services, child services, all sorts of things that people never imagined were franchise businesses. So, I always tell people to,

keep their eyes wide open, do a lot of kicking of the tires and exploring what's available in franchising, but it really starts first and foremost with them.

Michelle Rowan (08:26)
so if someone is exploring franchising and they might narrow down their search to specific companies or to a segment of franchising, you mentioned some of them, but like senior care, what they get their focus down to, they know what they want to deliver for the product or service to their community. How should they go about trying to figure out this? How much money can I make question? Where do they start?

Eric Stites, FBR (08:47)
Sure.

Yeah, yeah. first thing is don't be distracted or blinded by the investment cost of the business to get in. And so what I mean by that is, again, there's all sorts of different types of businesses, different investment levels. We have franchises that start...

literally under $10,000 for an initial investment, which is very, very affordable, obviously, for many people. And then we have businesses that are in the millions of dollars from an initial investment.

Michelle Rowan (09:19)
Yeah,

so I'm going to stop you there and just say if the audience listening hasn't listened to our FDD conversation, we dig into what that initial investment range really covers. But I think you're going to see a big range for a lot of these companies. There'll be a low end and a high end. So you want to get granular as far as what does that cover. So I just want to point people to that episode if they want more details on why is it a range, why isn't it one set fee.

Eric Stites, FBR (09:42)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. what I would say there is that, don't use that investment level as kind of a gauge of the quality of the franchise because, in my opinion, there's a lot of very affordable, great franchise concepts out there that, have an investment level under $100,000. And then some of the some of the companies that are out there that are in the millions, may not

that great of a return on investment. So again, you really have to look at the full picture and don't just look at, well, this one costs $50,000 more, so it must be better. The other piece I always tell people is read the fine print. When you're shopping for franchise opportunities, you get presented with lots of information, a lot of financial information.

in their marketing brochures and their franchise websites and the franchise development folks will share information with you. When you get any kind of financial information from the franchise company, you really want to question what's behind those numbers. You want as broad a sample as possible. So in an ideal world,

if they tell you that, our system average is, you know, $750,000 a year in revenue, for instance, is that actually a sample size of their whole system? Because many franchisors kind of massage those numbers a little bit and, it might be just their corporate stores or maybe it's ⁓ their top performing stores. And so you really want to, read the fine print on those and kind of find out, what's

what's behind the scenes on those numbers. And understand that, generally speaking, those are top line revenue numbers. They're not bottom line profit numbers. Very, very, very few franchisors provide details into what the net income or the profitability for the franchisee can be at the end of the day. And obviously, great franchise companies do that.

but a lot of them don't for various reasons. And so you really wanna, again, ask a lot of those hard questions. Just as an example, there was a pizza concept very popular years ago that had an ad that the headline was average unit volume was $1.2 million. ⁓ Who doesn't wanna make $1.2 million a year selling pizza? ⁓ Now, first off, that's,

Gross sales, so that's top line revenue and before all expenses, so that has nothing to do with profitability at the end of the day. But if you read the fine print on that ad, it was based on two of their corporate stores and it was only a partial period of time. It wasn't even a full year. So, corporate stores in their home market part of the year, they're not lying. Those are true.

real numbers, but not necessarily representative of what your experience would be in that brand. So again, you want to ask, dig in and ask hard questions around those.

Michelle Rowan (12:27)
Yeah, don't fall for the clickbait.

Eric Stites, FBR (12:29)
Exactly. and the thing that I say over and over again, I know you say it over and over again. And if anyone's listening to all the other episodes, think everybody on here has said it a million times. Talk to franchisees. Like that's where you're going to that's where the rubber meets the road. And that's where you're going to get the truth about, their experience in the system.

You have to do your homework before you have those conversations. You don't want to call up a franchisee and say, how much money did you make last year? Because they'll quickly hang up the phone. But if you do your homework and you've talked to the franchisor, you've done some planning and figure out roughly what you think you can make in this business, and then you go and talk to franchisees and ask them about their experience, they'll be happy to share.

information with you and really help you dial in on those numbers.

Michelle Rowan (13:20)
Yeah, I think some of the important things that I always think are good to ask is how long did it take them to break even and especially how does that compare to what they planned for? I think it gives obviously putting aside any huge things that happen outside of your control as far as supply chain issues or things that are going to delay you in getting open. Those things will all you're still paying for things before you're even having revenue come in. Those things can really hurt you right out of the gate.

Eric Stites, FBR (13:43)
Yeah.

Michelle Rowan (13:49)
But I think having a good picture of how long am I going to need to cover my financial life outside of this business or cover the business before I'm at that break even point, I think that's a great question to ask franchisees because it doesn't get into even the specific numbers, but more of the, did you break even when you thought you were going to? So as you're building out your business plan, you can kind of adjust that or have a worst case, best case scenario kind of thing.

Eric Stites, FBR (14:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I always tell people to plan for average. And it's funny, I always in my talks, I'll ask how many people in the room are average and, you know, nobody. We all we all we all think we're above average performers, right? But if you do your planning for average and again, you talk to franchisees and find out what the typical experience is, you'll be much better off because,

Michelle Rowan (14:31)
Yes,

Eric Stites, FBR (14:42)
Almost every business out there loses money for some period of time when you first open it's it's just the reality of business you've got all these expenses. You've got staff You've just invested maybe tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars into this business to get it open and and now you've got staff to pay and Inventory to buy and all sorts of things going into the business and not necessarily the cash coming out

cash is king and I know people have heard that many, many times and good businesses, franchises and otherwise die every day because they run out of cash and you don't want to be in that situation. So, you plan for average, you, you have a backup plans, plan B plan C plan D, what, what if it does take me longer, where, where can I get additional capital to keep me afloat?

Maybe it's personal capital that you can put in as an emergency fund, other sources, family and friends or larger bank loans. The other thing I always say, no offense to bankers, bankers don't lend people money when they really need it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, get it. Get as much as you can up.

Michelle Rowan (15:48)
That's actually what I was going to say, Eric, is like when you're at the moment that you need the cash, you're not going to get it at an affordable rate for sure.

Eric Stites, FBR (15:58)
front,

Michelle Rowan (15:59)
Yes.

Eric Stites, FBR (15:59)
know, that that rainy day fund, so just as an example, say you determine I need 100 grand to get this business open. I would go to the bank and say, I need 100 100 grand to get it open, but I need a cushion. So, can I get a loan for 150 or 200, whatever it might be. And again, you can talk to the bankers, you can talk to your accountant. But if you secure that funding up front and save that money for

that rainy day when stuff happens that always does, you'll be much better off because, to your point, when you've maxed out your line of credit or your loan and your business needs a little bit more capital to keep going, bankers are very shy about giving you additional funds at that point. And so better to get a little bit more upfront or, you again, have a plan B if you've got additional savings that you can set aside or...

Michelle Rowan (16:41)
Yeah.

Eric Stites, FBR (16:49)
or other financial capital available to you, that's great.

Michelle Rowan (16:53)
I love it. So the other thing too, you talked about passion and I think when you're thinking as a business owner, how much money can you make? You're also going to benefit from having very passionate employees and having really clear goals of how much money you want to make or what those goals are to get you to break even. think figuring out ways you can tie your team to that. they're all kind of that passion is just moving your business forward and everyone has really clear goals. think understanding how much money you need to make and making sure that your team understands that.

really has clear goal posts for you as an owner and can also drive the behaviors of your team to get you there. Because I think what I always think about is when you miss a financial goal, it doesn't just impact that month, it impacts all the goals you've set of how much money you can make down the road. So understanding the activities that bring the revenue into your business and then making sure your team understands those so you're all rowing in the same direction also I think gives you the

potential to make the most amount of money possible in your business. So I think those are things that new owners don't think about because you're just kind of running around and trying to get that first customer. But get your team behind you, rallied behind what are those numbers we need to keep the lights on.

Eric Stites, FBR (18:06)
it all, it all ties into at the end of the day, the customer experience, right? And so, that's, that's how your business is going to be successful is creating that unique, amazing customer experience, that, that wow experience. And so, you, as the owner have less influence on that than your

Michelle Rowan (18:11)
Yeah.

Eric Stites, FBR (18:25)
employees do because they're in the front lines, they're delivering whatever product or service it is. so to your point, like your passion is going to spill over into your employees and help them deliver that amazing customer experience. There's a book I always recommend to folks to read before getting into franchising, The Wealthy Franchisee. It's an amazing book about

Michelle Rowan (18:45)
Great one.

Eric Stites, FBR (18:53)
a gentleman that basically turned around two existing franchise units that were underperforming. And he came in and just motivated the team and really got his employees fired up to deliver that amazing customer experience. And so I would highly recommend checking out the Wealthy Franchisee as a resource. it's just a great inspirational story about business ownership for sure.

Michelle Rowan (19:22)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's great thinking about how you influence how much money you can make is hiring the right people. All right. so I'm a candidate. I want to start talking to franchises. What else can I do to prepare for financial success in franchising before I sign on the dotted line?

Eric Stites, FBR (19:28)
Right.

Yeah, great question. it's all about educating yourself. start with you and answering your why. But, you really want to start looking into business a little bit deeper. getting educated about small business finance. Now, many people that get into franchising have never owned a business before.

Having some basic understanding of financial documents within a small business, how cash moves through a business, understanding what a profit and loss statement is, a P &L, what a balance sheet is, and how money moves back and forth between those two. There's a lot of resources online. The Small Business Administration has resources. definitely educate yourself about small business finance. You don't have to

You don't have to be an accountant or finance major, but it certainly will help. The other thing that I say to people is, if you're thinking about buying a business now or six months, a year down the road is you should really try and reduce your personal living expenses as much as possible now. Start saving more now because every nickel and dime that you can put into the business from your own savings and not have to

beg, borrow, and steal for will just, give you a much more competitive advantage. So if you're lucky enough to have maybe a spouse that has a good job and you can live on one salary, or if you can't, then at least just look at your personal spending and figure out how to reduce that to a minimum and just start living below your means as opposed to so many people live beyond their means.

⁓ and

Michelle Rowan (21:18)
Or

you could find yourself a sugar daddy or a sugar mama. That sounds easier. ⁓

Eric Stites, FBR (21:21)
Yeah, that's a great, know, sugar mommy, sugar daddy.

Yeah, that's certainly helps. But it's funny because the people that have unlimited capital available to them, through the, whatever personal situation, often aren't the sharpest business owners do and make silly decisions. So yeah, would definitely keep yourself educated about

business. I know you had Ali on from Betatrends twice. finding out ⁓ your loan options, your financing options is really important. if you haven't listened to those episodes, go back and listen to those episodes and really think about, there's lots of creative ways to finance a business, traditional SBA loans and that sort of thing.

Michelle Rowan (21:53)
Yeah.

Eric Stites, FBR (22:09)
as well as options to tap into your retirement savings without a penalty. There's a lot of flexibility to do that, tapping into home equity, if you own a home and have equity in your home. So there's lots of different ways to access capital. generally speaking, what I tell people is, you gotta have some money down. And so,

Generally speaking, again, it varies depending on the industry, but generally speaking, bankers and financial people are going to want to see you with at least 25 to 30 % of a down payment on a business. if you've got, say, $50,000 in savings, you can do your calculations from that as to what sort of business that you can afford.

Talk to bankers now. I always tell people, start shopping for an accountant now and start shopping for bankers now because all those relationships will just help you down the road. just talk to as many people as you can about what you're thinking about, businesses that you're thinking about, industries that you're thinking about, and get feedback from them because they'll give you lots of different insights and help you figure out how to kind of get.

get to where you need to be. Because that's where so many people get caught up is they're like, you well, I don't have a ton of money and like, how am I going to afford this business? buying a business is a lot like buying a home. just because it's a half million dollar home, you don't put a half a million dollars down, right? You finance a lot of that. And so there's lots of creative financing that comes into the equation that you can tap into.

But again, you want to make sure you're properly capitalized and don't go into business where you're stretched too thin because it's like buying a Ferrari, right? You don't want to spend all your money on the car and not have any money to put gas in the car. So really kind of work through that and work through that with those professionals. Like I said, an accountant, an attorney, not an attorney, an accountant, and a banker, and

look at all your options that are available to you. we have, and I think we can put this in the show notes down below, but we have a document, it's called the My Franchise Life Workbook. life is an acronym for liabilities, income, financial wealth, and equity. And it really, it's just a series of worksheets and an Excel document that walk through planning.

a business startup and helping you calculate what your return on investment over time might look like. it's a great exercise. You're not gonna do this very early in the process. Obviously, this is later stage when you've identified a specific brand or maybe a couple of different brands that you're considering that you do this deeper due diligence and homework on.

But it just kind of walks you through that process of trying to figure out what at the end of the day, what is this business going to be worth and how it impacts my financial wealth over time.

Michelle Rowan (25:05)
love it. So you also have notes as far as reading everything you can on small business ownership. But I also know I'm putting you on the spot because we didn't talk about this ahead of time. You listen to so many podcasts you love and listen to books as well. Can I ask you for any specific podcasts or books that you would share that are fall under that small business ownership or that idea around just being the best business owner you can?

Eric Stites, FBR (25:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. rich dad, poor dad is a classic. I think that book does a really good job of explaining business ownership as a wealth building tool and not necessarily, you know, just income. it walks through two scenarios of two different fathers and, you know, one having much more of an income and one

Michelle Rowan (25:36)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Stites, FBR (25:54)
owning a lot more businesses and ultimately being much more wealthy in the long run, but it wasn't just income as a factor. so that's definitely a great book to check out. I I already mentioned Scott's book, The Wealthy Franchisee, that's a really good book as well. There's just...

all sorts of things online. I I listened to a podcast called 21 Hats and it talks to small business owners from a bunch of different industries and they have them on a rotating basis. And it's fascinating to hear the different challenges that they're facing, whether it be the economy or COVID or employee issues or culture issues or whatever it might be.

I think it gives you a good sense of what business ownership is like. A lot of people, you

Michelle Rowan (26:41)
a and I like it's a variety

and it's like smaller businesses and bigger businesses. So that that is a good one.

Eric Stites, FBR (26:45)
Yeah,

the other thing I tell people all the time is because we all know business owners, whether they're neighbors or, people in our community and, and, who doesn't want to aspire to have the lifestyle of the successful business owners that we know. But you often don't see, the 15 to 20 years plus of hard work that that person,

put in to get to where they are today. business ownership is a great path to wealth building, but it's not an overnight success thing. you're looking for an overnight success to make millions, ⁓ business ownership and franchising isn't it? I don't know what it is, but that's where I think that, again, going back to that, if you're passionate about something and

Michelle Rowan (27:24)
Yeah.

Eric Stites, FBR (27:32)
want to build this business over the next five, 10, 15 years and get excited about it, nothing will stand in your way. it really starts with that passion.

Michelle Rowan (27:42)
Awesome. All right, we're gonna get ready to wrap things up. Do you have any final thoughts around this topic of how much money you can make or anything that could help candidates as they do their research?

Eric Stites, FBR (27:52)
Yeah,

we've got a bunch of resources on our site. You definitely want to check out our most profitable franchise list on our on our site at franchisebusinessreview.com. We also have some lists on low cost franchises. we define low cost as under $100,000 investment, which I still know is a lot of money for a lot of people.

in the franchise world, under $100,000 is in that range of low cost. I realized I didn't actually share some of the more profitable numbers by industry earlier and want to give people a sense. The number one on our list is actually Senior Care. Yeah, yeah. So again, when you think about that 142 number as a benchmark,

Michelle Rowan (28:28)
Yeah.

I was gonna guess that. I would have guessed that.

Eric Stites, FBR (28:39)
the senior services sector is over $200,000 a year in income. Now, again, I would caution anyone thinking about this just from a financial standpoint. The senior care business is a very hard business. It requires a lot of managing of people and that inspirational leadership and driving that team.

Michelle Rowan (28:52)
Yes.

Eric Stites, FBR (29:04)
Yes, they get paid very well when they're successful and make a lot of money, but if you're in it just for the money and not the people and the empathy part, you won't be successful. just keep that in mind. Some of the other services that tend to be on the higher end, child services, education services, those types of businesses, depending on the model, they also tend to have a higher investment because

Oftentimes there's a building involved or real estate involved. So just keep that in mind. Real estate historically has been very good, although I know in some markets right now, real estate tends to be down just because there's not a lot of transactions happening. Food and beverage, obviously always a popular one. Business services, recreation, the list goes on.

There's franchises that make a lot of money in just about every industry sector that you can imagine.

Michelle Rowan (29:56)
Yeah. And I think the other thing to think about too is creating a business of multiple franchises, either territories or locations or across brands that are called Mumbo, a multi-unit, multi-brand owner. That is also a way to continue thinking about how you look at this as an investment and what you're building to either sell when you retire or what that looks like. Because I think sometimes

we see franchisees come on board to a brand and they are comfortable with what they're getting out of that business or they're scared to figure out that path to growth. So I would say, think about that from the beginning of, it make sense for you to own multiple territories or units of this brand that you're joining? Don't do it right off the bat, but think about how you could grow as a business owner because that will also impact how much money you can make. And I like to say that so that

people think bigger than just that first investment that they're making.

Eric Stites, FBR (30:55)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's so many great examples of that out there and like Subway, you know, back in the day, the average Subway, the net profit that came out of that business was, maybe 40, $50,000 a year. But if you owned five or 10 of them, that was a very interesting investment. So again, as a multi unit owner, you're not operating the day to day.

of each unit, you're managing all of them together. And, it takes time to certainly get there. And I think it's good advice that, you know, most good franchise companies now, they require you to start, you know, prove yourself with one. And if some franchise concept is trying to sell you a, you know, a five pack, so to speak, of five locations right out of the gate, I would definitely shy away from those type of opportunities. And, but

Michelle Rowan (31:36)
Yeah.

Eric Stites, FBR (31:48)
Those are certainly the more wealthy people in franchising is those that own either multiple brands or multiple locations of a single brand. Certainly, ⁓ those are great stories to talk. Talk to those franchisees too if multi-unit ownership is what you're interested in because they'll tell you their path.

Michelle Rowan (32:07)
Yeah.

And I bet you probably ruffled some feathers with that because I think we see a lot of franchisors push for we only sell to multi-unit now. So I think that was a pretty ⁓ good comment to make and we'll see if we get any feedback on that.

Eric Stites, FBR (32:24)
Yeah, if you're going to sell multiple units, most franchise companies that are only selling multiples are targeting people that already own multiple franchises. So they've got experience in multi unit ownership versus somebody.

Michelle Rowan (32:38)
I don't know

if that's true, Eric. I don't know. I would hope that that's the case, but I think franchisors have figured out it's easier to support fewer people operating those units, but I don't think everyone's built for multi-unit ownership, especially right out the gate. So I'm glad that you said it, but I... Yeah. Yes. But you said the people that are doing that are targeting those that are already existing, and I don't know that that's really the case.

Eric Stites, FBR (32:54)
Yeah. No, I'm saying that they're not, that they shouldn't commit to, you know, they should start, start with one.

Michelle Rowan (33:06)
I think that if they can sign a multi deal, they get paid more and they're happy to do that. I said it. I said it. ⁓ Good. Well, as always, I think we'll wrap up saying please use the resources on our site. We will put as much as we can in the show notes for you to find. But the idea is to just be prepared as much as possible and understand best case scenario and worst case scenario of how much money you can make.

Eric Stites, FBR (33:12)
Maybe, maybe.

Michelle Rowan (33:31)
But we did answer the question with a number, $142,000. So I don't want anyone to think that we baited them to come into a very complicated conversation. We answered it. And it would be great to look at it by tenure, by number of units, and all of that. But that gets a lot more complicated. So I love the simplicity of the one number. And it is kind of, it's not a joke, but it is just a reference point. There's so much. Yes, yes.

Eric Stites, FBR (33:53)
There's a big, big asterisk next to that 142.

Michelle Rowan (33:58)
Yes, we are not doing the clickbait ad. are trying to. Yeah,

Eric Stites, FBR (33:58)
Eric said I was going to make $142,000.

Michelle Rowan (34:05)
reach out to Eric if that is not the case. No, I'm just kidding. We are. We just really want to set really good expectations with people. That's what we're trying to do here. So visit our site and also just keep us updated on how your progress is going. If you are researching a franchise, we are here to cheer you on or scare the bejesus out of you before you invest in it. If it's not right for you. Thanks for joining us today.

Eric, maybe you'll be our first threepeat guest.

Eric Stites, FBR (34:29)
I was thinking that, don't invite Ali back. I'll come back a third time. Thank you.

Michelle Rowan (34:31)
I won't. Ali Who? Thanks, Eric.