20+ Years of Franchise Investing Advice in 35 Minutes

 Franchise is kind of get a bad route. We're like true entrepreneurs don't own franchises. Real true entrepreneurs do own franchises and they do it passively. Let's do a masterclass on why someone would want to invest in a franchise or even look at it as a passive income. Eric Van Horn is a top franchise advisor and entrepreneur who scaled his first franchise to 42 locations in Austin, Texas. He went on to acquire eight more brands, launch one as a franchiser, and secure major exits, including an eight figure sale to private equity. I've been told in the franchise business that about 50,000 to 100,000 is kind of the minimum. I would say you'd probably want to start at the minimum. I think of like franchise McDonald's, I don't want to be making hamburgers. What are the steps that you're walking me through on how to consider if I should do a franchise or not? Retail is going to be too expensive. High risk. What I would be looking at is making sure. If you were making a pro list there's a lot of pros. Let's talk about the cons. So cons for franchising, you have to let's talk about how you pick a franchise because it's just like real estate insurance. My advice for people. I guess start. Eric Van Horn, welcome to the better world show. I've been waiting ever to be on this. Finally, I get on. I've been avoiding you for years. I've been avoiding you for years, but we're going to talk about franchising all kinds of passive income assets. When I think of assets, sometimes I think of stocks, real estate, investing in business, maybe even crypto. I don't necessarily think of franchising as an asset class because there's not a lot of people talking about it. You are an expert. You've dedicated your life to this. So I would love to dive into that. But then also, like let's do a master class on why someone would want to invest in a franchise or even look at it as a passive income asset. Perfect. I love it. All right. So we're on an elevator together and you're just like giving me a little bit of context to who you are. What does that story look like? I started well, I'll back up even further. So I was going to go to law school, registered, and I'm a straight C student. So law school would have been a disaster. Yeah. I quit law school. I invested some money into some real estate. And then a month later, I had $20,000 in my pocket. Wow. I'm a quick flip. And I took that. I had some advice that said don't spend a bunch of money. Put that into a business, invest it somehow. Yeah. And so I had some friends looking at buying a franchise. And I didn't know any better. So I went to this seminar thing and walked away, basically bought my first franchise. And I took that money from that first franchise. I started three locations my first year, nine years later. I had 42 locations and I had an exit from that first franchise over the next number of years. I think next nine years, I owned seven different brands as a franchise. None of them where I live, all of them were out of state. And that was my first start into franchise. And so did any of the nine that you own, were you like the main operator? Or like, because you said that none of them were in that state, were you operating it day to day, or did you do invest in a franchise like some people invest in it? I read the email. And I knew that you shouldn't be the operator. Yeah. And so I was a marketer. I knew marketing hired for operations. And I didn't know anything about taxes. So I think the best thing that happened to me is I accidentally got into this business that I didn't know anything about the actual business itself. Yeah. And so I never did a tax return. All I did was hire good operators, hire tax repairs, and I knew marketing. So my job was to drive business in the door. Okay. And so I was an I was pretty active in the business, but I was definitely not an operator. Okay. So you have me. One of the things that this could be because you're so old. And so $20,000 back in the day, got you a lot far far away. I've been told in people that are in the franchise business that about 50,000 to 100,000 is kind of the minimum, not trip. That's true. What I would like to do is now let's talk about a master class. And if you had to like present or if you had to, if we were at coffee and I was like, okay, I want to learn how to get into this. Because I'm actually really curious is like, should I be investing some of my money into a franchise, not operate it? And what does the cash was look like? So I don't know where you want to begin, but let's create like a masterclass or framework for people that are watching or listening. And you know, again, you have me hooked, man. You're right. I am definitely a lot wiser, smarter than you. So. Okay. All right. So it's $20,000 does not go as far today as it did 20 years ago. We had some inflation. It's right. And so yeah, the dollar does not go as far. I would say for someone starting out thinking about buying a franchise, you would probably want to start at the minimum 50,000. I feel much more comfortable at 100,000. Okay. Because you have to pay for the franchise fee back in the day. The franchise fees were $20,000. Yeah. Today, they're $50,000 or more. Okay. And then there's just, there was different ways to finance it back then kind of in house with different brands, but it's not that way anymore. So the landscape has definitely changed. So I would say $100,000 to invest into your first franchise. That gives you a lot of options. You can do it for less, but the options are limited. And when you're looking at really buying it, buying a business or buying a franchise, you want to have a lot of options. Yeah. So the big difference is do you want service-based, like a man in a van, chucking a truck, or do you want to get into something that's retail based? You have to sign a long-term lease, do a build out and think like that. So let's take it to pass. So if you have $100,000 and you're listening to this for watching this, you could do a lot of different things with your money. You could put into a real estate, put in the market. Hopefully you don't put all in crypto. Okay. But the right time. Yeah. The wrong time is disaster. Yeah. But the point is you have options. And so there's really two paths that you could take. Let's take the path of someone that does not want to work in the business. Does not want to operate. Now, I understand that you're going to do some things, but it does not want to be the operator. Like I think of like franchise McDonald's. I don't want to be making hamburgers kind of deal. What's the framework? What are the steps? If you're sitting down with me and I said, okay, Eric, I have at least $100,000. What are the steps that you're walking me through on should how to consider if I should do a franchise or not? And what are the things that we need to look out for? So I would look at probably service-based businesses. Okay. And because retail is going to be too expensive, high risk. And it's probably if you have $100,000 to invest, I probably would not do a retail-based business. Okay. I'd look at service-based stuff that let's take restoration, for example. Restorations like surf pro. Yep. And you know, it's a need-space thing. Something happens. Somebody's home floods. They need somebody right then and there to go like dry out the carpet. Yeah. You know, knock out some drywall. Whatever it is, some mold doesn't start growing. That's a typical like needs-based service-based business. And so there you just need to put your $100,000 in finance, part of that. And now you have a business. I think what I would be looking at is making sure you're with the right brand in the right markets. So many times people get into they're in the wrong market for for whatever that business is. You know, like different regulations in different markets. So there's a lot of things to consider when it comes to the market that you're in. Even Facebook ads. Facebook ads work different in different markets. There's regulations that are different in different markets. And so let's stick with restoration. Okay. Florida is great. Yeah. Estoration. I mean, hurricane comes through. You know, it's non-insurance-based. Like, that's great. So if you're if you're thinking about buying a restoration business and you are in salt lake and you think, oh, it works in Florida. It's got to work in salt lake. A lot of times, I think the biggest thing when you're buying a franchise is talking to other franchisees. And you need to know who you're talking to. Yeah. How long they've been in business. What was their background before? So you want to talk to somebody that is like you. Yeah. If they're talking to you, you probably want to find somebody that's not very good at pick them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but you know, you need to talk to somebody that is not like you, but that is like you. And they're in the same market as you. So, Florida, you talked to somebody that they're like, yeah, we, you know, we made a half a million dollars last year. It was great. Well, it was a fluke because they had a hurricane come through. If you don't dive into some of that stuff, you are not going to make a really good educated decision. Okay. So, $100,000, you said that, you know, with financing, I can get into a franchise. If I were to spend $100,000 on a service-based business, we'll take restoration. For example, I'm not, you're not giving investment advice and you're definitely not saying that this is even possible. But where would that, some of that money be for like hiring an operator and for marketing or like, because I could, I could give $100,000 to start, but I need money to then operate. So, is $100,000 actually realistic to get in or do you? It's like. Okay. So, we're talking to probably say 200. Okay. 200. Okay. That's a real, that's a, that's a better number. That's a real number. Unless you're going to be that owner operator, the person that is buying the business, working in the truck, doing the thing. Yeah. Okay. So, and I'm very curious about this. Okay. So, let's say I have 200, I have 200,000 by the way. Okay. I'm interested in this. Where, so let's say I want to do an restoration, you, you, I'm pretty useless on most things other than beating you up pickleball. And, you know, there's a couple other things I'm good at, but most of things not good at, definitely not good at working with my hands. So, is, would it be dumb for me to even think about that? Or do you know people like myself that get into the restoration business? And I just feel like there's like, you need a higher operator or you need to have like, how do, how do you go about that? The best franchisees that are looking at it from a more of a passive semi-absentee perspective, they have an operator, they hire that operator or they already have an operator. It's best to have an operator that is working, working that business, somebody that you know already. Because what happens to that operator quits, calls and sick, something happens to them, they just, they don't want to work anymore, then you have to start over. Let me give you another example. Yeah. So, I'm a passive investor in this other, other brand as a franchisee, I'm a 25% owner. There's two of us, 25% owners and then there's two other partners who are 25% owners and they get paid to operate it. I think that's the best thing. If you have somebody, that's an active owner, they have ownership and they're being skid to run it for you. And I like that model. It's my favorite way to invest passively in financialized. So, the two right now that are active owners, they're getting a salary. Yeah. Their goal is to replace themselves and they want to do it in three to five years. Yeah. And then that aligns with my goal as well. I don't want to have to get in there and work. But if they want to replace themselves, now we have money for them to hire their replacement. So, that's the best way, and by the way, these people already have like the safest way to invest in a franchise, find somebody that's already in that industry. They know the industry. Totally. These two are in the industry already. I love that. And it's in a retail business, but at the same time, we have three open right now and the landlords are paying for the vast majority of the buildup. We are not out that much money. We're probably out $100,000 out of our pockets, financing the rest, and we are a cashful positive from day one. Well, okay. The reason franchises are so valuable is most businesses fail. Like, statistics are pretty high from the standpoint of you get into business even with a partnership, likelihood of you failing is higher than succeeding. Franchise has approved and marketing has approved brand has approved in operation. And so there's the year, I don't know the difference if you know of like between franchises is just starting a business. I bet it's a bit is dramatic. So that is one of the, that is one of the pluses to starting a franchise versus starting a business. Is there any other obvious like pluses to like why you should look at a franchise versus starting your own because the negative is I'm paying a franchise fee versus if I don't, don't, I have more money to you know, do invest in my own business. So I'm trying to like play Devils advocate to like, I'm paying and I have to make sure that the brand, the operations and all that is far out exceeds me going on my own. But I would imagine that the track record of me not losing money is a lot higher over here as well. So I'd want to reframe kind of what how you, how you see that. I instead of, you're right, I am paying this. I'm paying a royalties usually like six, seven percent, then a two percent marketing fund you're paying training, you're paying, advertise, you're paying all kinds of different, different fees to the franchise or the way that I like to think about it, both as a franchisee and franchise or I've been both is I want that franchisee to get an ROI and that. So whatever that is, if they're paying a hundred thousand dollars into franchise or over the course of the year in different fees, they should be getting a return on that. Whatever that return is, maybe it's double. And so that's how I would want to see it as a franchisee in anything. So my advertising fees or my royalties, how is, how am I doing better because I'm paying these fees than I would do it on my own. Some of the things that are kind of soft, you don't really, there's not like a hard ROI on it, but that's the other franchisees in the system. I think some of the best, the best advice that I've ever gotten as a franchisee or with the other franchisees. So the best things that come out of franchise systems as a whole, where ideas from franchisees, they tested something out, they tried it, it worked well, they tested it in other locations with the franchise and they're like, oh, this works great. And then they roll it out. And it could be simple, it could be simple things, it could be bigger things, it could give you from technology things to marketing or whatever it is. One brand that I was a part of, they didn't really have a good sales process. Like sitting in front of a customer like this, the person in front of them was just saying whatever they wanted as they were doing a tax return. And then one of the franchisees, they say, oh, we don't do that. We're very scripted. There's a loose script, but it's very scripted. And then over the next year that franchisee was hired by corporate, they put a whole system in place on closing the sale. I mean, it sounds obvious. They should have them. Yeah. They had it before, but they didn't. A franchisee came up with it and that whole thing got implemented across the system. If you're a passive investor in a franchise. So for example, you say that you're a 25% owner in a franchise with other people that have maybe more skin in the game from a standpoint. Like they're probably getting a salary, their salary is probably higher than yours, but you're getting some profit. Is there tax benefits that you have by being a 25% owner? I don't think so. Okay. You tell me. Well, no, I just I want to know. I guess another way to ask this is what is there tax benefits from a frant like getting into franchising. I'm assuming that there's tax write offs. You're running a business. So as a business owner, anything that you're spending towards that business is a write off. One of the best things that that I did from a tax write off standpoint within franchising was when I opened up 12 solo salon studios over five year period. And this was coming out of the last recession. You probably get out of diapers or something. And we were we invested probably 12 million dollars. Most of that was tenant improvements. And so then we did cost sags on all of that. And we had massive write outs. There's 100% depreciation. And it was fantastic. So I really really enjoyed that. And you take that money, invest it, you put it other places to make money because you eventually have to it gets you have to pay it back basically. But that was one of the bigger tax tax benefits that I've had building things out. So going back to the question, if I wanted to get into the franchising as investing, would you recommend me find partners to do it with that are operators? So it's like, so that that's a great so okay. So if I had a skill set, let's say I'm really, really handy, I could be I could get into a franchise, be the main operator, obviously try to replace myself, but but from a risk management standpoint, if someone walks out the whole business, it's like you have way more skin in the game and there's upside there. That makes sense. If you're someone like me who doesn't necessarily want to be in in in it day to day, then I should get into franchising if I can find other people that are passionate about operating that franchise. And then maybe I come to the table with capital or other other strategies. They're not a ton of strategy, though, because if you're buying a franchise, that's part of the why you're paying them, right? Is to they they have the brand they have, they have all that dialed in. And where am I off or am I am I I don't think you're off. I think you're right. I think you will get a lot of advice out there of people wanting to sell you their franchise because you got some money. You got the $200,000. You're ready to go. You're hungry. You're you're ready to ready to get a return on that. And they will sell you like franchise ores of will sell you. Yeah. franchise salespeople will sell you. Yeah. And and that's why like most people won't give the advice that I'm giving like don't don't do it alone. Get a partner because it's it's very difficult. And when when when things go wrong, when things are right, it's wonderful. But things will go wrong. And then you have you're holding on to the thing where you have to work it. You don't want to work it. You don't like to work it. You don't know how to work it. So partnerships are are the best. Yeah. What type of rate of return would you expect if you are investing into a franchise? Like what type of rate of return are you looking for? When we look at brands at my private equity company, we are looking for average unit volumes of a million dollars. Sometimes they're 500,000. But if you're looking at retail, we want a million dollar average unit volume. We would like to see 30 to 40% EBITDA margins on that as and and and and they're out there. Okay. So for the person that doesn't know what EBITDA is or unit volumes, like maybe say that a different way from a same are you looking for like a 30 or 40% return or return on on gross revenue. Okay. Yes. Okay. I think you know to your question earlier as well, if you were to invest, I think that's one of the things that franchises kind of get a bad route. They're like true entrepreneurs don't own franchises. And true entrepreneurs, real true entrepreneurs do own franchises and they do it passively because they're leveraging the franchise or to train your operating part. Yeah. And and I think like right now I have my two operating partners at a convention. I make sure they're introduced to some of the top performing franchisees because I know them. They didn't know them. Like you've got to talk to them. Yeah. And so you're leveraging they get to leverage other top performing franchisees and they get you they get to leverage all the corporate training. Yeah. And so do the managers, the people that they're managing also yeah, leverage that. So I think it's great for entrepreneurs to to do it. Before I get into the big question about how you find the right franchise, I let's talk about the cons to to franchising the cons that I can think of are you can sell the franchise, but we're not talking stock market liquidity or in life insurance, one of the big pitches is it's super liquid. Obviously that's not a pinch, right? But but it's not like your stuff. You might if you have a good franchise, you would I would imagine that you could probably sell that. What are their cons are there? If you were making a pro list, there's a lot of pros. What would be the cons if you were to be like, okay, these are the things to be careful of or these are the downsides to investing in this versus something like real estate, the market, or investing in your own business. What you just mentioned is is a con, but also a plus. It's a con. If you were in the wrong market, franchising, if you are in a standalone market, by yourself, you have one location, one truck, whatever it is, you don't have neighbors right next to you. It's going to be hard to sell it and it will be hard to expand. So when we bought Solos Salons, we bought 12 territories in Orange County. We locked down that whole mark. We did it because we knew that there were other franchisees and LA, San Bernardino, Ventura, all around us who were franchisees. We wanted to expand. We could buy in those markets or buy out other franchisees. Also, we wanted to sell. They might be our buyers. A lot of my acquisitions and sales have been to other franchisees. That's something to think about just in growth or exit. We eventually sold our 12 Solos Salons to a private equity company. That's something else that people don't think about with franchising. It made a good return. It was a nice, healthy exit. Very happy with it. Cons for franchising, you have to listen to the franchise or you don't have the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want. You just can't go make your own website or tweak your own website. You'll get in trouble. The sign is what it is. You can't put up like Eric's coffee shop. It's Starbucks or whatever scooters or whatever it is. You can't change it. You can't change the recipes. There's a lot that you can't change. The tendency for franchisees is to change things because we all think that we know better. Even though we don't, we think that we know better as a franchisee and you're always trying to tweak things, change things, push the boundaries and that's not a good thing. It's not a good thing for the franchise or it's not a good thing for the franchisee. Eventually the franchisee and the franchisee will have a good working relationship but there's tension at different times. That's one of the negatives. You're restricted. We're in Austin right now. I used to have locations here for one of my businesses. I could only mark it up to my boundary. I couldn't cross the road and go market my location because it wasn't mine to mark it. You might have a bad franchisee next year and they are going to hurt you a little bit. But if you have great franchisees and you're a little weaker, it's going to help you. Those are some of the negatives. Now let's talk about how you pick a franchise because it's just like real estate. It's just like insurance. It's just almost like take any category. You can make general statements but there are winners and there are probably losers and then there's probably average. If I were to come to you and I'm actually going to do that, please talk to me like in real part because I'm very interested, how would you go about figuring out what I should invest in? Obviously I'm already thinking of people that I could potentially partner with. What's the process of finding that? Are there brokers out there that have long lists? Should I go into chat GBT? Do I reach out to you? How do you go about figuring out where to begin? I don't even know. You've mentioned restoration and a salon. That's about it. Okay. That's interesting. Then I know that there's a lot of fast food deal which I wouldn't necessarily be super interested in. I'm going to hand it over to you around. Someone's interested. Now, how do we how do we surf? How do we figure out? How do we sift through? Where do we begin? We just call your cell phone or where do we begin? It's so hard because you go to the magazines. It's all dated out dated information. I mean, outdated by 18 to 24 months because you don't know what they're reported on. They say a number one franchise brand, emerging brand, whatever it is. It's all out dated information. You don't know really what they're scoring that. I would use that as a point to start looking at some different brands. I think what I would do, my advice for people, I guess start in your market. I would want to make whatever look at the market that you'd want to be in. Then I would look at some of the people that you think would be interesting as partners and start with them. Now you're in your market or whatever market is that you want to start in. Then you have some people on your bench or possible bench that would be. Then you see what they are good at. They're like, you'll set. Then beyond anything else, I would start putting together like, who are they good at managing? Who are they not very good at managing? Because so many people get into it and they think, oh, I want to start a coffee shop. Well, you're managing young people or you want to start a fitness company. Now you're managing a bunch of fitness people, salons and you're managing salon professionals, which are a disaster to manage. And so I would really think like, what is their skill set and who are they really good at managing? Or ideally, if it's something that you do it on the cheek, maybe they do start out as that chuck in a truck or man in a van and they're out there. So like one of the things I think for you, I won't name the brand, but there's a brand that we have that you could start out in a salon suite. You de-risk it. It's in the beauty space, but you start out in a salon suite. So you're in there, I have two brands like this actually. You start out in a salon suite, you're renting a hundred square feet. We have one technician in there and they're performing the service and technician like this would be someone that I should find a partner or this is. Is that's the word or I get okay. So I just employ them. You employ them and your and your operation partner manages them. Okay. And now you can test out that model. See how well they do according to what the franchise says you should do. If it's $10,000 a month or whatever that number is, if you're doing that in the salon suite down the street, then you know you have a you're in a good area. Now you can go find your $2,000, $3,000, $15,000 square foot retail spot in that particular market and then you'll be building up your clientele in the salon suite. You open up the flagship and now you're in business. Awesome. So that's I think, you know, I always think like how do you de-risk it? Yeah. And we found two brands like that that are actually doing it like that. Okay. Think about some some things that are in fitness in general right now is decreasing. Okay. Average unit volumes, gross revenue is decreasing in fitness in general. I know that through actual data. Electromosy got out at the right time. Yeah. Electromosy got out at the right time. Beauty is strong. Yeah. Wellness is really strong. Okay. And that's also something that I could get behind that I like the whole wellness space. And so beauty wellness are good good spaces. Those are those are great spaces. And I think anything that our needs base kind of like what we're talking about with restoration. I think some of the home service stuff right? Yeah. You know, there was an influx of that during COVID. So people got their window treat done or remodeling or whatever it is. And so there was more customers in a short period of time. The franchises did very well. People probably should have sold a year ago. Yeah. Made a nice healthy profit. But the customers aren't there. Yeah. Okay. So and I'm just going to reverse engineer what I'm hearing you say. So really if you're someone like me, you got to find the who. Got to find the who. And when I say who, that should be the operating partner. And you figure out what they are good at. And then you figure out what market they're in. And then if let's just say I find someone who's like really handy like this person can work hard and they could do lots of different things. Then then it could be like, okay, they're interested. And we could look at home service businesses or, you know, there are some reason is there a franchise out there that you can like spray wash, concrete. What is that? Yeah. Like I just see like that's that's one of my frustrations. It's my Instagram feed is filled with like people do it. It's just like I don't know. I think it'd be cool for a day. But like so so that would be an example of like then you would look at that market. And I would imagine some markets already like taken like there's an amazing franchise. But in natural Tennessee where I live, it's already taken. So you're only as good as what like that's the benefit of another benefit of franchises. They're they're going to protect the people that are, you know, already working with them. And so that would be that would be the route. And then if you are someone who's watching this or listening to this and you're like, Hey, like I I want to actually operate like I would love to operate in in a wellness franchise or I'm handy with my hands. I would love to do that or I would love to be a technician in the beauty salon. Like that could just be that much more of a no brainer because I would imagine you're saving a little bit of money early on because you not necessarily have to, you know, shell out money, hang someone to do that. And then there's a little bit more upside. But I imagine you're taking more of potential risk if you go in it 100%. I think my biggest takeaway is before talking to you, I wasn't thinking about the partnership model. And it's totally different partnering with a franchise versus just startup because there's already a proven system. And so it's a lot cleaner than at partnering on a on a startup because there's just a lot of more unknowns and a lot of times partnerships fail because of expectations, a difference in expectation. And that's that still can happen in a franchise. I would imagine, but it's harder because it's a lot clearer of what you're getting. What's who's doing what? So you want to know the hardest way to get into franchising that's probably the best way. Okay, yes. 100%. So I think that's buying an existing location out. Okay. And it's hard because franchisers don't tell you that they have an existing owner. It's easier to sell a franchise in an open territory to collect that franchise fee than it is to facilitate a resale. Okay. And if you get it into a resale, then what you're going to have, you can validate, you'll get real numbers from that franchisee. You'll validate those numbers with other franchisies. And then you'll validate that just in the industry in general. If it's painting, you validate with other painters in different markets. Like is this is this real? And so one of the hard things about franchising, you don't really have real numbers to work on. Yeah. You have historical numbers or you have historical numbers of corporate locations or franchise locations, but it doesn't really tell you not sure if the market is going to actually like your marketplace is going to translate. That's right. I think some of the best things that I did was buy out other franchisies. Yeah. And I know right now some of my good friends, what they're doing, they're just on an acquisition run, they're acquiring their other franchise. Why do people sell if it's doing well? Life changes. Think about this, they're locked down to that market and they're moving. Okay. They're retiring. Okay. Or they're just burned out on it. Maybe they just have one location and they're not making it and somebody with 15 locations can just gobble that up and put it into their current portfolio and they have much better economics. How do you find how do you find these deals? Like did become friends with you? I know you have the community. I want to make sure that we're plugging any of any of your stuff down below. But is it connecting with someone like you or how does someone like that? So let's give the lay of the land. Yeah. You can inquire on the website. Okay. You will. And if you don't hear back, they'll probably sold out. And so that's why they're not getting back to you. If they're aggressive, they want you. You can talk to a franchise consultant or broker. Okay. Some of them are amazing. Yeah. And some of them are worthless. They are the real estate agents yesterday. They're franchise brokers tomorrow. When the real estate market takes off, they'll be mortgage broke. I mean, they're just that they don't have any experience. And so if you get the right one, they're tremendous help. They're limited on what they could show you as well. Well, during COVID, crumble cookies was hot. People got into that and made a ton of money right away. Like everybody that opened up a crumble was crushing it. It's not that way today. They're competitors that have been. Brokers didn't work with crumble. No broker work with crumble. And so if you went to a broker, they would tell you you're an idiot for going with crumble because they are not they've made it making the top of it. Yeah. I mean, they probably truly believed it was a bad thing. So you might not be getting the best advice, but working with a good good consultant, good franchise broker is great or can be great. They get paid by the franchise or just like in real estate or something like that. So they're incentivized by the franchise or and then I would just talk to franchisees in your market. Okay. I give you something interesting. Yeah. An industry that you want to get into. Yeah. I would just start talking to the different franchisees. There's other there's some different websites out there that have some listed for sale. But it's not like you can't go into Zillow. Yeah. You can't go into now. Imagine if there was a Zillow or franchise. I know. If you go into Biz by Cell, you will get you have people that that an ad that will look like a franchise for sale, existing one, but they're just, you know, their consultants out there trying to get Lee. Yeah. They are new franchise or is trying to sell unopened territories. Yeah. So it's really difficult. But I would start trying to find any franchise for sale on Biz by Cell or with a broker that's in that franchise system that you want. That's where I would start. Any any final words that you have, anything that was not said that should have been said when it comes to creating a masterclass around, should you invest in a franchise? And I'm excited to talk offline about nail salons or whatever this salon. I'm interested. I, you know, I'm I'm not emotional about what we do as long as what I what I personally wouldn't be able to do is own a franchise. If I'm if I'm into health, I personally don't want to own a franchise that's like not helping people. That's just a conviction that I have. But you know, I'm, you know, I'm open for open open for lots of different ways to add value to the world. I think the last kind of comment on franchising is you want to make sure that you are you going to enjoy working with that founder or that team. Yeah. And that you align with them because you'll be working with them a lot for a while. Yeah. And then also realize they're probably going to sell the private equity at some point. And that's just the nature of it. They are probably going to have liquidation event where they get to, you know, cash out on all their hard work and the private equity comes in. I think at that point, you just need to understand if you want to stick around for that private equity and see how they are as a franchise or or maybe it's time that you sell around the same time that the founder is selling. Okay. So that's something that's probably not talked about very much in franchising. But that's what I would be thinking about. How can people, what's the best way for people to get to know you? I know you have some. I got a one. Yes. Called franchise secrets. Okay. franchise. You can just find that on the on the website. Scalable franchise is a domain that I have that has a lot of, you know, you can find my Facebook group and then we got a great Facebook community. Um, different masterminds and that's probably the best way. That was your franchise or thinking about, um, or you have a business that you were thinking about franchising, which is another topic for another day. That's what I really get passionate about. That is, um, you can find me at front street EP dot com and that's where we have it. If someone wanted to, if someone had something that was really, really working and they're like, I want to talk about potentially franchising this. That's, that's where your brand butter is. That's what that's what I do. That's what I do all day long is help brands grow and scale. Awesome. Eric, thank you for coming on the show and I thank you for giving me a lesson and masterclass around franchising as an investment. Absolutely. Thanks, Caleb.