485 – He’s the King of Franchises: Tom interviews Joel Stewart

Episode 485 – Joel Stewart
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode four hundred and eighty five of Screw the Commute podcast. We're kicking off Vetrepreneur month with a prolific veteran, Joel Stewart. He's here. He's a franchise expert and consultant and veteran. We'll talk a little bit about his service. And we were supposed to record this a couple of days ago, but neither one of us was up to it with 13 service people dying in Afghanistan. Both of us just said, huh, we're just not up to yucking it up and, you know, upbeat and still it's stinging rather badly. But but we really pay respect to all the folks that are keeping us safe over here and doing the things that they have to do. And that's why we have Veterans Month. You know, I'm not a veteran myself, but I have the utmost respect for all the the people in the services. And we want to highlight them and and really give them a big boost every September. So we'll bring Joel on in a minute. So how would you like me to send you big checks? Well, if you're in my affiliate program, you can get checks anywhere from PayPal or gold bullion, I don't care.

[00:01:41] I would send cryptocurrency, but I have no idea how to do it. So you can make anywhere from eight dollars and fifty cents to an excess of 5000 dollars for a speaking engagement and everything in between. So if you're interested in that kind of stuff, just email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com. And we hardly ever get any refunds because we take care of our customers. So your commissions are solid. Let's see. You should pick up a copy of our Free Automation eBook. We sell this book for 27 bucks, but it's yours free for listening to the show. Just one of the tips in the book, literally, we figured it out estimated at a couple of years ago, has saved me seven and a half million keystrokes, save me carpal tunnel syndrome. Help me ethically steal customers from people to slow to get back to prospects and all those great things that knock your workload down like crazy. If you just implement what's in this great e-book, so grab a copy at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And then while you're over there, pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app. And you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. And of course, all the links for this and stuff will be in the show notes for this is episode 485.

[00:03:06] Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, and then the episode number, this one is 485. Now, at this point, I usually tell you about my my school. It's the only licensed, dedicated Internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world. It's certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia to attend the school because it's distance learning. And what we're doing now is we're doing a pilot program for folks with physical disabilities. And I've always thought that this school is perfect because they can not only learn a highly in demand skill from home. They can legitimately work from home. And I've been preaching that for 23 years. But since the pandemic, everybody's like, oh, you can work from home. I didn't know. Yeah, I've been doing it 40 for years, long before the Internet was around. So we're doing a Go Fund Me campaign. We're going to do a pilot program and put five people through the school, get them hired and good jobs or start their own business or both. And then I'm going to roll it out really big. You know, once I prove the concept, I'm going to go for grants and foundation money and things and help loads and loads of people change their lives for the better.

[00:04:24] So I hope you'll help me with that. Check it out at IMTCVA.org/disabilities. Click on the Go Fund Me campaign. Any little bit helps, but if you're really flush with cash, you could sponsor a whole student yourself. So so get in touch with me if that suits you. But check it out at IMTCVA.org/disabilities.

[00:04:47] All right. Let's get to the main event. Joel Stewart's here. He is a United States Navy veteran. He's the founder of the International Franchise Marketplace and the CEO of the Veteran Franchise Initiative. He's a certified franchise consultant and he's a franchise navigator. We'll find out what that is. He's got an MBA, he's an engineer. I mean, he's way smarter than me. He does all this great stuff. He's a speaker, author and a guy dedicated to helping you escape career prison. Joel, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:05:26] Oh, yeah.

[00:05:26] Yeah. For the third time, we've had Joel on here. So Joel was glad to have you back. And again, the thank you for your service from all of us here at screw the commute and tell us what's going on in the franchise world, man.

[00:05:42] Oh, there's a lot going on. Before I delve into that, I actually wanted to backtrack a little bit. I think it's really cool what you're doing with your school for people with disabilities. I've had a fair amount to deal with myself, and I think that entrepreneurship is an incredible way for people with disabilities to really kind of find their own, find their passion, find their path. Because one of the things that I preach all the time is that you can't especially for people with disabilities, you can't focus on all the things that you can't do. Like that's just going to get you in a cycle of depression. It's going to take you down and make you no good to anybody. If you if you have a lot of disabilities and there's and you're struggling with employment and that kind of stuff, you got to focus on what you can do. Because what you'll find is if you just focus on what you can do, you'll realize that you can do a lot. You know, just because disability may make you less valuable to other people as far as employment goes, it doesn't make you less valuable. And it might actually make you more valuable because it's going to push your life in a different direction. So I'm really excited about what you're doing for people with disabilities, and I think it's a great idea. But it's one of the things that I think draw or appreciate it then. And I'll tell you what, I got surprised quite a bit when I started the program, because in my simple, pitiful mind, I was only picturing people with mobility problems. And the first two people that applied are are blind. And so that changed the whole thing. But you know what? They're so inspiring. They the one guy who's got vision twenty five hundred, his computer monitor looks like a drive in movie theater screen. It's such giant, magnified like so big. It's like the Hubble telescope and he's most upbeat person. Yeah, I can figure that I can do this Tom. Yeah, yeah. And he's doing it. Another lady totally blind just can only see a little bit of light and she's taken longer. But she just finished an MBA and she's focusing on things she can do so.

[00:07:45] So I'm really going a step further with veterans. I mean, you have people that have PTSD that may may struggle interacting with employees and stuff in the workplace. But if they're finding a way to as an entrepreneur, they can kind of custom build their own path that way without buy and avoid the stuff that triggers them and focus on stuff that doesn't. So there's a lot a lot of pathways you can go when you decide to step out, encourage into entrepreneurship.

[00:08:14] Yeah. And if you happen to know anybody, I mean, I was going to do a special one later for for veterans. But if you happen to know anybody, we still have two slots left in the program for. We have three people progressing now. We have two slots left. And there's just an application process. Very simple. And so if you know anybody, send them over because they get full scholarship, they will not spend a nickel to go through this entire program. So. So if you know anybody, send them my way, Joel. Yes, sir. All right. Let's get back to the franchise stuff. So so franchising. A lot of people think that. Oh, man, you got to have millions of dollars to start a franchise. So once you bust that myth right off the bat.

[00:09:03] No. Yeah, that's not true at all. You might need a millions of dollars if you're looking to get into something really expensive. Like if you want to start a Bennigan's, for instance, a casual dining restaurant and you want to open like a big one. Yeah. You're probably going to spend a million or two, you know, but when you get away from casual dining or something big like self-storage, where there's just like huge real estate expenses, you'll find that you don't actually need a whole lot, you know, and I kind of qualify that everything is relative. Right. So one person might say, you know, ten thousand dollars is a whole lot. Whereas someone else might think it's a hundred thousand and someone else might think it's a million. So I'm just going to put a little bounds on this. You can get into franchising. You should probably have at a minimum to even look. You should probably be have about, I would say, 25000 liquid capital in your pocket to just to look. I mean, you're not going to have a lot of options at twenty five thousand, but you are going to have options. And and there are. Few options, even less than that, but, you know, you don't want to you don't want to put yourself in a situation where you run out of funds and you can't properly fund your business. And that's the number one reason businesses fail. Actually, it's not about the product. It's not about the market. The number one reason is people just literally try to start a business without enough money to do it or that kind of franchises. Don't let you do that. They'll make sure that you have the capital before they sell it to you.

[00:10:33] But yeah, because they don't want a bad mark on their franchise of, you know, somebody failing like instantly.

[00:10:40] Yeah, a failure hurts everybody. So you want to try to stay away from that. So I would say at a minimum, if you've got access to 50000 or 100000 liquid capital between your bank accounts and maybe like a retirement fund, a lot of people don't realize this. But if they have more than 50000 in a 401k or something like that, you can actually roll that 401K into your business and use those funds to start your business. So you can tap into funds in some unique ways that you don't want to have. Probably 50 to 100000 is a good, safe number to really have a lot of options in the franchise world. And then it just goes up from there. Like if you wanna go to restaurants, you're going to need more anything with a physical build out. You know that 50, 100000 is generally for home services work from home or mobile type stuff for driving around a van or a truck, servicing people at their houses or in some kind of mobile way. But when you get into anything with a build out with a storefront, the number just goes up. You know, generally, any build outs related franchises usually going to cost at least 200000 all in. Not that you need all that in liquid capital, but, you know, and then it just goes up. Most restaurants are probably 500000 and goes up from there. So it really depends what you want to do and and what your budget is and then trying to find the right.

[00:11:59] Ok, so what everybody knows, jobs like a McDonald's, like I thought I read somewhere where you have to have like two million dollars and at least 200000 has to be in cash, something like that. Is that does that anywhere reasonable?

[00:12:13] Yeah, probably. If you're looking at something big like a McDonald's, I think McDonald's, you might actually they think they've changed stuff all the time. I mean, last I kind of looked into it, it was something like a million dollars that you needed to have. But, you know, franchises do different things. If I remember correctly, with McDonald's, they actually you pay them a lot of money upfront, but then they handle your real estate. And the way they look at it's like a cross reliance. You know, you pay them a lot of money. You have skin in the game. They've built out your real estate. They have skin in the game. And so you're both working for success of the system. Mm hmm. But yeah, that's that's it's pretty rare to have franchises that expensive, but that's also one of the biggest, most maybe the biggest, most successful franchises in the world. So. Yeah. So they can basically make their own rules, right? Right. You know, so a lot of franchises have a competitive atmosphere where there's multiple franchises all competing for the same thing, you know, and it's just not quite comparable to McDonalds. But that is what people think a lot when they think about franchising.

[00:13:17] So are all of these franchises. I can't imagine that all of them would be a hands on owner operated. I mean, is there some some of the ones where it can be totally run by others?

[00:13:31] Yeah. You know, when when I talk to people, I usually ask them, you know, do you want to do this? Hands-on working 40 hours a week or more, 60, 80. Oh, they're going to have. Yeah. All in. Or do you want to run this semi absentee or absentee? And kind of the difference is when you're all in your running everything soup to nuts and and you're the person that's driving the success and that's going to limit you if your goal is to open multiple locations or if you are looking to maybe kind of wind down into retirement, you know, you're not going to spend that much time. So a semi absentee model is usually you have a manager that runs it and you are there overseeing kind of limited duties. So you hire a manager, maybe an operations manager. And and they're doing most of the day to day, and you're maybe managing the books and managing the marketing and, you know, basically cherry picking the tasks that you want to do. You're still pretty hands on, but it's more like a part time business for you and you have somebody else handling day to day. And that is a useful model, especially if you're doing multiple locations, really hands on maybe working full time at that point, but you're managing two, three, four or five locations.

[00:14:53] So you're only giving kind of part time attention to each one. And then the absentee model is you find someone I call them a designated manager, but they're designated to run the man at the. Franchise in your place, and you might still spend 30 minutes or an hour a week just keeping tabs on how things are going. But you are, you know, for all intents and purposes, you're more of an investor than you are running the franchise. And for that, I would say you need to make sure you have some extra capital reserves, especially to pay that manager in the first months of startup when there's not as much money coming in. And not all franchises are going to let you do that. Most franchises will let you come in. As you know, almost all franchises are going to let you come in as an owner operator. Most will let you do a semi absentee model. But the designated manager, completely absentee model. Yeah, not not all franchises are going to be OK with that. Some are a lot of them require part or full time dedication on your part.

[00:15:56] Yeah, and what's the the right type of person that should get a franchise? I mean, is it the person that, you know, has absolutely no business experience and needs everything laid out or what what's the the best demographic for a franchise owner?

[00:16:14] Well, in general, franchise owners kind of fall into two categories, they're the employees that want to stop being employees and they want to be their own boss and take control of their own lives. And that's where they sign on with the franchise to get a lot of help as far as how to start a business and you know, how to run that type of business. You know, whether it's SeniorCare or trash removal or a restaurant, you know, they're going to mentoring and say, hey, this is how you run this type of business. You know, here's what you have to do to be successful. And they kind of mentor you into business ownership. So it's not just you stepping out into the cold and just hoping that you get the right business idea. And then the second type is the investors. So there are different investors out there. Some of them do flips like they'll open a franchise, they'll get it up and running for five years, and then they'll sell it and open another one. And then there are people that build franchise business portfolios. And this can be with of single franchise building, you know, three, five, 12, 50 franchise locations. I talked with somebody about 120 once. And then there are people that build a portfolio of multiple types of franchises. So, you know, they want to develop an area or something, and they might open a food franchise and an automotive franchise, and they might have multiple locations with multiple different franchises, and they just build their business portfolio that way.

[00:17:35] It's almost like an index stock where there's all there's all kinds of stuff going on. So if one takes a hit, the other ones.

[00:17:42] Yeah. Yeah. It diversifies the risk. And it also allows you to try to open businesses that might have synergies where you need certain things done in your own is going to help service them.

[00:17:54] Oh, good idea. So what how did the franchise world fare through the pandemic that we're still in? But but are were there some businesses that took off and some that took a dive?

[00:18:08] Oh, yeah. Yeah, the the the pandemic has just shifted the marketplace and and what I believe are going to be many irreversible ways, you know, just in the short term, what we're looking at is that restaurants, fitness, anything that has a physical indoor location got hammered. Some of them, you know, were forcibly closed. Other ones just saw huge drops in attendance because people were so worried about getting out there and being around other people and possibly catching the Covid virus. And as far as foreclosures go, restaurants and the fitness categories were especially hit hard. And then other franchises that were home related services that went and met people where they were or, you know, a lot of people started working from their house. So people that, you know, franchises that that made their house more usable or made their yard more usable, like some people in the first months of the pandemic, spent more time at their house. And they probably, you know, if for not sleeping hours, they probably had in years.

[00:19:12] Exactly. You know, a business that took off was dog training because people home with their dogs to see and what little monsters they were to train.

[00:19:25] Yeah. And then like the senior care industry, I think is doing really well. A lot of them are in-home senior care. So they have nurses go and kind of provide for people in their houses because the the nursing homes, like the actual facilities, I mean, they took they took huge black eyes. I mean, there were some areas I'm up in Connecticut and I don't know how much some of the listeners have heard about the some of the scandals happening in New York. But yeah, of course. But even here in Connecticut, where we didn't have people getting forced into nursing homes that I've heard of, the you know, there were just huge casualties and the nursing home space. So it's going to be a while before they kind of get recover from that. But that just pushes more people into the in-home care space. You know, you've got plusa there's an aging population that's going to need more of that anyway. So, yeah, and anything that's been, you know, cleaning, you know, cleaning services, anything that's construction, you know, helping people renovate their houses or improving their yards or keeping the pests out of their yards, all this stuff, you know, saw huge increases. I mean, some some franchises are up like 100 hundred percent over the previous year just because the demand kind of went through the roof. And also having that know, what is it now the the required essential personnel. So some franchises, you know, are able to stay open because they were deemed essential. Other franchises just kind of added stuff to make them essential. Right. Right. Like I think one of the big ones was was decontamination back. Yeah, I think that might be wearing down a little bit now because they they've some recent studies have shown that Covid doesn't last too long on surfaces. But in the beginning, a Covid, I mean, everybody was adding decontamination to their portfolio, whether they

[00:21:22] Were like that or not, stores showing up at your store with, you know, with the suits on and everything and spray and everything. But I'll tell you, some of the those home care services are kind of a little dumb because, you know, I sit at home, so I watch TV all day. They're right in the middle of the massive facemask push. They're they're older commercials have no facemask and they're showing all the stuff. And then all of a sudden those commercials got thrown away and then they had runs with face masks. So you've written quite a few books. You're quite a prolific writer. So tell us about some of the books and how it helps people understand what's going on, because a lot of people I think we've talked about this before or afraid of stuff just because they don't know about it. So that's your one of your missions is to, you know, inform them about this this world of franchises.

[00:22:15] Yeah. One of the things I say is. Is when it comes to fear. You know, let's say you're you're walking through a house you're not familiar with. You open a door and inside that door, there's something creaking. It's pitch black. You can't see anything in the room. And what kind of you know, what would kind of come over you if you're in that situation? Hmm. You just be like scared out of your mind that there's no way I'm stepping foot into that room until I get a light. Right? Right. And so what I've seen in the franchise realm is a lot of people have that same feeling about about franchising or about stepping out into the unknown at all. You know, that's where people a lot of times their lives stall out is because everything beyond what they've been doing is like looking at that dark room and saying, I know nothing about that. It's really, really scary. And so what I've started dedicating myself to with my writing is, is basically giving people a flashlight and letting them look in the room before they step in. So I started that with my first book I published called The Value Equation. I guess it was about a year ago now. I published that one.

[00:23:25] And and that one is is more general, because my passion with franchising has been to help people escape career prison, career prison, which is where you keep making decisions for your future based on the decisions of your past. You're kind of trapped in a path, even though you don't like it. I call it career prison. You don't know how to get out. You're stuck in it and you hate it, but you don't know what else to do. So franchising is a great way to break out a career prison because you have a franchise coming along with you, helping you, teaching you what you need to do to be successful as a business owner. But there's a lot of other things with people in their lives where they may be stuck in career prison or a life prison, and they just don't know how to get out. So the value equation looks at all the aspects, everything that feeds into your personal worth in the marketplace and how you can improve that, how you can tweak things in your life so that you're always advancing your life forward. And I try to shine a flashlight into things like business ownership and how you're perceived out there, you know, controlling your perception and how to find jobs that fit your skill set and are maximizing your value that way.

[00:24:32] So that was, you know, my first big writing project, and I'm super happy with it. And, you know, I've had people read it and they're just like, man, I wish I'd read this 20 years ago. Yeah. And it actually I had an ecommerce made for the Synergy Learning Institute, and they took the course and they presented it to Forbes Business School, Forbes School of Business Technology. And now it's offered on their Knowledge Innovation Center platform. So now I have an accredited course built off of that, that it's accredited with the Forbes School and as well as the University of Arizona.

[00:25:10] Amazing credentials.

[00:25:11] Yeah. Well, then I then I focused on the franchising and I was like, you know, there are so much unknowns with franchising. Everyone's like, I want to change my life, but I don't know really how. And franchising looks interesting, but it's also scary. So I've started a book series and I'm publishing the second one right now, and I'm going to have another one in the future. But it's basically following the same model is let's take the flashlight, shine in the room and and just kind of let people see what's there.

[00:25:43] What was the title of the series?

[00:25:47] Well, right now it's basically the franchise section of the Value Equation series, because in my opinion, it's all tied to moving your life forward. So the value equation is I have a series on Amazon, the value equation series. The value equation is more general. And now I'm doing a whole franchise series on how you can use franchising to move your life forward. But the first book is Franchising and Lock the seven Secret Keys to Franchise Ownership, and that focuses on the basics of franchising, like understanding how territories are created and and how franchises are created. That would probably be a better start. What type of franchise ownership models there are and how financing is often approached and different ways you can get started. And you'd ask about the franchise navigator or you mentioned in the beginning. That's actually a behavioral assessment system. So a lot of people are familiar with the Myers Briggs is a kind of general behavior systems. The franchise navigators is specific towards franchising. At least it started that way. It's branched out a lot more now into entrepreneurship and jobs and stuff like that. But yeah, it's a franchise specific behavioral assessment system that, you know, gives you or a consultant like myself good insight into your value system. What drives you and what's going to make you happy? And then I can incorporate that information into the franchise search. And I offer that for free with franchising and lot. So if you get franchising unlocked, you can you can get access to that. It's normally 50 bucks. So that's a nice five dollars or 50 there. Yeah, really? Yeah, but that's all the basics. If you're just like thinking to myself, you know, franchising seems cool, it might be interesting. Start with franchising a lot and just learn about the franchise industry. You know what it is, what it isn't, and all the stuff you're going to need to know to start to decide the franchising is worth further investigation or if it's just not right for you. That's what the business is there. That's what that book is there for.

[00:27:52] I know. What what do people have to watch out for? Because not all franchise owners are scrupulous or I mean, not scrupulous, but have scruples that way.

[00:28:05] Yeah. Oh, well, that's what the the books that are coming out now are are based on. So I've got two coming out now. There's franchise due diligence navigating the franchise purchase process and then franchise due diligence questionnaires and worksheets. And there are two separate books because the questionnaire and worksheet book is actually going to be a physical book available on Amazon. And the franchise due diligence book is an e-book. So but it's included. So if you get the franchise due diligence eBook, you'll have a link there to go and download a printable version of the questionnaires and worksheets books. So they're meant to be together. But yeah, so the franchise due diligence book goes through and says, here is the franchise discovery process from franchise introduction all the way through franchise closing. And here's what you need to look for and look out for at each step of the process. Here's why that that stuff exists. Here's the goal for you and the goal for the franchise or for each step. And it lets you know you know, if I do decide to get into a franchise, how do I know that this is a good franchise? Like I said, it's shining that flashlight in there. It's not just a blind walking through and then suddenly you're stuck with a lemon. There's stuff in there that should keep you from, you know, 99 percent of bad franchise systems. If you follow the advice that's in the book, as well as follow what's in the questionnaire and questionnaires and worksheets book the questionnaires and worksheets book that you get included with franchising unlocked.

[00:29:35] You have to go to the website and get the downloadable the printable version. That one actually has physical questionnaires. So the franchise introduction, what what questions you want to ask of the franchise introduction? What is it that you need to look for in the franchise disclosure document that's going to feed into, you know, the other questionnaires and worksheets that I have? When you go into validation, what questions you want to ask the franchisees? And then I pull all this information into actual worksheets that you can do that will show you quantifiably whether a franchise is good or not and in different aspects. So it's not just pie in the sky, like, oh, here's some general concepts. There's you're actually putting numbers that you're getting in your conversations into worksheets. And there's going to be things that are you know, if it doesn't hit this, that's a red flag. You know, if your numbers don't come to this as well as how to compare multiple franchises to each other, you know, one franchise might have certain numbers in the next franchises might have better numbers. So we get really in the weeds and the questionnaire and worksheets book, and it complements the main book very well.

[00:30:42] But got to watch your numbers, yes, so it's good, yeah. If you do, you don't want to be in the weeds after you bought the thing.

[00:30:49] No, no, you do not.

[00:30:52] Now you're a consultant in this field, right?

[00:30:54] Yes, I am.

[00:30:55] All right. Now, does that mean that you represent people like a like a real estate agent or what does that mean? You're just more training oriented or you actually represent them?

[00:31:07] Yeah. The franchise consulting role is a little bit weird. It really comes down to who the franchise consultant is, to how they're going to approach it. So franchise consultants have two roles. One is they're there to find they're there to find prospects for franchise owners, but they're also there to guide potential franchisees to the right franchise. So the way it's set up is franchise owners will give a finder's fee to a consultant for making an introduction to somebody and then that person closing. So it's a commission based deal. Okay. But most franchise consultants like myself work with several hundred franchisors. So it's not like I feel like I have to guide them to a specific franchise or in order to get money. Like I work with so many that it's all really for me, it's all about the person. Like, I try not even to look at what the commission numbers are while I'm in those initial stages and guiding somebody towards the right franchise, because I don't want that to influence my advice. And I think that's the way to ethically do it as a friend, as a consultant, is that you don't even look at what any potential revenue might be until after the person's already engaged with the franchise, or is that you think they're a good fit for?

[00:32:26] Yeah, but if they're successful, they're going to spread the word. If you just stick them somewhere for a short term high commission and your reputation is going to get shot.

[00:32:36] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But also, I mean, just on a personal note, I mean, I'm in this because I love helping people, you know. Yeah. I'm actually a terrible salesperson. I took the franchise navigator for myself and the results were. Stay away from anything sales related. But you're a terrible salesman. But Mike, my contribution score is very high. Like it's almost save the whales activist time. And so for me, I can I can only do sales if I believe I'm helping a person. So that's that's the main driver for me. And I feel it should be the main driver for other consultants. But the flip side to this, this whole thing is that for the person that's looking for a franchise, the franchise consultant is free, like we're a free resource. You know, we help you. And if we can't help you find the right franchise, then, you know, it's no skin off their back. They don't have to pay us anything. So so, yeah. So it's kind of a weird space. I feel personally that I'm a rep, that my goal is to get my candidates with the right franchise and make their life a success, even though they're not the one that pays me. Right. Right. So that's where it's really kind of confusing and and how different consultants might have a different opinion. You know, other consultants might say, I'm really more connected to the franchise or because of the one that pays me, and I'm going to connect them with candidates no matter what. But that's definitely not the way I take it. Yeah. And and to be honest, all the franchise consultants I know take the same same opinion I do. So I do put warnings on my books, like there may be franchise consultants out there that are looking out for your best interests, but all the ones that I know are customer centered, just like I am. And they get an immense amount of personal satisfaction from making from knowing they made a good connection.

[00:34:27] Oh, that's that's good. People hang with good people, put it that way. Yeah.

[00:34:32] Basically, you know, one of the things that I've been doing throughout my entire franchise consulting career is I've been focusing on veterans. When I first got into it, I was talking to a lot of franchisers. Everyone kept telling me that veterans were their best franchises, most profitable franchises. So I started focusing in that space because I'm also a veteran. And what what I realized is that most veterans just they have the capability. You know, they're they're amazing operators. They're able to replicate franchise systems like nobody else. But the military doesn't do a great job preparing them financially for for a post post military career. So most veterans don't have the capital to start a franchise business. So I started looking at that and saying, how can we solve this piece, how can we solve the, you know, the monetary piece and connect these veterans that are much happier owning businesses that than, you know, civilians are generally a veterans are very driven to entrepreneurship. How can I connect them with franchise orders that really, really want better operators? And it all came to a head when I was talking with some other entrepreneur friends of mine who are also veterans. And we came up with a model of bringing together investors with with the nonprofit and then having them team up together to open franchise locations for veterans. So this might seem a little complicated and it is a little complicated. But to boil it down, basically, we have if we have a transitioning service member coming out of the military or an existing military member or veteran or a mill spouse, what our program will do is the investors and the nonprofit will team up and open a franchise location for this veteran to manage.

[00:36:22] And and once they're going to go through a management apprenticeship program, you know, while they're managing the franchise location, and once they finish that apprenticeship, they're going to be able to take over a majority interest in that franchise. You know, ideally 100 percent through sweat equity, although if it is a really expensive franchise, they may have to contribute some of their own funds. But we have a method set up where income coming into the nonprofit can be put aside into a grant fund from the nonprofit ownership stake. And and they'll be able to take over at least 51 percent of that business once they finish their apprenticeship program. So we are super excited about this. And I've talked with dozens and dozens of franchise owners about this, and they're all excited about this. And we are in the process of rolling it out right now. We have one location finishing its build out. We have several more about to launch and we hope within the next couple of months. And we've got some some big plans and we have tons of veterans. So we haven't really advertised this. And last I talked with the guy running the apprenticeship program, which is where applicants would start the we had like a thousand people waitlisted.

[00:37:36] So we have tons of interest in that. Oh, wow. It's just kind of adding together the funding and coordinate with the franchise owners and get these locations open. So it's something that's never been done before. You know, we're getting through the, you know, the different hiccups and road bumps right now, because this is something that's never been done before. And that's become very clear from talking with Franchise Horse. They've never seen this before. And honestly, it's a really amazing program. It's a win win win for everybody. So, yeah. And so one thing I'd like to point out, if anybody is looking for a way to support veterans, you know, beyond your your disabilities program, which is very likely to have a lot of veterans in it just because there's a lot of disabled veterans out there interested in entrepreneurship. But you can make donations to the nonprofit Operation Phantom Support, and those donations can go towards either opening a franchise for a veteran or the grant fund that will grant a veteran there, 51 percent ownership. And you'd be really helping out the program and really helping out veterans that, you know, need to use this program to really kind of move their life after getting out. And and where in a world where I feel that the real importance of this is, is that veterans, especially the war veterans, have a hard time transitioning from the military to civilian life. They're in a they're in a in the military.

[00:39:07] They're in this organizational structure where they have a standard operating procedure for success when they step out into the civilian world. All of that just kind of disappears. You know, they get out of the military and they're like, OK, you know, I went through like kind of a separation program, but I've got no support structure. I've got, you know, no organization that I'm a part of now. I've got no standard operating procedure where if I do X, Y and Z, I'm going to be successful. And that's what we are really remedying with this. You know, we have a transitioning veteran military member coming out and we are putting them in a franchise, that franchise structure. And we're also part of that support structure and that, yeah, their website is PhantomSupport.org. And if you go to PhantomSupport.org/donate or just click on the donate button, you'll have the opportunity to donate. And if you put in the sorry categories are there. If you have if you want to make sure that your donation goes towards this program and the little donation rate below that in the donation box, there is a little thing that lets you tell you tell where you want your donation to go and just put to eat for better into employment. That's there. That's the apprenticeship program that starts this whole thing off. The Phantom's farm support that August donate. And I just put B2C and the designation button.

[00:40:32] And all right, man, that's a that's a great program, and I'm sure we have veterans listening to the show

[00:40:38] Here, too. Yeah. Yeah, we are working on some bigger projects that are going to get a lot of veterans in different businesses, and we get there a lot faster with with everyone out there support. So.

[00:40:51] So how do people get ahold of you and how they works?

[00:40:55] Yeah. Yeah. My books are great, you know. And just to go back to my book, one of the reasons for writing them is I realized that I started out I would spend two hours just telling people, you know, some of the basic stuff that's in my books every with every single time. And I was like, maybe if I just offer this up to people, you know, they can try that. More people might decide to explore this. If they don't have to dedicate themselves to two or three hours with me to get a lot of the same. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's. It's one of the things, but yeah, you can get a hold of me through my website. That's Integritycommercial.biz. And that's my site for the international franchise marketplace. When I first got started, I started out in commercial real estate and business brokerage, and I discovered franchise consulting through my business brokerage. So integrity commercial is actually, you know, like my kind of. Higher level organization, but I've still kept it around, like even though now that I focus on franchise insulting, integrity, commercial, that best you can email me, Joel.Stewart@IntegrityCommercial.biz. More than happy to reach out. And you can even give me a call or WhatsApp 860-459-9268.

[00:42:29] And we'll have this all in the show notes folks. So you can just visit those click and then get all these numbers. Thanks so much man for coming on and enlightening us about franchises. And again, thanks for your service, man.

[00:42:43] Well, it's been my pleasure. I love coming out of this podcast and I love the stuff you're doing for veterans. And and I really like what you're doing right now with that disabilities thing. So, yeah, I would even go out and throw a plug for you, as does any guys that are out there or girls that are out there that are, you know, wanting to support people who are disabled. That is what Tom is launching there, I think is going to be a great program. So check out his his go fund me and and make a real difference in some people's lives.

[00:43:17] Yeah, I really, really appreciate it. We're also going to use some of the money to hire people with disabilities to help run the program. So we're all in. All right, man. Well, thanks so much. And we'll catch everybody on the next episode. See you later.

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