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Your brand won’t sell for 9 figures if your franchisees are broke. And yet most founders scale like that’s the goal. Here’s what top M&A advisors actually care about when it comes to your exit 👇

Your org chart is killing your exit. CEO: You CMO: You CFO: You Operations: You IT: Also you I've owned 30+ businesses. The ones where I'm replaceable? 4-5x multiples. The ones where I AM the business? 1-2x if I'm lucky. That $300k/year business? Either a $600k exit or a $2M exit. Your choice. Stop being irreplaceable. Start building an asset.

Flynn Group just made their biggest Planet Fitness play yet. While everyone's worried about franchise saturation, smart money is doubling down. Consolidation creates opportunity...if you know where to look.

AI will tell you a franchise is a goldmine. Then it'll tell you the same brand is a disaster. Same day, same numbers. All depends on how you ask it. Talked to someone yesterday about where AI really fits into buying a franchise. And most people get one part of it wrong. AI made the information easy to get. That part's great. You can pull an FDD apart, compare Item 19s, check unit economics, all of it, in minutes. But it's only as good as what you ask it. Feed it weak questions, you get weak answers. Ask it to confirm what you already want to hear, and it will. The information doesn't tell you what to do. It just gives you the ability to make a good decision for you. I learned that one the hard way. I used to think I was the best in the world at picking franchises. Then I got into a few that weren't what I thought they were. How? I wasn't looking at enough unbiased information. I was deciding off old wins and a feeling that the grass was greener somewhere else. Sometimes it was. Sometimes it wasn't. So ask yourself this. When most franchisees in a brand make good money, was that really a great pick? Or did the future just break the right way? Because when you buy into a brand, you're betting on a pile of things you don't control: where the economy goes where private equity money moves next what your competition decides to do what regulators decide to do whether a black swan event helps you or wrecks you whether the brand's leadership stays strong how fast the brand grows how the franchisor makes decsions if the brand attracts more better franchisees vs weaker ones Get most of that right and people call you a great picker! Get it wrong and the same brand looks like a mistake. Most of it was never fully in your hands. What you control is you. I talk to people in average and even underperforming brands who make really good money. They know they're the reason. The mindset, the capital, the right team. They watch their KPIs. They budget. They do what a good business owner does. And those same people would win in just about anything. A franchise. A boring service business. A mom and pop. Doesn't matter. Codie Sanchez is great at getting people into the boring businesses. Walker Deibel does the same with buy-not-build. Same audience every time. People leaving corporate, sitting at a transition point, wanting to control where they're headed. AI will give you every fact. It'll run every scenario on that list, the economy, the competition, the regulators, all of it. What it can't do is factor in you. And it can't factor in the learning curve. There's always a learning curve. Buying an existing business? Employees might walk. Can you handle that? Can you fire the ones dragging it down? Starting from scratch? Harder than you think, every time. I've done it. Buying a franchise? Easy to assume the franchisor's going to do the heavy lifting. Maybe you were told that. Maybe you weren't. Either way, a lot of people carry that expectation in, and it costs them. Franchise, existing business, or built from nothing, the result 9 times of out 10 comes down to the same thing. You. At least this has been my experience as I thought about it this morning, having my coffee on the front porch.

Why Traditional FSOs Can Kill Your Growth as a Franchisor (Especially When Doing Their Job) Traditional FSOs see franchise sales as the end goal. That's literally what they're hired for. Reality check: It's just the START of your franchisor journey.

The biggest lie in business? That "Growth = Cash." Actually, growth eats cash. I see this with Franchisees and Franchisors constantly. Here is the "Growth Paradox"

AI just replaced the front desk (and did it better). Most leaders are chasing AI tools. The best operators are fixing execution. Brian Holmes from Franchise Ramp and AI Front Desk spotted the real problem: Front desks missing calls, ghosting leads, and leaking money. He built a better system. 1.1M+ tasks completed 65,000 hours saved 24,000 appointments booked $1K per month per location in labor saved And he’s not selling it to everyone. I tried to buy it and he said no until it was the right fit. “AI isn’t the silver bullet. Execution is.” If your front desk is still dropping leads, it’s not a people problem anymore. It’s a systems problem. Would you trust AI to handle your front desk? Full episode: https://t.co/9Ms6sYNAU9

Buying Brand #2? Here’s what no one tells you. Everyone loves to talk about scaling up. Few talk about the wreckage left behind when it’s done too fast.

McDonald's didn't become McDonald's because franchisees improved the Big Mac recipe. They succeeded because every location executed the exact same system. Your job isn't innovation - it's replication. Are you following the playbook or rewriting it?

The most profitable weekend of my consulting career, I didn't talk to a single prospect. I spent it alone with years of my own pipeline data, looking for one thing: where were my hours actually going?

The person who says "I'm so serious" and then disappears for 2 weeks told you everything. You just didn't want to hear it. I chased people like that for years. Draining. Then I checked my data: when words and behavior didn't match, 5% ever bought. Stop negotiating with stated intentions. Watch what they DO.

Franchisors aren't selling franchises. They're buying franchisees.

Franchisors still treat the FDD handoff like a milestone in their process. For a lot of buyers it isn't a milestone anymore. It's raw material, and what they do with it happens somewhere you can't see. What are you seeing?

TERMS OF SERVICE Cancellation. Email me, call me, or text me. Yes, you'll have my cell. In between calls. The founder room is small enough that we just run a group text. Somebody drops a question on a Tuesday and has three answers by lunch. Retention. Make it so good and so helpful that you don't want to leave. Departure. I've never once tried to talk somebody out of it. I say thanks for being part of it, and I mean it. Usually I leave your access on an extra month so you can finish whatever you were in the middle of. Reinstatement. Come back in two months. No fee, no reapplication, no conversation about where you've been. Only inconvenient part. You have to say "hey, I'm pausing" or "I'm stopping." That's it. Fees. $200 a month if you own locations. $500 if you own the brand and you're under a hundred franchisees. Upsells. I do have bigger programs on the Front Street side. Most people in here don't need them, and I'm not bringing them up unless you do. Actual retention strategy. The session that solves your problem was probably recorded eight months before you had the problem. That's what the archive is for. I've had good friends pay to be in this, stop, and come back later. Life changes, budgets change, needs change. That's why it works this way. Two rooms. Franchisees who own locations, and founders still under a hundred. DM me and I'll send you the details. I've also got friends running similar things and I refer people to them all the time. And I run a couple of little ones I don't charge for and don't pay for. One's called AI Franchise Fight Club. Twice a month, invite only, very small, a ton of fun. Start your own if you want. It doesn't have to cost anything. Just don't do this alone.

Why Traditional FSOs Can Kill Your Growth as a Franchisor (Especially When Doing Their Job) Traditional FSOs see franchise sales as the end goal. That's literally what they're hired for. Reality check: It's just the START of your franchisor journey.

Your brand won’t sell for 9 figures if your franchisees are broke. And yet most founders scale like that’s the goal. Here’s what top M&A advisors actually care about when it comes to your exit 👇

Buying Brand #2? Here’s what no one tells you. Everyone loves to talk about scaling up. Few talk about the wreckage left behind when it’s done too fast.

Franchisors still treat the FDD handoff like a milestone in their process. For a lot of buyers it isn't a milestone anymore. It's raw material, and what they do with it happens somewhere you can't see. What are you seeing?

The biggest lie in business? That "Growth = Cash." Actually, growth eats cash. I see this with Franchisees and Franchisors constantly. Here is the "Growth Paradox"

AI just replaced the front desk (and did it better). Most leaders are chasing AI tools. The best operators are fixing execution. Brian Holmes from Franchise Ramp and AI Front Desk spotted the real problem: Front desks missing calls, ghosting leads, and leaking money. He built a better system. 1.1M+ tasks completed 65,000 hours saved 24,000 appointments booked $1K per month per location in labor saved And he’s not selling it to everyone. I tried to buy it and he said no until it was the right fit. “AI isn’t the silver bullet. Execution is.” If your front desk is still dropping leads, it’s not a people problem anymore. It’s a systems problem. Would you trust AI to handle your front desk? Full episode: https://t.co/9Ms6sYNAU9

Semi-absentee isn’t a strategy. It’s a stage. If you skip the work to get there… you don’t step back. You collapse. 🧵 Here's what I learned the hard way:

AI will tell you a franchise is a goldmine. Then it'll tell you the same brand is a disaster. Same day, same numbers. All depends on how you ask it. Talked to someone yesterday about where AI really fits into buying a franchise. And most people get one part of it wrong. AI made the information easy to get. That part's great. You can pull an FDD apart, compare Item 19s, check unit economics, all of it, in minutes. But it's only as good as what you ask it. Feed it weak questions, you get weak answers. Ask it to confirm what you already want to hear, and it will. The information doesn't tell you what to do. It just gives you the ability to make a good decision for you. I learned that one the hard way. I used to think I was the best in the world at picking franchises. Then I got into a few that weren't what I thought they were. How? I wasn't looking at enough unbiased information. I was deciding off old wins and a feeling that the grass was greener somewhere else. Sometimes it was. Sometimes it wasn't. So ask yourself this. When most franchisees in a brand make good money, was that really a great pick? Or did the future just break the right way? Because when you buy into a brand, you're betting on a pile of things you don't control: where the economy goes where private equity money moves next what your competition decides to do what regulators decide to do whether a black swan event helps you or wrecks you whether the brand's leadership stays strong how fast the brand grows how the franchisor makes decsions if the brand attracts more better franchisees vs weaker ones Get most of that right and people call you a great picker! Get it wrong and the same brand looks like a mistake. Most of it was never fully in your hands. What you control is you. I talk to people in average and even underperforming brands who make really good money. They know they're the reason. The mindset, the capital, the right team. They watch their KPIs. They budget. They do what a good business owner does. And those same people would win in just about anything. A franchise. A boring service business. A mom and pop. Doesn't matter. Codie Sanchez is great at getting people into the boring businesses. Walker Deibel does the same with buy-not-build. Same audience every time. People leaving corporate, sitting at a transition point, wanting to control where they're headed. AI will give you every fact. It'll run every scenario on that list, the economy, the competition, the regulators, all of it. What it can't do is factor in you. And it can't factor in the learning curve. There's always a learning curve. Buying an existing business? Employees might walk. Can you handle that? Can you fire the ones dragging it down? Starting from scratch? Harder than you think, every time. I've done it. Buying a franchise? Easy to assume the franchisor's going to do the heavy lifting. Maybe you were told that. Maybe you weren't. Either way, a lot of people carry that expectation in, and it costs them. Franchise, existing business, or built from nothing, the result 9 times of out 10 comes down to the same thing. You. At least this has been my experience as I thought about it this morning, having my coffee on the front porch.

The best KPI I ever tracked as a franchise consultant was whether people did what they said. One weekend of digging through years of pipeline data changed my whole business. Here's what I found:

The most profitable weekend of my consulting career, I didn't talk to a single prospect. I spent it alone with years of my own pipeline data, looking for one thing: where were my hours actually going?

What do franchise buyers do now that they didn't do before?

TERMS OF SERVICE Cancellation. Email me, call me, or text me. Yes, you'll have my cell. In between calls. The founder room is small enough that we just run a group text. Somebody drops a question on a Tuesday and has three answers by lunch. Retention. Make it so good and so helpful that you don't want to leave. Departure. I've never once tried to talk somebody out of it. I say thanks for being part of it, and I mean it. Usually I leave your access on an extra month so you can finish whatever you were in the middle of. Reinstatement. Come back in two months. No fee, no reapplication, no conversation about where you've been. Only inconvenient part. You have to say "hey, I'm pausing" or "I'm stopping." That's it. Fees. $200 a month if you own locations. $500 if you own the brand and you're under a hundred franchisees. Upsells. I do have bigger programs on the Front Street side. Most people in here don't need them, and I'm not bringing them up unless you do. Actual retention strategy. The session that solves your problem was probably recorded eight months before you had the problem. That's what the archive is for. I've had good friends pay to be in this, stop, and come back later. Life changes, budgets change, needs change. That's why it works this way. Two rooms. Franchisees who own locations, and founders still under a hundred. DM me and I'll send you the details. I've also got friends running similar things and I refer people to them all the time. And I run a couple of little ones I don't charge for and don't pay for. One's called AI Franchise Fight Club. Twice a month, invite only, very small, a ton of fun. Start your own if you want. It doesn't have to cost anything. Just don't do this alone.

My wife told the 20-year-old teaching me to foil, "Erik thinks he's 20 like you, but he's 50." She might be right. People grind for money. They get it, then they want more. They say they wanted freedom, then they trade it back for more grinding. Family's out of the house and they're still grinding. Only so many summers left with all my girls home. I'm spending it them them on the boat.

Your org chart is killing your exit. CEO: You CMO: You CFO: You Operations: You IT: Also you I've owned 30+ businesses. The ones where I'm replaceable? 4-5x multiples. The ones where I AM the business? 1-2x if I'm lucky. That $300k/year business? Either a $600k exit or a $2M exit. Your choice. Stop being irreplaceable. Start building an asset.