Beat The Fear of Franchising with Roland Frasier and Erik Van Horn

If you are that franchisor that is more picky about bringing in the right franchisees, then you're going to have a lot more success because you are bringing in the right people, the right partners that are going to help you scale to where you want to go as a franchisor.

How much more successful would you be if you had lunch once a week with insanely successful entrepreneurs who share their biggest secrets on how they think and achieve success? Grab your seat at the table, because this is Business Lunch with Roland Frazier. Ryan Dice, Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch. And today's a snackable episode with Roland where he's going to get into some more tactical strategies that you can start using to live a rich and happy life. If this is the first snackable episode you're hearing, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to some of the other episodes that Roland has put out. And if you want to get notified every time we release a new episode, go to the new businesslunchpodcast.com website and we'll send you detailed notes along with every episode. That's businesslunchpodcast.com www.businesslunchpodcast.com and you can sign up for the free email newsletter where you'll be able to get all the highlights and resources from the episodes.

Okay, so I'm really excited to get to chat with you, Eric, because you are in a world that a lot of people are not familiar with, and actually a lot of people are kind of scared of in the franchise world. So I. I think probably, just maybe would we. Could. Could we start with an overview of the different things that you're doing and how you're helping both franchisors and franchisees right now? Maybe even just kind of a. Why, why is franchising scary to people? And. And why is it. Is it good?

So, yeah, right now. So I've been in franchising for over 20 years as a franchisee with multiple brands franchisor. And right now I'm in that space. I've got a podcast called Franchise Secrets. I got a Facebook group under the same name. And then I have masterminds. I have a mastermind for franchisees, where franchisees are in that. And I've got another one for franchisors. And I out of that franchisor mastermind, I meet these amazing young franchisors that need a lot of help, and they will work with me. And I'll usually come away with some type of equity advisory or really deep advisory for equity and some type of, you know, compensation along the way.

So right now, let's also clarify for people because they might not know what's the difference between a franchisor and a franchisee. I. We should probably start there.

A franchisor is McDonald's. Like, it's McDonald's corporate. That's the franchisor. Inside lingo is Zor. That's what we say in the industry. Franchisor, Zor franchisee is that local McDonald's owner or Subway owner or painting, you know, franchise owner. That's the local franchisee, and we call them Z's. So inside lingo, Z and zor.

Nice. Okay. All right, go ahead. Tell us a little bit more about the. The goods, bads and uglies.

Talk about, like, why. Why are people afraid of it? A lot of people just don't. Don't know about it. So I think true entrepreneurs, like those that are building big businesses, they're afraid of it because they don't want to be a franchisee stuck with inside a system because they're too entrepreneurial. So they're like, I don't want it to be a chuck in a truck, a man in a van. I don't want to have somebody telling me what to do all the time. So for those that are very entrepreneurial, maybe they've had success or they're going to have success. What franchising might do for them if they get with the right brand and they find that right operator, it's plug and play. You get an operator, the franchise or coaches, teaches, helps that operator. So you, as that true entrepreneur, don't have to. So I love certain franchises for that because you can find that operator, plug them into that, and you can have equity or whatever, whatever you want to do in that particular franchise at the local level. So that's one. One reason.

What about from the franchisor standpoint? Because I know a lot of people that I've talked to want to do multilocational expansion, and I'll talk to them about the franchise option, and that scares them. Can you speak to that at all?

I think a lot of it's the unknown, and they should be scared of it because, you know, if you're talking to that successful entrepreneur, they have one or two or 10 locations and they're thinking about expansion and then, you know, the capital that it really takes to expand across the country. I have Tommy Mello coming on to talk to my mastermind, and he's done that. Yeah, he's great. He's going to talk to My mastermind about, like, expansion, because he's done it as an entrepreneur and didn't go the franchisee route. So it's not easy. That's difficult. All the risk is on you, and you're working, working, working, and you're not really leveraging. The other way to do it and expand nationwide is through the franchi model. People are afraid of it because they just don't know what it entails. They hear horror stories and a lot of them don't make it. And they don't make it because they don't have. Because they got sold something. They got that that wasn't true, saying, hey, it's going to be easy. I can help you sell a bunch of franchises. It's not going to be that expensive. Franchisees are a dime a dozen and they never give you problems. All you have to do is give me a couple hundred thousand dollars and I'll help you get everything set up and you're off to the races. In reality, it's not that easy. But if you want to partner with the right people, if you want to bring in some partners like me, and there's other people that do that, that have a proven track record of scaling brands and being part of brands that have scaled like that, you're going to drastically reduce the risk of scaling, of getting to the point where you have 50 to 100 franchisees. And that's really the goal. You need to get to, you know, probably 100 franchisees to be really solid franchisor. And if you do that on your own, without the help, you will make mistakes. And a lot of people think just because I had a successful business, that means I will be a successful franchisor. But as soon as you're a franchisor, you're no longer in the business of the widgets or the service or whatever it was before. You are now in the business of scaling a franchisor and doing that through partners that are now franchisees. So you have to bring in the right franchisees. They're going to take. The franchisees will take credit for every success that they have. They will blame you as a franchisor for everything that went wrong. That's just part of the game. I've been a franchisee. I get it. I know it. I've been on the franchisor side. And, and it's very true. You have to be okay with that. And, and you're in the business of helping other people become successful business owners. So very different types of business models. But I think it's an amazing way to scale a business nationwide. And you as a founder don't have to be in the business all the time. If you bring in the right people.

Yeah. Cause it really provides self identifying operators, right?

Yeah. If you bring in the right operators and you frame it the right way, you have the right messaging going out, you have the right the sales process which some franchisors, they're bringing in franchisees to buy their franchise, it's a sales process. Others it's an awarding process or selection process. And if you are that franchisor that is more picky about bringing in the right franchisees, then you're going to have a lot more success because you are bringing in the right people, the right partners that are going to help you scale to where you want to go as a franchisor. I was just talking to somebody the other day, comes from the Internet marketing world of course, and he's got a successful brick and mortar and he said, Eric, this does not have to be a 60 to 90 day sales process. I can compress this into a two week sales process. I'm like, you could, but should you? And he's like yes, I should for all these reasons. And I said no you shouldn't. For all these other reasons. Would you bring on a business partner that you've never met in person, that you've never really had an opportunity to spend time with and to, and to learn about and to be with them like this? Don't think about you selling them, think about you bringing them in as a business partner. That's the mindset that you need to have. And too many franchise ors want, early on want to get butts in the seat. They want, they want franchisees and they are missing out on bringing the right franchisees. And so if you bring in the first 10 franchisees, they're the wrong fit. Cultural fit. Fit from being the right entrepreneur for that particular business, it's going to be a disaster. It's really going to be hard to scale after that. But if you get the first 10 franchisees that are aligned culturally, you have the right systems, they're making money right away to the expectation that they have, then it's really easy to go from 10 to 20 to 50 to 100 and easy with asterisks because nothing's easy with. But that's the easy way to do it. But most people get it wrong.

Roland, I love it. So we were talking a little bit before this podcast about the three or so kinds of different people and I'd Love, if you could kind of talk about how do I know what's right for me? Because I think a lot of people think that there's only the franchisor who is the company that wants to expand rapidly, using that as the method of expansion and the franchisee, who's a person who's an operator, owner, operator, that's effectively just licensing a system and they're going to kind of work in the business. But there's also a level of master franchisee that will buy a territory and still primarily be an operator or kind of overseeing it. And then there's the absentee franchisee investor. Like you see Shaq and Magic Johnson and a lot of famous people that have Tom Brady, you know, a bunch of franchises and they're not doing anything in them. So there's really these four types of people. Could you speak a little bit to what's right? Well, maybe to each of those different four positions or types of people. And then kind of what's the right set of circumstances that, that, that any one of those might be a fit for somebody that's, that's watching or listening to us right now.

So let's call that second group the, the well capitalized entrepreneur that has operational people, infrastructure that can go big with a company. Okay, so that's where you've got, you know, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Shaq and others. And then people that you've never heard of. You open up the multi unit franchise magazine and you see people that have hundreds of different franchises. So those just call them, you know, wealthy, backed by private equity franchisees. So you've got the money and you've got the operating partner and infrastructure. Those you can go with a brand. Most of the time you want to go with a brand that is proven and then you can go and continue to scale that around the country, grow around the country. Sometimes you are going with an unproven brand and you have so much belief in yourself or you have some special arrangement with the franchisor because you're bringing in star power or credibility or whatever it is. So you can maybe get some upside in the franchisor by being a part of the franchisor like that. And then you have more say in the franchisor. So you have influence with the franchisor if you are a big franchisee with deep pockets and good operational people. So call, we'll just call that like the. Really that's a multi, not even multi unit franchisee. That is a, a massive franchisee. And that's kind of what we're talking about earlier in my podcast. We could you get. The entrepreneur gets a franchise as a franchisee just brings all the right people in place and the franchisor is the one that trains all of them and helps all of them. That's the advantage of somebody with capital like a shack and some infrastructure like a shack can get into a brand like that. And then you've got just the normal multi unit franchisee and sometimes they call those area developers.

Let me jump back to the other one. Just, just to kind of help everybody. So for that what kind of capital would you want to anticipate that you had available either in equity or through some credit facility or something like that to, to do the, that big play that, you know, we'll call them a shack or since we've got Zors and Z's, we'll call them a.

Yes. So millions especially like what Shaq is doing. A lot of these, a lot of these folks are doing. They, they have large build outs, they're doing restaurants, they're doing Planet Fitnesses, they're doing gyms. And you know, a half a million to a million dollars to open them up. And then you need to have that operational capital that you absolutely need to have. As you scale and as you're scaling these businesses like they are, you're not pulling out a bunch of cap cash right away because all the cash that's coming in is going out. So there's, there's an exit play for them. But you, you have to have millions of capital in capital to be able to do that or access to that. So a lot of these guys, they're not just doing it themselves. It's not all Shaq's money, it's not all Drew's money. They, they have access to, to funds and capital outside of just their own personal savings account. But it's, it's in the millions or they have, you know, they have access to family offices or private equity that want to be in the franchising space.

So what kind of return would I expect if, let's say that, that I've got a million dollars to invest and I can put together, you know, another five or so and we, we say, okay, our plan is that we're going to buy a whole bunch of this kind of franchise or the master franchise rights for this franchise. What, what are the kind of returns could I expect on my money over what period of time for that?

So thank God I'm not a broker anymore and I'm not selling franchise anymore because you can't talk about this stuff. You can't talk about anything that's not in the franchise disclosure document.

Crumble.

Cookie crumble is probably a unicorn. Extremely successful. I've had some of their franchisees in my mastermind, and they, you know, it's a 6 to $800,000 investment, call it. And they are netting 4 to $600,000 a year. Like, that's amazing.

Yeah.

For cookies. When we look at brands, what we like to see is someone able to net 25 to 30%. Like if they can. If they're. If they have $100,000 of gross or, you know, they're making 30,000, they have a million dollars of gross, they're making 30,000 or $300,000 out of that particular location or number of territories.

Is that after paying the operators?

This is after paying the opera. Yes, after paying that. Just call it the general manager.

Correct.

I don't. Was after paying like an operational partner, not necessari paying a manager.

Okay, so third round, 30%.

That's the goal. Now, some of them now, just to be super clear, some show 30% in their item 19 when the vast majority of their franchisees don't do that, or they show higher than that when their franchisees don't do that. And some don't have anything disclosed and their franchisees are doing very well. But I would say if you're an entrepreneur out there thinking about franchising your business, you want to have that 25 to 30% return, cash flow, EBITDA margin, to really bring it to market, because you got to realize these franchisees aren't going to do that and can they survive at 15% return? And. And so I would, I would, as a franchise, as an entrepreneur, I would want to show that to my franchise franchise. I would want my franchisees to have that kind of expectation. And that's after royalties, after true expenses that a franchisee would have. Because you as an entrepreneur, you don't have royalties built in that. So I would start to suck out some of that. And that's where you as that entrepreneur need to build value in your brand and you need to help them for that royalty. So they're paying 8% royalty, 6% royalties and 2% advertising royalties. They need to be able to get some type of return on that, meaning customers in the door, better revenue than you have to be able to have decent margins.

Okay. And so if I put my. I'm going to say 10 million just because I can do that math easier. If I put my $10 million up, would I, and I buy, you know, 20 franchises at a half million dollars a piece, then would I reasonably expect that I'd get 3 million bucks back that first year and 3 million or so a year after that. So effectively it's a, it's a three and a third year payback.

I would have the expectation of not making any money that first year.

Okay. So first year, just to start, I.

Would like at the end of that first year for franchisees to be at a, like to be at that point where that second year they are at that EBITDA level, where they are having, they're on that run rate of, you know, 25 to 30% EBITDA margins.

Okay, that's pretty great return though, right?

It is, but most franchisors aren't like that. So I don't want to give the false hope that this is most of the franchisors out there. This is not most of franchising. This is what some of the best do.

Okay, great. Then let's talk about the business owner that wants to expand using this technique. How do you know that it's the right thing for you? And what, what would be some of the pitfalls that you've seen for people that do that?

The business owner that wants to expand as a franchisee or a franchisor or big pitfalls are you, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And if you, and being under capitalized, they, another pitfall is they think they know how to sell. And selling a franchise is a high ticket sale. And so if you're not used to selling high ticket and it's a very emotional sale. So it's not just selling them something, it's not selling them a 30 or $50,000, $100,000 mastermind. You are changing their life. Like they are quitting their job or they are putting a significant amount of their life savings on the line. So this is not an easy sale. And that's where a lot of franchisors that I talked to, they thought it was going to be easy. And it's really not. Because you're not just selling someone how great your opportunity is. You're fighting against so many great amazing franchises development people which are franchise salespeople that know how to sell franchises. That's their job, that's what they're really good at. And they are, they're amazing at that. They make millions of dollars a year doing that. So now you as a founder are go not knowing anything about having never sold A franchise, you're going up against somebody that sold a thousand of them and it's really difficult. Plus you don't have anything proven like, you know, it's great, but there's so many things that you're limited on telling them that they can't, that you can't tell them legally. So you can only tell them so much and they're getting sold somewhere else. And, and so you start to lose sales. And now you're six months into it, 12 months into it and you're like, I have zero franchisees. This is not as easy as I thought. This is, this is actually a bad thing. And when I talk to franchisors like that, that's probably the best thing that could happen to them that they haven't sold any yet. Because now they're like, okay, now I'm ready to learn, I'm ready to understand what I don't know. Because once you get a franchisee rolling, that's when it gets, that's, that's when you have to be on it. You have to help them perform. You have, they have to make money. They have to, they have to make money according to their expectations that they had during the sales process. And if they don't, that's when you know you sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into creating a franchise and now you have someone that you just can't get rid of and they're mad at you. And then, you know, Times that by 10, now you have 10 franchisees that are mad at you. And it's really difficult to get traction at that, at that point. So the best thing, so that just goes back to people not knowing what they don't know because franchising is a different animal in itself. So being under capitalized, not having the right systems and processes in place, and by that I mean having a learning management system, like they should have a learning management system with videos and everything, not just an SOP on a, on a Google Doc. Like that's the kind of, when I say systems and processes, like what's your learning management system? What do you have on it for your franchisees? And, and what's ongoing training and there's just so many different things. And can it really work in other markets? Like if you are in Orange, if you're in Irvine, California, like so many businesses work well there, like that's a great place to start a business. But then if you want to go to Rapid City, South Dakota and Duplic that it's probably not going to be the right, the Same margins as you had in Orange County.

So there's or even demand. I like that. One of the examples would be if you open an ice cream shop in South Florida, then you're going to have demand kind of all the time because it's pretty much always toasty there. But if you open that in Minneapolis, there's a lot of the year that people just aren't going to be eating ice cream. So like just even a simple thing like that, like what is the product seasonality based on the geographic location that you're going to be in.

Right.

This is where it gets so frustrating too because to piggyback off of Florida, like I want to get into the restoration business, like the remediation business, like your house, floods, rent, fans, you know, repairs, all of that stuff. So they make money Florida, they make really good money because there's always, you know, storms or hurricanes, things are happening. So you have to be pretty, pretty bad as a business owner to not have a great restoration company in Florida. So if you are a franchisee looking at a restoration company and you're looking at the numbers that actually did and you don't give it the weight that this is Florida versus Denver, Colorado, like you are going to be making the wrong decision or if you are the franchisor that's crushing it in Florida, can you really do that well in a normal market? So I love it when I see franchisors that have their location, their business in a normal market like Kansas City or Oklahoma City or Denver, something like that, versus a market that has massive demand or something unusual that that particular industry does well in that area.

Yeah. And you have to be careful because like we're working on a roofing roll up right now. I was, I found several companies that were in Florida and I brought them to the, to the group and they said, they said well here's the challenge that there's a lot of demand down there because there's roofs getting ripped off and all kinds of other stuff. But there's legislation that is either enacted or pending right now that's going to drastically inhibit insurance based repairs. So they're like, they're like we don't want that. Even though you would think that there's a lot of demand because there's a lot of weather based turmoil down there. But there's this other regulatory thing that you know, somebody like me wouldn't even see coming. But they know that that's, you know, so like it's just funny how many things you've got to be Aware of, right?

Yeah. You have to be like. All of a sudden you just go from being a very successful entrepreneur in your regional market, and now you're like, oh, I didn't know you had to have a. Like, you had to be like a licensed contractor in the state of Florida to have a roofing business. And the way to get around that is a very expensive endeavor. You, like, you have to shell out a lot more money to be able to basically rent somebody else's license to be under them, so you can actually do business until you're able to get your own. So there's this. That's the point. There's so many things that you just have not thought about. Another thing that so many franchisors make mistakes on is they. Is they have this, you know, the franchise agreement. And then somebody comes in like a Roland Frazier and says, yeah, I'll be a franchisee, but I'm much smarter than your average franchisee, so I want you to change X, Y and Z. And so they say, you are smarter than my average one, but we really want you, so we'll change this. And they start to change everything. And then they have a hundred locations, you know, five or 10 years later, and they go to sell to private equity, and private equity looks at that and they're like, your agreements are all messed up. They're all different. This is an absolute disaster. And then valuation goes down because of that.

That's a really good thing for you to point out as a recovering attorney. That was something that, like, I would constantly advise clients that were dealing with lots of people, even if it's just a sales contract for a service. Right. You got to keep uniform. You can't. You know, you can change the price if you want, but you can't change the terms because then every time anything comes up, we've got to look at every agreement and it's going to cost a whole lot more. And as you said it in the exit process, that's going to be a ding, right?

Yep.

Love that.

There's so many things in that exit process that if you haven't gone through it, you don't know what to expect. And my business partners, they've been through that multiple times as, as franchisors and have been in the rooms and have been on the back end taking a brand through a second or third sale. So they understand all that stuff. But as a, as a new franchise or you don't understand the way that you're building it today is going to have massive impact on your exit, 10, possibly tens of millions of, or multiple tens of millions of dollars because of honest mistakes that you, you just don't know. And that is true for all kinds of things. Bringing on the wrong franchisees, having the agreement set up the wrong way, not having certain fees, technology fees in your business. Because a lot of times, you know, going back to mistakes franchisors make, most franchisors that I talk to early on, they're in it to help franchisees, like, they want franchisees to be successful. And so one of the reasons, one of the things that they do is like, we're going to have low royalties, we're not going to have advertising royalties, we're going to make them really low. We're not going to have a technology fee, we're not going to do this, we're not going to do that. So they think value to the franchisee is less fees. Where I think value to the franchisee is let's charge these fees a technology fee, and let's have amazing technology that we can do at the corporate office to be able to give them massive ROI on that 500amonth technology fee or whatever that fee is. So the franchisor needs to be thinking about return on the dollars that the franchisee gives them. If you have that mindset, you're really going to be able to help those franchisees be set up for success in a much more meaningful way.

I love it. So let's switch off of the franchisor franchisee thing and talk about what are you most excited about in your business right now?

I love equity deals. Ronald. I told you two years ago, maybe two and a half years ago, it was before COVID or maybe no, it's during COVID and we were face to face and I said, I'm gonna be the Roland Fraser of franchising. And you said, I want to be the Roland Frazier of franchising. And next year we'll probably be on a podcast where we're doing something together. I can see that happening. I love it. But you've motivated me to start doing equity deals, and I put it out there right away. I'm interested in equity deals. And within months, I got a LinkedIn message. Eric, I'm interested in having you on my board of advisors and for equity. And I'm like, this isn't going to cost me a bunch of time, is it? It's not going to cost me, you know, in, in, in areas that I don't want to pay. And they said no. And, and I know to the time commitments and the things that were no go's for me. And they said yes to advisory shares and yes to the commitment that I was able to give them. And it's worked out fantastic, and it made me want to do more of them. And that particular franchisor came onto my podcast and had over a million dollars of franchise fees collected from that one podcast. With 10 franchisees now we set up for it. He was, he. He had the. He was at that right place in growth to be able to take advantage of my podcast like that. But it helped me also realize that I had the audience. I stopped having franchisors on my. On my podcast because everyone wanted to get on my podcast. And then they would tell me, oh, I got three franchisees because I was on your podcast. I'm like, I don't even know how good your brand is. I had you on because you had done this one thing that I thought was really cool, right? So it made me realize the value of my podcast and the value of my influence. And so I started to say no to a lot of those franchisors, which made the franchisors that did come on even more valuable. My audience was more valuable to them. And I had more equity deals that happened as a result of me just putting out there that I'm interested in advising for equity. And then I started this franchisor mastermind. And again, that was for to. To hopefully have equity deals more, not just advisory, but equity deals where we could come in and help their sales process and help their franchise disclosure. Like, get that ready for. Have. Have it ready for sales. Have it ready for. To provide maximum value on an exit. So just to help create a very valuable company from the beginning. So they came into my mastermind, they paid me for it. I got to know them, they got to know me, and they're like, eric, I want to go deeper with you and your team over at Front Street Equity. And we've done that with one, and we're getting ready to do it with a. With a second one. And that brings me energy. Like, I love having those type of strategic conversations with founders that really care about their franchisees. And I was in a meeting yesterday with a potential partner over at Front street as he's a franchisor and he's like, he said, eric, I want these franchisees to be successful. Like, if it's. If they're not going to be successful. And we were looking at that 30% margin that we were talking about, that was success to him. If they can achieve that 30% margin, the average franchisee. And so I love having conversations with founders that have the right, the right heart, the right reason why they are a franchisor, to make money. But it's also they're making money because they're helping make a lot of people a lot of money as well. And then, you know, when you and I have talked about this before, that this investing mastermind, that's the third kind of thing I've got, the franchisee mastermind that I love, the franchisor mastermind, and the passive investing mastermind, where it's helped my partner in that Justin Donalds, open my eyes up to this whole world that I was never actively involved with. And now I've got deal flow that I've never had before, and I can bring deal flow and tax breaks and so, so many different strategies to entrepreneurs and high wage earners to help them have a lot of freedom in their life and make more passive income to get out of the rat race and have an amazing life. So those are the things that are really bringing me energy right now.

That's awesome. That's really cool. So for people that want to listen to your podcast or get involved in masterminds, or find out more about franchising as a Xor or a Z, what, what are the best ways to do all of that?

The best way is scalable Franchise dot com. I ripped that off from you because you guys had scalable. I'm like, I love, I love scalable. So scalable franchise that has all of my franchising stuff on there, and it's very clear. And whoever you are, wherever you want to go in franchising, you can find how to reach me there. And you can see the different things that I offer. My podcast is called Franchise Secrets and my investing mastermind is called Tribe of Investors. And my buddy Justin Donald's my partner in that, and he's got a book called Lifestyle Investor, and it's a fantastic book and he's a fantastic partner.

I feel like Franchise Secrets should be a book. Is there anything, any thoughts of that coming out?

People keep. You know, people are always talking about books, and someone was just mentioning that to me yesterday. No thoughts? No, no desire for that. But. But it's because I don't know what I don't know, and I don't want work.

Are you doing an event or do you do. Do you have an event that you do for your franchisees that kind of sets them up for all the information they need and all that kind of stuff.

Everything's virtual right now. I've taken a real kind of low key because everything started out of the pandemic. So I got.

Do you do a virtual event that is kind of like an introduction to franchising and all the cool things and all that stuff?

Not yet, but it sounded like I, maybe I should do something like that. But no, I don't do. I have free, free trains and free things I'll do. People come into my Facebook group and they'll get on my email list and I'll have random free sessions, but I wouldn't call it an event.

So here's, here's a suggestion for you. So either if you want to do no additional work, take this to Caleb and say, I've got these 10 sessions that I've done, these 10 trainings that I've done that kind of lay up in a sequence of stuff that I would like for people to know about. Send them off to Rev.com, get them transcribed, get them to an upwork editor to edit and put it into a book. You'll do zero work and then you'll have a book like I did that with for my challenge. So for, for this. Look at it in the camera. For this book, I basically I hired the, you know, a company and a ghostwriter and all that. And it took like two years and I never got it done. Because of me, Because I was not available, not because of them. They're great. All I did was I was finally just so annoyed with myself for not having it that I took the. One of the events, the virtual events that I do, which is a, you know, a multi day challenge, and I sent it off to Rev.com I got it to a got transcribed, sent the transcriptions to a book editor, said turn this into, you know, neat chapters and stuff. And I got a book and now we're selling, you know, not, not a lot, but two or three thousand copies a month. It's a great lead gen and I.

Didn'T actually have to write a book.

Now three years later, I have written a book, but it took me three years that I would, I would not have had that. And it's great for lead gen. Book funnels are fantastic. So I like, you could do that without having to do any additional work just by kind of setting that up. So just a thought.

Okay, so coach me on that. So my audience is franchisees and franchisors. What is that, what is that challenge or that event that I should have that I should turn into a book?

No, don't do it. Don't do any. I'm saying this is the lazy person's way to do it, right? So you don't have to do anything. Just take a look at what you've already got and say, you know what? Like if you, if you made a list of kind of the titles and subject and you probably already have this on those things, just take the videos or the audios or whatever training you've already got and then say, well, shoot. I've got this one where I talked about the best things to do about an overview of the franchise system. And I've got this one where I talked about things to watch out for. And this one was seven things to be sure that you always have. And this one is how to do operations. And this one is that then those you will find can lay out into a logical sequence of effectively chapters. And then just take those 10 episodes or 12 and send them off to rev transcribe them. Get it to an upwork editor that does book editing that's got great reviews and then you'll have one.

Well, we're going to see how good Caleb is because I'm probably not going to mention this to him and we'll see if he listens to this to, to. To get it done. So. All right, I'll have a book in the next six months and it's gonna.

Be called Franchise Secrets, which is a great name. I love that.

Rip that off from Russell.

I know. I like it. It's good.

Awesome.

Well, dude, anything else that you want to share with anybody before. Before we head out? I don't think you said how to.

Get a hold of you find. It's Eric van or Eric. EricRanchisecrets.com is my email. You can find me on all the socials. Eric Van Horn. Check out just Google Franchise Secrets and. And you'll see my stuff as well. Check out that podcast. Rollins just been on it as well. That's probably. You know, Roland, I just appreciate you. I appreciate everything that you've. You've given. I appreciate you mentoring me over the years virtually and in person. And that's the power of these masterminds. That's the power. Like I look at my decision to go to war Room and I'll leave, leave, leave with this. My decision to go to Traffic and Funnels because I met somebody, my friend Brian Holmes said, hey, come to this marketing conference with me. I went to that. I saw what you guys were doing in the mastermind because I had a friend in there. And then I joined not even fully knowing the type of ROI that I would get on it. And then years later being a part of that, having friendships like I have with you and others, ROI is I'm not even able to calculate it. So I just want to say thank you for mentoring me like you have, helping me in all the ways that you've helped me and so many others.

Awesome. I appreciate that and I love to see all the things you've done. It is really, really impressive and cool and also that you have that servant's heart, that you're really focused on serving the audiences that you serve and that makes all the difference. Well, thank you for coming and hanging out here with us and you guys should all reach out to Eric if you have any questions or thoughts or interests in franchising the Franchise Secrets podcast. Great podcast, lots of great guests and we'll see you next time on the next episode.

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