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If I hear this question one more time, Brian, I found this franchise, it only needs like 5 to 10 hours of work per week to generate passive income while I keep my job. What do you think? Fuck me. Look, I get it. You've got a good job, you got a family. You heard that the average millionaire has like seven streams of income. You want to build something significant without risking it all. I get it. Is it possible? Yes. But you are asking the wrong question. And if you don't understand what I'm about to tell you, you are going to lose a lot of money chasing a fantasy. Semi absentee ownership. Sounds amazing. You get to put a little money in, you get to hire some people, you get to lead, you get to manage. You don't have to be in the weeds all while collecting a check, making money from a business. Passive income, baby. Sounds great, right? But the challenge is it's not that easy. And this semi absentee ownership, semi involved, like it's a buzzword that's used to sell franchises to high income professionals. And here's the truth. It is never easy and it is never that quick. But the question I have for you is what are you really chasing? Because when people say this to me, that hey, I want to buy this like semi absentee business or I just want to like hire a manager and do it, I asked them, well, what are you actually looking for? Like really, is it passive income, right? Or is it that you are afraid to quit your job and go all in on this thing? And there's a big difference. Because if you're just looking for passive income, you're saying, hey, well, I want to invest in franchises because, like, I want to get a return. I can tell you right now there are way better places for you to invest your money that have less risk, less stress, less headache, less downside, all of that. Like, go put into real estate, go put into like an established business that's raising money for some big deal. But don't go out and buy franchises. I'm telling you, because it's. There are a lot better ways. Now on the flip side, if you say, I really want to be in this, I want to be in this ownership, I like view franchising as my path to eventually quit my job. And so I can go all in on it. We can work with that. Okay? Because it's a legit concern, right? It's a legit concern. You have a lot of people that rely on you. You have your family and your friends and like, what if you fail? And what if it doesn't work out. You have a lot on the line. And the thing is though, if you put part time effort into anything, a business, real estate, anything that you want to get into, if you put part time effort into it, you are going to get part time results, it is going to go slower, it is going to take you way longer and it's probably not going to be as much fun to be totally honest, because you're just going to like all this stuff to deal with and you're not really in it, versus if you went full time in the business and said yes and I'm all in, I'm going to grow this thing, you are going to learn it faster, grow it faster, make more money faster, and you have so many more reps in a short amount of time that you're going to be able to get through it and then ultimately get on track to where you want to go. I know a lot of people who have made this transition from corporate America into franchise ownership and I want to tell you how they've done it, how it works. But to start, let's go over the failures of where it definitely does not work. So let's get into where I see the biggest failures. This is the one where I think it's really hard to succeed in a semi absentee business. Number one is anything that's very sales heavy. So let's say you're in the roofing business or flooring or cabinets or something where it's like high ticket, generally home service, where like you had higher salespeople who are probably 100% commission or like close to it. And you really got to drive home the process in generating leads and closing deals. And I think it is very difficult for people to hire somebody to take over the role of the, in the energy that the owner is going to have to bring that type of business. The second one is anything that is very relationship based in terms of how you get the sales. So for example, anything that's in like commercial services where you got to go out and you got to build relationships with like property managers and landlords and other businesses that are relationships like to start, the owner is the best person to go ahead and build those relationships, owner to owner. And I've seen it work tremendously when people execute it that way. I've seen it really struggle, including myself, which I'll tell you in a minute how I failed at this in that type of business. The next one is anything that's very people heavy. So for example, a senior care business, a cleaning Business. Any businesses have very high turnover in like, you know, there's a lot of people involved. It's the same thing where I struggle to see it work. And then finally anything that is very custom, so custom manufacturing of glass, of signs, anything that's like custom repair. And there's like a lot of detail. Generally those businesses, it's hard to get people kind of trained and up to speed for doing those repairs. So then the owner ends up being like the main steady person involved so that they can be the ones to like be the backup. Right. And so generally not very scalable businesses in my opinion, in part because of this the heavy owner reliancy. So a number of years ago I was at this like point in our, in our Midas business. So we had an auto repair business about, I think I had a couple stores back then and I don't know, I just didn't like the direction of the company at the time. And I was like looking for other opportunities to say how could I diversify and how could I spread out my money and de risk and like, you know, all these fancy terms. And I ended up finding another franchise that was an auto parts distributor. So the business model was essentially we were very niche and we were selling very specific parts to other automotive repair shops. And like I was a customer of this business, so I thought hey, like I know the service side, like the parts isn't that much different. And so I, I bought into this business and a large territory and you know, hired a manager to run it because like I was the leader and the, you know, the owner and the driver of our auto repair business. And so I needed somebody to kind of run all the day to day in the, the, the parts business. But I thought it's an easy business, it's simple. We're just like selling parts, right? Wrong. And turns out it was a heavy relationship business where you know, we needed people who were like go into the stores and they've been. That auto like mechanic or manager has been buying his parts from the same guy down the street for so many years. And like he wasn't really apt to give us a shot. The only way we could compete was on price. Like we'd be significantly cheaper. So now to get my foot in the door, I got to, I got to cut my margins and I got to have a low price. But then he also wants fast service. So now I need like all these drivers and all this inventory in it to be able to get not only a good price but also fast service and availability and to break in and to overcome those relationships. Because in this type of business, a heavy relationship driven business like this one, it takes time to build that. And I didn't personally have that time. So I had to hire salespeople. And ultimately it's like a long story short here. Like, I ended up losing about $300,000 over the course of six years in this business because I had to keep putting money into inventory to keep hiring people. But like, nobody could really build it. Nobody could get it to the level that it needed to be to sustain and move on. And when I looked at all the other owners in my, you know, kind of in the system and really kind of around me specifically, they were all owner operators, they were all the owners who knew all the, the shop owners and they were in the business every day. They knew every element of what inventory was selling and what. And they knew all these intricacies that I just didn't know because my attention was split. And I was trying to run this thing, like the semi, absentee, semi involved, like whatever it is, part time and my results were part time. But like, because of the low margin nature of the business, like, I just couldn't make money. And it was so stressful for me because then like, I couldn't get out of it, right? It was like really hard to get out. I had this building with this lease and like the franchisor didn't want to let me out. It was like threatening to sue me basically if I broke the contract. And like, there's lots and lots of like negative stuff that, that came of this. And ultimately I sold business for a dollar. I sold it for $1. I think I had, I mean, over a hundred thousand dollars of inventory and I had all this like, stuff. But for me, the liability and the weight on my shoulders was worth way more than the money I was losing because I still had the mics business and we were still trying to grow that and anything like it slowed me down from growing my other business because I tried to run this thing part time, I believe. I mean, if I was full time into the parts business, I believe I would be successful with it. Because, you know, anything that I put my full effort on, I do have success. But because I was split, it was just such a challenge for me. And maybe I didn't have the right people running it. Maybe there were other things I could have done to make it work. But at the end of the day I decided like, this isn't fun anymore, it's not worth it. And it just wasn't worth my time. I caution a lot of people because I see them trying to repeat this. Now sometimes people repeat it while they like they have a job and they are trying to like build business part time on the side. And it's very similar to me with my Midas job, even though I'm the owner trying to build this thing on the side. And so I don't want to see you go down this path and lose a bunch of money while you're chasing this thing versus, like being a little bit more strategic about it. And so let me talk about when it works. So here are the wins. This is why people do this or why people chase us. This is the dream that is being sold. So now in our Midas business, we have 35 stores. I have a CEO, a CFO, a COO, district managers. I probably only spend 10, maybe 15 hours per week like actually on the business. While, you know, most of that time is thought more like the high level stuff, right? The strategy, the vision, talking about new technology, new key hires, like figuring out how do we drive more, you know, people into our stores. It's why I launched a towing business and I'm building that as like an independent towing business really as a funnel to get more broken cars into our stores. Like, I have this whole leadership team that I've built that runs a lot of the day to day. And you know, there have been times where almost a month will go by and like nobody's bothering me about stuff because I have an excellent team who takes care of a lot. But the truth is I've been in this business for almost 10 years. I have worked 70 hours a week. I have risked a ton of money. I've massive amount of like personal guarantees and every single lease and franchise agreement and seller financing note like is all of me. And you know, I have earned the right to be where I'm at today. But if you're just starting out, like you haven't earned anything, to be totally honest, like you have not put the reps in to earn like the business that I have today. And the challenge I think I see is people have the vision of the five year, like this is what I'm trying to build. And then they try to start that from day one. And it's like you haven't earned it, right? You got to pay your dues. And so if I was good to do it today or if I was going to make a recommendation to you to say how do I do this thing while keeping my job, while having these other Businesses, whatever it is, how do I actually make it work if I really want to do it? Here's exactly how I do it. Number one, I'd get into the right model. Earlier I told you about all the things not to do. The high ticket sales driven businesses, people, businesses, relationships, custom stuff. What I would look for is something that is simple and extremely process driven. Because your goal is that the process is, is what drives results, not individual people. If individual people drive results and you have a lot of turnover cause you don't have the right like leadership and vision, all that stuff, you're gonna have inconsistent results. But if it's process driven where like, hey, we can have like anybody doing this thing and we can have results like a lot better. So I would look at gyms, like I would look at, I don't know. In Anytime Fitness, for example, where the money you're making is really based off of having gym equipment available 24,7 that people are paying a membership for. And like in theory no one could show up for a day and customers can still like get in and have their key fob and like you could just have like a third party come and clean the gym and like you would still be making money. If nobody showed up to open my Mitre shops, like we would make zero money. We would lose money that day. But in Anytime Fitness or you know, any 247 like fitness concept, it's not based on the people that show up, it's based on the assets that you've bought. I also think are seen similar like Laundromats or maybe like a car wash. Right. Things where like you're making money from their assets, not the, the process. I've seen people get into salon suites, which is more of a real estate play. I have seen seen people get into spas where, you know, it's, it's a certain service, it's like relatively simple to deliver. I've also seen simple qsr. So we're talking like smoothies, something where it's just like scooping in stuff, ice cream, those are more process driven and a little bit easier to execute than let's say you're getting an Arby's or like a McDonald's or a Subway or something that there's more moving parts to it. But to really make this work, the main principle is you have to be mentally all in on it. So you may be physically not there. Like physically you may have a job, but mentally you're all in. Right? So mentally you are thinking about how do I grow this business? How do I scale it? What are the opportunities? So while you may be working from like 9 to 5, let's say on your, your core business, selling software or like whatever you do, but maybe from 5 to 9 and from 9 to 12, you were thinking about the business, you are working on the business you are sending emails, you are working to get yourself in to other opportunities, whatever it looks like. But this idea that like, yes, you physically can't do it, but you were thinking about it all the time, you have a strong manager, you have somebody, you're overpaying somebody for reliability. You have strict standards on what you want in accountability and how the process gets done. Because remember, we're trying to find a business that makes money through process, not by people. The other way you can do this that I have had success with is through finding a partner. So for an investment to work, usually you can have two parts, right? You can have a money partner, which is somebody who brings the money, and you can have an operating partner, which is the person that like, does the work. Now, let's say you've got the money but not the time. Maybe you bring the money and maybe you, you know, have other expertise and you're good in finance and in the back office and all the admin work and the marketing and the details and like everything that can be done from an office, maybe you're saying, like, I'm going to invest it and I'm going to handle all this stuff. And then you get an operating partner, which somebody who could, who has time, but they don't have the money, but they, they're going to work their ass off and they're going to do whatever it takes because they have a big vision. For this to work, number one, you have to buy enough territory or units or like, the opportunity has to be big enough because if it's small, if it's like you're going to get into one thing, like, there's not going to be enough, like, money there, most likely for both people to make the money that they need to so that I would make it sure it's worth it. And then honestly, like, the partnership is so important. So for me, like, I'm the money guy in this scenario and I did this deal with Waterloo Turf in Houston. We bought a bunch of territories and then I found an operating partner. Now, for him, he has equity in the business. He has first dibs on all the profits. Like, for him, he has, he has a really good upside to it and he's working his ass off for it. It took me forever to find the right person. And me, we have the back office. We have this expertise. We plan to basically reinvest all the profits that we would be making out to you to grow the business. We'll see how it all works. But, like, we were a couple months in and we were having success, but a lot of times it's not like, not necessarily because of me. I mean, I'm definitely part of it, but I have a really good partner, and that's a big part of this. So, you know, franchising is an amazing vehicle to build wealth and cash flow. You know, it's changed my life. It changed so many other people's lives, and I just want to leave you. That takes work. It takes effort. It is simple in terms of what can be done, but it's not easy. And I just see so many people who get sold this idea that you could just, like, buy something and hire a manager. It just, like, prints money, and a lot of times it doesn't work that way. And then they end up, like, working the business, trying to hire somebody, like, totally stressed out and, like, it's not what they signed up for. And so that's not to say that the outcome would be different if they knew, but maybe they would have picked a different path, and maybe they would have picked one that was a little bit better, that fit their goals, that fit their skills. Maybe it was a little lower cost to start, but then had scalable potential because of the economics of it all. So what do you think? Am I on the mark or totally off here? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments about franchising, and if you think this is a good opportunity. And I'll see you in the next one. Cheers.