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In 2016, I bought my first franchise. And in 2025 we will cross $50 million in revenue. Now, owning a business is the most powerful investment vehicle on earth. A franchise business helps accelerate the process by providing tools, frameworks and support. And in this video, I'm going to give you my exact blueprint that I have followed up to this point and will continue to follow on my path to $100 million. So let's dive in. The first thing that I look to buy is is an existing unit of a current franchise brand that I operate in a current market. The entire point of running a franchise business is rinse and repeat. And adding existing locations into my existing footprint is very easy because we already have all the resources in place. I have district managers, we have employees, we have vendors. From day one, it is turnkey. The essential checklist is done within hours of acquiring. So we buy a new Mitre shop, for example, in an hour. We have credit card machines swapped over, we have employees onboarded into our payroll system. The software is then pointed to our central database. You know, this is one of the many benefits of franchising is the ease of onboarding a new location. If I was taking over an independent business and trying to convert it into my franchise brand, it would be a whole thing. Like we'd have to change the hours, we'd have to change the point of sale, we'd probably have to change the compensation plans, the pricing, maybe even the scope of work that is done when I buy a franchise, boom, day one, we're good to go. If I buy an independent business, like I could turn over the whole staff and it could take me months and months to get it on board. This is why franchises are scalable. It's the ease of duplication because you eliminate all the different factors and just focus on the main things. So if I can buy an existing unit of a current brand that I'm in in my current marketplace, it's a no brainer. And that is going to be the first priority for my money. Next up, I'm going to look to open a new unit of a current brand that I operate in one of my current marketplaces. There are a lot of synergies to fill in your footprint. Currently I have 33 Midas locations between three different markets in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And I already have all these infrastructures in place. And so for example, I have two stores, let's say they are 45 minutes apart and I'm going to look to see if I can get a location right in between Them to split that drive to about 20 minutes in each direction. Now you may say, well, isn't that going to cannibalize and hurt your existing customer base? But in automotive repair, people don't really go that far out of their way to get their cars fixed. Most people go within like a mile from where they live or work. But for me that creates a lot of synergies. We create more opportunities for promotion. So maybe we have an assistant manager at one of our stores who can then get promoted to be the manager of that new store. As we add more stores, we can add more district managers who are the leadership who oversee the store levels. And more stores means we've got the budget to hire more district managers and continue to create career paths. And really great people want to be in an organization that allows them to grow. By filling in multiple locations in our footprint, we create those opportunities. When I do direct mail marketing, I can saturate a market and I get lower cost per mail piece when I print more because I'm servicing more stores. We can work with fleet companies to be able to, you know, service entire fleets. We can do radio and other things that cover the entire marketplace. That would not make sense if I only had one or two locations. So if I have opportunities to fill in new stores in, in our existing market, I'm going to take those whenever I can. Alright, next up is to buy the real estate of a building that we currently rent. I'm not a huge fan of buying real estate to gain financial freedom. You know, real estate is meant to protect wealth. It is not meant to create it, at least over the short term. However, if we are going to be paying rent for the next 10 or 20 years, I'd rather use that cash every single month to pay down principal on a mortgage and, and at the end of the 15 or 20 years now I own the building and now I have something that can create passive income and could create wealth if I potentially sell it. Unfortunately, all of our leases are triple net. They're long term. We're in a resilient industry. You know, it's backed by a very solid operator who pays every month. And so landlords aren't really interested in selling their properties unless they need a cash or you know, they, they die. I am ready when the opportunity presents itself to buy these things. But I'm also not going to way overpay for a property when I could use that cash to buy more businesses to continue to grow. Like I would make way more money doing that and then take that Money and buy other real estate if I really wanted to own it. But if I have an opportunity I'm going to take it. But it's not something that I'm going to go crazy on. Next up I'm going to look to buy an existing multi unit package of franchises in our current brand in a new market. Now I've done this two times already where first it was into New Jersey. Our core business was Philadelphia. We said hey we want to break in New Jersey. And I need at least four locations with a path to five to seven to make sense to enter that new market. Because our business requires a hands on district manager to oversee the stores to be shoulder shoulder every day, coaching, training, it's at least about $150,000 annual investment for salary, bonus, payroll taxes, health insurance, other benefits, travel like other market expenses that we're going to incur when we open those new markets. If we were opening these stores one by one it could years to get enough of them because it's so hard to find real estate. And so if I start with a package, start with a few, that becomes the foundation which then I can build upon. I did this in New Jersey a number of years ago. All of our stores are in Philadelphia. We said hey we want to get into this new market. I was able to acquire seven stores in a single shot from an existing franchisee who was looking to retire. That was my existing multi unit current brand new market. And then once I had those seven stores as my foundation I go to the back to the top of my list where we said okay, if I then could buy an existing unit of my current brand or my current market. I did did that. So I was able to acquire another location six months later that gave us eight locations. Then another guy came along, two locations, three locations. We bought those, we bought those same thing. And then I had an opportunity to buy the real estate of in that new current market of one of the buildings we operate. We are currently looking to open up new units in that market and we can continue down the path. I same thing, I did it in Lehigh Valley a couple years ago where we were able to buy five stores single shot. That seeded the market boom back to the top of my list here. And we were able to buy two more existing locations in the that market. So now we've got seven locations in that market does very well for us and we are continuing to look to open new units in it because I've acquired all the existing miter shops in that area. As you can see this is the system that we've created in order to compound our growth by finding a new market and then going back to the top of the list and continuing to reinvest the profits. Next up is buying an existing multi unit package of franchises of a new brand. New. In my current market, I only get into a new concept if I feel very strongly about the opportunity. Something that's scalable, has a strong roi, it's simple to operate, has huge macro rings behind it. Like I'm not into trendy concepts. I want something that's tried and true. If I'm going to do this, I need an operating partner who is skin in the game, who will eat, sleep and breathe the business, who will give everything they got to make it work. That just like hire a manager does not work no matter what people tell you. I'm looking for a unicorn here, a multi unit group to acquire. In my current market, these are very hard to find because franchisees want to sell to other franchisees the best deals. They get done internally and they never hit the market. And most broker deals are complete crap, which is why no other franchisees wanted to buy it in the first place. Because if they were good, guess what? Back at my step five here is other franchisees are going to buy that business and it's never going to hit the brokers. It's never going to come to me. This is a unicorn. I have not found this yet, but I am looking for it. If something came up in the markets I operate in that's a great deal and a great brand, I'm going to try to get it. Now these are hard to find, but they do exist. This is one of the reasons that I create content, is because it allows opportunities to come into my world. And then it's a question of can I find an operating partner and can we make it happen. If I can't find that, I move to the last bucket. Finally, it is getting into a new unit of a new brand in our current market. Starting fresh with a new brand has its advantages. I can pick the absolute best locations, the best business model that fits my goals, my skill, my team, and not be limited to what's just available. There are no bad habits to break, there are no systems to fix and that first location is my ticket to the brand's inner circle. But then once I'm in, I can start at back at the top of my list, working to acquire existing locations, to buy real estate if it's available, to buy out multi unit guys and all that. I get to cherry pick the best practices from each system that I'm part of and what I learned in one brand helps me in others. The same with marketing operations and team building and each business becomes a learning opportunity for me and my team as I'm a sponge to absorb everything and as I'm trying to build a portfolio of multiple brands, multiple industries with lots of different partnerships that have synergies that sometimes don't have synergies intentionally in order to counter each other. This is all part of the game and so I'm excited to find these opportunities if they fit my strict criteria in terms of being simple and scalable and having great operating partners in all of that stuff. If I can't find any of these things, my final, final bucket is other people's money. So I invest into index funds like Vanguard, Low cost, Super Boring, Set it and forget it. I invest into private equity, so I'm looking for potential home run deals with proven operators in unique opportunities. I also invest into debt earning 10 to 15% annualized, whether I directly lend the money or put it into some sort of debt fund backed by hard assets. Basically, I try to keep it simple with investments. I try not to think about it because I really want to focus my time, effort, energy, money and all that in growing the business. So this is the blueprint that I have followed and will continue to follow on building my business. And if you have any questions about this or anything else related to growing a franchise, drop them in the comments below and I'll see you on the next video. Cheers.