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Turning Expertise Into Income: Lessons from Four Startups and the Rise of "Quartrly"

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 17:15:10 +0000

In an era where 🏗️ entrepreneurship is increasingly accessible yet equally unforgiving, the story of Philip Duong offers a compelling case study in resilience, monetization strategy, and human-centered innovation. In an episode of the podcast What's Your Next, hosted by franchise matchmaker Stacey Riska, Philip recounts his journey through four startups — three of which failed 😅 — and the bold birth of his latest venture, Quartrly. His story is not merely a tale of business success; it is an 📚 education in how failure, monetization thinking, and market observation converge to create meaningful opportunity.

🌱 The Entrepreneurial Mindset Starts Early

Philip's journey reveals that entrepreneurial instinct often emerges long before adulthood. While he never ran a lemonade stand 🍋, he was the child who bought candy and gum in bulk and resold individual pieces from his school locker — purchasing a pack for 25 cents and reselling each piece for the same price. This early arbitrage illustrates a foundational business truth: value is created when you identify something people want and make it conveniently available. 💰 Philip's willingness to act on opportunity, rather than simply observe it, would later define his approaches to technology and entrepreneurship.

🖥️ Startup One: Turning an iPad Into a Time Clock

Philip's first venture emerged when the iPad was first released roughly twelve to thirteen years ago. Having a background in computer tech and networking — but notably not in iOS development — he recognized a need for software that could transform an iPad into a time clock system for attendance tracking ⏰. He hired an overseas developer and completed the entire project exclusively through email 📧 because the developer refused to join phone calls. Despite this unusual constraint, the project was delivered. The lesson here is twofold: first, resourcefulness can compensate for technical gaps; second, projects can succeed even under unconventional or difficult working conditions.

💸 Startup Two: The Critical Lesson of Monetization

Philip's second startup tackled a common modern problem: meeting someone new without exchanging contact information. The software connected two people and allowed them to communicate within the app, preserving each party's privacy until they chose to share details. The venture ultimately failed — but for an instructive reason. Philip had not determined how the software would generate revenue. 😬

This failure crystallized one of the most important lessons for any aspiring software entrepreneur: you must think about monetization from the very beginning. Philip outlines three primary monetization models:

📺 Advertising, where a platform earns revenue by running ads.
🔁 Subscription models, where users pay a recurring monthly fee.
💳 Pay-per-service, where users pay for each individual use of a service.

Quartrly, notably, uses the third model — a decision directly informed by this earlier failure. The insight is simple but profound: if a venture cannot make money, it is a hobby, not a business. 🎯

🎮 Startup Three: The Expensive Reality of Game Development

Inspired by the enormous revenues of games like Clash of Clans and Angry Birds, Philip entered game development. He quickly discovered that the hardest part is not building the game itself, but acquiring users, retaining them, and monetizing them profitably. User acquisition costs are extremely high 📈, and generating sustainable returns often requires "deep pockets." When he realized the returns did not justify the investment, he made the disciplined decision to walk away — a crucial entrepreneurial skill: knowing when to stop. ✋

📅 Quartrly: A Platform for Monetizing Expertise, 15 Minutes at a Time

Quartrly is Philip's fourth (or fifth) startup, and it was funded with an audacious decision: he sold his California home 🏠 to finance it. The concept is elegantly simple. As Stacey frames it: "Uber helped people monetize their cars. Airbnb helped people monetize their homes. Philip wants to help people monetize themselves — 15 minutes at a time."

⚙️ How It Works

Quartrly is described as the world's first platform where individuals monetize themselves over a 15-minute video call 📹. Key mechanics include:

💲 User-set rates: Anyone can set their own price — ranging from a low of about $5 to a high of $999 per 15-minute call.
📊 Market-driven pricing: If rates are too low, too many people book; if too high, nobody books. The market determines value.
🔄 Full ecosystem management: Quartrly handles the video call, credit card payment, scheduling, and payouts.
🌐 Cross-platform accessibility: Unlike FaceTime, which requires iPhones on both ends, Quartrly is web-based and works on any browser and any device — laptop, Android, or iPhone.

👥 From Micro-Influencers to Universal Experts

The initial inspiration was to help micro-influencers (those with 10,000–20,000 followers) monetize their audiences through paid 15-minute calls, rather than chasing brand deals that better suit larger influencers. As development progressed, Philip realized the platform applied far more broadly — to topic experts, consultants, and virtually anyone with knowledge worth paying for. 🙌

🔧 A Practical Illustration: The Plumber

Philip offers a vivid use case. A homeowner with a plumbing issue typically faces a $100 on-site visit fee, even when the issue may be simple. With Quartrly, a homeowner could pay a plumber $40 for a 15-minute video call to diagnose the problem. This saves the homeowner money, avoids reliance on "YouTube University" 🎓, reduces the risk of a flooded house 💦, and allows the plumber to be better prepared if a site visit is ultimately required. It is a win-win demonstration of how video calls can substitute for — or enhance — traditional service calls.

🧭 Finding Your Value: Advice for the Uncertain

A key question raised by Stacey concerns professionals with two decades of corporate experience who nonetheless hesitate: "I don't consider myself an expert — how do I know what people will pay for?" Philip's answer is empowering:

🤝 Leverage your own network — for example, share on LinkedIn how many years of experience you have and offer a booking link.
📉 Let the market reveal your value — pricing will self-adjust based on demand.
💎 Recognize that everyone has expertise — someone is always asking you for guidance, and that demand signals value.

Currently, users must market themselves to their own networks. However, as Quartrly grows, a network effect is expected: users will search for expertise (e.g., "I need a business consultant for 15 minutes") and book providers organically. 🔍

🤖 Quartrly and AI: Complementary, Not Competitive

A natural objection is: "Why not just use ChatGPT?" Philip's response is nuanced. He positions AI and Quartrly in different verticals:

🧠 AI excels at returning text-based information quickly.
🗣️ Quartrly provides a live conversation with an experienced human, offering shared stories, back-and-forth dialogue, and relationship-building that AI cannot replicate.

AI will not replace a custom video conversation with a seasoned expert, and Quartrly will not replace AI. The lesson: choose the right tool for the right problem. Stacey adds a memorable philosophy — all business is H to H (human to human) ❤️ — and human interaction carries a value that no algorithm can fully substitute.

🏆 The Overarching Lesson: Redefining Failure

Perhaps the most powerful takeaway of Philip's journey is his perspective on failure. In school, an "F" signals failure and is treated as inherently bad. In business, however, failure is an unavoidable part of the process. There is no building a business without it.

Philip's framework:

✅ Accept failure as a normal component of entrepreneurship.
📝 Extract lessons from each failed venture and apply them moving forward.
📈 Recognize compounding progress — after three failed startups, Quartrly is, in his view, more valuable than all three combined.

We try to reframe failure as "lessons learned," emphasizing that the most successful people are often those with the most war stories — and the resilience to get back up and try again. 💪

🚪 Getting Started with Quartrly

For those inspired to act, Philip provides clear pathways:

🔗 Visit Quartrly.com to register (the easiest method is Google sign-in).
🎁 Use your six-character invite code when referring others — you earn 1% of the revenue the people you invite generate on the platform.
✉️ Contact Philip directly at CEO@Quartrly.com for business and partnership inquiries.

Philip Duong's story is a masterclass in several timeless principles: monetization must be intentional, failure is data, not defeat, marketplaces thrive when they help people earn, and human connection retains irreplaceable value in an increasingly automated world. Quartrly is not just a software product — it is a philosophy that each person's time and expertise have worth, and that worth can be unlocked, fifteen minutes at a time. ⏳✨

If you need assistance to help you acquire a the perfect franchise, please reach out.

What's Your Next? - Podcast

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I’m Stacey Riska aka “Small Business Stacey”, your franchise placement specialist. I help aspiring business owners find the PERFECT franchise so they can get to the next level in life and business.

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Gold, Bitcoin & AI: How Entrepreneurs Can Build Wealth and Thrive in an Uncertain Economy

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 14:53:23 +0000

Economic uncertainty can make entrepreneurs feel as though they need to predict what will happen next. But the central message of Tony Arterburn’s conversation is different: business owners don’t necessarily need better predictions—they need a stronger understanding of money, purchasing power, risk, and adaptability.

From financial literacy and inflation to gold, Bitcoin, AI, and entrepreneurship, the conversation explores how business owners can become more resilient in a rapidly changing economy.

💵 Money Is More Than the Number in Your Account

One of the episode’s biggest themes is the distinction between the amount of money you possess and what that money can actually buy.

Inflation matters because rising prices reduce purchasing power. A business can increase its nominal revenue while simultaneously facing higher costs for labor, energy, materials, insurance, financing, and other expenses.

Tony connects this problem to the modern fiat monetary system. He points to the United States’ departure from dollar convertibility into gold in 1971 as an important historical turning point and argues that expansion of the money supply contributes to the long-term erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power.

For entrepreneurs, the practical lesson is simple: think about inflation and purchasing power, not merely the number of dollars coming into the business.

🎓 Financial Literacy Should Be Practical

Tony argues that financial education should begin with ordinary life.

Young people can learn about money by seeing what housing, electricity, gasoline, insurance, food, taxes, and transportation actually cost. Entrepreneurs can apply the same principle to their businesses.

A business owner doesn’t need to become a monetary economist. But understanding concepts such as inflation, interest rates, credit, debt, liquidity, and purchasing power can improve decisions about pricing, borrowing, expansion, and saving.

This turns financial literacy from an academic subject into a practical decision-making tool.

🪙 Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, and the Power of Scarcity

A substantial part of the conversation focuses on assets Tony considers scarce.

He views physical gold and silver primarily as long-term stores of value rather than short-term speculative investments. Their attraction, in his framework, comes partly from the difficulty of creating additional supply compared with fiat currency.

Bitcoin enters the discussion for a similar reason. Its protocol establishes a maximum supply of 21 million bitcoins, which Tony considers an important form of digital scarcity.

He expects Bitcoin investing and ownership to become increasingly relevant to businesses and sees parallels between Bitcoin and precious metals.

However, these ideas should be distinguished from guaranteed investment outcomes. Scarcity alone does not guarantee that an asset will maintain or increase its market value, and cryptocurrencies and precious metals carry their own risks.

🏆 What Collectibles Can Teach Us About Investing

The conversation broadens from traditional assets to sports cards, Pokémon cards, rare coins, Hot Wheels, artwork, and other collectibles.

These examples introduce an important financial concept: liquidity.

An item might theoretically be worth thousands of dollars, but realizing that value requires finding someone willing to buy it at that price. A rare collectible can therefore appreciate dramatically while remaining considerably harder to sell than an asset traded in a large global market.

When considering an asset, entrepreneurs can ask four useful questions:

How scarce is it?
Can additional supply easily be created?
How strong is demand?
How easily can I convert it into cash?

That framework applies far beyond collectibles.

📊 Preparing Your Business for Economic Stress

Perhaps the most immediately applicable part of the conversation concerns business resilience.

Tony encourages entrepreneurs to understand their industries deeply and model adverse scenarios before those scenarios actually happen.

What happens if sales decline? What if financing becomes more expensive? What if inventory is delayed? What if suppliers suddenly change their payment terms?

Liquidity becomes particularly important in these situations.

Credit can also provide flexibility, although Tony cautions against excessive leverage. The objective isn't simply to borrow more money. It's to ensure that a company has options when conditions change.

This is also where AI for entrepreneurs can become particularly useful. Business owners can use AI tools to model different revenue assumptions, financing costs, inventory delays, supply-chain problems, and cash-flow scenarios—potentially identifying vulnerabilities before they become emergencies.

🤖 AI Could Make Human Relationships More Valuable

Interestingly, the discussion about artificial intelligence doesn't conclude that humans are disappearing from business.

Instead, Tony emphasizes qualities technology has difficulty reproducing completely: authentic relationships, trust, expertise, responsiveness, and personal service.

Stacey describes this concept as H-to-H: human to human.

For small businesses, that can become a competitive advantage. AI may automate administrative work, analysis, communication, and other repetitive tasks, allowing entrepreneurs to devote more attention to the parts of the customer relationship where human judgment and connection matter most.

🚀 Entrepreneurship Is Continuous Adaptation

Tony's own career illustrates another theme of the episode.

After military service and involvement in multiple businesses—including precious metals—he continues looking for new opportunities. His next project involves coffee, a product he personally enjoys and also views through the lens of commodities and entrepreneurship.

That example captures the broader philosophy of the conversation.

Financial resilience doesn't come from correctly predicting every recession, market movement, technological disruption, or monetary-policy decision.

It comes from understanding the economic forces affecting your business, maintaining flexibility, controlling risk, protecting liquidity, and continuing to adapt.

For entrepreneurs, the most useful question may therefore be the one at the heart of the show:

What is your next? 🚀

If you need assistance to help you acquire a the perfect franchise, please reach out.

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From a Single Van to a National Brand: How Scenthound Turned Dog Grooming into a Wellness Revolution

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:02:23 +0000

Every great business begins with a problem someone noticed that everyone else walked right past. 👀 In the pet care industry of the early 2000s, Tim Vogle spotted exactly that kind of missed opportunity — and it took him fifteen years to turn it into one of the most compelling franchise success stories in the pet wellness space. This article explores how Scenthound was born, how it scaled, and what lessons it offers to aspiring entrepreneurs and franchise owners. 🐾

Seeing a Fractured Industry as an Opportunity

Tim's journey began not with a revolutionary product, but with a simple observation. 🔍 After getting a dog and falling in love with it, he discovered that the pet grooming industry was extraordinarily fragmented — roughly 97% of grooming businesses had three or fewer employees. This meant the market was dominated by countless "mom-and-pop" operations with no unifying brand that could scale.

His first instinct was to build mobility and consolidation. He moved to South Florida, attended grooming school to truly understand the craft, bought a mobile van, built a website, and hired a groomer. He was, as he put it, "off to the races." 🏁 But the race quickly turned into a hard lesson. About six months in, he faced a gut-check moment: the mobile business was difficult to staff and not very scalable. This, he notes, is typical of the entrepreneurial journey — you don't know what you don't know until you're in it. 💪

The Aha Moment: Redefining What Grooming Really Means

Rather than quit, Tim and his team spent a decade iterating. They moved from mobile to brick-and-mortar to solve operational problems. Then came the pivotal insight: grooming, in most people's minds, is about haircuts, looks, and aesthetics — and only one of the top ten dog breeds in the U.S. actually needs a haircut. ✂️ But all the other nine dogs still need routine hygiene and wellness care, and there was no fast, easy, or affordable place for them to get it.

That gap became Scenthound. The name itself is an acronym: Skin, Coat, Ears, Nails, and Teeth — the five core areas every dog needs care for. 🐕 Every visit includes a "Scent Check" where staff review the dog's health status with the parent before pickup, actively educating them about what it means to be a good dog parent. This combination of convenient service plus education became the brand's winning formula. 🏆

Building the Model Before Scaling It

One of the most instructive parts of the Scenthound story is patience. ⏳ The company opened five locations and ran hundreds of experiments over a five-year period, testing membership models, flow patterns, buildouts, location strategy, packaging, and pricing. Only after perfecting the model did they pursue scale — which is precisely why they grew from zero to over 170 open locations with roughly 200 more in development.

The membership model, in particular, deserves attention. Tim frames it as a values decision rather than a purely financial one. Veterinarians recommend clipping a dog's nails and cleaning its ears every two to four weeks. Up to 90% of dogs by age two already have some form of periodontal disease, and regular dental care could extend a dog's life by three to five years. 🦷 A monthly membership holds the dog parent accountable to a routine their pet genuinely needs.

Scaling Through Franchising the Smart Way

When it came time to scale, the team evaluated multiple options — opening locations themselves, partnerships, and franchising. They chose franchising, but not blindly. 🧭 Tim unearthed a sobering statistic: only 16% of businesses that franchise ever surpass 100 units, and only 5% do so in under ten years.

That reality drove their defining philosophy: stay two years ahead of the system in infrastructure. They raised friends-and-family capital and built robust support around construction, real estate, pre-sales, and marketing before selling their first franchise. They joined franchise advisory councils and brought in experienced people preloaded with solutions. The result — zero to 100 units in four years — far outpaced industry norms, and today they have nearly 500 units sold and are opening roughly one per week. 📈

The Blind Spot That Became a System

Growth reveals blind spots, and Tim is candid about his. When early franchisees struggled to manage their teams' career paths, he realized he had taken his own natural talent for team-building and managing entry-level employees for granted. Because it was invisible to him, they hadn't built systems around it. 🔄 The fix required reverse-engineering: analyzing his own daily huddles, KPI motivation techniques, and employee education to create a teachable career-path system for franchisees.

Toward a Data-Driven, Predictive Future

The most forward-looking dimension of Scenthound is its identity as a data company. 📊 With more than 100,000 dogs in its centers in a single month, it collects millions of health data points — body condition, weight, skin, coat, ears, nails, teeth, and glands. Tim argues that in an AI-driven world, proprietary data becomes the ultimate defensive moat. The goal is to move from proactive care to predictive care, telling customers not just what's best for dogs generally, but what's best for their specific dog, delivered through a consumer app evolving toward an Oura-Ring-style dashboard. 🤖

The Right Franchisee for the Right Brand

Finally, Scenthound is deliberate about who it brings on board. Tim rejects the "absentee owner" myth. 🚫 Successful franchisees must be fully engaged at the start, learn every role hands-on so they can lead effectively, and only then step back. They also need a growth mindset and coachability — a willingness to run the recipe before proposing changes, because that recipe is what de-risks the venture. ✅

Scenthound's story is a masterclass in category creation, patient model-building, and infrastructure-first scaling. Tim Vogle didn't just build a better grooming business; he redefined what dog care could mean, wrapped it in a membership, powered it with data, and scaled it through franchising with unusual discipline. 💎 For entrepreneurs, the lesson is clear: the biggest opportunities often hide in plain sight, and success comes to those who test relentlessly and prepare ahead of their own growth. 🌟

If you need assistance to help you acquire a the perfect franchise, please reach out.

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Franchise Fusion: How A Serial Entrepreneur Meshed Passion and Profit To Start A Franchise From Scratch

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 18:33:13 +0000

👍Maybe you have a great product or service and you’re wondering how to grow and scale the business. Could franchising be a good option? What’s involved? What are the advantages? What are the roadblocks?

💰All of these questions and more are answered in this episode of What’s Your Next.

You’ll hear from Denise Lawrence a #femalegogetter who after 36 years in the non-profit world decided to start and launch a national franchise.

📈 She shares what was involved in doing this, lessons learned, and what her next is.

🏆Get your notepad ready because this episode is full of inspiration and actionable tips.

To book your NO COST Dream Business Match Making Session with us go to Explore.NextLevelFranchiseGroup.com

Contact Denise Lawrence

www.DeniseBLawrence.com

www.CharityChangers.com

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7 Top Statistics Answered About the Franchise Industry

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 12:43:08 +0000

Today what we have on tap for you is sharing where does the franchise industry currently stand today as far as its breadth and depth. And I think what's really interesting about all of these statistics we're going to go throw out is the amount that they've grown in just a short period of time.

Now I do want to disclaim a couple of things here. Number one, these statistics come from different sources, including Entrepreneur Magazine and the International Franchise Association. What we’ve seen is that the stats are all give-and-take a few on the same franchise industry statistics. So we kind of averaged them out a little bit for these stats we are showing today.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read these out and Stacey and I are just going to give you some commentary on these on just how much the franchise industry means to the U.S. economy right now.

In the Franchise industry, the economic output of the franchise establishment in the United States is in excess of $790 billion per year.

That is a tremendous amount of money flowing through these franchises. So, Stacey, what does this mean?

This is a huge number.

It means there are a lot of zeros and numbers don't lie, right? So franchising is a huge part of the economy in the United States. Dave and I always talk about whether should you start a business from scratch or should you look at franchising. And we always encourage our candidates to look at all of their options, but the numbers and the stats don't lie. So the number that Dave's sharing with you 790 B, with a billion, dollars of economic output, that's a lot of sales being made, attributed, and passing through a portion to the franchises themselves.

I think the big thing here is how much this has grown just over the last 10 to 15 years, it really has become a much larger part of our economy.

Statistic number two. We, a lot of times allude to this in some of our other webinars and podcasts.

Right now they say there are over 4,300 franchise brands out there.

I actually believe that. I mean, I'm starting to even come across new brands that I've never heard of just popping up out of nowhere. So Stacey, what are you finding?

It is amazing. I never knew it myself because when you're driving down the road and you look at those businesses on the side of the road, many times, you may think it's just like a mom-and-pop business, but so many of them are franchises. I think it's going to tie into another stat that you're going to share with us, but they represent every different industry.

Yeah, no kidding. It's funny because the next stat I think is low to me. We've seen numbers different than this, which I'll share with you after I share this stat.

There are 750,000 plus franchise establishments currently in the United States.

These are the franchises that you see when you drive down the street. Now I heard statistics as high as 950,000. Maybe that's changed. Maybe COVID. There are obviously a lot of them that may have been not essential businesses and they just haven't come back. Who knows? But anyway, it's a lot and you drive down the street, you see 'em everywhere.

Again, another statistic that we frequently reference in our podcasts and some of our webinars and other content is the number of industries that the franchise business encompasses.

Today they're saying there are over a hundred plus industries represented by franchises.

This is where I really have seen the growth. There are a lot of new franchises coming out, and a lot of new industries. Although to clarify I won't say new industries, but in industries where there weren't franchises there before. So I think it's really interesting that not only are the number of franchises growing but so is the number of industries you can find a franchise in.

There's business-to-consumer there's business-to-business. If you can think of the industry, there is a franchise for it. There are franchises for ATMs, or Bitcoin, right? There are franchises for crime scene cleanup. There are franchises for absolutely everything out there.

Now, another interesting statistic.

The number of jobs franchising directly creates is over 1 million jobs.

So that’s a lot of jobs. You find a lot of people working in these franchises that we're telling you that you see as you're driving down the street. So it is a massive growth industry for jobs in this country as well.

The final statistic that I actually found to be super interesting, and I really didn't even have a concept on this when I had first seen it or heard it.

Nearly 3% of the amount of the U.S. nominal GDP franchising represents.

So that means that it's 3% of our GDP in this country and I'm guessing and growing rapidly. So if you're interested in franchising, it's a wonderful place to be. It's a wonderful place to look if you're interested in learning more about business and becoming an entrepreneur. These are businesses that have established business systems in place to help you be successful. They now represent a large part of our economy and probably going to continue to grow going forward.

So the final statistic is not really a statistic.

If you are interested in learning more about franchise ownership, you should contact us.

You should let us know what you're interested in and why you're interested in it. We will certainly love to reach out to you and help you learn more about this industry.

Franchising is just such a phenomenal opportunity. What we didn't mention is that we own a franchise ourselves. We have for the past 16 years. And therefore when we're helping candidates such as yourself learn about franchising, we practice what we preach. So all the numbers and the stats that we shared with you today, we're part of that in this amazing industry called franchising.

If you're going to go into business for yourself, wouldn't you rather be in business for yourself, but not by yourself and with a franchise? You get that because you're getting a proven system and all of the support, training and resources to set you up for success. What makes it work is being matched to a franchise that makes sense for you. That's what we do. We look at your transferable skills, interests, resources, and passion, and match you to a franchise that could be a great fit. We would love to talk to you.

We talk to candidates in all realms of life, people who are looking to transition out of their corporate job and they're just miserable. We have veterans that we work with. We have husband-wife teams that we work with. So no matter where you are, if you want to get to your Next Level, please reach out to us.

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The 7 Questions You MUST Ask Every Franchisor In An Initial Interview

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 14:06:02 +0000

You’ve decided it’s FINALLY time you do what you love and love what you do.

You want to be your own boss and start a business.

You know that your best chance of success in achieving that is with a franchise.

With over 4,000 franchises to choose from, you know you’ll be more likely to find the PERFECT one by working with a franchise placement specialist.

You’ve winnowed down the list of serious contenders to a few. You’re excited and eager to have conversations with these franchisors to learn more about their business models and what they’re looking for in a franchisee.

Remember, this is a 2-way interview. The franchisor will be asking you questions to determine if you’re going to be a good fit for their business. So the questions that you ask are very important, especially in that initial conversation.

Here are the top 7 questions we encourage our clients to ask franchisors on their initial interview:

What are the trends in this industry?

You want to understand if the industry is growing and if so, what are some of the factors contributing to that (ex: demographics, geography, regulations, etc.

Who are your biggest competitors?

Competition is good. It means there’s a market for the products or services being offered. Understand who the competition is and what the franchisor is doing to differentiate itself as the leader.

What support do you provide to franchisees?

You’re not only buying the rights to use the brand/name when you invest in a franchise, you’re also investing in support and training. Understand what types of training and support the franchisor provides (ex: virtual, in-person), when and how training/support is provided, and what the structure of that support/training looks like (ex: some franchisors provide it only on a national level, some regional, some local.

How do you support franchisees with marketing?

Remember you want to be in business FOR yourself, not BY yourself. Marketing is vital for every business. What type(s) of marketing resources are available to you as a franchisee to help you get more customers and clients?

What is it that contributes to the success of your top franchisees? What is it that isn’t being done that is hindering poorly performing franchisees?

You want to understand what differentiates the best from the poor performers. You’re going into business because you want to the best. Understand what the top performers are doing so you can do the same.

What can you share with me about revenues, expenses and investment?

Note that franchisors cannot make any earnings claims. It makes complete sense because every business is different and the franchisor is not a genie who will be able to tell you what you’ll make. However, every franchisor should be able to present you with a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) which will detail many of your revenue, expense and investment questions. Ask for a copy of their FDD, review it, and schedule another call with the franchisor to discuss it further.

In what ways do you collect best practices and share them with franchisees in your system?

This will give you insight into how collaborative and supportive franchisees are with each other. Being able to learn from others who have “been there, done that” and are willing to share and learn from each other, is the benchmark of a strong franchise system.

Use these 7 questions to help you gain insight into each franchise system you’re having an initial interview with. You got this!

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