No commission shilling. No vague platitudes about "passion." Just the things I learned writing the same checks I'd ask you to write.
Everyone loves ROBS until the franchise underperforms and they realize they bet their retirement on someone else's playbook. Here's how to think about ROBS vs SBA without the salesperson's gloss.
Read →The Franchise Disclosure Document is 200+ pages. About 30 of them matter. The rest is legal padding. Here are the four sections I read first — and the answers that should make you walk.
Read →You've managed teams of 50. You've built billion-dollar projects. None of that matters when a customer screams at your tech and your dispatcher quits the same week. A practical preview.
Read →Real semi-absentee ownership exists. It just doesn't start that way. If a brand promises "20 hours a week from day one," they're either lying or selling you something else.
Read →I run Ace Handyman, Urbane Upgrade, and Gotcha Covered from one operations stack. Some things share beautifully. Others — payroll, dispatch, customer journey — absolutely do not.
Read →Existing franchisees won't outright lie to you, but they'll hedge if you ask the wrong questions. Here are five I never skip — and why each one peels back a different layer.
Read →The headline interest rate is what gets quoted. The guarantee fee is what surprises you at closing. Here's the real cost-of-capital math for a typical $250K SBA franchise loan.
Read →Half the people who tell me they "haven't found the right franchise" are actually 12–24 months away from being able to fund one. That's a fixable problem — but only if you name it.
Read →Every brand says they have "world-class support." None of them mean the same thing. Here's how to figure out what they actually deliver — before you sign a 10-year agreement.
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