Episode 258 Stacey Marmolejo Veterans Have the Skills for Starting a Franchise Business Transcript

This transcript is from episode 258 with guest Stacey Marmolejo.

Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we are focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community. Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and now let’s get on with the show.

Scott DeLuzio: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Drive On Podcast. Today my guest is Stacey Marmolejo. Stacey is the founder and c e o of Franchise Prep Academy, which helps soon to retire military personnel navigate the franchise industry so that they can evaluate if a franchise career is right for them in their next their next step after the military.

Scott DeLuzio: So, welcome to the show, Stacy. I’m glad to have you here.

Stacey Marmolejo: Thanks so much. I really appreciate you inviting me, Scott.

Scott DeLuzio: Absolutely. So, before we get started, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and your background, just for anyone who may not be familiar with you and and your

Stacey Marmolejo: background.[00:01:00]

Stacey Marmolejo: Sure. So I am from a family of 10 military generations serving collectively 176 years. Our youngest family member is a freshman at the Naval Academy this year. Go Ben. So I, my parents were very, Disheartened when I did not join the military. But when I was in my twenties, I knew I’d either be in the brig or kicked out really quickly cuz I was quite a rebel back then.

Stacey Marmolejo: But I, so I climbed the corporate ladder and I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but because my parents were so aligned with the military and what they perceived as security, they were uncomfortable that I was even having a civilian job, let alone thinking about starting my own. So that just wasn’t on the table.

Stacey Marmolejo: But I never forgot about it. And so I spent 30 years and when I was a senior vice president of a national company, I was just like, it’s now or never. Like, I’ve always wanted to own my own business. I wanna know if I can do it. So I quit [00:02:00] and I bought a startup franchise and I ended up having three locations over 16 years and sold it for seven figures and decided I was going to retire.

Stacey Marmolejo: And I was retired for two days. So those of you who have done many years, if you’ve done your 20 and you’re like, ah, I’m gonna retire and play golf, I wanna know if that’s what really happens. . Cuz I was so bored, I was like, oh, I can’t do this. And I just started helping people looking at franchises. I don’t represent any particular franchise, so it’s not like I sell franchises, but I think it is a great business model, especially for people who have work experience but not necessarily business ownership experience.

Scott DeLuzio: Right. And there’s a difference there. And we were talking before we started recording about Business owners and starting up a business starting a business from scratch. Not, I’m not talking franchise. I’m just talking. I have this great idea. I’m going to start a business, I’m gonna start selling this product or service or [00:03:00] whatever it is.

Scott DeLuzio: That’s startup process is incredibly difficult.

Stacey Marmolejo: So difficult. Yep.

Scott DeLuzio: Just, I mean, Coming up with a name of your company that you can actually use that hasn’t been used before, that’s not currently in use, someplace else that you’re gonna get in trouble with you know, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna go out and create your new fast food restaurant chain that you just, you came up with this great idea and you’re not gonna call it McDonald’s.

Scott DeLuzio: You know, like, you can’t do that like that. You have to come up with a unique name and you have to, yeah. There, there’s legal stuff that’s involved and there’s paperwork, depending on what state you’re in. There’s different forms and all this filing stuff, fees that you have to do, coming up with a logo and a brand and all this stuff.

Scott DeLuzio: Marketing all that stuff is.

Stacey Marmolejo: A lot of work. If it’s brick and mortar, then you have to go find your location and Right. And location is a huge deal. That’s whole, that’s a whole nother skillset is negotiating commercial leases.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Ex Exactly. Yeah. And getting into the right place that you’re gonna be able to afford and be able to [00:04:00] make money at down the line.

Scott DeLuzio: You’re not gonna just hit the ground running on day one when you’re starting off a business like that because there’s just a lot involved. And if you don’t have the right team in place, that’s gonna help you out with a lot of this stuff. It’s a lot of work for any one person to do by themselves.

Stacey Marmolejo: It’s a lot of work for one person. And I don’t know any one person that has every skillset. No, exactly. So something is going to be better than something else in whatever it is that you’re doing. But another thing that Since the advent of the internet, which I realized probably everybody watching this doesn’t remember before the internet, but I do.

Stacey Marmolejo: So I do too. So , the other thing to think about when you’re look thinking about a startup versus buying a franchise is where are you gonna rank in the search engines? Yeah. So think about that. Let’s say that you decide that you want to you are in the plumbing. Field, right? And so you’re gonna [00:05:00] start, you’re gonna become your own plumber.

Stacey Marmolejo: Now you could do that as a startup or you could buy a franchise brand of plumbing, right? But you think about it, let’s say your name’s Joe and you start Joe’s Plumbing. How long is it gonna take Joe’s Plumbing to get on page one, let alone on the top three, right? On Google, right? Because if you look at a franchise plumbing company, because they have so many locations, because they’re updating their website so frequently, they’re always gonna rise above Joe’s Plumbing.

Stacey Marmolejo: So not only are you gonna have that startup phase that’s difficult, but then even once you start just getting known in your community is you’re at a deficit when you start your.

Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. And it’s not impossible to say no, not at all. to ruin anyone’s dreams out there and be like, oh no, I’ll never be able to do this.

Scott DeLuzio: But it’s a whole lot more difficult. And I know I’ve started businesses in the past and quickly realize that when you’re going up against you know, if you’re just say, an e-commerce [00:06:00] company which is what I did, and you’re going up against companies like Amazon and things like that, they, I don’t care who you are, they have a bigger marketing budget than you do.

Scott DeLuzio: And , they’re gonna outrank you nine times out 10, probably 9.9 times out of 10. Just because they’re able to put more resources behind whatever it is that, that they’re selling and the marketing of it and the search engine optimization and all that kinda stuff. It’s just really difficult to compete against bigger companies like that.

Scott DeLuzio: So, so franchises are a great idea. Yeah.

Stacey Marmolejo: I’m sorry. What I have found is if you have a product, if you’ve invented a product, then definitely you’re better off starting your own company. Yes. If you’re offering a service, then you’re better off with a franchise. And that’s, those are very broad statements, but generally speaking, so a friend of mine who actually she and her brother were both in the army so they’re vets, she started a business called Busy Baby Mats.[00:07:00]

Stacey Marmolejo: And I won’t go into all the details, but it took her six years. Before she really took off. And I think what her and she used to grind, she would go to local fairs and everything, just trying to sell onesies, twosies and get the word out. She got on Shark Tank. Yeah,

Scott DeLuzio: I was gonna say I seem to remember the name of that be because of watching

Stacey Marmolejo: Shark Tank.

Stacey Marmolejo: Yeah. She did not accept the offer, but it was enough exposure and now she’s doing millions. Right. But that was a product that she created and invented, so. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott DeLuzio: And, you know, not all the time that just because you’ve created a product doesn’t mean that a franchise, you know, existing business that’s out there might be a good place to get that product get that product launched.

Scott DeLuzio: I was, my wife and I have been watching some of these shows on Like the History Channel kind of shows and they talk about some of like the original franchises, like earlier on in the, [00:08:00] this country as far as like the food, fast food industry and things like that. And how some of them got some of their best ideas from the individual franchise the individual location owners right.

Scott DeLuzio: Companies like McDonald’s the the breakfast sandwich that they had, the Egg McMuffin. , that came from one of the individual franchise owners. Right. And so if that’s your idea, like you can make a significant amount of money by getting into the franchise and like we all know what that is now.

Scott DeLuzio: Right. So. Right. Exactly. There is another option there too, where franchises can come in. I wanna get

Stacey Marmolejo: Well, and the third option, but that’s, we’re just gonna put it on the table and then walk away from it, is starting your own business and then making that a franchise. So you are the franchisor. Sure. But that’s kind like buying a house, right?

Stacey Marmolejo: You don’t buy the mansion first. You buy the starter house and then you get some equity in it, and then you flip it. Yeah. So whether you’re starting your own business or you’re buying a franchise, it’s kind of a mindset. A lot [00:09:00] of people are like, oh, I want a McDonald’s and I need 2 million. I don’t have $2 million, so I’ll go get a job.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right? It’s like, no. If that’s your ultimate goal, start with a $20,000 franchise. Build it up, flip it, and then you’ve got more money to invest in the next level. Build it up, flip it, and then invest in the next level. But you might discover that you really like your little franchise. And then here’s your next thought to think about.

Stacey Marmolejo: Do you wanna be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond, right? If you’re clawing your way to own one McDonald’s location, when there are people who own chains, hundreds of them. Or you could be the guy that owns hundred or gal that owns hundreds of a different franchise location and only pay 10,000 for each one or 20,000 for each one, right?

Stacey Marmolejo: And then you become like their number one franchisee. [00:10:00] So it’s, it really depends on what it is that you want in life. And I think a lot of people, I did this, a lot of people have an experience and they’re like, oh, I wanna do that. So they reach out to that franchisor and say, I’m interested in buying your company.

Stacey Marmolejo: I’m interested in buying a franchise location with you. And so when I work with people, I like to flip that around because there are 4,000 franchise offerings right now in the United States. And half of ’em have never been heard of by most people. Right? Right. So when I work with people, there’s four things that I like to do.

Stacey Marmolejo: You can do it on your own as well, but you need to take a risk assessment because you wanna know whether you have an high enough risk tolerance to look at a startup franchise, or if your risk tolerance is less, then you probably wanna look at a more established franchise. Right? That’s true. So risk tolerance is one.

Stacey Marmolejo: [00:11:00] Core competencies, again, what did you learn? What skills did you pick up in the military or pre-military, right? If you, again, if you learned how to be a plumber, hvac, electrician, welder, all of those trades, they all have franchises. You can start out, maybe you’re like, well, I don’t wanna do it myself, but that’s how you start.

Stacey Marmolejo: You know, you start with a franchise one truck, you’re the guy that’s out doing everything until you’re making enough money that you can hire somebody to be the one going out in the truck. And then you’re just building your business bigger and bigger, right? Sure. So it’s like, what are your core competencies?

Stacey Marmolejo: Then the third one is, what are your motivators? And I don’t mean I’m motivated by money. I mean, if you think of your ideal workday, what does it look like? Are you indoors? Are you outdoors? Are you working by yourself? Are you working with people? Are you working more with [00:12:00] people or interacting more with the computer?

Stacey Marmolejo: Is it a work from home? Is it a brick and mortar? You know, so truly visualizing what your ideal day looks like. And then the last one is putting together your personal financial statement. Cuz when it comes to buying a franchisee, you know, I talk to a lot of people in there like, well, I don’t wanna put any money in.

Stacey Marmolejo: And because they’re hearing or they’re reading all this stuff on the internet, on how you can start a business with no money. I don’t think you can, but we’ll just leave that on the table. Yeah,

Scott DeLuzio: I’ve seen those things too. And I question how authentic and accurate some of these things are because they are, I don’t know, I don’t know anyone out there who’s willing to put up all the money for someone else to do the work.

Scott DeLuzio: And so like, I’m gonna take all the risk and you get all the benefit. Like, that doesn’t really seem like it’s gonna make a whole lot of sense to me, you

Stacey Marmolejo: know? And plus if you have no skin in the game, it’s so much easier to walk away. [00:13:00] Yeah, exactly. So think about having at least 30% of whatever the total amount is that you.

Stacey Marmolejo: To invest, okay? Because typically if you’re working with lenders, if you put 30% in, then they’re ready to talk to you. Okay? Now, that’s not to say you don’t need some collateral to support the other 70, but two benefits that your audience has. One is vets and if in fact you look at buying a franchise, so the S B A has money set aside.

Stacey Marmolejo: Small business administration has money specifically set aside for vets, and they also have money specifically set aside for franchises. Okay? So looking for that 30%, whether it’s, and there’s lots of ways to finance a business. You know, if you have a retirement plan, [00:14:00] Then you can roll over some of those funds into your own business without having to pay tax for withdrawing it and then putting it back in.

Stacey Marmolejo: Because you’re just, if you think about it, all you’re doing is transferring it from an investment in this money market fund to an investment in yourself, if you think of it that way.

Scott DeLuzio: That’s a good way of thinking about it too. Yeah. It’s still an investment. It’s not in the stock market, but it’s in, I mean, which essentially a stock market is a collection of a bunch of businesses that you’re investing in.

Scott DeLuzio: And so why not just invest it into your own business and you know, do that instead and and make a whole bunch of money while you’re at it. Exactly like that makes a whole lot more sense in, instead of making, having other people make money and you just, you know, collect on whatever the stock does or the right, you know, the funds that you’re invested in.

Scott DeLuzio: You know, make your money based on the amount of work that you’re willing to put into this business. Right? Which, knowing a lot of the people that I know [00:15:00] from the military the work ethic is there. Like, you’re gonna absolutely 100% you’re gonna succeed if you put in the time and effort.

Scott DeLuzio: And one of the nice things that we were talking about earlier it’s a when you get into a franchise, the playbook is already written. There’s standard operating procedures for everything. Like if you walk into everything a McDonald’s in Phoenix versus a McDonald’s in New York or Chicago or anywhere else across the country, you’re gonna get the.

Scott DeLuzio: You, you know what a Big Mac tastes like. And it doesn’t matter where you’re from, you know what that, that Big Mac tastes like,

Stacey Marmolejo: and you know what the table looks like that you’re gonna sit at to eat it.

Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. All of that, all those decisions are made already. It’s done. You don’t have to think about it.

Scott DeLuzio: You know, the drive-through experience the counters the lighting, the every, like, everything is already there. Right.

Stacey Marmolejo: They all have two windows, one of which is always closed. .

Scott DeLuzio: Yes, they are. And I don’t get that. I’ve never understood it . But yeah. So like we can [00:16:00] follow orders, like that’s very well, like we can do that really well.

Scott DeLuzio: We’ve done that throughout the military. Now if you’re getting out of the military and you’re saying to yourself, I’m done following orders. I don’t wanna do this anymore. Okay, well then maybe this isn’t the best thing for you. But if you’re looking to get into a business to start up start up your own business and you want a playbook for success, Follow the playbook that’s already been written.

Scott DeLuzio: You don’t need to reinvent the wheel with all of this. And so I, I think it’s a perfect fit and that’s why I was excited to have you come on the show and talk about this because you know, franchising for veterans I think is just really a super

Stacey Marmolejo: great fit. Yeah. Well, and there’s a couple things, like you were talking about the person who gets out and they want their own business, they don’t wanna follow someone else’s playbook.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right. So there’s a couple of things, and again, this is why it’s so important to know yourself before you go trying to figure out which franchise you’re interested in, because there are franchises that have more flexibility than others. Right. Okay. McDonald’s has zero flex. . [00:17:00] Okay. I owned a school of rock music school, so we had flexibility in terms of do you want red furniture or black furniture?

Stacey Marmolejo: it’s within this style, you can have whatever kind you want. So if you’ve, if you need couches to fill a student lounge versus chairs to fill a student lounger and then we had choices of graphics that we could use throughout the school. So there are some franchises that have more creative flexibility than others.

Stacey Marmolejo: So if that is important to you, then that’s something you wanna look at, but you are correct. If you’re just like, Nope, I wanna reinvent the wheel my way, then you absolutely will be miserable owning a franchise. Right.

Scott DeLuzio: So, so yeah, that, I think that’s part of that your motivators, right?

Scott DeLuzio: That that you’re talking about. Those four things like. If you’re focused on doing things your way, like, I know this is the way I want to, I [00:18:00] wanna run things. And you, it’s trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, it’s just not gonna work. Exactly. So yeah, definitely have to look at what your own personal motivating factors are gonna be.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Stacey Marmolejo: And I like to say there’s four reasons people wanna start their own business. Okay. And typically there’s one driver and, but all of them come into play. So it’s money. Obviously I wanna make money or more money, or as much money as I can, but it’s around money. The other one is around fulfillment.

Stacey Marmolejo: And that was my driver. It’s like, I wanna know if I can do this. I wanna prove to myself that I can own my own business. So that was fulfillment. Another is freedom. So again, you come and go as you please. You make the rules. You know, like, I mean, even when you own a franchise, like some of them again McDonald’s, they’re gonna tell you what hours you have to be open, right?

Stacey Marmolejo: Yeah. A [00:19:00] plumbing, an HVAC handyman, home services. Even my school of rock, I got to decide what hours I was open. So when I first started, I was only open two nights a week cuz that’s all the students I had. Right? So when you think about that flexibility and freedom, which is the fourth one, those kind of sometimes go hand in hand.

Stacey Marmolejo: . But if you want the freedom to take a three week vacation, a 30 day, remember in the military you got 30 days leave and then you look at corp, you look at civilian jobs and you’re gonna get two weeks at best for five years. Right, right. , people say you can’t own a business and go on vacation.

Stacey Marmolejo: And I would say don’t plan on going on vacation your first. But I went on vacation when I owned my business because I had a great team in place. Right? Did I call in every day? Of course I did. But, you know,

Scott DeLuzio: well, and the, there’s another aspect to it too, if you love what you do I, I’ve heard this [00:20:00] said before, if you love what you do, it’s like you’ll never have to work a day in your life.

Scott DeLuzio: And so Exactly. If you really enjoy the work that you are doing and the business that you’re running you know, calling in from vacation, wherever you’re on the beach somewhere and you’re calling in, just checking in to see how things are going, like that is also a source of enjoyment for you because you enjoy that type of work.

Stacey Marmolejo: So, I was gonna say, it’s peace of mind. It’s like I can go enjoy my day surfing or tube diving or whatever, because I know everything’s handled.

Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. Yeah. So, so, you know, everything is good. You know, the team that you have in place is gonna be able to handle everything and you’re good to go there.

Scott DeLuzio: Right. So, when we talk about franchising and specifically with retiring military service members uh, when we’re talking about these people getting into a franchise, what characteristics would you say would make somebody a successful franchise owner? Like if someone’s sitting there right now thinking to myself like, this actually sounds pretty good.

Scott DeLuzio: Maybe this would be good for me. What type of person [00:21:00] would be a successful franchise owner?

Stacey Marmolejo: It’s interesting you asked that question because. They, any franchisor would tell you someone who’s been in the military, like they love the military so much that almost every franchise has a discount if you’re a vet because they understand.

Stacey Marmolejo: I actually wrote an e-book, you can get it off of my website stastaceymarmolejo.com,t I actually wrote an ebook on why vets are such a perfect fit for franchise ownership. But a little history cuz a lot of people don’t realize this franchising goes back to Benjamin Franklin. I mean, he was actually the first franchisor, right?

Stacey Marmolejo: But it was kind of an unregulated, sloppy, quasi cottage industry for many years. But what happened is, at the end of World War II, when everyone came back, there were no jobs. And so many of the vets bought [00:22:00] franchises and then hired the other vets, and that’s what elevated escalated whatever. That’s what made franchising take off was military so much so, and it became a tradition.

Stacey Marmolejo: So much so that one in seven franchise locations now is owned by a vet. Wow. Yeah. That’s interesting.

Scott DeLuzio: Yes. And it makes sense too with the discounts that are available that you were talking about, that a lot of franchise organizations have a discount for military. And that just kind of lowers the barrier to entry to get in.

Scott DeLuzio: So, exactly why not go that route, you know? Yep. And like you were saying too, , you don’t start off with a hundred locations when you’re starting off this way, right? You start off at one location and then you build up your portfolio of locations, whether you keep that same location and then invest into that profits into another location or sell that one and invest into something else.

Scott DeLuzio: You, you build that up over time. And [00:23:00] you may have this other idea in the back of your head. Doesn’t mean that you can’t eventually do that idea sometime down the line, but this is a great way in the meantime to make some money and be able to have the money to invest into that idea later on and business experience as well.

Scott DeLuzio: Because

Stacey Marmolejo: it, I was just gonna say, the other thing is it teaches you how to own a business. So when you buy a franchise, you’re actually entering into a contract with the franchisor and there’s a time on it. So some franchisors have five year contracts, some have 10 year, and then the bigger ones like the Hilton’s, McDonald’s, you know, hotels and restaurants they’re mainly 20 years.

Stacey Marmolejo: But if you think about it, so there’s a couple of options when you’re looking at, do I want a five year or do I want a tenure? There’s pros and cons to each one. But one of the pros of a five year is, I mean, you did a hitch for four or six. You can look back and say how, you know, [00:24:00] was that a blink of an eye or was that like the worst experience?

Stacey Marmolejo: You know? Yeah. And if you think about it that way, it’s like, okay, can I do another hitch for fi five? Right. Right. If you don’t wanna keep it, you don’t have to keep it at the five year mark. You’re better off if you flip it instead of just walking away. Sure. Because if you just walk away, essentially you’ve just bought yourself a five year job.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right? .

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Yeah. You’ve guaranteed yourself a five year job.

Stacey Marmolejo: Exactly. But if you flip it, and I will also say that research shows when you sell a franchise business, it sells for 20% more than the same business as an independent. Okay. So, you know, for example, let’s say you have a jewelry store, right?

Stacey Marmolejo: And it’s Stacy’s jewelry. If I owned. A franchise jewelry store and decided they were both doing the exact same revenue, [00:25:00] exact same business volume, blah, blah, blah. Right. I could sell a franchise location for a 20% premium than what I could sell an independent for,

Scott DeLuzio: which is pretty awesome because Pretty nice premium, huh?

Scott DeLuzio: You’re also selling not only the location and the client base that you have and the all of that you’re also selling that, that brand name as well, that goes along with it because Exactly. Who knows. About what, you know, Stacy’s jewelry store is versus some other major jewelry location, you know, like a k or something like that, you know?

Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. Yeah. Like, you know that, that name, there’s television commercials already out there for it, and so why wouldn’t someone wanna pay more to, to get into that? Because so much of that stuff is already done for them. The marketing and all that kind of stuff, it just makes sense that you would want to get into something that a lot of that expensive stuff is being taken care of for you.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right, exactly. Well, and that’s another way to think about it as a buyer as well, is [00:26:00] like, yeah, okay, if you decide you wanna own a franchise, do you wanna own one that you’re gonna start up? Or do you wanna buy a franchise that someone like myself has built up and is now selling to retire or move on to something else?

Stacey Marmolejo: Right, right. Just because somebody’s selling their franchise does not mean it’s a bad franchise. Right.

Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. No it may actually be a great franchise and you may know like, there’s bigger and better things for me right now. Let me move on to this next thing, but I can’t do that while I have this other franchise.

Scott DeLuzio: Right. So let me sell this. I know the business is doing really well. I can make a decent amount of money off of this if I sell it now. , and so now you turn it over to somebody else who can take it from there and really hit the ground running with the business that’s already in an established location, already has customers coming in on a daily basis. And you know, just is really Easy to just get started with that. Yep.

Stacey Marmolejo: you will pay more for that, but you’re paying because there’s already revenue there, you know?

Stacey Marmolejo: Sure, yeah. Yeah. And

Scott DeLuzio: It, I don’t wanna say [00:27:00] it’s guaranteed because there’s nothing guaranteed in any business, but

Stacey Marmolejo: if you can screw it up, you can lose it.

Scott DeLuzio: Anyone can screw something up pretty royally. But but there’s also external factors too, you know, look at the last couple years with the way things were locked down and, you know, if you just started a a business at the beginning of 2020, I’m pretty sure it didn’t survive very well if it relied on foot traffic,

Stacey Marmolejo: you know?

Stacey Marmolejo: So that’s another great example of a benefit of a franchise that I hadn’t thought of till you just said that. Okay. So we were in-person music lessons. Sure. And a kid would go in a five by seven room with a teacher, right. And like play guitar or keys or whatever. Right. Well, obviously when covid hit, people have to be six feet apart, blah, blah, blah.

Stacey Marmolejo: I couldn’t, we couldn’t do in-person lessons. I’m not a technologist. If I had just had Stacy’s music, I would’ve been out of business. Okay. Yeah. But because I was part of School of Rock, we had that whole parent company [00:28:00] figuring out how to implement lessons online, and within two weeks they had a complete system in place.

Stacey Marmolejo: Amazing.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And try to figure that out on your own. Good luck, you

Stacey Marmolejo: know, and the cost to do it. Right,

Scott DeLuzio: right. Yeah. Hiring the IT people to figure this out, get the system in place, the scheduling, the the infrastructure, the computers and the servers and everything else that is needed. You know, yeah, you probably could have figured something out using like Zoom, like we’re recording on right now.

Scott DeLuzio: You could have probably figured something out like that, but it wouldn’t have been as clean and polished of a solution as probably what you. Probably branded and marketing

Stacey Marmolejo: towards the other challenge to that too, and we’re getting kind of down a rabbit hole. But the other challenge is on Zoom, you can have a conversation.

Stacey Marmolejo: You actually cannot have people playing music together, which I learned as an owner because there’s a delay. And even if it’s only a one second delay, [00:29:00] imagine if the guitar is one second off the drums, which is one second off the keys, which is one second off the vocals by then you’re five seconds apart on these two different, and it just sounds like noise.

Stacey Marmolejo: So they had to create a whole platform.

Scott DeLuzio: Wow. Yeah, I didn’t even think about that as far as the delay, but yeah,

Stacey Marmolejo: there’s, yeah, there’s terminology for it. And your readers, or your listeners are probably like screaming at me telling me the words, but I can’t think of what it’s called. Synchronous. No, that’s okay.

Stacey Marmolejo: There you go. Synchronous there you an asynchronous. That’s it. .

Scott DeLuzio: Okay. Yeah, so so that is another, so

Stacey Marmolejo: you have that whole team that’s gonna take care of those like world altering challenges cuz they’re not doing it just for you, they’re doing it for the whole network. Right.

Scott DeLuzio: And if that whole network fell apart, then they fall apart and so they Exactly.

Scott DeLuzio: They have a vested interest to make sure that whole network of all the individual locations are able to stay afloat because otherwise they’re outta luck too and Exactly. Obviously not what they want.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right. Yep. And then there are also, [00:30:00] That do exceptionally well or are unaffected in recessions.

Stacey Marmolejo: And again, I keep going back to the trades, but you think about that if your plumbing, if your pipe bursts in your house, you’re not gonna go, well, I’m in a recession, I don’t really have any money, so I’ll just ha go ahead and let the pipe flood the house. You’re doing that, you’re still gonna call a plumber.

Stacey Marmolejo: Yeah. Right. So, and then the recessions usually don’t impact exceptionally wealthy people. So luxury brands do well in a recession cuz they’re unaffected. .

Scott DeLuzio: That’s true. Yeah. They still have the money available to spend on those. Nice to have the luxury type things. Yeah. Where other people may not, but they’re, they wouldn’t be purchasing these high-end luxury items anyways.

Scott DeLuzio: Or services. Exactly.

Stacey Marmolejo: Yeah. So there are some businesses that are unaffected. Even though everyone talks about the recession, there are some businesses that are wholly unaffected by it. There’s a, I’ve got a couple of weird, I [00:31:00] call them weird ones, but franchises, they’re crime scene cleanup.

Scott DeLuzio: That might actually increase during a downturn

Stacey Marmolejo: in the, maybe , the economy . It’s not a job that I would be comfortable doing, but somebody’s gotta do it. Right, right.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And you don’t think about these things and that, that brings me to the question I wanted to ask you is you mentioned there, there’s.

Scott DeLuzio: Thousands of different type companies that are out there, that are

Stacey Marmolejo: franchises, yeah. That

Scott DeLuzio: are offering franchise opportunities common ones. We all know about things like, like the fast food restaurants. And you mentioned things like, like some of the services like plumbing and electrician and things like that.

Scott DeLuzio: What are some of the other ones that maybe are a little bit more obscure that maybe people aren’t quite as familiar with and wouldn’t necessarily think of didn’t come top of mind? And the reason why I’m asking this is because again, there, there’s probably a listener out there who’s like, you know, this sounds great.

Scott DeLuzio: I’d love to do, fill in the blank, whatever the thing is. Right. But who knows if there’s really a franchise out there that, that does this type of work. So, [00:32:00] so what are some of the things that are out there that maybe people don’t think of? Right off the top? Very of franchises. Yeah.

Stacey Marmolejo: We have Ellie Mental Health.

Stacey Marmolejo: Okay. Which is counseling services. So even if you’re not a counselor though, you would hire professional counselors to work for you. In the mental health we have pooper scooper, lots of pooper scooper franchises. You laugh, there’s a pooper scooper, Fran. So franchise franchising is regulated by the government, right?

Stacey Marmolejo: And they have a document which is called a franchise disclosure document, f d d. And once you get into like discussions with the franchisor, they’ll give you one. But if you can get your hands on one ahead of time, it’s even better. But all of the fds are structured the same. So once you know how to read one, you can read them all.

Stacey Marmolejo: Okay, now there’s. Every one of those 23 points are [00:33:00] called an item. So there’s an item 19 and the item 19 is the only item that is optional whether the franchisor wants to fill it in or not. And item 19 is, what does the average franchisee make in this business? Right? Okay. So if they’re not willing to share their item 19, that’s always a red flag for me.

Stacey Marmolejo: Cuz if your franchisees are doing well, why wouldn’t you tell people? Sure. Right. So anyway, so I went to this one pooper scooper franchise disclosure document. I went to their item 19. Their average profitability is six figures. Wow.

Scott DeLuzio: That, that’s

Stacey Marmolejo: a lot of crap. That’s about that. That’s a lot of crap.

Stacey Marmolejo: And I’m guessing it’s probably in wealthy neighborhoods. Uhhuh, . Right? Sure. So, yeah, and if you don’t wanna pick up dog poop, hire some teenagers. Remember the old days [00:34:00] where teenagers cut grass and they have their own business. Now it’s landscaping companies that are coming around to cut grass, which by the way is also another franchises landscaping.

Stacey Marmolejo: Yeah. But there’s landscaping, there’s blinds, there’s home decor, there’s pie shops, bakeries child enrichment, whether it’s music lessons, swim lessons, stem centers, science, technology. What’s the e engineering? I think engineering and engineering. And math. And math. Yep. There’s sports. Soccer shots is one.

Stacey Marmolejo: If you wanna teach kids how to play soccer, there’s the paint thing where you paint and drink wine together. Gosh, I’m just trying to think. There’s advertising, there’s business to business, there’s corporate cleaning, there’s house cleaning, there’s I said landscaping painting, house, painting everything.

Stacey Marmolejo: If you can think of it. I would be amazed if there wasn’t a franchise for it. [00:35:00] And,

Scott DeLuzio: and if there isn’t, then if there you go. There’s an opportunity. There you go. There’s

Stacey Marmolejo: an opportunity,

Scott DeLuzio: right? Yeah. So

Stacey Marmolejo: I mean that’s, and by the way, there are people out there who only want to invest in franchise opportunities,

Scott DeLuzio: right?

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And it’s great that there are so many opportunities out there, different industries different brands that are out there that

Stacey Marmolejo: you can get into. Travel agent. Sorry. Accountants. Yeah, no bookkeepers. It just keeps and sorry to interrupt you, but here’s another thing to keep in mind. So it used to be all franchises had geographic territories, right?

Stacey Marmolejo: So that was really problematic if like, you had a military spouse because they can’t, they couldn’t move the geography when they got transferred. But now there are some franchises that don’t have geographic restrictions. So you could actually be doing like, let’s say bookkeeping, right? You could do bookkeeping on a part-time basis as a [00:36:00] military spouse.

Stacey Marmolejo: And it would, and you could do work from home. And it wouldn’t matter where you were stationed or where your spouse was stationed.

Scott DeLuzio: That was actually gonna be my next question is are there any franchise opportunities that are work from home type things where you don’t need a brick and mortar location?

Scott DeLuzio: Yep. Yeah, so, so what are some of those, like obviously, you know, bookkeeping you mentioned. What are some of those? They’re mainly

Stacey Marmolejo: services bookkeeping on the B2B realm, one of ’em is stenographer court reporting. So if you, because a lot of it’s done over Zoom now. It used to all be done in, because they’re, yes, you have it in the courtroom, but you also have depositions in attorneys’ offices, Uhhuh,

Stacey Marmolejo: Right. So a lot of those are actually done via Zoom. Wow. So you could do court reporting and I mean, yeah it’s crazy. Which

Scott DeLuzio: is actually another good thing because there are, I know there are some veterans out there who they don’t want to interface with the public all the time. They don’t wanna be the guy standing behind the counter.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, [00:37:00] exactly. Yeah.

Stacey Marmolejo: I’m an introvert. I mean, I’m happy to talk to somebody one-on-one, but if you wanna put me in a crowd with a bunch of people, I’m just like, so I totally get it. And

Scott DeLuzio: that happens all the time. And I’m the same way. Like, I know it, it’s kind weird to say that, like, I host a podcast and talk to people all the time and but it’s one-on-one way.

Scott DeLuzio: It’s one, one conversation. Exactly. Yeah. Right. It’s different than putting me out in public in a unfamiliar location with, you know, Customer service type things and whatever. It’s like I, I may not want to deal with that, so I may want to just stay at home and yeah, I may have to deal with some customer service related things, but it’s gonna be kind of that one-off thing as opposed to someone cleaning the door to return an item, something’s broken.

Scott DeLuzio: I gotta talk to ’em about all this kind of stuff, whatever. So, so it, that’s another option. So honestly, I feel like as long as you’re not dead set against working for somebody else or that’s not even the right way to put it, but working under somebody else’s rules and conditions it seems like there is an opportunity out there for [00:38:00] just about anybody who wants to get into

Stacey Marmolejo: franchise.

Stacey Marmolejo: Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. And I know that different franchises have d. Oppressions, is that a word? I don’t know. Some are more strict than others about they have these rules and you must follow every single one of ’em. some of ’em aren’t quite that tight. So that’s, again, one of those things you’re gonna wanna look at.

Stacey Marmolejo: They are going to expect to receive your financial statements. Some are once a month, some are once a quarter, some are once a year. You were just, another one that just came to mind is business coaching. You know, there are those, there are franchises that you do one-to-one business coaching, but there are also franchises where you like get people from one, from each industry in your community and they come together to create a mastermind.

Stacey Marmolejo: And so you’re with them once a month. And you [00:39:00] have a keynote speaker who comes in and talks about things in business, and then you do round tables where each other’s helping each other out with their business, that kind of thing. Right. So there are some of those as well. How do I go off on that tangent?

Scott DeLuzio: You know, it’s so many options and I think we probably could have this conversation all day talking about the different options that are out there. But one of the things that I wanted to talk about was for the people who might still be in the military they’re, they know their retirement separation date is approaching.

Scott DeLuzio: When should they start planning for looking into like what the next steps are for getting into a franchise? What would be a good timeframe? Like what, how long is,

Stacey Marmolejo: that’s a great turnaround. That’s question. Yeah, that’s a great question. I like to say you should be thinking 12 to 18 months out.

Stacey Marmolejo: Okay. Not so much to buy a franchise, just 12 to 18 months out to say, what am I gonna do when I separate? Okay. Once, if you get to the point where you’re like, I know I wanna franchise, then [00:40:00] again, if you are working at it on a regular but slower pace, you’re not gonna be as stressed out as if you like, oh my God, I’m six weeks from separation and now I gotta figure this out.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right, right. I know one guy who was in the Navy, in San Diego, originally from North Carolina, he wanted to go home. So even before he separated, he bought the franchise in North Carolina. He found the spa, it was a brick and mortar, but he found the space and everything. He negotiated with the franchisor that he would open after he separated.

Stacey Marmolejo: Okay. So they picked a specific date after separation. Right now some franchise orders are gonna say, I’m not gonna hold a territory that long. So it just, again, it depends on the franchisor how long it will take from deciding that you want X franchise to opening it again, is gonna depend on brick and mortar work from home, you know, because the brick and mortar’s always gonna take longer A, to find the property and b, to build out.[00:41:00]

Scott DeLuzio: Right, right. Yeah. Because you, you may be building it from scratch or you may be converting it into retro location. Exactly. So there’s a lot of work that goes into that on the brick and mortar side. So I guess the answer to that is probably the sooner the better get thinking about that and start looking at the locations, but also if

Stacey Marmolejo: realizing, so even if you’re, like, if you know you wanna own your own business and you think a franchise might be an option, learn what you can about FraNChiS.

Stacey Marmolejo: Yeah, make the decision. And if it’s not that, if it’s not a franchise, then you cross it off the list and move on. Right. I mean, you’re getting outta the military. The world’s your oyster. You can start a business, you can buy a franchise if you’re retired, if you’re done your 20, you can see if you like retirement, you can get a little part-time job.

Stacey Marmolejo: I mean, or you can go to work for corporate America.

Scott DeLuzio: . Yeah. A lot of, not

Stacey Marmolejo: what I recommend, but .

Scott DeLuzio: No, but you know what? It [00:42:00] takes a certain type of person to do this type of stuff. And you know, if it, if you feel like you’re that type of person, that, that would work well in this type of environment.

Scott DeLuzio: You know, working in a franchise situation. Then, you know, there’s a ton of options.

Stacey Marmolejo: Is there any I think it’s the best of both worlds. I’ve done both. I think it’s the best of both worlds. Is there

Scott DeLuzio: one location where people can go to find franchise opportunities that are available? Like, I know, like geographic regions you know, certain places.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay. We’re booked up in this region. So we’re only offering it in a certain region. Where can people go to find the franchise opportunities that are

Stacey Marmolejo: available? So there are probably 10 or 11 websites that list franchises, the challenges the franchisor has to pay to be on there. So there really isn’t one place where you can find it all.

Stacey Marmolejo: There are people called franchise consultants. And if so, if you think [00:43:00] about it, like when you go to a financial planner, which by the way is another franchise, taxes are another franchise. Anyway, if you go to a if you go to a financial planner, there’s usually two models. One is you pay the person for information and they provide it to you.

Stacey Marmolejo: They educate you, right? And then you go to Char Charles Schwab or website or whatever and buy whatever stocks or that you wanna buy. You invest however you want. Then there’s the model that you go to the financial advisor and they give you free advice, but when you trade through them or you buy through them, then they get paid a commission.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right. Same thing, I’m a franchise coach. I don’t care if you buy or you don’t buy. My goal is to provide you with all the information you need to make the right decision for you. It’s like taking a college course. I’m gonna tell you what you don’t even [00:44:00] know you need to know, right? Right. Then you have the franchise consultants.

Stacey Marmolejo: They are paid by the franchisors, so they have signed agreements with specific groups of franchisors to represent them. So they guide you through the process of buying. They introduce you to the franchisor, they get you ready to meet with the franchisor, with like financial documents and things like that.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right. Tell you what you need. And then if you buy that franchise, then the franchisor pays them a commission. so they don’t mind answering questions for people, but they don’t want to spend a lot of time educating you because that’s time taken away from working with clients that they’re gonna get paid for.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right? Sure. So a lot of franchise consult, not a lot, several franchise consultants [00:45:00] will send people to me to educate them first, and then they’ll go back to the franchise consultant if they want assistance through the buying process.

Scott DeLuzio: Got it. Okay. So there are options out there. There’s a bunch of websites out there you could probably go take a

Stacey Marmolejo: look at.

Stacey Marmolejo: You look around franchise directory and you’ll get probably a dozen of them.

Scott DeLuzio: Yep. Right. But I. Ultimately, probably a better route would be to talk to someone like your yourself who can coach you through the whole process. Educate the individuals on what it is that they need to know about all this, right?

Scott DeLuzio: And then work with a a consultant who can help you get in the door. Absolutely.

Stacey Marmolejo: Buy the one you want. Yeah.

Scott DeLuzio: Get the one that you want in the location that you wanna work in. And you know, if you’re getting outta the military and you wanna move back home or you wanna stay where you were or try someplace new altogether, those are all options that [00:46:00] are available to you.

Scott DeLuzio: So I think someone like that would be able to help you, especially if you’re going into a territory that you’re maybe a little bit unfamiliar with and help you find the right location there. So, yeah.

Stacey Marmolejo: A lot of great information and a couple of the franchise consultants that I work with are also vets.

Stacey Marmolejo: and I like pairing vets with vets because it’s a mindset that you’ve lived, you know, you understand, you know? Yes. Because I did I read some statistics that said one of the top five biggest challenges for people getting outta the military is feeling like they belong. It’s, and that’s one of the things that I love about franchising too, is not only do you, we’ve talked a lot about the parent companies supporting you, but all the other franchisees support you too.

Stacey Marmolejo: So, I mean, again, let’s use the jewelry store example, right? If I have Stacy’s jewelry and it’s Valentine’s Day coming up, and I’m not [00:47:00] seeing the sales that I wanna see, I can’t pick up the phone and call Kay Jeweler manager down the road and say, what are you guys doing? Right. To get people in the door, they’re gonna laugh at me.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right. But if I own a franchise, I can call the franchisee down the road and say, what are you doing? I’m not having any success with X, Y, Z. Right? Yeah. And I learned as much, if not more, from other franchisees as I did from corporate, because I could figure out which franchisees were about my size in a market, about like mine.

Stacey Marmolejo: What’s selling for you? What’s not selling? What marketing is resonating, what’s not resonating. In child enrichment, the best place to go for leads is the school systems. Of course. Right? But not all school systems will let. We’ll let businesses go in and market to the kids.

Stacey Marmolejo: So how do you get in to the school [00:48:00] systems if you don’t have kids in the school system, you may not know all of the opportunities. Right, right, right. So if I call another franchisee and I say, I’m having a difficult time getting into my school system, what did you do? And they tell me all the things they did, it’s like, oh, I could start implementing those things.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right. So you might be saying what, so as an example, every grade school goes to pretty much every business and asks for donation for the silent auction. Right, right, right. And most I’ll use music schools again cuz that’s what I was Most music schools will give a pack of four free lessons, say, right. Well, as a music school, I had access to buying instruments at reach, at wholesale pricing.

Stacey Marmolejo: So I put together a kit of a beginner guitar amp strap bag, but it’s a kit you can buy. Right. Beginner guitar kit and lessons [00:49:00] making it the most expensive item in the raffle. Right? Right. Not that everybody wanted to learn to play the guitar. Every parent wanted to buy their kiddie guitar, but it got the parents’ attention.

Stacey Marmolejo: Look, this is a $500 value that this InDEEP this because it’s a franchise, but they think of you as locally owned independent businesses. Right? Sure. It’s kind of funny cuz they think of McDonald’s as a franchise and they think of School of Rock as an independently owned business and it’s kinda the same thing Anyway.

Stacey Marmolejo: So if I’m, if you’re trying to get into the school system, donate something of great worth or value to the silent auction, I guarantee you, you will get the parents’ attention.

Scott DeLuzio: Right. And the now they’re gonna be looking at that and saying, okay, well who donated this? And not only are, you know, whoever gets the, whoever wins the auction, gets the item.

Scott DeLuzio: They’re gonna be coming to you for the lessons. They’ll do the four lessons or whatever it is, but they’re probably gonna stick with it longer. Stay for

Stacey Marmolejo: longer. [00:50:00] Right. They spent that much longer, but then they’re also gonna, right. And then they’re gonna talk about their experience and that’s gonna make a difference.

Stacey Marmolejo: But again, and particularly in child enrichment, where you think every year they’re getting older, so maybe they try guitar and they discover hockeys more important than they drop music lessons. Right. But every year you’ve got a new crop of kids going into the elementary school. So every year you’re putting that guitar out there.

Stacey Marmolejo: And parents are talking, they’re like, wow, I can’t believe she donated a guitar.

Scott DeLuzio: You know, . Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what she’s gonna donate next year. You know? Yeah.

Stacey Marmolejo: So it’s like, yeah. So you become, and then parents would call me and they’d say, I really appreciate you supporting my kids’ school. I have a daughter that’s interested in singing.

Stacey Marmolejo: Do you do singing lessons? And it’s like, yes, we do. Right? Yeah. So a again, there are marketing tools at the local level that you may never think of that all of your other franchisees are happy to share. [00:51:00]

Scott DeLuzio: And that’s a benefit of being a another franchisee because we were talking about Geo geographic regions before, right?

Scott DeLuzio: Those people who operate in their geographic region, they. Don’t st they don’t stand to lose anything by helping you out in a different all geographic region. Right. So that you’re in two separate regions, your customer base is two separate sets of customers and Yeah, sure. Every now and again, you might have somebody who moves from one area to another and you know, but whatever.

Scott DeLuzio: So it doesn’t hurt them at all to Right. Help you out and it doesn’t hurt you at all to help them out. And so why wouldn’t you help each other out sharing Exactly. Ideas, sharing techniques and all this kind of stuff. Exactly. And when you

Stacey Marmolejo: have that, and even the ones in the same town, like if, let’s say you’re gonna buy advertising, let’s face it if you live five minutes from my music school in 45 minutes from somebody else’s music school, no matter how much advertising that 1 45 minutes away does, they’re gonna come to mind instead of yours.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right, right, right. [00:52:00] So if you’re in that environment, then everybody in the same town can put their money together. To buy more advertising and each of you are paying less because in reality for that type of business, the parent’s gonna go to the one that’s closest to their home. And if you’re in, like I’m in Minneapolis, St.

Stacey Marmolejo: Paul right now, right? I can’t buy advertising in St. Paul without spillover to Minneapolis, cuz we’re looked at as one geographic region, right? But I don’t want, arguably I don’t want anybody on the Minneapolis side. So if I partner with somebody on the Minneapolis side to buy ads, then I have my investment in marketing spend, advertising spend, and we’re both gonna get who we would get anyway.

Stacey Marmolejo: Sure.

Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. And it just makes your dollar go so much further. It just makes everyone’s business that much better by being able to collaborate that way. Whereas if it was Stacy’s jewelry and. Jim’s jewelry on the opposite side of [00:53:00] the the border there. There no way the two of you would come together and invest on the same type of advertising.

Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. You know, it just wouldn’t happen. Right. So, right. Yeah. Can I

Stacey Marmolejo: throw one, one other, one other item out there for people to think about, please? Sure. Yeah. So when you buy a franchise, you pay royalties, and I don’t know if everyone’s familiar with this.

Stacey Marmolejo: Okay. But when you buy a franchise, your first cost is a franchise fee, and it’s a one-time fee. That you pay to the franchisor for the rights to use their name, and it lasts as long as that agreement is. So if you remember, I said five years, 10 years, 20 years. Right? So that fee lasts that long. When that time period comes up, you have to pay a renewal fee, which is generally about a third of the going rate of the franchise fee.

Stacey Marmolejo: Okay? You also pay on a monthly basis something called royalties, and it’s typically a percent of your revenue. There are some [00:54:00] franchises that have a flat monthly fee, but generally speaking it’s a percent of your revenue. So it may be 7%. It’s generally somewhere between six and 11%. Okay? That cannot change until you.

Stacey Marmolejo: Your franchise agreement. Okay? So if you’re starting with a startup and they say, well, we’re gonna have a 5% royalty because we’re a startup, but then two years later they raise it to seven and two years later they raise it to nine. Now you’re four years into the agreement. Anyone buying that franchise is paying 9%, but you’re still paying 5%, thus a benefit to a tenure agreement, right?

Stacey Marmolejo: But lot of people will look at a franchise and say, well, I’m not giving up 10% of my revenue. That’s ridiculous. That’s a lot of money. You could not hire the talent to do the jobs that the corporate people do for you for that [00:55:00] percentage. I’m just saying, you know, you, you’re not gonna have to hire a lead management person cuz corporate’s gonna do that.

Stacey Marmolejo: You’re not gonna have to hire a website designer cuz corporate’s gonna do it. You don’t have to hire an IT person. You don’t have to hire an ops person. There, you know, there’s just so much that value there. So when you’re thinking about, I don’t wanna pay 10%, I already paid you $50,000, right? Don’t look at it that way. Look at it like, wow, if I had to hire all of these people, I couldn’t afford it. You couldn’t get 10% or 80. The example

Scott DeLuzio: that you, the example you gave before with when Covid happened and they came up with this whole basically remote learning type of system, right?

Scott DeLuzio: And they had that in place in two weeks. Good luck. Yeah. Trying to figure that out on your own right. As a franchise. And so that 10% or whatever the percentage. Well worth it because you’d be out of business. Exactly. So 10, 10% of zero is still zero. Right? [00:56:00] Exactly.

Stacey Marmolejo: Right. , .

Scott DeLuzio: So you’re definitely better off.

Stacey Marmolejo: Yeah. And again, that’s another thing that as a coach I try and do with people, is to help them think about how to think about things because it is a different model than either a startup or the military or working for somebody else. It’s absolutely a mindset.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, it is. Yeah. Well, yeah, I, again, I thi I think we could probably talk about this all day long.

Scott DeLuzio: But I do wanna, I think we covered the high points. I think we covered the high points. Yeah. I, and I want to kind of wrap it up here, but where can people go to get in touch with you and find out more about the Franchise Prep Academy and becoming a franchise owner? If they want to get in touch with you for your services to learn more about that.

Scott DeLuzio: So

Stacey Marmolejo: the best place to start is at my website, which is my name. It’s Stacy, S T A C E Y, Marmolejo, M A R M O L E J O.com. [00:57:00] And on there, or Instagram it’s Stacy, my maiden name, Beck, b e c k, and Marmolejo. So Stacy Beck Marmolejo at Instagram and you can hit me up, you can DM me. Send me a message via email on my website.

Stacey Marmolejo: There’s a contact me page, and I’m happy to hop on a call with you if you’re looking for a consultant. If you already know what you need to know, but you need a franchise consultant, hit me up and tell me, and I’ll introduce you to a couple vets that are franchise consultants as well. So wherever you are on the spectrum, happy to help.

Scott DeLuzio: Excellent. Yeah, and I’ll have links to all of those in the show notes, so everyone who is looking to get in touch with you, they can check it out there. Stacy, it’s been great speaking with you today. It’s been really informative and educational. Hopefully it will help some of the listeners who are out there trying to figure out what their next steps are.

Scott DeLuzio: So thank you for everything that you shared with us today.

Stacey Marmolejo: Thank you so much for having me. I really do think a franchise is a great first business to own and do anything for our vet, so thank you so [00:58:00] much.

Scott DeLuzio: Thanks for listening to the Drive On Podcast. If you want to support the show, please check out Scott’s book, Surviving Son on Amazon. All of the sales from that book go directly back into this podcast and work to help veterans in need. You can also follow the Drive On Podcast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.