On this episode of the Franchise Secrets Podcast, Erik is joined by Zachary Lease, owner of several Board & Brush franchise locations, to talk about his journey into franchising. Zack discusses how he went from selling things as a teen to co-owning a business with his father before jumping head-first into franchising with his wife.

Thinking smarter and growing faster with vertical integration

By looking for opportunities and making the most of them, what started as a single location quickly turned to three and another business for Zack. He expanded his franchise thanks to his own success and taking the opportunity to buy out a struggling location. But by thinking about vertical integration and how he could offer value, Zack opened up another business as a vendor to his own franchisor, growing that quickly as well.

Failure is not a bad thing, even if people believe it is. In fact, failure can be one of the quickest paths toward greater success if you learn from those mistakes. With many businesses and entrepreneurs struggling during the coronavirus pandemic, there are plenty of lessons to be learned for even the most successful franchisees.

On this episode of the Franchise Secrets Podcast, Erik is joined by Marcos Moura, CDO of Amada Franchise, to talk about his experiences with failure. Marcos discusses how he lost his business and home in 2008, and what lessons he learned from that strife. Whether it’s a reminder that everyone goes through troubles at some point or learning how to deal with issues head-on, Erik’s and Marcos’ insight is sure to help you out.

Investing doesn’t have to just be the stock market or million-dollar deals where your money is tied up for years. Lifestyle investor Justin Donald joins Erik Van Horn on The Franchise Secrets podcast to help you think about investing a little differently. 

Justin shares some of the low-risk investment principles he’s developed over the years, so you too can live the life you want. Whether you’re looking for low-risk cash flow investments for passive income, building your wealth more efficiently and easily, or just trying to get out of the rat race; Justin teaches some of the insights that have helped him find and structure deals that make his money work for him, not the other way around.

On today’s episode of Franchise Secrets, I’m joined by LinkedIn marketing specialist, Joshua B. Lee. Josh shares his unique outlook on marketing and gives some tips and tricks to improve your marketing efforts on LinkedIn.

Josh talks about some of the basic things you can do to improve your LinkedIn profile to attract more interest. We also talk about thinking of marketing as a human-to-human connection rather than hard pitches and goal-oriented discussions. With a few tweaks to your marketing mindset and making your target audience more focused, you too can find more success when using LinkedIn.

This episode of the Franchise Secrets podcast features special guest Brian Holmes, the co-host of the Franchise Story podcast and partner of FranchiseRamp. Erik and Brian talk about some of the things they’ve learned over the years they really wish they knew earlier, as well as what they want to start doing in 2021 in this live show on the Franchise Secrets Facebook group. 

The guys talk about going beyond just buying, growing, and selling franchises to diversify their revenue streams. Erik also touches on how to ask the right questions to the right people with the right mindset to get real answers that can improve your businesses. Both Erik and Brian share how they want to improve their leadership in different ways in the new year before answering a mastermind question.

This week, Erik shares his personal story of growing and eventually selling his Sola Salons franchises. Things aren’t always easy or perfect and Erik’s story helps shed a light on some of the struggles and successes he had, as well as his takeaways from the experience. 

Whether it was learning not to read too much into a single location’s achievements or failures, how to handle employees, or even managing partnerships, Erik learned a lot taking the franchise from one location to 12 and eventually selling. And for those wanting to break into franchise ownership, Erik also talks about a great path he saw first-hand, with his own manager moving on.

This episode is full of the type of insights that can save you time, money, and mental anguish.

In this week’s episode of the Franchise Secrets podcast, Erik takes your questions. While so much of the advice on this show is around broader topics, many of you have excellent and specific questions in the private Franchise Secrets Facebook group that deserve to be answered. 

We covered topics such as how to find the right franchise for you, adding more franchises, finding financing, and using the mastermind groups to your advantage. Erik also gave some of his personal insight into specific brands and markets.

Investing doesn’t have to just be the stock market or million-dollar deals where your money is tied up for years. Lifestyle investor Justin Donald joins Erik Van Horn to help you think about investing a little differently. Justin shares some of the low-risk investment principles he’s developed over the years so you too can build passing income and live the life you want. Whether you’re looking to build your wealth more efficiently or just trying to get out of the rat race, this episode is for you.

In this very special episode of the Franchise Secrets podcast, Erik sits down with John Hewitt, co-founder of Jackson Hewitt and founder of Liberty Tax Service. Erik and John discuss their foolproof way to determine success and benchmark their franchises and franchisees: The top-10 list.

Though it doesn’t necessarily need to be exactly 10 things, the purpose of the top-10 list is identifying the objective things that are impactful to the business. Once identified, franchisees can better focus their attention on the things that bring customers in the door and drives revenue rather than getting stuck on the stuff that doesn’t really make the business successful.

In this week’s episode of the Franchise Secrets podcast, Erik introduces a new format where he sits down with franchisors to get some insight into their business. This week, Erik is joined by Jeff Fenster, the founder and CEO of Everbowl.

Jeff covers a bit of his background prior to starting the business, as well as why he started Everbowl in the first place. Erik and Jeff talk about Everbowl’s market, who’s ideal to start an Everbowl franchise, and what makes them such an ideal franchisor. Whether it’s the lower startup costs, the health aspect of the business, the franchise’s fun attitude towards food service, or the profits; Everbowl could be an answer for you or a company to model your own business after.