Transcript

Why Franchises Are the Smart Investor’s Play 🏬 EP133

From The Money Mondays Podcast · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 40 min · 8,712 words · 129 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Why Franchises Are the Smart Investor’s Play 🏬 EP133", an episode of The Money Mondays Podcast published August 18, 2025 (40 min, about 8,712 words). It mentions 18 people, works and ideas, including Franchising, Alex Mursnak, Money Mondays, Artificial Intelligence, Charity.

What this episode is about

The main topic explores the advantages of franchise investments as a smart strategy for aspiring entrepreneurs. Key points include insights from co-founders of a platform designed to match potential franchisees with suitable brands and the value of franchising in various business sectors.

Key takeaways

  • Ditch the 9-to-5: Entrepreneurial spirit thrives best when risks are taken young and unencumbered.
  • Franchising's future hinges on disrupting outdated broker models; the market is ripe for democratization.
  • Tai Lopez's mansion? A reminder that sometimes success looks like a $100 million price tag.
  • In the world of startups, boredom can be the spark for new ventures; never stay too comfortable.
  • Balancing business and family? It’s a tightrope walk that even entrepreneurs fear to tread.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Franchising, HR Logix, Alex Mursnak, Money Mondays
  2. – 10:00: Franchising, Laundry Lab, Everbold, Uber
  3. – 15:00: Franchising, Franchise Disclosure Documents, Venture Capital, Zillow
  4. – 20:00: Franchising, Popup Bagels, United States (states)
  5. – 25:00: Franchising, Artificial Intelligence, Venture Capital, Popup Bagels
  6. – 30:00: Charity
  7. – 35:00: Franchising, Charity
  8. – 39:45: Money Mondays, Charity

Notable quotes from "Why Franchises Are the Smart Investor’s Play 🏬 EP133"

  • Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast. Normally, we're inside of an RV motor home, but instead today, we are inside this $100 million mansion in Beverly Hills that Tai Lopez is hosting.
    about Money Mondays · at
  • The last one we raised 35 million in venture capital for. It was a laundry and dry cleaning pickup and delivery business. Eventually started franchising part of that business, which is how I.
    about Alex Mursnak · at
  • Franchised. So we started franchising the laundromats in 2021 under a brand called Laundry Lab. We sold 118 locations in 14 months. That's the beauty of fr the franchise model…
    about Laundry Lab · at
  • Through. we soft launched in November, hard launched January of this year. we've raised about 3.3 million in venture capital. we've started closing you know deals like crazy and helping people find the best fit franchise for them.
    about Venture Capital · at
  • Yeah. So, I think franchising is one of the most underestimated wealth plays of, of all time. it's 10% of our country's GDP and no one's talking about it. It's always oh,.
    about Franchising · at
  • Or 3 in the morning, there's there's, no employees there. It's fob access. and then I really like this one bagel concept called popup bagels.
    about Popup Bagels · at
  • That's where most people get hung up is I don't even know where to start, so I'm not going to. We want to make it as easy as looking for a house on Zill. it fun honestly where…
    about Zillow · at
  • Some of the money from previous businesses and then we just you know we see this wave happening right now of AI starting to displace more and more white collar jobs. it's…
    about Artificial Intelligence · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Alex Mursnak — Person · Main guest · 1 mention · first at
    He co-founded FRY/Franzy and shares his prior venture-backed laundry business experience and the motivation to fix the franchise buying process.
  • Tai Lopez — Person · Referenced host of event/location context · 1 mention · first at
    The episode is recorded in a Beverly Hills mansion where Tai Lopez is hosting events, providing the setting for the interview.
    Podcast. Normally, we're inside of an RV motor home, but instead today, we are inside this $100 million mansion in Beverly Hills that Tai Lopez is hosting his events at as we…

Companies & orgs

  • Laundry Lab — Company · Referenced franchise brand example · 1 mention · first at
    Alex Mursnak uses Laundry Lab to illustrate how franchising accelerated growth (118 sold in 14 months) compared to corporate expansion.
  • Zillow — Company · Primary analogy · 3 mentions · first at
    FRY/Franzy is repeatedly described as 'the Zillow for franchising,' framing the product as a discovery and matching marketplace.
  • Popup Bagels — Company · Referenced franchise concept example · 2 mentions · first at
    Alex Mursnak highlights Popup Bagels as a high-AUV, fast-growing concept that sophisticated operators seek as the 'next hot' franchise.
  • HR Logix — Company · Referenced prior company · 2 mentions · first at
    Chris Wright describes his prior experience scaling HR Logix, establishing his operating background before co-founding FRY/Franzy.
    Yeah, so before Franie, I was with a company called HR Logix. We helped provide tax credit software and HR compliance software to businesses. We grew that business from I think seven people when I joined and a couple.
  • Everbold — Company · Referenced franchise/investment example · 1 mention · first at
    The host cites Everbold’s rapid scaling and celebrity investors as an example of franchise growth dynamics through disruption periods.
    So, I invested in Everbold in 2018.
  • Uber — Company · Referenced analogy/company · 2 mentions · first at
    Uber is referenced to contextualize the 'on-demand' marketplace era and as an analogy for on-demand cleaning/laundry models.
    Be the owner of my own destiny a little bit and so much to my wife she left and started a cleaning company was on demand Uber for cleaning similar to laundry. I got out sooner…
  • Dave's Hot Chicken — Company · Referenced benchmark franchise · 2 mentions · first at
    Used as shorthand for a breakout franchise brand that sophisticated operators want to discover early via FRY/Franzy.
    Would be a great candidate to go pair with, Dan who's maybe saying, Hey, I've got capital, but I don't want to run six Dave's hot chickens. so let's find the operator, give them some sweat.
  • Fit Body Boot Camp — Company · Referenced franchise example · 2 mentions · first at
    Used as a concrete example of what a FRY/Franzy user might be matched with and how the coaching process proceeds.
    So, I go there, I discover it, and you guys recommend FitBody Boot Camp. Okay.

Concepts & topics

  • Franchising — Concept · Core topic · 14 mentions · first at
    The episode centers on franchising as a path to entrepreneurship, how franchise discovery works, and why the guests believe it is an underestimated wealth strategy.
  • Artificial Intelligence — Concept · Enabling technology · 1 mention · first at
    AI is presented as the mechanism to improve franchise matching and as a macro trend displacing white-collar jobs, increasing interest in ownership.
  • Charity — Concept · Core topic · 5 mentions · first at
    The host’s third pillar is giving; the guests argue businesses have responsibility to do good and give examples like book/play centers in laundromats.
    Core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. We're going to talk about all those topics. And keep in mind when you're listening to this…
  • Venture Capital — Concept · Supporting topic · 3 mentions · first at
    Alex Mursnak references raising $35M previously and they explain why FRY/Franzy raised $3.3M to accelerate product and go-to-market.
  • Franchise Disclosure Documents — Concept · Key mechanism/data source · 1 mention · first at
    They describe compiling 25,000+ FDDs and training models on them, and educating buyers on how to read FDD sections.
    So Chris and I started working full-time on it last summer in the better half of last year was compiling the largest most robust data set in franchising we have over 25,000…

Places & events

  • Beverly Hills — Place · Recording location context · 1 mention · first at
    The host states the episode is recorded in a Beverly Hills mansion, setting the scene and tying to Tai Lopez’s event.
    Guests happen to be the people I was going to interview. So, bada bing, bada boom, we decided to take over his library to make this podcast episode.
  • United States (states) — Place · Macro context · 1 mention · first at
    They reference franchising as 10% of US GDP and discuss nationwide scaling and demographic wealth transfer trends.
    Yeah. So, I think franchising is one of the most underestimated wealth plays of, of all time. it's 10% of our country's GDP and no one's talking about it. It's always oh, it's…

Media & podcasts

  • Money Mondays — Media · Podcast / show · 3 mentions · first at
    The host frames the episode around the show’s three pillars: making money, investing, and giving to charity.

Full transcript with timestamps

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast. Normally, we're inside of an RV motor home, but instead today, we are inside this $100 million mansion in Beverly Hills that Tai Lopez is hosting his events at as we speak. Some of his guests happen to be the people I was going to interview. So, bada bing, bada boom, we decided to take over his library to make this podcast episode. So, as you guys know, we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. We're going to talk about all those topics. And keep in mind when you're listening to this podcast, it's not always just for you. It might be for someone from your past, present, future.

Meaning, I might interview someone about real estate, owning nightclubs, a rapper, an athlete, a celebrity, and the topic that they're talking about may not pertain to you, but it might be for someone in your life from your past, present, future. So listen to these episodes. We keep them to under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes. Average commute to work is 45 minutes. So this episode will be under 40 minutes for your listening pleasure. So without further ado, I'm going to have two guests at the same time give you a quick two-minute bio each so we can get straight to the money.

Hey, Chris Wright, uh co-founder of the company FRY. Uh my background is in software and product, and we're building a product called FRY, think the Zillow for franchising. So we help people get paired with uh franchise brands that are a good fit for them and help them become entrepreneurs.

Very cool. Uh, and I'm Alex Mursnak. Uh, originally from Minnesota, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, uh, the other co-founder of Frany and a serial entrepreneur. This is my third company. The last one we raised 35 million in venture capital for. It was a laundry and dry cleaning pickup and delivery business. Eventually started franchising part of that business, which is how I got into the world of franchising and saw, you know, just how broken and misaligned the franchise buying process is. So with France you were hoping to disrupt the traditional broker model and democratize access to buying small businesses and franchise businesses.

So the company you raised at 35 million for did you stop? Did you get bored? Did you sell it?

A mixture of all the above actually. So I was nine years into it. Yeah. Long long uh long journey. And we started at the advent of all the like Uber forex businesses. So you saw like shipped and instacart and wag and rover. I was like someone's going to do this for laundry and dry cleaning. I'm going to be pissed if it's not me and you someone else does it. So, we started up in 2016. And the reason I think I eventually, you know, started to to to move on from it last year was we had pivoted into a business that had trucks and washers and dryers and eventually, you know, vertically integrated the business. And I was like, I don't know if I'm the guy that takes us from 30 laundromats open now to 300 or, you know, 3,000. Um, so I hired a CEO last year to to go work on Frenzy with Chris full time. Very cool. What about you?

What about me? Yeah, last company. What did you decide? What happened there? Yeah, so um before Franie, I was with a company called HR Logix. We helped provide tax credit software and uh HR compliance software to businesses. We grew that business from I think seven people when I joined and a couple million in revenue to close to 90 million revenue by the time I left. Um, I had just had my first kid and uh, we had been growing this business for about 3 years and it had gotten pretty intense and I really enjoyed the people I was working with in the business I was building. But I wanted to take a step back and spend a little time with my family and really be present for the first 6 months of my son's life.

Um, around that time as I was kind of getting decompressed, Alex called me about this idea of Frenzy.

Sent the bat signal. Yeah. Sent the bat signal. We've been wanting to work together for a long time and uh, I was ready to jump in and start building FR alongside Did you guys happen to live in the same city or convert?

So he was he was in Charlotte originally when we met, but then he'd moved to Birmingham for the HR Logix business. I was like, "All right, come on.

Come on back home." Very cool. All right, so let's talk about the make money side. When you're first getting into entrepreneur career, someone out there listening, should they dive right into entrepreneurship? Should they go take a job, you know, work at a company first? like talk to us about your thoughts about the beginning of an entrepreneur's journey when they're like 21, 22, 23 years old.

Yeah. So for me like I grew my dad was a financial adviser and I think I got to see a little bit of that like eat what you kill mentality and he'd always told me like there's three types of careers or you know paths you can take. You can either work for someone else uh you can have you know the ability to work for yourself which is what he was doing or you can have people working for you. And like that that just always resonated and stuck with me and I knew I needed to be in bucket two or three and he's like you'll live a probably more fulfilled you happier life doing that. Um and so I took that advice wholeheartedly and you know started a business in college. um loved entrepreneurship, was addicted to it and through that kind of course like seeing my peers I think you know realized we're pushed frequently you know to get good grades in high school to then get into the good college to get

good grades again to then go work at the fortune you know 100 company um and I just didn't want to do that I knew that wasn't for me and um so my advice is especially to people at that age or that juncture in life is to take the risk then you know that's probably one of the best times in your life to do because you don't have a ton of responsibility, probably don't have kids at that point, a ton of, you know, debt or bills or anything. Um, and so I always say buck the norm and, you know, try that try that business and take that risk at that age.

What do you think? Yeah, I had uh I had two role models in my life early on when we were talking about kind of business and what I should do with my life and kind of how to get started. And I don't think that a lot of people really know who they want to be when they grow up, but I'm still kind of learning who that is for me. But um my

That's right. That's right. My uh my father-in-law is a serial entrepreneur and he encouraged me to kind of just explore entrepreneurship and so I started my first business in college was a Amazon FBA business. I know a lot of people explored those at one point and we had gotten pretty big at the time and then took my dad's advice and went down the kind of corporate route and went to go work for Deote and consulting and really enjoyed that as well but determined that I really kind of want to be the owner of my own destiny a little bit and so much to my wife she left and started a cleaning company was on demand Uber for cleaning similar to laundry. uh I got out sooner than he did. But uh I think that you really have to figure out what you want to build and how you want to build it. But more than anything, it's a really great time, like Alex said, to take risks when you have less responsibilities. I know that it was

easier for me taking this risk having a kid already because I had done it in the past. But if I was just starting from scratch at 31 years old and deciding to be an entrepreneur, I don't know that uh it would be nearly as easy as it was back then.

So quick question on the laundromat side. Every article study I see because I talk to Cody Sanchez a lot showcases that laundromats are actually the lowest failure rate of any business to acquire. You guys know anything about that?

Yes. So I mean we had, you know, 30 plus or still have 30 plus of them open and going.

Um I think it's because it's such an essential, you know, need. People have to have clean clothes and so if you're in a lower income community or an area where there isn't you access to a washer and dryer, you have guaranteed customers. Um and they're fairly simple businesses to run. there's no employees if you don't want to. It can be an unattended laundromat. Um, and so I think that's why there's a lot of, you know, success in the model. Now, the the size of that success varies, right? You could have a business that only kicks off 30 grand in cash flow a year if if it's a bad area or bad equipment, right?

But I've seen laundromats do 6 700 800k in cash flow with very, very few employees.

Very cool. So, the 30 laundromats, you guys are running those, owning those. How does that work? So some of them are corporately owned and some are franchised. So we started franchising the laundromats in uh 2021 under a brand called Laundry Lab. We sold 118 locations in 14 months. That's the beauty of fr the franchise model is it can scale and just blow up and you have

other partners with you that have the capital that are building and developing a series of locations with you.

Um and so we could grow the business pretty rapidly. The first six years we started we had two corporate stores and the following two years we started franchising. 30.

Whoa. So, it's just it speeds everything up when you bring those partners in. So, I invested in Everbold in 2018. There was 13 locations. Blinked eyes. 2019 there was 21 locations. I raised $5 million for the company to help scale it.

7 seconds later, it was co. So, we had to furlow the staff. We had at that point 25 locations open right around March when the the closing day was March 2020. Um and then Jeff Fster went on the full attack, signed like over 300 leases, sold franchise all over the country, Drew Brees invested, Jason Tatum, all these things like Kamar Usman, everybody started jumping in and now few years later there's 103 locations, one new one every six days. We're building for everybody else. We're building for Shaq, Mark Wahlberg, EOS.

were building other people's locations and it just I think about that shutdown period of like most people shut down. That's why it was called the shutdown.

Mhm. Especially franchises. They were freaking out. They weren't no one was willing to go sell franchises. And so that leads me to tell me about fray. Like what do you what is this? Why is this like why did you decide to go down the franchise model?

Yeah. So when when we started franchising the laundromats, we knew nothing about franchising. It was this crash course like entrepreneurs do like it's a problem. Let's just go figure it out. Um, and so we started franchising. We realized, all right, how do we sell a franchise? You have to, you know, do sales and run ads and go on podcasts. Um, and we worked with what's called an FSO, a franchise sales organization that essentially acts as your internal sales team. And so that was effective. They they they helped a lot. They stood up our sales process with us. So we were so, you know, because we were so focused on operating the stores and getting our new franchises open. But we eventually crossed paths with business brokers, franchise brokers. And what a lot of people don't realize is those franchise brokers take a 60% commission 6.

What? On the franchise feed. What people don't know this and like you'll get reached out, you know, on LinkedIn by these individuals. You're like, "Oh, this is a free free service for me." They tell you they make money from the brand, which they do, but they don't they leave out how much it is that's leaving the system. that franchise fee should be reinvested in training and site selection and marketing 60.

And so I would go to these conferences with these, you know, franchise brokers and I saw just how much money they were all making and how like fat and happy they all were. And all the brands were like, I hate having to do this, but I don't know what else to do. I'm so focused on scaling the business that this is just this is the way it is. And as an entrepreneur, you hear that like a bunch of upset people, one side that's very fat and happy. there's a problem here that could be solved with technology using you know AI better sales process and so our goal is to democratize the you know process around franchise discovery franchise buying and selling

so what stage are the company in now so Chris and I started working full-time on it last summer um in the better half of last year was compiling the largest most robust data set in franchising we have over 25,000 FTDs franchise disclosure documents across 3600 brands Uh we've trained the LLM and we've trained the model to you know be very very accurate at recommending the best brands for you know for you as you come through. Um we soft launched in November, hard launched January of this year. Uh we've raised about 3.3 million in venture capital. Uh we've started closing you know deals like crazy and helping people find the best fit franchise for them.

So how do you make money? So similar to a broker that we get paid based on success

but only 59% No, it's a much it's a much lower reduced flat fee and so we tell our our clients upfront we make money from the brand here's how much and it's a flat dollar amount so that we have no incentive to push one brand over another in front of you

we can be objective yes so whether I want to get a gym or it doesn't matter to you

yeah versus a broker they might only show you the analogy I use is brokers today will only have an inventory of like 30 to 50 brands but you again as as their client don't realize that you think, "Oh, this person's going to bat for me. They're going to go look at the thousands of brands." They're only showing the brands that have paid to play in the background. Another 30 to 40k just to get into the group.

And so, it's like a real estate agent showing you houses that they're also the listing agent. Bucket

listings, huh? It's crazy. No, you would never buy a house like that. So, why would you buy a business that way?

Okay, so I go to the website. Where's an app? Uh, it's a website. Website. I go to the website. I say, "I'm Dan. This is how much am I telling you my budget or I'm telling you my area? What am I telling you?

Yeah, you're answering round 10 questions giving us interests, what industries you're interested in, your budget, kind of where you want to put the franchise, answer those few simple pieces of information. It feeds into our AI, which looks at everything we know about every single brand, which the model's trained on, and then pulls back with nine or so recommendations. Then you're going to see a screen that'll have kind of Tinder style thumbs up, thumbs down. as you like different brands, that then feeds into the algorithm. Again, on the end of that that journey, you kind of get connected with one of our team members, one of our coaches who's going to help narrow that list down. And we spend a lot of time with prospects on the front end to make sure that they're as educated as possible, but also to make sure that they're getting matched with the right brands. We're not just rushing them towards a decision or rushing them to

talk to brands. We want to make sure they understand franchising and understand what they're getting themselves into before they actually get to that stage. And so are there experienced brands that are going to come there or experienced investors or you think it's going to be someone that's just starting with one to three locations that wants to

we have three main ICPs, ideal customer profiles. It's the corporate, you know, grinder. They've been working 9 to5. They want to do something entrepreneurial, but they don't saved up.

So there's that group. Then there's like the side hustler, you kind of hacker type that does short-term rentals and they've got crypto.

Exactly. Exactly. And then the third group is your sophisticated, you know, opera. They own five units, 10 units, 20 units of a concept, and they're looking to add to that portfolio and find the next Dave's Hot Chicken or the hot hot concept that they're discovering on France.

Mhm. So, I go there, I discover it, and you guys recommend FitBody Boot Camp. Okay. Now what?

Yep. So, we you have a coach that you can use as much or as little as you want. So, you know, franchise advisor, they can help you with finding the right lending or, you know, capital um structure. They help you with finding a franchise CPA, a franchise attorney, the right commercial real estate uh agent to help you find the site if it's a retail business. And then if there is ability to ne negotiate with the brand, they'll help you you be in your corner through that process as well. So they walk you through the whole franchise buying process to the day that you sign. And then we're not done at that point either. We help you with all the things that the brand isn't already doing. The brand's going to do training and marketing and some of the site selection. We're all the business in a box, you know, type of stuff. get your entity formed. We'll help you set that up. We'll help you with all those other

things that every business has to do regardless of whether it's a franchise or not.

And then what about the building? Like, have you talked to Jeff Fster about We Build to actually go build the locations?

Yes, I was on Jeff's uh show probably a month or two ago and met Justin Sloan who's your big operator in Texas.

Um yeah, we'll eventually pull we build in for offering to do that. Interesting.

Okay. So, I go there. You tell me fit by the boot camp. I talked to my coach. I've got 350k saved up, ready to go. Do I talk to you again? Do I need you anymore?

Yeah. The idea is that every step of the buying process, even if you hit a hiccup along the way in a brand conversation, we're having conversations with you, your coaches, every single time you have one of those. There's debrief calls if you want to have them, right? Depends on how much the prospect wants to engage, but has debrief calls at the end of each of your meetings with the brand. helps you understand what came out of that meeting. Helps you have new questions to ask at that meeting and then walks with you all the way to discovery day, which is that kind of final step before you sign or don't sign and then helps you make that decision at the end of the day. So, they're there as much or as little as you want, but really throughout the whole process and then thereafter.

How do I how do people find you guys? Where do you where's your clients coming from?

Yeah, so it's three main channels right now. It's programmatic SEO that we're using. So, we have all these very datari articles on top 10 ice cream franchises of 2025 that have investment cost and revenue and Google My Business reviews. Um, so SEO we're dominating in paid ads, uh, podcasts, and we're starting to put a ton of our own content out. Uh, we launched a show recently called How I Franchise This, which is like a play on the, you know, NPR podcast.

We're telling the story of like the normal dude, right? It's not Colonel Sanders or Ray Croc. It's like we want to talk to Susan and Tim who left their jobs at Bank of America. Now they run three, you know, fitness concepts and they love it. They've been more fulfilled doing that than anything else they've done. We want to tell the story of that, you know, average person, that average operator that went and did it.

So, someone saved up this money, they're working their core job, maybe they sold some real estate. On the investing side of this podcast, I like to ask like how do people make decision like that? because they can invest in the stock market, cryptocurrency, more real estate, there's so many different things. S&P 500. Why franchises?

Yeah. So, I think franchising is one of the most underestimated wealth plays of, you know, of all time. I mean, it's 10% of our country's GDP and no one's talking about it. It's always like, oh, it's McDonald's and Subway and that's what it is. They don't realize it's hospitality and home services and fitness and health and wellness. Um, so it really spans all these different categories. And then the success rate, which I think is important for people that are being entrepreneurs for the first time or the 20th time, is the 5year success rate on a franchise business is 85% compared to half of independent businesses failing after 5 years.

And so that's the reason, you know, we're preaching about it is entrepreneurship has changed both of our lives in a very positive, incredible way. But not everyone wants to go be a tech, you know, entrepreneur or a real estate entrepreneur. And this is a really good but diverse set of options to become an entrepreneur in a a more d-risked way.

Interesting. What about for you guys personally as you guys are making capital? What do you like to invest into?

I mean, we're both looking at more ways to invest in franchising as much as possible. Alex has invested in a couple of franchises and me personally, I'm trying to build out a franchise portfolio as well. We haven't we're just kind of getting it off the ground, but I think that um we want to put our money where our mouth is and invest in franchises because we do believe it is a very d-risk way to build out your own personal wealth, wealth through your family and generational wealth. It scales. It's got a playbook that's built in and it gives you the opportunity to build on a system and platform that's got support built in that you wouldn't necessarily otherwise have if you're building something from scratch or buying an existing business. Yeah, I'm doing five indoor golf simulators in Minnesota called It's called Another Nine.

And I like it because there's no employees. There's no food and bev. It's like anytime fitness. You fob in or use the app to get in. It's private bays though, so it'll be like a room like this where you can go with your family or buddies. Um at 3:00 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning, there's there's, you know, no employees there. It's fob access. Um and then I really like this one bagel concept called popup bagels.

Oh yeah, I follow that guy. blowing up the the average unit volumes are crazy. It's like $2 million in revenue off of bagels

really. And like one of the it's the simplest thing, one of the genius things they did is they force you to buy three. You can't buy one.

Can't buy one bag. You can only get three like groups of three. That's the interesting

that's the thing. And the cost to get in is like 450 to 650k. They've sold all of Maine to Florida, all of Texas, all of California. They're blowing up. It's like the next I'd say crumble cookies but for

bagels. Bagels. Interesting. Yeah. I I was wondering why I follow that guy. There was something about it that made me compelled by it.

They're doing new, you know, flavors every week and cream cheese, you know, crazy in, you know, spice flavors and cookies and cream. And that's what I think people are getting hyped up about. It's the Crumble playbook but for bagels.

Yeah. I mean, Crumble's got multi-billion dollar valuation now. It's just staggering to watch what they're doing. Um, okay. So, also on the investing side, how can people invest into learning? Like, how do they learn about franchises? They can figure out, do I want a pop-up bagel? Do I want an Ever Bowl? Do I want a FitBody boot camp? Do I want a laundromat? Like, where do they study? How do they invest in themselves?

So, there's a lot of good, you know, podcasters out there. There's Brian Beers. There's Fran Dogs and The Wolf of Franchising or good like newsletter resources. We have our podcast where we tell stories of people getting into it, how they got into it, how they financed it, how they identified the brand called

uh how I franchise this. Um and then on FRY as well, we have all sorts of franchising 101 guides. So, but as an FDD in the first place and what section should I look for and then a lot of our, you know, software, our process is to help with that education to get over that first step of fear because that's where most people get hung up is I don't even know where to start, so I'm not going to. We want to make it as easy as looking for a house on Zill. it fun honestly where you can go look and see like I could see myself doing this it fits me it's a 97% match etc. Um, so we have tons of educational content uh on the on the site as well.

Then our coaches as well, right? There's no obligation if you start talking to one of our team members. There's no obligation to move forward even if it's just to understand if franchising is a good fit for you. We sometimes tell people franchising might not be a good fit for them.

Um, which is part of what we believe in is transparency and objectivity, right? We don't want to recommend one brand or the other because one brand pays us more and we also want to make sure that we're transparent with people on how the whole process works and can educate them whether they become a client or not.

So as you're considering investing into the business raised 3.3 million and growing, why does a company go raise $3 million? Why is that part of the process? Yeah. So we we bootstrapped initially and we're like oh let's take some of the money from previous businesses and then we just you know we see this wave happening right now of AI starting to displace more and more white collar jobs. Um it's people that would go you know buy and run a franchise and we want to capitalize on the wave that's happening. There's also the silver tsunami happening with the boomers you transferring 15 trillion over the next, you know, decade.

And so our thought was we either bootstrap and go a little slow or we can raise money, accelerate product development, accelerate go to market and you be more aggressive on on marketing and driving awareness for what we're doing because there's a lot of things out there that you could do. You can go to bisby sell. You can go uh you know consume Cody Sanchez's content. There's all these other ways to buy a business and we want to, you know, grab our piece of that mind share of, hey, franchising is a very viable way to get into ownership and raising capital helps do that better and faster.

And to Alex's point earlier about uh franchising making up 10% of the US GDP, but no one seems to really talk about it. Um, you can either buy a business, you can start a business from scratch, and then you maybe have a friend or a cousin or somebody who does franchising or is in franchising somehow. We want to make franchising as mainstream as possible. And one of the best, quickest ways to get there is to invest more capital and making that story told at a more broader scale. Talk about investing in people. Let's say I am the doctor, accountant, lawyer that did save up half a million. I can put in 350K into this thing, one of these franchises, but I don't want to run it or I don't know how to run it. How do I invest in people?

How do I go find somebody to to run this thing or partner on this thing? So not yet, but at some point fr is going to pair capital with operating as well. So part of that survey

I was not teen that up. We're not there yet, but that's one of the product iterations we want to make is cuz I ran into it all the time. You get these really, really good operators that ran five McDonald's for, you know, you know, wealthy family or individual

who just doesn't have enough money saved up to go buy their own restaurants. they would be a great candidate to go pair with, you know, Dan who's maybe saying, "Hey, I've got capital, but I don't want to run six Dave's hot chickens." Um, so let's find the operator, give them some sweat.

I don't I don't want to run them. Exactly. I want to eat at them and own them, but not

not run them. I want to post about it, but definitely don't want to run it. So, my life is designed where I will not do a project without a quarterback.

I don't care how much money you tell me. I don't care who, this, that. I don't I don't care about any of that stuff. If I don't have a quarterback, which is a CEO, to run that company, I will not do the project. Even if someone offers a boatload of capital, there's a war chest.

Here's $12 million. Dan, do this tequila brand with me. No. Mhm. I'm not going to run it.

You're not going to run it. Who's going to run it? I don't want to find out later. I don't want to go just hire someone off of LinkedIn or Monster.com or Hot Jobs to go try to run it. I need to know who the quarterback is or I am not in ever under any circumstance. It comes up

every week I'm pitched. Well, every day I'm pitched, but every week I'm pitched like dun d like something that's fully capitalized, just be my partner, just be the adviser. And I just say no.

Mhm. I leave a lot of free money on the table. But I know the long-term effect of it is and the short term if there's not a CEO, if there's not a quarterback to run this thing, there is no chance

at all. At all. Can it get off the ground? Maybe. Can it get to XYZ? Probably. But like without someone running the dayto-day, not possible.

You need someone who's like blood, sweat, and tears and time. Like the man in the arena that's constantly obsessing over it, thinking about it.

The way I describe it is called ride or die. So I'll give you a quick example. Let's say there's two girls that are pitching right now to invest in their companies.

One girl, she went to Harvard. She got sumakumlad blah blah blah, fanciest degrees you could imagine, and she's selling red cups. And these red cups are going to be $2.99. Very comparable to the other price point of other the solo red cups that everyone knows at every grocery store. But she's got the pedigree. She's got a business plan. All set. This girl over here is selling green cups. These green cups are biodegradable. She donates a percentage to saving the elephants and the manatees. And they're a little bit more expensive. They're $3.99 because it is, you know, more expensive to make these green cups. But this is her passion.

She's been studying everything. She knows that they're com, you know, combustible, compatible, whatever the heck you call it, and they can be replanted. And she does, she has all the things. Every time you buy one of her packs of green cups, a tree is planted, and she's got it all.

Who do I want to invest into? Green cup, green every single time. You know why? Cuz if red solo cup girl gets an offer from Gary Vee or Microsoft to come work for her,

she's out of there. Oh yeah, we'll give you 800k salary plus equity. you see a cup of smoke, she'd go work for them cuz she doesn't care about the red cups. It's just a business. I could interchange red cups with flowers, cans, books. She doesn't care. It's just it's a widget to her. She just knows she can run a business cuz she has the pedigree. This girl with the green cups, you can't offer her a million dollars to go leave or 800k to go leave. This is her life.

She wants to save the elephants and the manatees and plant seeds and, you know, plant trees. Like, she cares deep in her soul about this thing. And the money is a default byproduct of it that she might not even care about. She might I hope she has some. I do want her to care about it from that revenue perspective, but I want to know that she cares about the thing.

And I will pick her every single day and she might not have any college degree.

She might have left high school as a sophomore and I don't care about that part cuz I can build a team around her.

I can go get the Harvard girl to go work for her. That I would love. I would love for that girl to be the president,

right? But I want the Green Cup girl that's passionate to be the owner. I want her to

be the what I call ride or die. I remember uh when when Pomp, we were talking about Pomp earlier, invest in our in our first company. He was like, "You're not going to leave in like six months and go backpack across Patagonia, are you?" And I was like, "What are you talking about?" He's like, "I've had a bunch of investments where the founder just, you know, didn't have that hard, didn't have the passion into it." And I get why he was asking that now, but at the time I was like, "What do you mean? No, this is like this is it. This is all I do." And think about it. I work most weekends and you have to have, I think, that desire to win and be competitive and pour everything you have into it.

That's my biggest fear is the founder leaves. Whether they leave for personal reasons, they leave because they were lured away, they leave because it got hard. That is my fear in investing in a company because I'm betting on them, not the product.

The products are all interchangeable. I always joke about Jeff Fster from Everv. If he was selling pillows, I would have invested the same amount of money.

I say that same sentence all the time. What? He's ride or die. Morning, noon, and night. He's on airplanes, trains, and automobiles figuring out to scale his business over and over and over, no matter what. The good stuff, the hard stuff, the whole world shuts down. When the freaking world shut down in 2020, he went on QVC and started doing $150,000 episodes.

Crazy. He was selling 150 grand every 11 minutes of Frozen. All right, let's talk about the charity side of things. Why do you think it's important for companies, whether it's for their employees, their investors, their partners, their clients, or front-f facing to have some type of charity component to their business?

I've always been a huge believer in like do good while doing well. And I think without getting on the soap box too much, if you think of like where the center of like power used to sit in society, at one point it was, you know, very much religion. Like the church had a lot of, you know, influence and control over society. And then I think it shifted to government, you know, for a long period of time. We very much operate in a society now where that power and that influence sits within businesses. Like yeah, we have the government still, but all the businesses are in the pockets of politicians and have a lot of influence on what we all consume and do. And and so I think businesses have a a huge responsibility to have that element as part of their culture and their mission of doing good while while doing well. And part of the reason, you know, our mission at France is to help the next million

entrepreneurs is they have that influence and the biggest propensity to positively impact society and the communities that they they operate in. So, I think it's wildly important. Um, and I think there's good ways to do it through entrepreneurship, whether it's job creation or you're, you know, creating a ton of revenue to pay a ton of taxes on it. Those taxes hopefully get used appropriately to give back to that, you know, community that you're in. Uh, but then beyond that, what other things can you do? So, at our laundromats, for example, we put read, play, learn uh centers in each location where it's free books and a kids play area for families to come in because it's a lot of single mothers and dads going into laundromats. Um, and we get new books every month and you could, you know, the kids could take them home and we just restock them every month. But, it's things like that that don't cost

the business a whole lot, but could drastically change the life of an individual or a customer experiencing that.

What are your thoughts? Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that um to Alex's point about where the power lies, I think at the end of the day, right, it money can do a lot of good. Uh and it can also provide for a lot of people, right? I think the more that businesses can give back, the more that especially in a space like franchising where one owner can own 15 units, 15 units could be 15 communities that are being built around that that unit. And the ability that they have on a scale is much larger than most individual business owners. So they have the opportunity to give back and I think that in all right, we all should give back as much as we possibly can to help those less fortunate than ourselves. We share a lot of the same philosophy on on that topic.

So, there's one main question I ask on every single episode, and I've never asked this question to two people at the same time, and I've never gotten the same answer once out of 200ish episodes. All right, so you build this company up, you exit it, 40 years from now, hundreds of millions of dollars. You do your next company, build it up, hundreds of millions of dollars. But at the end of the time, let's say hopefully, God willing, 100 years from now, it's finally time to pass away. But you've accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars of net worth and you both have these brand new children. What percentage of your net worth do you leave to those kids?

That's a really good question. That's a really good question. The only question I ask on every episode.

I don't know what the exact dollar amount or percentages, but once one thing my dad my dad grew up really poor and I think he did a good job instilling these kind of values in my brothers and I where it was like when we got a car, for example, he's like, "I'm not buying you a car." Like whatever you save up on your own by the time you're 16 years old, I'll match. So if you got 200 bucks, you're getting a $400 car. Go figure it out. If you got two grand, I'll give you another two and you got $4,000 car now. And so I I think about things like that a lot of like it could be worth a billion dollars. I wouldn't want to have, you know, my children be super entitled or everything's just kind of handed and you don't understand some of the sacrifices that you have to make and the work ethic you have to develop and build on. And so I think my number and my percentage would be centered and focused around that. It's like what do

they need to you know survive and you have a happy life but without it uh I think not setting them up for success as an individual on their own and so it's I don't know very small amount plan to give whatever money I make away for the most part.

Damn that was a good answer but I was like very similar to where my head was going. Um yeah so both my father and father-in-law similarly like grew up relatively poor. Um, and one thing that my father instilled in me in my younger years and my father on later on is uh the ability that hard work and and basically being the one who always shows up, who gets in early, who leaves late uh can can provide for you and your family. One thing they both believe in is making sure that the next generation doesn't have to struggle as much as your generation did. However, making sure that those values of working hard and what showing up and leaving late can can build in yourself and your family and build those ethics. Um, similarly, I don't know the exact percentage. I do want to give away a lot. I I literally was thinking about this as you're giving this answer, but my goal would be to make sure that my kids have to work hard

for everything because I don't think that handing them things is going to be a good good value for them in later parts of their life. I think we're built in the hard moments, not in the the easy ones. I think character comes from the hard moments. So

if you're giving too much to your kids, and I don't want to give too much to mine. I want to make sure he works hard for things, but it's safe, right?

Yep. So I don't have to. So it evolves over time. In my dream world, I'd give her all of it to to utilize while still giving a big portion of charity, but she leads it,

right? Um, and I I'll be adopting a boy at some point, so there will be two kids, but um, right now there just one. But in my dream world, I I'm building her up to be the steward of capital that I trust in her, not for her to have a zillion dollars, you know, cuz that would steal her chance of greatness. Um, but if I teach her enough and she's in her, God willing, she's in her 30s or 40s when I pass away, then I don't mind. If I give it to her when she's 19, it's different. I give her to her when she's 44,

you know, not saying else to be alive then. Hopefully I will. And so I think it's a much different when we think about um when you hand a child cuz when she's a 44 year old child,

right? U by that time she's probably had her third exit for all I know, you know, like and married with two kids. So

I think I wouldn't be stealing anything from her if I all of a sudden gave her $700 million. Like I think that'd be fine. 44 years old, for example. So I think there's

for me one it would be in a trust format so she's not just getting handed at x time and I also think no matter what I would never give it to her all in one lump sum because there's no need for that she's not going to go deploy it all if I hand her 700 million for example not going to go deploy it all in one shot anyways I'd rather give it to her at you know 10 20 30 40 million a year whatever that number is

over the course of time and have her deploy percentages to charity percentages to our family members and hopefully she's the leader of that um because I built her up that way and my uh unborn adopted son uh same similar fashion, right? Let them split it up assuming that they're both good kids and good stewards of capital. Um, but I it's an interesting because I didn't we didn't have money when I grew up and it built me to who I am and so I definitely wouldn't want to take that from her, but I'm hopefully I'm still alive at that point. So, I'm not trying to like, you know, uh, but for some reason I pass and she's like 11, then yeah, it's going to be in a trust.

She'll get it when she's, you know, 18, 21, 25, 30, etc. in tranches so that she's not getting I don't want her to be a zillionaire at 18 years old. That's not

Yeah. Shoot. I know too many trust fun kids and no matter how much training you give them, you you know, we watch NBA athletes, we watch rappers, we watch people grow up and they get handed a zillion dollars. It's, you know,

it's very difficult to explain this the human psychology of what happens. A lot of their learnings go out the window or their non-learnings don't, you know,

aren't relevant at that point if they get handed this much money. So, especially now with NIL deals, you got

17 18 year olds getting $11 million and they're they don't have a driver's license yet.

It's insane. It is crazy. So, the knowledge is a big thing that the age is a big thing for me, but I would be comfortable with her having a huge amount of capital to deploy, not for her to go buy title business mansion, right? That's not that's not the point.

Yeah. All right. Where can people find you guys? Where can they find your socials? Where can they find the company? Tell us everything.

Yep. So, if you're interested or just wanting to explore buying a franchise, it's frzy.com. Franzy.com. Um, you can also follow me on Instagram, Tik Tok X, etc. Alex from France. Uh, we have tons of business tearowns, breakdowns, and interesting uh business content that we put out on a daily basis.

Yeah, I'd say honestly follow Alex. Honestly, my socials are not dialing right now, but follow Alex. And yeah, find us on Frenzy. And honestly, we're big fans of product feedback. So tell us our baby's ugly. The only way that we get better is by feedback from people like you. So please visit Fry if you want to buy a business or if you just want to rip it apart and give us feedback. I'm here for that, too. All right, guys. We're listening to the Money Mondays podcast where we cover those three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. with these gentlemen. It's very interesting because again, you may not want to buy a franchise, but your mom might, your uncle might, your friends might, someone at a dinner or lunch six months from now might want to get into the franchise game, and you can be like, "Oh, you should listen to this episode, The Money

Mondays with the guys from Frenzy or something the website, etc." So, it's not always about you. Think about the people in your world that you might not even met yet that might want to listen to episode like this. We grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think it's ridiculous. We have to have discussion about money, about loans, accounts, taxes. Should I borrow? Should I lease? Should I buy? There's so many questions about your normal daily life. Money is not the root of all evil. It's so much power in money, and it goes for your bills, your health, and everything involved in your life. So, check us out here on the moneymunds.com, and we'll see you guys next Monday.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Why Franchises Are the Smart Investor’s Play 🏬 EP133"?

Chris Wright (Guest), Alex Mursnak (Guest), Unknown Host (Host).

What is "Why Franchises Are the Smart Investor’s Play 🏬 EP133" about?

The main topic explores the advantages of franchise investments as a smart strategy for aspiring entrepreneurs. Key points include insights from co-founders of a platform designed to match potential franchisees with suitable brands and the value of franchising in various business sectors.

What is mentioned in this The Money Mondays Podcast episode?

18 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Franchising, Alex Mursnak, Money Mondays, Artificial Intelligence, Charity, Venture Capital. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Why Franchises Are the Smart Investor’s Play 🏬 EP133"?

The episode runs 40 min; the transcript is about 8,712 words in 129 timestamped sections.

More from The Money Mondays Podcast

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.