How to Choose the Right Franchise Business | 4,000 Franchise Opportunities Explained

Giuseppe (00:00)
what it has taught me is you have to be resilient and, but you have to be flexible. Not everything is a straight path. I can guarantee you that, especially in entrepreneurship, you’re going to have good years, ⁓ maybe not so great years. Things are cyclical and you have to adapt just because something was working. Like I had a building services business. We opened in 07 and then there was the 08, you know, the economy went south.

that I sit back and cry and say, well, I’m to put my hands up and just give up. No, we looked at industries that were not affected by the economy.

Quentin (02:04)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. I’m excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest. And I love the language that this gentleman uses because he want to empower people. He want to empower people to kind of get past the noise. He want to help people decide.

if they should be an entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship ain’t for everybody. know, it’s an unfortunately, some people pay tons of money to find out this thing for me. Some people pay pay ton of time to find out this just ain’t for me. And so I appreciate the service that this gentleman renders to people. And of course, we’re in a real estate space, real estate. We talk about entrepreneurship. So it’s all going to matter. It’s all going to tie in. I am so.

excited to introduce you all to Mr. Giuseppe Grammatico Mr. Giuseppe, how you doing, sir?

Giuseppe (03:01)
Doing well, Q. I really appreciate it. I’m excited for the show. You know, you really enjoyed the chat right before we started recording here. So this will be fun.

Quentin (03:08)
Absolutely.

I appreciate you. And I think I need to put a little bit of respect on your name. Grammatico said cut. Grammatico. Yeah. Gotta put some respect.

Giuseppe (03:13)
Grammatico, you got it. Yeah. Grammatico,

famous punter, I think, way back when. So yeah, so that one letter difference, no relation.

Quentin (03:23)
Ah,

exactly. Yes, sir. Look, maybe that’s why my archive rain went there. Absolutely. I appreciate your grace, And I appreciate you being here. Listen, sir, I kind of want to dive in. I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you can give us a little bit of an origin story, man, kind of how you got into the space where you are. We love origin stories. And if don’t mind, tell them what part of the world you’re in. People seem to want to know that as well, where people are geographically.

Giuseppe (03:25)
Yeah, yeah, it does. Yep, it does for many. Now it’s completely normal.

Quentin (03:53)
And so what you’re up to, origin story and where you are, if you don’t mind, sir, you have the story.

Giuseppe (03:57)
Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. So Giuseppe Gramatico, it’s it’s a mouthful from New Jersey, born and raised to have, haven’t left the state. And, ⁓ you know, I, it all started way back when I grew up. A family came over from Italy, opened up a restaurant. So I got some great exposure as a young kid, ⁓ up until my twenties and loved entrepreneurship, loved everything about it, except for the hours of a restaurant, the nights, the weekends, the holidays.

So I worked the restaurant, learned a ton about entrepreneurship and realized, you know what, I’m going to go the corporate route. you know, first person in my family to go to college. Got my bachelor’s and my master’s degree from Rider University. You know, went into the corporate world, continued there and just really didn’t feel like I fit. I felt like I had way too many bosses. I had no control of my time, you know, with a five hour round trip.

⁓ And that ⁓ was a daily five hour from door to door, was brutal. And we got married, told my wife, if I continue at this route and we start our family and have kids, I’m never going to see the kids just like we never saw dad because he worked the restaurant. So I started looking for different jobs, different industries, a little bit more local to me and found that I just, wasn’t employment material, employee material.

Quentin (04:52)
Mmm.

Giuseppe (05:21)
want to have bosses, I wanted to control call the shots and things like that. So after hours and years of research back in 2005, ran into a franchise coach online, local to me, and we explored the world of franchising a business on training wheels is a phrase that I use quite a bit. And we realized that it wasn’t all about your your fast food, your subways and McDonald’s.

⁓ he helped me invest in my first franchise back in 2007, fell in love with that process. I said, this is definitely my calling, but I wanted to, you know, obviously have the business up and running. ⁓ so, ⁓ shortly afterwards I became a franchise coach as well. And I truly, you know, feel like we’re helping, you know, we’ve helped thousands of people, you know, over the last two decades. So it’s been 20 years in the franchising space.

And we help people make the decision not to move forward. We help people to make the decision to potentially move forward and find their perfect franchise match. the best part, just like an executive recruiter or real estate agent, there’s no cost for our service to you. We’re paid by the franchise company. So this is one of the biggest financial decisions you can make. And I want to be part of that and really helping you kind of figure out if the fit is there and what that perfect franchise looks like.

Quentin (07:28)
Love it, man. Well, you know, I’m right, the Jersey girl, so I’m favorite. When you start talking Jersey, you get all the love from me, man. But I love, man, thank you for walking us through your journey, through your story. And as you was talking, I was just writing down like your resume, right? ⁓ Family came from Italy. And there was different parts about that. She was like, wait, maybe I should decide to go into the corporate world. So you got your masters. But then you realize you’re doing a

Giuseppe (07:31)
you

Awesome.

Quentin (07:57)
five hour round trip, Jesus. And you started a family and you was concerned that you wouldn’t have time with your family. And you mentioned like your dad, that’s a process you’re kind of seeing with your dad. And then you talked about, you know, the business on training wheels 2017, you fell in love with the process of franchising. I say all those things, I regurgitated all of that back to you because I always, I make this statement Mr. Giuseppe, every podcast that destiny has no wasted moments.

Right? Meaning when you look back through your life, just like you did, when you reflect, you walk up to the point where you realize, why did I make this decision? Where am I in now? What do I borrow from that? What mindset do I borrow from that to kind of decide my mindset going forward, my business style, my strategies? And so I would love to know Mr. Giuseppe, what has destiny revealed to you about you? What have these moments, these journey?

to the point where you are now, what has it revealed about you? Sometimes it’s like discipline, it’s humbleness, it could be whatever, but what has these moments taught you about yourself?

Giuseppe (09:03)
Yeah, you know, in life you have to be flexible and everything. There’s a reason for everything. So fast forward, if I could, I could make the statement, well, out of college, I should have, or just maybe skip college and got right into franchising. Well, you’re at a different point in time, right? Much, know, 21 years old versus getting in, you know, at 26 years old, there’s a big difference, you know, not experiencing the corporate world versus experiencing it. So, ⁓ you know, don’t have regrets, you know, everything is a learning lesson. Sometimes if certain

events didn’t happen, you’re the trajectory, right? You’re going to go in a completely different path. But

what it has taught me is you have to be resilient and, but you have to be flexible. Not everything is a straight path. I can guarantee you that, especially in entrepreneurship, you’re going to have good years, ⁓ maybe not so great years. Things are cyclical and you have to adapt just because something was working. Like I had a building services business. We opened in 07 and then there was the 08, you know, the economy went south.

that I sit back and cry and say, well, I’m to put my hands up and just give up. No, we looked at industries that were not affected by the economy.

We went after health care and we service companies like dialysis centers, surgery centers, and we just switched our approach. We switched our target audience. So you got to be flexible and resilient, but always take something away from the experiences. Don’t sit back regretting everything and you’ll be fine. know, life, we don’t know, you know, you can only plan so far out.

And ⁓ if you have that one goal, was for me, time and financial freedom, that was kind of the primary goal. And I pushed ahead and you make it happen. You create your own luck, I always say.

Quentin (10:40)
Yeah.

Giuseppe (11:16)
and and it’s just, know, there’s some luck in the world, but yeah, you have to generate it. It’s the attitude, it’s the people you associate with, it’s the persistence. So yeah, make your own luck. I couldn’t agree more. Love that. Actually, I may steal that background instead of my green wall. Yeah.

Quentin (11:36)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So this is what I say, this is my running, my working definition of luck. And I didn’t think of it my own, I got it from somebody, I can’t remember where, but my working definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity. That’s my running definition of luck. It’s like when, you prepare, you prepare and that you just never know when opportunity comes. This is one of my books I’m finishing up now, it’s called,

Gradually, then suddenly by Mark Batterson. he says, success happened two ways. Gradually, then suddenly. There’s a time when you putting the seeds in the ground, when you’re tooling the ground, that’s success working gradually. But man, once, and then you nurture it, you water it, but all of a sudden, that thing started to sprout up. the success has been working both ways, gradually, then suddenly. And so I loved how you talked about the mindset, being able to pivot.

I love it. And I would love to know within the franchise world, just want to peek into that world a little bit. How does averse adversely look in the franchise world? Is it like people may be lying on that application or not giving you enough information? Like how does adversely look in it? How does it show its head in the franchise world?

Giuseppe (12:54)
Yeah, I mean, you when I work with individuals, we talk about fit, right? We don’t look at brands out the gate. So we just have an open, open conversation as to what their expectations are, making sure that we’re all on the same page. So yeah, I mean, someone can lie about their financials and it’s not my job to check someone’s financials, but ultimately that’s going to come and bite you in you know where just because you’re going to be out of funds and or you may not be able to get that loan. So I always tell everyone be open and honest. There’s

a franchise for just about everyone and we focus on the fit, the skill sets. You can lie to me and say you’re a salesperson. It kind of comes across in our conversations, but we want to make sure the fit’s there because ultimately there is, I truly believe, a franchise for everyone, assuming that that’s the type of business you want to look into. even have, actually taking this back, there’s 4,000 franchise companies in about 70 plus industries.

And believe it or not, you know, there’s some in real estate where it’s kind of a real estate play where you’re, renting out the salon and health and wellness professionals. call those salon suites, laundromats and things like that. Everything to running it from your home office and offering business coaching, dog waste removal, water and smoke mitigation. So there’s really, you know, a franchise for everyone. either, you know, there’s a real estate, we call it hybrid type of businesses.

You can own or lease the real estate that’s completely up to you. yeah, mean, it’s really, you know, being honest with yourself, taking even a further step back. If you’re not okay following the system, you know, people that buy McDonald’s are not buying the system to change it and change the menu. You’re looking to follow a proven system. So I always say that’s a great conversation. have a 20 minute call with everyone. Let’s figure out together if it is a good fit. Sometimes it is, but

The financials aren’t there and we put a plan. Sometimes you’re like, yeah, you know what? Maybe it’s not a good fit. I prefer the startup route and that’s fine. There’s no right or wrong answers. It’s all about individual situations and what that specific person’s looking for.

Quentin (15:44)
know, I appreciate it. think you’re changing the conversation and the mindset around franchise. I some of us have an antiquated kind of viewpoint of when it comes to franchise. You said 4,000 franchises in 70, what? You said 4,000 franchises.

Giuseppe (16:01)
70 plus industries and it’s not that and believe it not, it’s not all fast food. mean, home services has grown enormously since the pandemic. If you could think of a business, it’s a franchise. Most people sometimes see the business, don’t even realize it’s a franchise. So there’s a lot out there depending on what you’re looking for.

Quentin (16:20)
Yeah, I think a lot of people, you know, ignorant like me and if that hits you, ignorant don’t mean you’re dumb. It just means you just don’t know. Most of us think Burger King, McDonald’s, you know, maybe ice cream, you know, like, but yeah, I mean, that’s fascinating. I think that’s good because that kind of opens up the landscape for people.

Giuseppe (16:28)
Yep. That’s what I thought. Yeah. ⁓

Quentin (16:40)
especially people that are all about systems, able to follow systems and want to be business owners, but don’t understand how to put a system in place. They call a person like you, they can have no problem. You show me the system, you show me how to get it done. I can follow the system. And so I think what you’re doing, think is really good. I’m glad you’re talking about it today. What are you looking to solve or scale next? So say what you’re about to say and then answer that question for me.

Giuseppe (17:02)
Yeah, I was going to say franchising all about systems and you’ll notice that even if you go from one industry to the next, the systems are similar, the role in the business is similar. You’re not actually making the burger. You’re not actually going out and painting. You are overseeing that team, the marketing and the KPI. So as far as next steps, goals and things like that, it’s to help even more people. Nothing changes.

You know, we have a podcast. We we try to do our best to to educate as much as possible. I wouldn’t say, you know, to convince more people into franchising. That’s not the goal. The goal really is to educate. Some people love love it and they just they don’t have maybe the spouse backing them up or financially they’re not ready. And that’s OK. It’s it’s good to do your homework. It’s good to kind of figure things out. But it’s good to talk to someone like myself to really set the expectation, because if

you’re looking to explore a franchise today and maybe open up in, you know, in, two or three years, I would challenge you to say, don’t bother looking at a brand, just look at franchising in general. So my job is just really to get out there and educate and help as many people as possible. My goal isn’t to talk everyone into franchise and people say, what’s your success rate? I don’t know how to, how to actually measure that. You know, we’re everyone I work with learned something new. So I would say a hundred, a hundred percent, whether they move forward or not. don’t, I don’t judge.

success based off of that. It’s basically if it’s not a fit, it’s not a fit. can’t force you to sign an agreement. But I would say about 25 percent of the families we work with typically by our second call, we’ve had two really good calls and are talking about companies. But 25 percent have moved forward over the years. So that’s hundreds and hundreds of families that have decided to to hire themselves. So it’s really exciting to see how much we’ve changed not only their lives, but the lives of their employees and things like that. So it’s very exciting.

Very rewarding.

Quentin (18:59)
I love it, I love it. I don’t ask too many gotcha questions. I don’t ask too many questions to put people on the spot, but you’ve been doing this for 20 years. So I got a fun little question I’m gonna ask you. Is it possible to have a franchise that’s not on some type of real estate?

Giuseppe (19:17)
Yes.

Quentin (19:18)
Okay. What’s the percentage though of most franchises being on some type of real estate? And I’m not, not, know you can’t give me accurate percentage, but I mean, you know, yeah.

Giuseppe (19:24)
I… I am…

⁓ I would say maybe it’s 50-50. I do not know. I don’t know the answer. know, a lot of the franchises, for example, home. So it’s a hard one to answer because at some point there may be real estate involved. So a lot of the home service brands like roofing, painting, siding and things like that, mosquito spraying, you could run that from home. Some people decide to run it from home and park the vehicles on the street. Others decide to get a flex space, a small

Quentin (19:33)
Yeah.

Josh.

Giuseppe (19:57)
office with a warehouse where the technicians can park, they can have their daily meetings, they can get changed, you know, get their equipment. So maybe later on there’s some real estate, but the business doesn’t necessarily revolve around real estate, unlike a fast food chain, ice cream, massage, you know, and all the other fitness concepts. So maybe it’s 50-50 when you look at pure numbers, but we’ve been seeing a lot of interest in home services.

Quentin (20:11)
got you.

Gotcha.

Giuseppe (20:26)
The investments tend to be a lot less and you’re up and running sooner. I see a lot of the brick and mortar, I call them retail opportunities. They’re going to be obviously for obvious reasons, a higher investment due to build outs. ⁓ Obviously it’s going to take you longer to get open six to 18 months for a non standalone building. But those businesses overall historically have shown to be a little bit more semi passive out the gate. And for someone that is looking to

you know, maybe keep their job and run and run this business. They tend to be a little bit more easy to manage just because everyone’s reporting to one location. So so they’re both popular. Really, it depends on you know, we don’t have a list of brands in mind when we speak with someone it’s all about, OK, what are you looking for? What can we get? What do you qualify for? That’s another one. You have to hit net worth and liquidity requirements. But yeah, we look at the whole entire picture so we can present brands accordingly that you would.

Quentin (21:06)
Idiot.

Giuseppe (21:19)
enjoy as well as qualify for it because sustainability is the key is the key word in this game.

Quentin (21:27)
Yeah, So even if the business itself is not necessarily on real estate or in real estate, but the service itself is probably serving some type of something on real estate. The home services will be serving homes on real estate in different places. So it seems like some type of way, real estate kind of gets tied in some type of way. Not necessarily from an investor standpoint, but just with just, you know what I mean, just the services itself. Yeah.

Giuseppe (21:36)
Yes.

Correct, yeah, honk.

Right.

Yeah, servicing homes, cleaning, pool cleaning, things like that. There’s a commercial side for the most part as well for the local businesses. But yeah, we have brands. I mean, can’t tell you this countless brands out there just servicing the home and just about any. If you could think of a service from drain cleaning to just general cleaning and roofing, it exists out there. So yeah, it touches for the most part. Yeah, I would say close to 100 percent touching real estate at some point.

Quentin (21:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cause I’m bringing this up because I know you investors out here, you’re always looking for a value add, right? Listen, you’ve got the thing that’s getting service. Maybe talk to my manager, Sepe, a value add maybe can be starting a franchise to service the thing that your business is already on. I’m just saying, I don’t know. mean, I’m just brainstorming here. know, I haven’t been in the franchise business for 20 years, but I’m just brainstorming.

Giuseppe (22:41)
and that it’s a complete, what do we do? We do property management, we do cleaning, we do roofing. Property management is something that’s been growing. literally there’s so many things and what’s nice is they all tie in. You start owning home service businesses, they all refer to one another, you start to create this ecosystem between either yourself and the other franchisees in the area and that way it’s like once you’re in the home,

Quentin (23:02)
Yes!

Giuseppe (23:08)
There’s five other franchisees that are getting referred to all non-competing businesses, which is really cool. So yeah, there’s a lot, lots of ways we work with lot of investors, real estate owners that are looking for different ways to diversify. I personally own my own, my home is my only standalone real estate, but I own invested real estate syndication across the country. ⁓ Franchises my consulting business. So it’s a great diversifier and always happy to help you explore because we do work with a lot of investors looking to.

to really increase their diversification of their portfolios.

Quentin (23:41)
Yeah.

I love it, man. I love it. This is my last kind of topic or question revolves around relationship. You I often you said the word ecosystem and I think community and culture is how you can create an ecosystem. And especially when you’re doing things from an integral way, when you’re doing things, just like you said, to help people sometimes creating this ecosystem is the best way to form relationships. And so I would love to hear from you on the word relationship.

Giuseppe (23:48)
Mm-hmm.

Quentin (24:11)
⁓ As it served you well, you put, you know, do you build healthy relationships within business? Like when you hear the word relationship, what comes to mind for you?

Giuseppe (24:21)
Relationship is, it’s really, we have, for example, an accountability group. we work with ⁓ other franchise consultants and we all work together, talk about, maybe you’re having a rough month or windows and areas of opportunity we meet every other week. So having those relationships are key because sometimes you gotta get out of your head. You gotta talk with other.

individuals in like businesses. Sometimes it does not be a like business, because I have relationships in and outside of franchising. So it’s great to have those relationships that way you can kind of talk through ideas and maybe you’re in a rut. Maybe you just have to get out of your head. So ⁓ the beauty of franchise and when I was also a franchisee is that when you become a franchise owner, now you are part of their, you know, group there. I call it almost like a mastermind. There may be a hundred franchise owners.

and all hundred have different backgrounds. Some are previous owners, some worked on Wall Street, some were corporate executives. So you get to really interact with them. Everyone has different backgrounds, different ways of approaching things. You start teaming up with franchisees, with marketing, support systems, accountability groups. So ⁓ that is huge. think that’s, you that makes a difference between kind of, you know, mentally just being completely drained and feeling like you don’t have anyone to talk to, to being able to kind of…

talk through business and any challenges and things like that, because it will happen. It’s not when it’s not if it’s when. So yeah, those are extremely important. I have great relationships with everyone I work with, my colleagues, franchise companies as well. I get to speak with a lot of founders and hear about the future of franchising, where the direction is going. So yeah, I you got to you’re at the end that you’re always in the people business. So you have those those relationships are priceless.

Quentin (26:10)
Yeah, Mr. Giuseppe, man, I appreciate you, man. I think this has been a wealth full of knowledge, And listen, man, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,

Giuseppe (26:24)
I appreciate it. Yeah, just the website. So ggthefranchiseguide.com, all the resources, we have about 270 podcasts, you can just type a search covering just about every area. If you’re thinking of franchise ownership, my download free book, Franchise Freedom, which is also the name of the podcast. It’s a 30 minute read. It’s my exact blueprint to helping you find your perfect franchise.

And we have about 25 FAQs and blogs and you name it. take advantage of that. For those that are ready to jump on a call, just book a call. There’s a button top right side of the screen. just, we just redo the site. It’s 20 minutes. We’ll figure out together. I’ll answer your questions, figure out if a franchise is a good fit. And we’ll talk about kind of next steps and the website details, all of that, but there’s no cost. There’s no silly questions. This is really to empower you to show you what’s out there.

And I talked to a couple students just graduating college. They weren’t ready at this time, but they were planning of the next five or 10 years. We jumped on a call together. We talked about that. was actually, I did a call at a university here in New Jersey. And we talked through what that would look like and what they need to plan now, savings-wise, expectation-wise, timeframe-wise, for them to maybe come back to me in several years and potentially move forward. But…

You know, we always send out as much helpful information as possible. So take advantage of the sites there. If you’re ready to chat, book a call. If not, I would recommend this would be your next step to download this book and I’d love to help you every step of the way.

Quentin (27:59)
Oh man, Mr. Giuseppe, I feel like time went too fast. I feel like I could do at least 15 more minutes with you, man, and just talking about things. But let me say three things to you sincerely. Thank you for your time. I mean, you could have chose to do anything else with your time right now, but you gave us your time. Thank you for your time. Secondly, thank you for your story. What I even call the gift of your transparency and vulnerability. I really appreciate it. a premium on stories. Story have a way of just planting seeds in people.

Giuseppe (28:02)
I appreciate it.

Quentin (28:28)
that can literally course correct their own life, give them their whole life, give them a perspective that they did not have and really just begin to get things rolling in a way that they never thought. So thank you for your story to get to your story. Lastly, thank you for your mindset, the way you think and bringing that perspective to this platform. I greatly appreciate you, sir.

Giuseppe (28:47)
Thanks, Q. This is fun. really appreciate the opportunity and looking forward doing it again.

Quentin (28:52)
Absolutely. Well, listen, you heard Mr. Giuseppe. Please get in contact with him. All the information that he shared is in the show notes. Definitely franchise freedom. Get in contact with him. The podcast. Get the book. Definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I keep telling you we’re going to bring up and keep bringing up amazing people just like Mr. Giuseppe. So, sir, I say thank you again and everyone else. You have a fantastic day.