Jeff Platt was 21 when his dad asked him to take over a two location trampoline park in Las Vegas. He had no plan and no idea how franchising worked. Then a UFC fighter trained there on Spike TV.…
Chris Naugle's mom put up her house so he could open a snowboard shop at 17. Every bank had turned him down. One would do an SBA loan if he had real estate, and her 700 square foot ranch was worth…
At one of Big Dave's early grand openings, 20 to 30 new tickets landed every two or three minutes. Ticket times hit 30 to 45 minutes against a seven-minute target. Darryl Gates worked the grill for…
Joe Pedatella walked into Spa 23 in New Jersey as a trainer in 1998. He ended up owning it. For nearly 30 years his job was changing adults' habits, one person at a time. Then his son was born, and…
Kyle Chiasson was 22, working a banking job in eastern Washington and on track for his CFP. He describes the feeling as sitting in a nice four-walled office with everything you think you need,…
Taylor Johns has had exactly one job his entire life. He was making pizza at seven years old in stores his grandfather opened in 1983, a grandfather he never got to meet. The company is named Karolina…
Welcome back to How I Franchised This — the show where we dive into the real stories behind franchise empires, told directly by the people who built them. Today’s guest is Adam Contos: former CEO of…
What happens when you're literally born into franchising? In this episode of How I Franchised This, Alex sits down with GR Waldrop—a second-generation operator who grew up making subs at Jersey Mike’s…
Taylor Byington and Shideler Bennett went from pitching insurance door-to-door to opening nine Crumbl Cookies locations across three states. In this episode, they share their unconventional path into…
Jon Bahr didn’t come from food service. He came from real estate finance. But after bingeing franchise podcasts and hearing Dan Reese pitch Milkshake Factory, he and his wife took the leap, signing a…
