March 12, 2026 – Financial Therapist Dr. Erika Rasure and Franchise Starter Dr. Tom DuFore 

0:04 Intro 1 : Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award‑winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. Jim Beach.

0:25 Jim Beach : Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I have a fantastic show for you today. First up, Dr. Erika Rasure, talking about finance consulting and her business in that space. Very, very impressive. We have a long conversation because I was enjoying it and having a great one, and I learned a lot about finances and what people should be doing, should not be doing, how to take care of our businesses, all of that. After that, Dr. Tom DuFore is with us. He has a DBA, kind of like a PhD in franchising and franchise systems and how to start your own franchise system. Great show. We’re going to start right now. Very excited to introduce Dr. Erika Rasure to the show. She started off as a financial advisor and a university professor and has turned into a financial therapist. She helps thousands of people approach their finances in a healthy, intentional sort of way. She is the Chief Financial Wellness Advisor at Beyond Finance, which is her coaching business. She is also part of the Research Board of Financial Therapy Clinical Institute, and she is a member of the Financial Review Board for Investopedia, The Balance, Verywell Family, and Verywell Parents. She’s been on all the shows: CNN, Forbes, Fox Business, MarketWatch, NBC, all of those. And she holds a doctorate in personal financial planning. Very impressive. Dr. Rasure, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

1:58 Dr. Erika Rasure : I am great. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

2:01 Jim Beach : All right, how much of money and being happy with your money is a mental state? Is it 100% mental?

2:08 Dr. Erika Rasure : I would say it’s closer to 90%. I think it is very high up there in the sense that we really need to make sure, if we want to have our numbers in check, we have got to keep our emotions in check too.

2:19 Jim Beach : What do you mean by our emotions, like my desire to go buy a new car?

2:25 Dr. Erika Rasure : That could be part of it, but it is really starting to recognize that a lot of money decisions are made from an emotional point of view. Understanding where you are coming from before you make those decisions makes you make better decisions and makes you feel better about yourself.

2:43 Jim Beach : You know, that’s very true. When I do the money things that I hate, I do feel good about myself when they are done. Why do we hate money things so much? Taxes, balancing the checkbook, all that kind of thing.

2:55 Dr. Erika Rasure : I think for a lot of us those money tasks represent time taken away from other things. So a lot of those things can feel just like basic administrative tasks, but a lot of times there is some sort of block involved. I definitely resonate with this idea of taxes. For me to do taxes I need to sit down, and I have a ritual for taxes. I go get a Diet Dr Pepper from the gas station, a giant fountain soda, and a box of Hot Tamales. And I sit down with that. It makes it a ritual. When you are able to create a ritual around tasks that you do not like, it makes a big difference. And as we know, a lot of times we do not regret finishing those tasks, but we can also make doing those tasks

3:40 Jim Beach : a little bit better. You are in St. Louis, so maybe the rules are different. I am pretty sure that down here in Georgia you are only required to balance your checkbook once a decade.

3:49 Dr. Erika Rasure : Are you familiar with this? I am not familiar.

3:53 Jim Beach : A decade. It is required.

3:56 Dr. Erika Rasure : A Georgia thing. Well, hey, you know, we have got to respect those geographical differences. But maybe try something else.

4:03 Jim Beach : Once in a while we really need to balance our checkbook if we sort of have an idea of how much money is in there.

4:09 Dr. Erika Rasure : I get this question a lot. A lot of people do kind of the mental accounting, and I would say if you are comfortable doing it that way and you are pretty accurate, go for it if that is the way it makes sense to you. But if you are anywhere in the realm of not knowing exactly where your money is at all times, it is probably time to look at a different method.

4:32 Jim Beach : All right, what has more impact on our mental health? Credit cards, debt, school debt, taxes? Are they all just equally horrible for our mental happiness?

4:43 Dr. Erika Rasure : In my experience, I have been doing financial coaching and therapy for 21 years, and the one thing I would say that has the most impact on everybody kind of universally is debt. The debt I am talking about is the credit card debt, the debt that is open and evolving and gets out of control. It is not so much the student loan debt or the mortgage debt. It can be in some situations, but overwhelmingly it is the excessive debt that grows and grows and grows, and then all of a sudden you wake up one morning and you do not know how you are going to pay your minimum balance.

5:18 Jim Beach : So I had a weird situation. Tell me what you think about this. I had a corporate bankruptcy about 25 or 26 years ago, and after that I did not even try to get credit. I knew my credit was probably toast. We walked away from 34 leases and about eight million dollars in debt. Because of that I did not even try to get a credit card. I got a debit card, and because I had a debit card it immediately took the money out of the checking account and I never accumulated credit card debt. I could only live within the money that I already had. For an entrepreneur I found that very reassuring, that I could only spend what I already had. What do you think of this?

6:02 Dr. Erika Rasure : I really love that idea because sometimes I really do think it takes a major life event like a bankruptcy or a debt restructure for people to reset their habits.

6:13 Jim Beach : But you know it really bounced on your list.

6:16 Dr. Erika Rasure : It is not. No, I do not think that is a good idea. I really do not, and I am a true crime diehard. We know how this plays out. You always get caught.

6:27 Jim Beach : You jump back. I will give you your time. So I was getting a divorce and the business manager, my business manager, just happened to live across the street from me. He had done twenty years in the New York Police Department. He came up to me and said, “Jim, I have been thinking really hard about this. I think you should kill her, and then we will go straight to the police station and you will get fifteen. You will be out in eight. It is worth it. Do it.” Because he knew my ex‑wife.

7:00 Dr. Erika Rasure : That is some advice. I will just call it that. That is some advice. I do not think it is a good idea. In general you always get caught.

7:20 Jim Beach : That is turning myself in. You know you get a lot of credit if you just turn yourself in.

7:27 Dr. Erika Rasure : Well, I am glad you checked first. That is positive. But going back to the original question here, when we are going through major transitions where debt has been involved, it is not unusual for someone to decide they are not going to extend credit anymore and instead live within their means. Not everybody is like that, but if you can get into that habit it can make a huge difference in the way you experience money going forward.

8:49 Jim Beach : What about having a credit card for emergencies and then trying to pay for all your gasoline and dinners on dates and things like that with your debit card? I hate the idea of paying interest on dinner.

9:02 Dr. Erika Rasure : For the majority of people nobody likes paying interest on things like gas, dinner, or groceries. There are certain benefits to having credit cards, but if you can pay cash, and a debit card is basically the equivalent of cash in card form because it comes right out of your checking account, prioritizing that can be a good idea.

9:46 Jim Beach : Have you seen these videos on that YouTube thing? People are going thirty or forty thousand dollars in debt to go on a Disney vacation. I could not have fun on that vacation. Could you?

10:10 Dr. Erika Rasure : No. It is not aligned with my money values. I enjoy vacations and spending time with my family, but not at the expense of my mental health. If I had to take out a loan or put the whole trip on a credit card, it would not be enjoyable to me.

11:04 Jim Beach : What about financing cars? When I was a kid you could pay off your car in three years. Five was the most. Now we see seven or nine year car loans.

11:19 Dr. Erika Rasure : Extending a car loan out nine, ten, or twelve years is generally not a great idea given the lifespan of the average car. A three‑to‑five‑year car note is much more reasonable.

12:01 Jim Beach : I drive a Toyota Camry, which is the cheapest Toyota made. I paid for it. It is a 2017 and it only has about 60,000 miles on it now. I do not care if it has a ding on it. I feel happier that way.

12:42 Dr. Erika Rasure : A lot of people prefer that feeling. One of my favorite feelings in the world is a car that I own free and clear.

13:25 Jim Beach : The book The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley and Danko points out that two‑thirds of the people who drive luxury cars cannot afford to buy them outright.

13:50 Dr. Erika Rasure : Then everyone will think you are that secret millionaire next door.

13:54 Jim Beach : Damn the Joneses. What is loud budgeting?

14:04 Dr. Erika Rasure : Loud budgeting is the idea that we need to talk about our money. If I am trying to make progress toward my financial goals, I am going to say to my friends that I am skipping something because I am saving or paying down debt.

15:09 Jim Beach : Our pool is the number one rented pool in Georgia. Why are you laughing at me?

15:19 Dr. Erika Rasure : I just love this idea of renting out your pool.

15:22 Jim Beach : It is called Swimply. We take in about fifteen to twenty thousand a summer.

15:32 Dr. Erika Rasure : That is a great way to diversify some income.

15:36 Jim Beach : How much of mental health and money is your focus largely on the mental aspects of money and savings and debt?

15:57 Dr. Erika Rasure : Absolutely. In my practice I focus more on the mental, emotional, and cognitive aspects of people’s money because that is where much of the work has to be done. You can make all the money in the world, but if you do not feel content with it from an emotional or mental perspective, you will never enjoy it.

16:21 Jim Beach : On what date do you talk about money? The first date?

16:32 Dr. Erika Rasure : I do think it is important to at least start talking about it. You might begin by discussing what you do for a living or what your goals are.

16:53 Jim Beach : You are just setting the groundwork for day two when we bring checkbooks.

16:59 Dr. Erika Rasure : We bring our credit reports. I actually recommend that. If you are dating someone new and things start getting serious, you should look at each other’s credit reports.

17:21 Jim Beach : Financial infidelity.

17:26 Dr. Erika Rasure : Yes. Secret behavior your partner would not approve of—gambling, secret credit cards, hiding purchases—all of that falls under financial infidelity.

18:12 Jim Beach : That is interesting. I will propose that on my next date and see how hard the slap hurts.

18:48 Dr. Erika Rasure : There can be insecurity and shame around money, and people worry about how a potential partner will react.

19:34 Jim Beach : I once went to a wedding where the father‑in‑law handed the groom one hundred thousand dollars of debt at the wedding.

20:26 Dr. Erika Rasure : That is pretty great.

20:29 Jim Beach : So what about age and gender? Are younger generations different financially?

20:58 Dr. Erika Rasure : I would not say better or worse. It is just different. Younger generations tend to focus more on experiences and living now rather than waiting until retirement.

22:19 Jim Beach : My Bible school teacher saved his whole life for a trip and died within the first hour of it.

23:10 Dr. Erika Rasure : That is tragic, and it reminds people that life is fragile.

23:38 Jim Beach : What about debt for college? Would you rather go to Missouri for free or Harvard with $100,000 in debt?

23:50 Dr. Erika Rasure : As someone who went to the University of Missouri, I would rather go to Mizzou. Prestige is not always worth the debt.

24:56 Jim Beach : Let me tell you this horrible story about my college choice.

25:52 Dr. Erika Rasure : That is quite a choice.

25:56 Jim Beach : My mother framed a pencil from my grandfather to remind me of my roots.

27:33 Dr. Erika Rasure : That ties back to intergenerational money stories.

28:04 Jim Beach : Dr. Rasure, I have enjoyed speaking with you. How do we find out more about you?

28:19 Dr. Erika Rasure : Visit beyondfinance.com. There are great resources there about financial wellness.

28:37 Jim Beach : Thank you so much for being with us. We will be right back.

28:51 Jim Beach : We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us today. Very excited to introduce another great guest. Please welcome Dr. Tom DuFore to the show. He is the genius behind Big Sky Franchise Team.com. Tom and his team help you, the successful business owner, take that business and multiply it through franchising. Tom, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

29:16 Dr. Tom DuFore : I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me.

29:19 Jim Beach : We want to make very clear that there are two sides of a franchise situation, right? Someone creates a system, and then someone buys into the system and becomes a franchisee, and you’re there to help the original company get started in multiplying, right?

29:35 Dr. Tom DuFore : That’s exactly right. Yes. So a lot of times, most people out there are familiar with franchises generally as a customer. Maybe you had lunch at a McDonald’s or a Jimmy John’s or something over the last week or two, and most of us are customers of franchises. Every once in a while there are people who say, “Well, maybe I want to buy a franchise,” but we’re at the genesis idea of this, where there is a successful entrepreneur that has created a business and likely someone approached him or her and said, “Boy, that’s a great business. Can I get started? Can I buy one?” Or, “I’m interested in learning more.” And that gets the conversation started about saying, how do we help multiply this and grow this and get going down the franchise process to turn it into a franchise business? And that’s something most people just don’t know a whole lot about.

30:33 Jim Beach : Tell us about your DBA. Did you write a dissertation in that? It’s like a PhD, sort of, right?

30:39 Dr. Tom DuFore : Right. We called it an applied doctoral project, because it’s the same concept that I completed as a dissertation. Instead of four chapters, it was six. We included that because we focus on solving a real-world problem. When I was completing the doctorate degree, I actually did work with a real business. It had a real problem, and part of my project was to actually conduct thorough research and study the problem that I was solving. The company I was working with was really curious about this idea of virtue and virtuous business, and really wanting to do business that way. The company found out about this idea of the virtuous business model through the university I was going through and was curious about how they might be able to implement this into their business. They said, “Well, we’re intrigued. We find this interesting. But how do you measure virtue and virtue within an organization? How would you even do that? What is it? Is it even possible?” And so the end result, to summarize this couple-hundred-page document and hundreds of sources that were pulled, was that I developed what I call the Virtuous Organization Scorecard to help this organization have a plan for how they would implement this idea into their business and then have something to measure, to quantify and measure. Okay, are we on track or not? Are we living up to the standards we’re setting for ourselves as an organization or not?

32:32 Jim Beach : All right, very interesting. And how does that feed into your franchise business today? Does it help make that business better somehow?

32:39 Dr. Tom DuFore : Absolutely. In one regard, the idea of this virtuous business and virtuous business model has been intriguing for me personally. It’s a way I’ve always tried to do business, but didn’t really have quite the right way to describe how I’d like to do business, and found that others I do business with tend to prefer to do business that way too. It seems pretty commonplace that you try to do things above board, within a certain ethical framework and with a moral compass, but not all businesses do it that way. So I said, well, this helped me fine-tune my own business and develop my own standards, and really even cement core values at our company that would attract the right kinds of talent and people to join our system, even the types of clients that end up being attracted to work with us. So yes, it’s definitely been impactful.

33:39 Jim Beach : All right, Two Men and a Truck. Great Atlanta business. Is that an Atlanta business?

33:46 Dr. Tom DuFore : No, actually based out of Michigan is where they started.

33:49 Jim Beach : I thought that was an Atlanta business that I was proud of. All right, tell everyone what Two Men and a Truck is and what you helped them do.

33:57 Dr. Tom DuFore : Yeah, so Two Men and a Truck is a really interesting business. It’s a moving company, and basically the original idea is that it was just two men and a truck, and they send two-man crews to help move your home, mostly homes when they started. Now I think they do all kinds of residential and commercial moving, and they have locations all over the country. I got engaged and worked with them, goodness, maybe about ten years or so ago, and they had been franchising and needed help expanding to the West Coast. So all of their expansion was pretty much east of the Mississippi at the time. I was brought in to help with their westward expansion and making some moves and initiatives in that regard.

34:44 Jim Beach : All right, and are they nationwide?

34:46 Dr. Tom DuFore : Now? Yes, yes. They’re all over the country.

34:50 Jim Beach : Well, it’s a great business and a very good model. So I want to take my business, franchise it, and have millions of people do my business for me. What do I need to do to get ready for that decision? What state do I need to be in before I come talk to you?

35:09 Dr. Tom DuFore : Well, that’s a common question that comes up, which essentially is asking, how do I know if I’m ready to franchise, or is my business franchisable? That is a common question that comes up. There are three big checkboxes that we look for to think about, okay, are you ready to start having that conversation about franchising a business? The first checkbox we look at is, do you have a profitable prototype? I know that seems fundamental or basic, but it’s got to be on the checklist. You want to have a working model ideally of what you’re planning to franchise. So that’s checkbox number one. Sometimes clients and prospects will say, “Well, Tom, my tax return says I didn’t make any money.” Okay, well, your tax return is between you and your CPA and Uncle Sam, however you do that. But for my purposes, we look at this and say, well, as a profitable enterprise, is this a business that you’re making a living from? Especially if you’re an owner-operator, are you making a living from this, paying your bills and running the company in that regard? So checkbox one. Checkbox two then is, are you able to train or teach someone how to do this in a reasonable time period? A reasonable time period might be from a couple days to a couple months, but are you able to teach someone? Think of this as if you were to train a general manager to take over and run day-to-day operations for your business. Are you able to teach someone how to do that? For most entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with in the more than twenty years I’ve been doing this, it’s really, are you willing to train someone? Because most entrepreneurs have the ability to do this. Are you willing to do that? Then the third checkbox we look at is, do you have a customer base, or potential customer base, on a national basis across the country, at minimum a regional basis, and then ideally international, because you never know? Meaning that if you’re based in Atlanta, where we happen to be based, and you decide to franchise, if you were to open up franchises in Texas or Washington or Florida or New York or wherever they might be located, generally speaking there would be potential customers for a franchisee in those areas. If you can check all three of those boxes, chances are that your business is franchisable. Now, does that mean you necessarily should franchise? Well, of course not. There are a lot of other factors that an owner or a founder would need to consider before they want to franchise their business, but that at least can give you a quick litmus test or smell test to see, okay, do I kind of have a quick qualification process there?

38:13 Jim Beach : All right, very good. What percent of businesses are ready for this? Not that many, is it?

38:26 Dr. Tom DuFore : Small businesses, if you’ve been operating for three years or more and you’re making a living off your business, chances are you probably check those boxes. But it really comes down to a mindset of that owner. While I think there are lots of companies that probably could qualify to turn their business into a franchise, the owner really has to be behind this. So having the franchisable business is one piece of it. The second part then is the owner and really answering that question, what do you want to be when you grow up? I can’t answer that question for you. For the owner, what is it that you have an ambition or a dream of becoming? For some it’s an ambition or a dream of seeing their brand and their business all over the country and in locations everywhere. For others, it’s making an impact and impacting the franchisees and helping change the lives of a franchisee through your business model. For others, it’s serving more customers through your product or service, any kind of business you’re offering, and being able to serve more customers with the product or service you’re offering and making that readily available through franchising. There are lots of great reasons to turn into a franchise or to franchise a business, but do any of those really fit with your vision and your goals? If you’re the owner that is happy and satisfied with where you happen to be at this stage, well, maybe franchising isn’t for you, and that’s okay. In fact, we offer a feasibility study that we offer to clients that are interested. They kind of want to dip their toe in the water and they say, “Well, I’m interested, but I don’t want to jump all the way in.” We offer a feasibility study for clients that are maybe in that in-between space. But I’ve found that over the years of doing this, many entrepreneurs and founders either started right from the beginning thinking, I really want to expand this, or their mindset changes a few years into operating, recognizing that, oh wow, I really do have something different. There’s an old saying, right? If it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Sometimes a successful entrepreneur might say, wow, it looks like a franchise, it walks like a franchise, it talks like a franchise. Maybe I should franchise. But to your point, Jim, most businesses will never franchise. Most entrepreneurs will never franchise. I was inspired by my dad when I was a kid and saw him start his own business, just a little small business that he ran for about thirty, almost thirty-five years. For him, it was a great lifestyle business. He loved it. He enjoyed it. He was happy, and he only ever had one location of what he ran. He was happy, and that worked for him, and that’s okay. But for someone that says, I’d like to maybe make a bigger impact, have greater opportunity, and grow this without using your own money, that’s the power of franchising. You don’t have to use your own money or people to run the business. Franchising solves really critical problems for expansion, which is that it costs money to open more locations of any kind of business, even service-based businesses, and it takes time. You have to hire staff and manage staff to do that. And then how fast do you want to grow? At what rate of speed do you want to do it? Franchising allows you to decentralize the liability and the risk for securing the funding and hiring the staff. When you franchise, the franchisee takes on that burden of being responsible for funding the business to get it up and going. They take on the burden of managing the staff. So if an employee doesn’t show up, it’s the owner that probably fills that shift or figures out how to manage it. The management piece of it becomes important in it, versus compared to company-owned territories or company-owned locations, where when it’s company-owned it’s single source, is how I describe it. You have a single source of liability, where the owner is liable and responsible for all of the loans, all of the leases, all of the payroll, all of the employees, all the hiring, all the firing, all of the everything that comes with day-to-day management. It falls back, ultimately, on the owner in a company-owned structure, and in franchising that’s decentralized down to the local level and integrated within that community. Those are some of the reasons or benefits why franchising might make sense for someone.

43:47 Jim Beach : So Tom, do you wait for clients to come to you? Or do you go out and look and say, you know, this Jamba Juice stuff is pretty cool. I would like to franchise this. And then the owner goes, what, me? Which one is it?

44:10 Dr. Tom DuFore : Every once in a while we’ll get one of those that says, what, me, because a customer or someone walked in and said, “Holy cow, this is a great business. Have you ever thought of expanding this?” Normally, though, what happens is we get contacted or approached by an owner that says, “I’ve been thinking about this for a while.” Usually it’s more than a year. It’s two, three, four years. They’ve been thinking about it for a while and wondering, and now we’re finally ready to really start digging into this and say, well, what would this look like? That’s part of the reason we offer a free consultation to any business or any owner that’s thinking about franchise or just wondering. We don’t charge any fees or hourly rates or anything like that until someone says, let’s do business together. So we offer a free consultation and offer that to any of your listeners that happen to tune in. The way we approach it, most are going to reach out to us. In our business, it’s not all that different from any other small business. We’re a small business too. This is my company. We’ve got a team of twelve here. We service and do work all over the country. My wife is our project manager. In one regard, we recognize we’re working with a lot of family-run businesses, and we’re a family business too. Private equity in today’s world, and private equity venture capital, is really transforming franchising. It’s changing a lot of industries, but franchising especially. I don’t know if it’s for better or for worse in franchising, but there’s been billions of dollars poured into the franchise space through private equity and venture capital over the last ten-plus years, and so we’re just seeing a shift or a change. Ten or twenty years ago, I never would have thought to say, well, we’re a family-owned and operated business, but we are. We’re one hundred percent family-owned and operated. So it’s kind of interesting how that’s transforming things.

46:23 Jim Beach : All right, very, very good answers. Tom, I’m sixty-two and I own this business, and it might franchise. Is this my way out? Is this my exit strategy, to franchise and then get out? Is that realistic, or is that stupid?

46:43 Dr. Tom DuFore : No, I would say that is a very common place where a lot of our clients are. They’re oftentimes fifty-five plus, saying, “I’ve got a great business. What’s my exit? I’ve got maybe five, ten, fifteen years that I’m looking to build something and really make my business more valuable as an asset.” What’s interesting is there are a couple of exits that occur. In this case, I mentioned the private equity and venture capital in today’s world of franchising. It is realistic to expect some kind of offer from a private equity or venture capital group. If you were to have asked me that ten, twelve, fifteen years ago, I would have chuckled and thought, it’s rare. In today’s world, it’s much more common. I have clients that, after we finish working with them, start getting emails and letters from private equity groups and venture groups every month. Just a little notice: “Hey, when you’re ready, if you ever want to talk, we’re here.” That becomes a viable exit strategy. Previously, you might have had to have one hundred or two hundred plus franchises in your system. In today’s world, you could have ten or twenty franchises in your system and become a real candidate for a private equity group. Now that’s one exit strategy that becomes viable. One of my favorite exit strategies, though, for the founder that franchises is this: I had a conversation with a client last week about this. He said, “Tom, we ran the numbers and at about ten franchises, we would be able to essentially retire out of our day-to-day business. We could sell that off and keep running our franchise system and make the same money or more and just basically be a coach and a trainer, helping coach people to run this franchise business that we operate.” My favorite option is, once you get eight, ten, fifteen, somewhere around that, between that ten-to-twenty number of franchises, it generally replaces your income that you’re generating from your operating unit or units that are existing. Now the franchisor says, wait a minute, this is pretty great. My franchisees are happy, I’m expanding, I love this franchise business because I’m able to share in the game that my franchisees make, I get to help them grow their business, and I’m putting more pins on the map of our locations around the region or around the country. A lot of times entrepreneurs have the big exit in mind, but what they don’t realize is just this beautiful residual income that you build with an asset that acts almost like an annuity for you. It’s income that you could start living off in retirement and have multiple income streams, kind of like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, where you’ve got revenue streams that are coming from other sources that are no longer dependent on the amount of work or effort that you specifically are putting into the day-to-day of the business.

50:04 Jim Beach : Very, very well said. What percent of businesses are ready that come across your desk?

50:13 Dr. Tom DuFore : Most companies we meet with, and I’ve literally spoken to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs over the years of doing this, a very, very small percentage actually end up moving forward with franchising. It’s generally going to be one percent or less that actually decide to franchise their business. Certainly they may qualify and then decide to franchise their business, however they decide to do that, whether they work with a company like ours or figure out some other way to do it. It’s a very, very small percentage. If you think of franchising, there are roughly about thirty-three million or so small businesses and businesses across the United States. Well, out of the thirty-three million or so, there are roughly only about five or six thousand franchisors that exist. Think about that. It’s a very, very small number. There might be a few hundred new franchise systems that start each year. There might be a few hundred that start and a few hundred that stop each year. That number has been pretty static in total number of franchise systems that exist for many years. Even if you err on the high side, six thousand or so businesses that have franchised out of thirty-three million small businesses, you can really start to recognize that franchising has an outsized impact for the actual number of companies that have turned into a franchise.

51:58 Jim Beach : All right, we only have a minute left. Tom, I think that all the franchises are food. So we know McDonald’s and Burger King, all the big huge franchises, Chick-fil-A. What percent are food? And what are all of the others, like nursing services and all that kind of stuff? I think this will surprise people.

52:17 Dr. Tom DuFore : Yeah, less than half. More than half of all franchises are service-related today. These are home services, a painting franchise, or like you were mentioning, a senior care or nursing service. That’s the majority. Pest control or mosquito franchises that exist out there. And professional services, accounting services, coaching businesses, bookkeeping and CPAs and fractional CFO businesses. These are franchises. Certainly there is a popular segment in boutique retail, something that looks really local or hyperlocal. Food franchises are still popular, don’t get me wrong, in hospitality with motel, hotel, and food service, and most of us are familiar with those because we’re regular customers of those, but that’s a small percentage of the actual franchise mix.

53:15 Jim Beach : Fantastic. Tom, how do we find you, get in touch, and reach out?

53:21 Dr. Tom DuFore : The best place to visit is BigSkyFranchiseTeam.com. That’s BigSkyFranchiseTeam.com. We have a ton of free resources, including a free quiz. You can schedule a free consultation. Everything is there. And Jim, I know you’ve got your quick ten before you go. I just figured I’d mention that to see if we have time for that.

53:42 Jim Beach : We do. We’ll do it as a separate feature. All right.

53:45 Dr. Tom DuFore : Sure, you got it.53:47 Jim Beach : Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you, Tom. We are out of time for today, but you know what we do. That’s right, we come back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, and go make a million dollars. Bye