August 26, 2026 – The Franchise Guy Matt Stevens MBA by Day Studio 54 by Night Don Kurz

00:00 INTRO 1: In the AM, radio network, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while 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.

00:22 JIM BEACH: Hello, everyone, welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. This is a great show. First up, Matt Stevens, The Franchise Guy. I bet you can figure what we talk about, and he plays the Quick 10. You know I love that. And then Don Kurz is with us talking about his new Do the Hustle. Perhaps the most interesting character. We’ve run across in a long time with roots back at Studio 54, if you can believe it. Anyway, it’s a great show. We’re going to go ahead and get started right now. Here we go.

00:58 JIM BEACH: Longtime listeners know that I love the franchise model. It’s a business that de-risks with every manual that they give you. Every system they teach you takes more and more risk out of it. Because of that, I love it. Please welcome someone who can teach us a lot more than that. Matt Stevens is the founder of The Franchise Guy and author of Franchising 101, an introductory guide designed to help respective franchise owners make informed decisions. He has won tons of awards like the rookie franchise of the year.

01:30 JIM BEACH: He’s had been behind successful business turnarounds and has served on a board that was a $2 billion organization. He also won the FranChoice gold and Century Club member awards and the Columbus Business First 40 Under 40 honoree, and the list goes on and on, and he’s just a damn swell guy. Matt Stevens, welcome. How you doing, Matt?

01:51 MATT STEVENS: Very good, Jim. Thank you so much for that introduction. I will say it’s the century club, not the country club, but I’m probably part of that too, and I appreciate a wonderful introduction. Looking forward to our discussion today.

02:06 JIM BEACH: As am I. All right. So, is now with the economy the way it is and Jobs hard and all of that, especially for Post 55 and will help, Post 45, is now a good or a bad time for franchise.

02:20 MATT STEVENS: I think the best time is yesterday, but frankly, I work with a lot of people around the country who they hit 50s and I know it’s illegal, but ageism exists and it’s prolific. And the sooner you can figure that out. Frankly, the more you can enjoy the fruits of your labor. So I tell people to look as soon as they can. I have a candidate right now in Cleveland, who’s 28 years old. I have a candidate elsewhere who’s 58, the oldest person I’ve ever placed was 78. There’s coincidence in all the 8s there. But the sooner you look, the better.

02:57 MATT STEVENS: We have finite lives, and the better you can master your trade, your art, your skill set, your business, the longer you get to reap the benefits.

03:06 JIM BEACH: All right, very well said. What? Let’s compare buying a business of which there are so many now because so many boomers are aging out and they, their kids don’t want a steel processing yard, you know? What’s the advantages and disadvantages, buying something that’s on the market versus a franchise?

03:25 MATT STEVENS: Jim, I appreciate it. For the person who’s buying a business. The challenge is this. There are businesses that are failing, a fire sale. There are businesses that are okay or doing well or exceptional. If you’re buying the business that’s doing exceptional. You’re going to come into 2 roadblocks. The price is going to be through the roof and you’re going to be 5th in line. The biggest challenge there is the price. If you’re looking at a business that is solid to good, you’re going to be 15th in line. That’s the reality of it.

03:59 MATT STEVENS: If it’s a franchise, you might not be in line at all, because a lot of franchisers do not want a 1st time franchise in their system to buy a resell. They want them to start from scratch anew, and they will sell that resale to a different existing franchise owner who already understands the deal. There’s no training fee. There’s no commission paid to a salesperson. Each party knows what the sale price should be. It’s just a different equation for those folks. And then, if you’re looking at a fire sale, You might be the only one in line.

04:35 MATT STEVENS: You might be paying a small price, but you’ve got to somehow figure out how much money it’s going to take to end effort to get that business back on board and back in line. So there are challenges. Frankly, I have a long diatribe. I won’t go into it today. I would rather build and sell a $2 million business, then pay $2 million for a business and do the learning curve, which will likely decrease my sales in year one, pay that debt service, and finally earn my way out of it in 10 years.

05:09 MATT STEVENS: I’d much rather build than sell than buy an existing multimillion dollar business or even several $100,000 business.

05:16 JIM BEACH: Alright. Where, I know there’s a lot of franchises. I heard, and I don’t know if this is true or not, Matt. I’m going to go way out on a line here, okay? I heard that there are other franchises than McDonald’s. Now, is this true or am I crazy?

05:34 MATT STEVENS: They’re occasionally, yes. There are 80 plus different industries out there. It’s not just McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Hilton. There’s a franchise out there that sells water. I’ve never placed anyone there, but it exists, and there are people who bought it and are doing well. So when candidates come to me. My goal is to hear what it is they’re after and why and figure out. All right, if you have a personal preference to go in the direction of a McDonald’s or a subway or something like that. We can talk about that. We can talk about what you’ve learned about that opportunity.

06:11 MATT STEVENS: But really what I’m looking for are your evidence procedures and your attraction strategies. The reasons why you’re looking at that opportunity. And with that, we can deduce other opportunities to pit against those businesses where you can compare them quickly. Frankly, in my 30 years in this industry. Now, Jim, with almost a 1000 placements of people into franchises, in the vast majority of cases, people drop after a little bit of comparison. Of what I’m sharing with them that they didn’t know about versus the ones they were already familiar with.

06:45 MATT STEVENS: They often dropped the one they were familiar with because they saw opportunity that was better elsewhere. But we had open conversations about all of it.

06:55 JIM BEACH: If my entire career has been in medical supplies, and I’m vice president of medical supplies, and I’m tired of it and I want to quit. Should I go into a medical supplies franchise? Into a supplies franchise.

07:08 MATT STEVENS: You can. There’s certainly an opportunity there. There’s a number of skill sets that that person’s have that you would have in that situation. One would be B to B sales, management, long and short term sales, creating opportunities where none exists, warp keeping opportunities warm, recurring customer bases. There’s a lot of skill sets there that that person is incredibly familiar with that could translate well to even different opportunities. I can recall now people in my history who came to me, who came to me with logistics histories or medical sales histories or something like that.

07:43 MATT STEVENS: And we ended up talking about those opportunities if they existed or adjacent to that. But we also talked about businesses where they said, hey, I want to be up and running within the next 5 months, I want to be able to break profit within the 1st 12 months. I want to be able to making a specific income within the 1st 3 to 5 years. And those opportunities that they came in with a preconceived notion would favor them.

08:12 MATT STEVENS: They might find quickly that that’s not true, that the other opportunities that I shared with them could favor them better after just a little bit of research, and they moved the other way, because the businesses they came to me with in mind didn’t help them achieve the financial outcomes that they were looking for, or the run rate was too long, or the timeline was too big, or the investment was too big, or their clientele was too spread out or there were too many competitors. There’s all kinds of reasons people find to avoid getting into a business once they dig deep.

08:49 MATT STEVENS: When we put all of their ownership criteria out on the table. We are able to figure out quickly the direction they might want to look instead.

09:00 JIM BEACH: So when I was in high school, getting ready to go to college, my school had this really cool thing that you could input your SAT score and, you know, a whole bunch of variables, and then it had sliders where you could do, you know, how far away from home and that kind of thing. And then pop out a bunch of schools that, that all of those criteria. Is it sort of the same thing with franchises, the way you were talking about ROI within 5 years? I mean, can that be my criteria that I come in with?

09:34 JIM BEACH: Not, I don’t want to. The only thing I want, the only thing I got to have, Matt. 5 years, 5 years ROI. You know, is that, can we do it like that? Do you like that character by the way? That’s Fred.

09:49 MATT STEVENS: I did. I appreciated that. Jim, there is a, that would be an exceptional tool. However, there’s other pieces of the puzzle here. One specific one is culture. Culture means a huge difference, like it does on a college campus. Culture in a business means a great deal. You don’t want to get into a franchise or any other business and realize, wow, I have, I don’t like the people I’m surrounded by. I don’t like the industry, I don’t like the vendors, et cetera.

10:19 MATT STEVENS: The 2nd piece is the behavior it must take, and the resources it must take to get you from A to Z. So that’s why we do come into the ownership criteria, the things that you mentioned, Jim. Here’s what I want to see. Here’s what I’m after. We delve into those much further. The import level of each of those characteristics. We measure each of those. Then we go out into the field and try to find the opportunities that are best suited. Once we start reviewing those best suited opportunities. Two of the things we look for, our behavior and culture.

10:54 MATT STEVENS: And in behavior, maybe it’s B to B sales, maybe it’s B to B sales, maybe it’s both, maybe it’s a small average job size or a large customer ticket, maybe it’s a recurring revenue stream. Maybe it’s not. There’s all kinds of components to this that my candidates must test. And at the end, they have to ask themselves, am I ready willing and able to behave in this same manner with the same timeline and resources of the people who are achieving the outcomes I want, or am I really not up to that task?

11:30 MATT STEVENS: And that gives us a very clear, logical, non-emotional answer. And then we have to deal with the emotional part of it. And that’s fun too.

11:39 JIM BEACH: And so explain the emotional part. What’s significant about that? Why should that industry that we’re going into? I don’t get it.

11:47 MATT STEVENS: Yeah, we all come in with preconceived notions to everything. We’re all human. We all judge things. Prematurely. Again, we’re all human. So what we have to do is we have to test those. And because we often will decide with emotion and then justify logically, right? We have an opinion about something. I love this house. I think I want to buy. It could be out of the area of the school district you want. It could be too overpriced.

12:16 MATT STEVENS: It could have terrible names, but what happens is the person who wants to buy that property will create reasons or find them as to why they should buy that property. The same things for not going in the right direction. Well, that’s an industry that I don’t really love. Well, it meets all of your ownership criteria. The culture’s right up your alley. The neighboring franchisees are kicking tail. Why clock when you can soar?

12:43 MATT STEVENS: This opportunity here is showing you that you can get everything you want, if you can just look, if you can be happy in your role, even though it isn’t what you came to the table with in your mind? And frankly, 80 to 90% of my placements are like that. They ended up, Jim, buying into a franchise business where somewhere along the road, they said to me, this is crazy. Why would I consider that or I have a preconceived notion or I know someone who failed in that industry yet.

13:15 MATT STEVENS: Now here they are buying one, 3 or 5 territories of that business because they learn more about it. All right.

13:23 JIM BEACH: What are some of the industries that are hot right now and what are the cold industries?

13:29 MATT STEVENS: Sure, some hot industries, we I could probably share the hot ones rather than the cold ones gyms because it’s easier for me. The Hollands right now, health and wellness has skyrocketed since. It started to before COVID. Then we all were locked in our homes and it skyrocketed more then, and since then it has not slowed down. So health and wellness. You know, what’s the word 50 is the new 70s, 70s, the new 50? I don’t know how that works. But, uh, there are, when I look at pictures of my grandfather at age 60, I’m 58.

14:04 MATT STEVENS: He doesn’t look anything like me, respectfully. It was a different time. So people are maintaining youth and so forth. The 2nd type of industry is a service to a property or a person. Painting, sewage control. Roofing. Those are industries that are here tried and true. They’re not going to disappear. And frankly, there’s a lot of money in those. And I’ve placed a lot of people in those types of industries over the years.

14:31 JIM BEACH: The richest person that I know, Matt, was in paving.

14:35 MATT STEVENS: Okay, perfect.

14:36 JIM BEACH: Great example. When he was 16, bought a dump truck when he was 16.

14:40 MATT STEVENS: Jim, I had a I have a wonderful anecdote. I’ll share with you. I’m working with a 40-year-old attorney and he just went he’s 38. He went to his 20th high school reunion. This is about a decade ago, and he came back and we were following up on that discussion. He said, Matt, I’m the one who got all the grades. I had all this debt for law school. At this thing, the wealthiest guy was the guy who left at age 18, left high school.

15:10 MATT STEVENS: He continued his lawn care business and now he owns a bunch of multi-unit properties and has an enormous lawn care business. He was the wealthiest guy at the reunion, and it’s really gnawing at me. That’s what my attorney, uh, candidate said.

15:27 JIM BEACH: It’s true. It’s funny that we get. Our our feelings hurt by the lawn man.

15:33 MATT STEVENS: That’s exactly what happened, yes.

15:34 JIM BEACH: But it’s true. This is one man story. Yeah, do our lawn and we were trying to outsource it, and he showed up in a brand new Range Rover with new rims and everything. It was at least 130. I don’t even know how much it was. $150,000 car. I was just… No, just leave now, dude. I have no desire to hear what you have to say after you pulled up in that, you know?

15:58 MATT STEVENS: Yeah, we had a painting operator once. I was operating in 3 states one time. I had 33 territories in action. And, um, One of my cohorts pulled up to my job site in an Aston Martin. I said, you can’t do that. Oh He could, so he did.

16:17 JIM BEACH: My father used to have business in the automobile space with the A, uh, UAW, and so he had, their company had a nice Cadillac that they drove on Cadillac or GM day, and they had a nice big Lincoln continental that they drove on Ford day, and they had the cars to play the roles.

16:36 MATT STEVENS: Oh, that’s fantastic.

16:37 JIM BEACH: Yeah, that’s wonderful. He also had a pair of shoes that had a hole in them. And those were his negotiating shoes, he said, during the level of negotiations, he starts playing with the hole in his shoe to pray how poor he is or ignorant or something. I don’t know what it was, but that was one of his tactics. So…

16:59 MATT STEVENS: I guess it worked for him.

17:01 JIM BEACH: I do to get ready to buy a franchise. Obviously, I need a little pile of money other than the pile of money. Well, let’s do that in 2 separate questions. Hey, how much money do I need and B, what other skills, things do I need to set aside, be ready for?

17:19 MATT STEVENS: You need some access to capital? My minimum requirement really is, you got to have a net worth of 250. You should have some kind of liquidity of about 75,000 or more, but I’ve placed people into franchises, Jim. 20 years ago, I placed a guy who invested 15 grand in a little service business and he did very well. He ran 7 or 8 years and retired. The biggest investment is 8 figures, and that’s usually with a private capital company that gets in.

17:50 MATT STEVENS: Most people are popping in, including cash plus loans, somewhere between 175 and 800 grand, depending on whether they get storefront or non-storefront. But there are loans out there for that, even if you have a credit score of 680 or above. Okay, I’ve helped do some SBA loans for people as well. So there’s there is money out there because SBA loves a franchise.

18:13 JIM BEACH: All right, what other skill sets do they need?

18:16 MATT STEVENS: You just need to be able to figure out which of your own skill sets. You want to leverage the most. So an introspective person who has figured out what their skill sets are, what their lack of skill sets are, what they want to do and not do every single day, who they want to work with and who they don’t want to work with. You know, I asked my candidates, if I polled 10 of your coworkers over the years and ask them about you, what would they say?

18:48 MATT STEVENS: If I asked your spouse about you, what would they say are your strengths and your weaknesses? We have very candid discussions about that. So the person who can acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses and decide what they want to do with their day, as well as where they see themselves in 5 or 10 years. We’re going to leverage those skills so that their role every day, helps them use those skills in a business that can allow them to achieve their goals. And often that business is not the shiniest car on the lot.

19:22 MATT STEVENS: Often it’s got a dinged door and it doesn’t look so pretty. Some of the wealthiest people I’ve placed are in things like painting, water removal, and flooring.

19:32 JIM BEACH: Yeah, water removal is a great business. That’s the, you almost have to be the ambulance chaser in that business, though, you know? I know a guy who was in water mitigation and that’s what he told me. So that’s I’m going to cross that one off my personal list.

19:50 MATT STEVENS: Okay. Different people tackle it different ways. I have a person I placed in the Northeast who all of his leads come in through online, Thumbtack and ServiceMagic. And he likes it that way. He does most of the work himself, but there’s another guy doing the same similar thing up in Milwaukee who does $50 million a year. He has a huge network of relationships he’s built.

20:14 JIM BEACH: Go back and tell us how you got into this, Matt. Give us some of your personal bio for us. Like, you got out of college or whatever, maybe not whatever you did. Then what happened?

20:27 MATT STEVENS: Sure, I wanted to either, when I was in a teenager, I wanted to either play baseball or be a statistician. So, Ernie, if you’ve ever watched them.

20:36 JIM BEACH: Oh, you made a baseball statistician.

20:39 MATT STEVENS: No, I either wanted to play baseball or be a statistician. Math and baseball were my big strength.

20:46 JIM BEACH: Did you love the movie Moneyball?

20:47 MATT STEVENS: I was going to say, if you’ve seen Moneyball, all the main characters in there, I would have loved to play each one of those roles in my life.

20:57 JIM BEACH: That’s a great movie. I love that. I love his books as well, Michael Lewis.

21:03 MATT STEVENS: It is.

21:04 JIM BEACH: Fantastic movie.

21:05 MATT STEVENS: What happened was I transferred from Florida to a school in North Carolina on the walls of that school in North Carolina. I saw ads for run your own business, which is absolutely crazy. I would not have seen those ads had I stayed in Florida because the company doing it the furthest south they went was Carolinas. So I luckily saw that ad. It was very fortunate. I became a business owner that summer in New Hampshire. I was rookie of the year.

21:34 MATT STEVENS: The next year I was runner up for franchisee of the year and I paid for my private college education and just kept going. I never left the industry. And the result was I played a number of roles. I’d been a franchisee, a trainer, a developer, franchise sales, consultant, executive, quality board. I’ve done all those roles. And so it really just changed my life by happenstance because when I was in college, I just said yes to every new experience and it landed me here. Here I am 58 and enjoying it wonderfully.

22:07 JIM BEACH: I saw a thing on the wall at my college that said, sail the Atlantic Ocean, and so I did that.

22:15 MATT STEVENS: Yeah, oh, fantastic. When did you do that?

22:17 JIM BEACH: Uh In between freshman and sophomore years?

22:20 MATT STEVENS: Oh, that’s wonderful. That sounds amazing.

22:22 JIM BEACH: From Woods Hole, which is on Cape Cod, up to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and then back down to Bermuda, and then back across to North Carolina, and then back into Maine, and then turned around and came back to Woods Hole, where they took the boat out of the Waterford maintenance.

22:40 MATT STEVENS: Oh, wow. Was that like a one month trip or a 3 month trip or longer?

22:46 JIM BEACH: Like 4 months, I think. We were sailing. It was 125 foot sailboat with marine research. So we had to do research and sail the boat and all of that to get college credit for a semester. So I have a minor in oceanography now, Matt.

23:02 MATT STEVENS: Oh, great. What an amazing experience, Jim. That’s fantastic. Woods Hole. Know. I grew up in New Hampshire and I’m familiar with that. That’s wonderful.

23:11 JIM BEACH: Yeah, so anyway, that was the thing I did. You started a business. I just went for a long sail. I think we did better.

23:20 MATT STEVENS: Yeah, I was actually asked to coach baseball that summer and I said, I’m sorry. I’ve committed to this other endeavor, and I just never looked back.

23:29 JIM BEACH: How many different uh, franchises have you been involved with in some capacity?

23:34 MATT STEVENS: Sure, I’ve, I’ve operated 2 uh, the one of the companies I sold for had 7. But as a consultant, I’ve placed people into hundreds. It’s over 200. I counted it up about a month ago, over 200 different brands, placed people in over 40 states. You know, and to each his own. Every person is different. Every situation is different. And franchisers are incredibly different. You can pick 10 franchises in the same industry. They will have wildly different success rates, cultures, and outcomes among franchisees.

24:07 MATT STEVENS: So my philosophy is why look at all 10 when there’s 3 or 4 of them that are clearly head and shoulders above the others when it comes to franchisees ranking the opportunity and their outcomes. So we focus on the best of the best. We reject about 90% of franchises that come to us. And that way, I’m able to introduce only the best opportunities to my candidates. I think in my busiest year gym, I introduced a little over 300 different options to my candidates.

24:36 JIM BEACH: Wow, that’s a lot.

24:38 MATT STEVENS: It is. It’s a lot to know. And luckily, we have people combining efforts and information into one huge database so that we can keep up with the knowledge.

24:48 JIM BEACH: Very impressive. Matt, how do we find out more? You online, get in touch by a franchise? All that, please.

24:55 MATT STEVENS: Do we get to do the quick 10?

24:56 JIM BEACH: Yes, we do. I’m glad you asked.

25:00 MATT STEVENS: Do we do that now, Jim, or do we do that after?

25:04 JIM BEACH: We do that right now.

25:07 MATT STEVENS: Okay, very good.

25:08 JIM BEACH: It’s just a perfect time. And yesterday I even transferred it to my new book. I’m still 100%, uh, book and paper and pen-based.

25:15 MATT STEVENS: I am too. Notes and stuff.

25:17 JIM BEACH: [unclear brief response about paper notes]

25:19 MATT STEVENS: Excellent. I’m very happy for that, Jim.

25:23 JIM BEACH: Thank you. I’m looking at a library, 2 library shelves of books in front of me right now.

25:28 MATT STEVENS: I appreciate that.

25:29 JIM BEACH: What, uh, do you want to accept the standard wager?

25:33 MATT STEVENS: I don’t, I forget, I don’t know what that is.

25:36 JIM BEACH: It’s the bet that everyone else made.

25:39 MATT STEVENS: Okay, yes, I do.

25:40 JIM BEACH: There you go. 58’s not too old for little peer pressure. Number one, favorite creativity hack.

25:46 MATT STEVENS: Oh boy, I am so much better when I solve my own problems for someone else. I find it difficult to solve my own problems for myself. I have to put it in the world of someone else and solve it that way.

26:01 JIM BEACH: Number two, favorite bootstrapping trick.

26:03 MATT STEVENS: Look at a challenge with a nonprofit perspective. If we had no money to solve that, what would we do to get it done?

26:12 JIM BEACH: Number three, name your top passions.

26:13 MATT STEVENS: Oh boy, probably finance, writing, comedy. Friends, poker and exercise.

26:17 JIM BEACH: Number four, the 1st 3 steps in starting a business are…

26:21 MATT STEVENS: Yeah, uh, see your vision clearly. Where are you going to be? Plan, act. Vision. Plan. Act.

26:27 JIM BEACH: Number five. The best way to get your first real customer is…

26:32 MATT STEVENS: repeatedly, I opened up market after market by doing a charity work or a free job for a highly visible charity or a friend.

26:39 JIM BEACH: Number six, your dreamiest technology is…

26:42 MATT STEVENS: The apps that reveal who opened my email and when.

26:45 JIM BEACH: Number seven, best entrepreneurial advice.

26:47 MATT STEVENS: Yeah, timely, honest communication, beats the vast majority of your competition. I mean, 95% or more.

26:54 JIM BEACH: Number eight, worst entrepreneurial mistake.

26:55 MATT STEVENS: Teaming up with the wrong partner. It’s better to have not a partner than to have the wrong one.

27:02 JIM BEACH: Number nine, favorite entrepreneur, and why?

27:04 MATT STEVENS: I like the Junior Bridgeman story and the Roger Staubach story. People who left their careers and created 100s of millions of dollars in net worth.

27:13 JIM BEACH: I know Roger Staubach, Dallas, quarterback who went into insurance and then also commercial development, right?

27:19 MATT STEVENS: Correct.

27:20 JIM BEACH: Who’s the other person you named?

27:22 MATT STEVENS: Junior Bridgeman was a… I think he played 10 or 11 years in the NBA, but, you know, not a name anyone recognizes as you just saw, Jim, and he built an empire of, um, food franchises.

27:35 JIM BEACH: Who else has done really well in that they and his Fran Tarkenton?

27:39 MATT STEVENS: Oh, okay. I didn’t know that. Fantastic.

27:42 JIM BEACH: You know, Mr. That’s Incredible.

27:44 MATT STEVENS: Exactly.

27:45 JIM BEACH: He wasn’t the most gregarious SNL host way back in the day, but if he can build a business like that, that’s great. He actually used to be my carpool driver.

27:55 MATT STEVENS: Really?

27:56 JIM BEACH: Yes. Guess who else was in that same carpool?

27:59 MATT STEVENS: Another Viking?

28:00 JIM BEACH: Amy Carter.

28:01 MATT STEVENS: Oh my. How did you neighborhood, isn’t it? There’s a story right there, Jim. You share?

28:06 JIM BEACH: We already did how we find out more and all that, didn’t we? We already got the UR. Give us the URL again.

28:14 MATT STEVENS: We didn’t.

28:15 JIM BEACH: It is, he is The Franchise Guy. WWW. He is The Franchise Guy.com. Just spell it out.

28:20 MATT STEVENS: That’s me. I have some wonderful tools on there for my visitors. You can have an aptitude test. You can read parts of my book. You can see videos of me, so you can get into my head and understand if I’m the guy for you or not.

28:37 JIM BEACH: Okay. Oh, man, I just got your score. Oh, I am so disappointed. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Matt. You got a 94. It’s an excellent score. Excellent score, but we had someone from the SBA apparently didn’t like one of your answers. And so danged you a little bit. So unfortunately, you lose. You owe us a Tesla. We always play for a Tesla.

29:00 MATT STEVENS: I will look forward to that soon, my friend. I appreciate you letting me know that after the fact, Jim. Wonderful game.

29:08 JIM BEACH: It’s always been played this way. We’ve never changed the rules.

29:12 MATT STEVENS: I’ll be happy to speak with the SBA person and set them straight.

29:17 JIM BEACH: Matt, thanks for being with us. We love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

29:22 MATT STEVENS: Jim, thanks so much. It’s been wonderful. Have a great day.

29:27 JIM BEACH: And we will be right back. We are back in, boy, do I have an interesting entrepreneur to introduce you to. This one is crazy. I feel like we should play that game. Which one of these doesn’t belong with the other. Anyway, see if you figure out what I’m thinking about. Don Kurz is our next guest, an amazing entrepreneur, former championship athlete. He won a national title with Johns Hopkins, their 1st lacrosse team to ever win.

29:55 JIM BEACH: He was also a dance instructor with Arthur Murray Dance Studios, and was a regular at the iconic Studio 54 in the late 70s with Mick Jagger and Cher and all those other crazy people. He is today currently the executive board chair and principal shareholder of a creative agency called Omelet. I love that name. Throw all the stuff in a skillet and see what you get. The omelet anyway. Fascinating.

30:22 DON KURZ: Exactly.

30:23 JIM BEACH: He was on the board of Johns Hopkins University for 12 years as a trustee and now he has been granted emeritus for life at the Johns Hopkins at the system there. Let’s see. Outstanding athlete of high school and then went on to Athletic Hall of Fame and I already mentioned the dance instructor. He was an adjunct professor at Columbia. That’s enough. Good God. Don, welcome to the show.

30:50 DON KURZ: Well, thank you so much, Jim. I love the framing of which one of these things about this guy doesn’t belong and that probably there are multiple answers.

31:00 JIM BEACH: What would you choose? What do you think the weirdest is?

31:04 DON KURZ: If I had the proverbial gun to my head, I would probably say the whole dance between Arthur Murray dance instructor and Studio 54 regular, they kind of don’t conform with athletics and being a business person.

31:18 JIM BEACH: No, that’s exactly the one I was thinking about. I did not get to the book. He has just released a new book called Do the Hustle, Life Lessons from Studio 54, the Championship lacrosse field, and the boardroom. The cover is brilliant. It’s got a hand holding a lacrosse ball, and instead of cross stick, and instead of the ball, it’s got a glittering disco ball there, as Studio 54 did. Who did you hang out with there? Who were the stars you regularly saw and bumped up against? Give us a 54 story in other words.

31:54 DON KURZ: Okay, well, um, the way I got in, because I’m no special guy, so it was a very hard place to get in, and one thing your listeners might not be aware of is Studio 54, the iconic disco that we all know was only open for 2 years. That kind of contributes to its mystique because the owner, uh, Ian Schrager and, um, forgetting the other gentleman, evidently didn’t like playing paying taxes, so they got busted and spent, um, years in prison in this and Studio 54 closed, which kind of contributes to its aura.

32:30 DON KURZ: And I was a dance instructor after I was my athletic career ended ended with 2 major knee injuries and somehow I morphed into this dancing thing and then one of my dance students worked for the one of the big fashion houses who had the entrée to Studio 54. So I just went with Donna Karan and then a bunch of other folks in, because I couldn’t have gotten in on my own. There were thousands of people outside the velvet rope and.

33:00 DON KURZ: Then I got to know the doorman and I was able to go in pretty much whenever I wanted, which was which was very special. So, I’m just off the top of my head. I’ll tell you the people, and I’m not suggesting these were all my best buddies, but that I saw and danced next to, and he danced with from Mick Jagger, the Bianca Jagger, to Truman Capote, to Andy Warhol, to Donna Summer, the disco queen herself, to Jackie Onassis, and the list goes on. So these are all folks that I saw, and I even got into the VIP room.

33:39 DON KURZ: Uh, which was actually downstairs and the sex, drugs, not rock and roll, sex, drugs, and disco that went on down there are uh, something that is still hard to believe what I witnessed. So it was quite a period, but that was that was many years ago.

33:56 JIM BEACH: And were you at Columbia at that time teaching?

34:00 DON KURZ: Yes, sir. That’s, uh, I was, I was, I was actually a student because I, I became an adjunct professor after I graduated. I was getting an MBA there uh, in the late 70s and that’s where, of course, the Columbia’s in New York City and Studio 54 is as well. So when I went to Columbia, I was still teaching dancing on the side to students and their friends. And, um, that’s how I morphed into Studio 54, but then I became an adjunct professor after I graduated.

34:32 JIM BEACH: That’s just so funny. MBA by day, 54 by night.

34:37 DON KURZ: Let’s just say my priorities weren’t studying. They were more the nighttime, which is another story.

34:42 JIM BEACH: I love it. All right. I left out part of your resume too. I was just it was so long. You also took a company public on NASDAQ, which is like winning the Oscar, the Academy Award. It’s like winning the Super Bowl. You know, it is the epitome for us entrepreneurs, what we do in our space. So congratulations on that. Tell us that story for you, son.

35:08 DON KURZ: Thank you. Well, it was, um, I, after graduating from Columbia and realizing I wasn’t going to be a dance instructor the rest of my life, I got somewhat serious about a career in business and I became a management consultant, to, which is the company that’s now PricewaterhouseCoopers, uh, and did that for 10 years, became a partner and realized I didn’t want to be an advisor, kind of, companies my whole life. So I became an entrepreneur. And the company that ultimately we took public was uh, it’s a fascinating business.

35:42 DON KURZ: It was getting the licenses from entertainment studios, particularly for kids and family. So Disney. We had the Lion King and Toy Story and Pocahontas and, uh, the little mermaid and on and on and on, and then we would take that intellectual property and marry it with a brand, in this case, Burger King or other fast food restaurant, or Kellogg’s cereal company, and do advertising and then do toys, promotional toys that were giveaways, you buy the happy meal or the kids’ meal at Burger King, and you get that free toy.

36:19 DON KURZ: So that’s actually quite a big complicated business because you have to manufacture them in millions and millions of quantity. They have to be safe for kids of all ages. You have to import them and clear customs and warehouse them and get them into the stores or whatever. So that company, which was called Equity Marketing, we took public in 1994 I believe. And had a good run, yes.

36:44 JIM BEACH: You mean, like those, the Dalmatian 101 Dalmatians that you collected from McDonald’s, the Christmas of 2001.

36:50 DON KURZ: Exactly, or Beanie Babies or or Pokemon, which was our biggest promotion name, that’s, you know, like, and, and, you know, if those of us who have kids, you know, the pull of having those pre-toys, the kids don’t want to eat the food, they just want the toy. And it was a very powerful business and then we leverage that. The company reached about $250 million in sales, which today is a sizable company, but back then was quite sizable and it had a quite a good run on NASDAQ.

37:25 JIM BEACH: What company was that called?

37:26 DON KURZ: Equity Marketing Inc. The holding company was EMAK, EMAK, and that was also the trading ticker symbol, EMAK.

37:34 JIM BEACH: That is an amazing story. I, you know, I don’t collect that kind of stuff, but one year I went off and bought the Dalmatian series because they were all, you know, Disney, Mickey Mouse stuff, and Mickey Mouse tree that year, and I bought a whole bunch of the ornaments and then super glued books on top of them. And it was a great tree. It was a Mickey Mouse tree from McDonald’s, but it got huge. Great combat. Everyone loved it.

38:04 DON KURZ: Yeah, everyone loves it. Makes you smile and, you know, you find, you know, adults and serious adults, like professors and executives, have these little toys on their, you know, their desk. And, uh, they just get a kick at them, they, they, they walk and, and spin around and do whatever. But engineering that, and of course, I’m not, wasn’t the creative guy, engineering that to deliver it at a price point where they could give it away was quite a challenge. And it’s not as easy as it might look. And, um, yeah, it was, we had a good run.

38:41 JIM BEACH: ¢10? What was the budget per item?

38:43 DON KURZ: That’s a great question. The budget, that ultimately had to go into the store, including every cost, if there’s a, uh, an import fee, to warehousing, to building the molds for the toys to manufacturing. It had to be delivered to the franchisee who bought them. The guy who owned the restaurant had ¢50 So we had to, and that included the royalty to Disney, because you have to pay to use their IP.

39:10 DON KURZ: And, uh, and it had to be tested, included the safety testing for kids of all ages, so you had to test for lead paint, you had to test for small parts, so they don’t choke. Yeah, they go through a lot of rigorous stuff. So the net price was ¢50 And then the kids meal was anywhere from $1.99 to $2.49 and that free toy was in there. Now, they didn’t make any margin the franchisee on the kids meal because they were giving away the 50-cent item. But the average check for a customer who bought a kid’s meal was $13.

39:49 DON KURZ: Uh, so what happens is the kid, of course, doesn’t walk in there alone, the parents come and then they buy food. So the average check for the kid’s meal was $13 without a kid’s meal was $3. So they, it was a very profitable loss leader, if you will, for the franchisees, quite, quite a, quite a racket, if you will.

40:12 JIM BEACH: A racket, that’s an interesting term, because I was also thinking about the monopoly, which I loved there, which turned out to be quite literally a racket. You remember that?

40:24 DON KURZ: Oh yeah, and that’s that was McDonald’s. We were Burger King and Arby’s, but and Subway. But yeah, that was a McDonald’s and then, you know, the company, um, God, their, their sign, it was called Simon Marketing. I knew the principals there. Uh, they, there are some shenanigans with the game pieces, which have very strict security protocols. The FBI got involved, and I think there’s a Netflix documentary on it, and they got busted, but, um, so it, uh, Jim, you’re right. I didn’t mean racket literally, but you’re right. In that case, it was a racket.

41:00 JIM BEACH: Yeah, I used to love McDonald’s Monopoly.

41:03 DON KURZ: Yeah.

41:04 JIM BEACH: One year, you know, one, it was 11 o’clock at night or something, and the guy at the windows was like, you love it? And I was like, yeah, it gave me a whole bag, you know, thousands of pieces. I was in heaven, Don. I was in heaven. But I didn’t win a damn thing. And that’s what I…

41:24 DON KURZ: Well, maybe the guy, maybe the guy knew, or the, the, the, the scam was, they knew where the winning pieces were. And so the guy, to the extent he was in on it, he knew that he didn’t give you a winning piece. They seeded the winning pieces and specific stores where their relatives would go and they would get it. And, um, Amazing that they caught them, but I’m glad they did.

41:51 JIM BEACH: Yes. Tell us about Omelet. Again, love the name. I immediately get it for an agency. Tell us about the company.

42:00 DON KURZ: Yeah, it’s a uh, creative agency that does uh, high-end brand and related work, including social media for big clients like Google and Netflix, Warner Brothers, um, speaking of Monopoly, one of our big clients is a company called Scopley, which does the Monopoly Go mobile game that’s quite, quite popular. I think there’s something like a 1 billion worldwide users of it. So we work on Monopoly in terms of the mobile gaming.

42:28 DON KURZ: And we do every type of creative you can think of from a traditional television commercial to a out of home, an event, a all types of social media, from Instagram to Facebook to TikTok, and we will create the campaign, do the strategy behind it, produce it. We mostly produce things in house with our own video people and uh, photographers, et cetera. And then, um, distribute it. And we tend to not buy the media so the clients will actually place it in the media that they want. But we’re doing the strategy that created the production.

43:05 DON KURZ: And, um, yeah, it’s, it’s a company based in LA. I live in Nashville now I moved here a couple of years ago and it’s a wonderful company, highly, highly creative, and you hit it right on the head. The notion of an Omelet is, uh, it’s creative. Sometimes you throw ham in, bacon and green peppers or onion or whatever and can get creative with it. It comes out a little different each time. You never quite know what you’re going to get. So we think it’s a good, uh, symbol for what we do.

43:39 JIM BEACH: Only the big Fortune 500 type customers, you do work for small people or your name list of customers is pretty impressive.

43:47 DON KURZ: Yeah, we tend to do work for the bigger companies, not because we are only care about them. We’re focused on them. It’s just, they have the bigger budgets just being realistic and the, uh, smaller companies, um, we find we’re not that price competitive with, but we are keen to work with them. I’m opening up some doors in Nashville and uh, we can, we can work on smaller budgets, but fortunately, we’re very busy with the big clients and big budgets. So right now we’ll tend to be Fortune 500.

44:22 JIM BEACH: Very impressive. I haven’t figured out, Don, when your breakthrough moment was yet. You know, you were a normal guy, then what did you do to put you on a steeper trajectory for the rest of your life? When did that happen?

44:38 DON KURZ: Boy, that’s a great question. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, I, I, I think the, and and to the extent I have a message for your listeners, I, I think, all of my breakthroughs came after substantial setbacks, and the 1st major one was, I was a very good lacrosse player, if I can say that, and was on the national championship team and was hoping to be an all American in my junior season. I got a very bad ACL, an MCL ligament tear in my right knee playing at the University of Pennsylvania on an early version.

45:15 JIM BEACH: Yeah. [unclear joking response about Penn].

45:18 DON KURZ: Oh, I, I, I, I share that particularly after getting, getting hurt on Franklin Field and their Astroturf, that was like a shed carpet.

45:26 JIM BEACH: I hate those AstroTurf guys there. [unclear brief response].

45:30 DON KURZ: Exactly. And and then I was that dating myself here, but that was pre-MRI is pre-arthroscopic surgery. So they, what they did back then was they put you in a full leg cast for a couple of months. And then you rebuild it after the cash you build the muscles do a lot of physical therapy and training. And I heard it again, the same injury right on my 1st practice back 4 months later. So not being a very big guy.

46:01 DON KURZ: My entire game was speed and quickness and the ability to cut, and I just lost a step and My career was over, and then I just hopping to pivot, got as a drummer as a kid. So I guess I had some natural rhythm and I met this young lady and she was a dance instructor, believe it or not, at a place called New York Hustle, Inc.

46:26 DON KURZ: And, uh, she taught me these moves and because I’m from New York and Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore where I was going to college, I would go back and forth to see her and since I wasn’t planning across anymore and starting to build up my media, she would teach me the moves. I would then go and put up flyers at the local women’s colleges and start giving lessons and then I was discovered by Arthur Murray, many of your listeners might know, was a big ballroom dancing, uh, organization and started teaching them the hustle and learning all the ballroom dances.

47:05 DON KURZ: And then I went, I got my MBA at Columbia and then the Studio 54 thing happened. So my, that’s a very long winded response to your question. That pivot from arguably the lowest point of my life. My entire identity was sports and then it was over. With that.

47:23 JIM BEACH: And after college, after the MBA, what happened?

47:25 DON KURZ: I got serious because I almost flunked out of Columbia because I lived at Studio 54 and I think the statute of limitations as expired, so I can say I was doing plenty of drugs with all the folks there. So, I wasn’t a very good student and then I finally got serious. I got into consulting and became a, you know, put my work ethic that I had in sports towards, uh, towards business.

47:54 DON KURZ: And I, I just had, I, you know, I think I have a knack for reading opportunities and situations and people and I just took, took a flyer with this crazy business of promotional marketing that we talked about with fast foods and the Disney characters and, um, having a reasonable background in finance because of my MBA and in the consulting world. I said, you know, what the hell? Let’s just take this sucker public, see if we can get some liquidity and use that currency to start buying other companies. And I knew a lot of folks in the finance industry.

48:32 DON KURZ: And, you know, we, we push through the IPO, you know, at, in, in, I believe 1994 it was, uh, during, uh, not a frothy market and it was, you know, we got public. The stock didn’t do well the 1st year and then it became a very good performing company for about 5 years was definitely one of the top 100 stocks. It went up of, you know, 5 times, 5.5 times from its IPO in 3 years. Um, and, uh, and then of course, You know, things don’t keep compounding at 50% growth a year.

49:08 DON KURZ: We had our moments between the, um, dot com crash in 2000, which we weren’t part of the dot com, but of course, it pulled the whole markets down and then 911 in 2001 markets got hit again and the public started not being as much fun as it was when everything was going great.

49:27 JIM BEACH: Very true. Well, what an amazing career, Don. Worthy of the book. Why did you want to write the book? What was the impetus behind it? What were you hoping your grandkids would see in it?

49:40 DON KURZ: You know, it, it, I don’t know, I can’t speak for other people. Everybody, always, many people say I have a book in me. You know, whether it’s a novel that they have an idea or there’s life story, whatever it is. Um, but of course, many people don’t write a book because it’s a lot of work. And the thing that triggered me was I got a call from Forbes. Of course, the big, big business publication who evidently looks at people’s backgrounds on LinkedIn and they saw my background and said, wow, we’d love for you to join our publishing.

50:19 DON KURZ: Empire, if you will, will help you write a book and then you’ll be a contributing author and will help market it, et cetera. And I said, no, that’s…

50:29 JIM BEACH: Who called you? Yeah, that’s exactly who it is. Pretty impressive that I knew that off the top of my head, isn’t it?

50:38 DON KURZ: I, you’re the 1st one.

50:40 JIM BEACH: Yeah, the 1st one.

50:42 DON KURZ: First and last one.

50:43 JIM BEACH: Okay. Okay.

50:44 DON KURZ: Yeah, and very good guy. I was very impressed with very smart.

50:48 JIM BEACH: He is, they’re just.. Expensive.

50:49 DON KURZ: They do it well.

50:52 JIM BEACH: They’re the highest price point out there.

50:54 DON KURZ: They they are, and that’s the thing, and that was definitely a factor, but then it was also, I did a book plan with them. Of course, Jimmy, you know what that is? It’s like a 30 page detailed outline. And it was well done. It was, But it didn’t really have any soul or uniqueness. It was more traditional business and well, I think I have something to add to the business world. I didn’t think. My unique contribution to writing a book would be about business would be more about my life ups and downs and with different twists and turns and whatever.

51:32 DON KURZ: So I respectfully declined and then I went and hired an editor, a prominent person to work with because I didn’t know how I can write. I’m a reasonable writer, but I didn’t really know how to structure a book. And he was really good in helping pull the story out. Shaping the narrative and the like. And, uh, so I wrote the book and then went to, um, I wasn’t interested in the big publishing has it because it would take a year or 2 to get the book released and just wanted to get it out there.

52:09 DON KURZ: So I, um, work with a small publisher called Money Avenue Press, who was very good, and we got the, the, the thing published in March of this year, and it’s had a, it’s had a good running. You know, I’m learning about book marketing and how to get the message out and I’m very grateful for you to give me this platform to talk to your listeners and and people who write it. Sorry, who read the book really like it.

52:39 DON KURZ: It’s gotten really good reviews and I’m anxious to get more people on on board to read it because there’s a lot of good lessons, I believe, in there. Oh, from my many mistakes.

52:52 JIM BEACH: How do we find out more? Follow online, get a copy of the book, Don.

52:56 DON KURZ: Uh, my, I have a website, DonKurzAuthor.com, D-O-N-K-U-R-Z author.com, which will have all of the, um, information, the background of the book, and it’ll have a link to buy it, and then, of course, it’s available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, and in a bunch of local bookstores, I don’t control where it gets distributed, but it’s a bunch of local bookstores as well. And I have an audiobook coming out in the next month that’s not out yet, but that’ll be available on Audible and any other audiobook platform. So, people seem to like the book. It’s fun. It’s serious.

53:36 DON KURZ: It, it, uh, doesn’t take itself too seriously and uh, I think it’d be a worthwhile lead for your, for your listeners.

53:44 JIM BEACH: Thank you so much for being with us. Great stuff and Do the Hustle. Thanks a lot for doing work.

53:51 DON KURZ: Thank you, Jim. I appreciate it again. It’s wonderful to talk to you.

53:56 JIM BEACH: We’re out of time. Have a great day. Bye now.