June 12, 2026 – eReleases CEO Mickie Kennedy and FranBridge Jon Ostenson

Intro 1 0:04
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.

Jim Beach 0:26
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a great day, a great week, and excited for your future as an entrepreneur. Right now, when things are tenuous in the rest of the world, is a great time to be an entrepreneur. I have a fantastic show. I’m excited to welcome two great guests. First up today, please welcome Mickey Kennedy. He built e releases, which you have got to be using. And then John Austinson is with us, talking about non-food franchises. I love a franchise. Good show. Let’s get started right now. Here we go. You know, I am obsessed with PR, and getting your name out there, and I believe that visibility begets visibility, and there’s nothing you can do more as an entrepreneur and a thought leader more important than getting your name, your company name out there. I’m very excited to introduce someone whose business I have looked at a lot of times and never committed to, but I’m going to now, after I studied it a little bit. Please welcome Vicky Kennedy to the show. He is the founder and CEO of E Releases, plural e releases. It is a PR agency, you post things there, I think, and then the New York Times and the Washington Post see it and go, wow, we should put that in our paper, and you get great PR out of it. He is obsessed with helping small businesses, startups, and authors gain the visibility and authority that they need through their PR. Vicky, welcome. How you doing?

Mickie Kennedy 2:00
Good, thanks for having me.

Jim Beach 2:02
So, tell us, how the industry without you works. All right, so how does it normally work with PR, you know, big agency and all of that stuff?

Speaker 1 2:15
So, most, I guess PR firms do a lot of different things, one of which is they’ll write pitches and send those along to journalists, ideally ones they have connections with. They might also do some phone calling, pitching by phone, but I find that journalists pick up less and less, even when they know who it is, coming, calling in, and and then they also send releases out over a wire, and in the US it’s predominantly a duopoly with PR Newswire and Business Wire being the major news wires of press releases. There are wires you’ve heard of, like the Associated Press and Reuters, they do not disseminate press releases. What they send out is content that they’ve written, and then they license it to newspapers and other places. And press releases, you know, are written by the people releasing it, and they’re hoping anybody will use it and write articles and things like that, and here in the US, we also have a lot of noise out there. There’s a lot of companies with wire in their names that are doing what’s called syndication, and it’s basically your press release gets replicated on a bunch of websites, it happens a little bit with Business Wire and PR Newswire, like your press release will show up on Yahoo Finance and things like that, but very few people see those. It is a lot of noise and misinformation, and people assume, hey, you know, I got 300 links to my press release replicated across a bunch of websites that must be good, but the truth is probably 20 people will see that, even though it’s 300 links. A lot of the places that syndicate stuff put it on a sub domain. If you go to the website and do a search, your company name, your name, none of that will show up, because it’s not their content, it’s just content that they’re trying to monetize on a sub domain or a folder on their website or something like that, so we get a lot of people saying I get the same thing that I get through e releases that I get through, you know, blankety blank wire, which charges $49 and the truth is, you don’t, so if you go through e releases, you get a national distribution on PR Newswire, and that’s one of the two wires that I’d mentioned being a duopoly, the very expensive, they charge about just under 18. $100 to move a 600 word press release nationally, you get that through e releases for a new customer special under $400 so it’s quite a bit of savings to come to e releases. The caveat is you have to be a client pure newswire doesn’t want to work with, so if you’re a large company publicly traded, you know, their sales team will want to work with you directly, but if you’re like a small company or a startup or entrepreneur, and your budgets say two or $3,000 a year, and not 20 to $30,000 a year, then you’ll have a better and cheaper experience going directly to us. We are the only person organization that has a relationship like this with PR Newswire, where every release goes out nationally for a fraction of the cost, and it’s largely because of the fact we’re distributing more than 10,000 releases a year, so individually we probably wouldn’t matter to the newswire, but aggregately, with over 10,000 releases a year, it’s still a few million dollars that Pure Newswire gets from us by representing so many small businesses and entrepreneurs and startups.

Jim Beach 6:15
Wow, that’s very impressive. But then, wow, I’ll get lost in the mix.

Mickie Kennedy 6:21
Yes, 97% of the press releases that go out, even the ones that pay nearly $2,000 to go out with Pure Newswire, do not generate any earned media. The odds are not in your favor. That being said, there are lots of examples in the 3% of press releases that do get picked up, and you could craft an entire PR campaign following those 3% principles, and probably two or three of a of your press releases would generate earned media, and that’s a campaign of six to eight press releases. Generally, I always tell people, if you’re going to try one press release for to see if PR works for you, save your money and just move on to whatever the next shiny object is. You know it’s it needs to be judged by a proper PR campaign, where you try and test several different approaches and hooks to see what happens. Now, if you are doing strategic releases, following the 3% of releases that do get picked up. You will have at least, like I said, a couple of wins. There’s one type of release that has never not generated earned media, and often it’s usually between six and 14 articles every time someone does that, and that’s an industry survey. Do a survey of your industry, ask some really compelling questions, timely questions, you know. Maybe it’s, How is AI influencing your industry at the moment? Are there any fears around that? You know, what are other things that are happening in your industry? Is there consolidation? Is there, you know, employment issues where people just aren’t adjusting to being back in the office, you know, things around that, and also, you know, things that are very particular to your industry. If you’ve noticed something that you can’t wait to mention to others, that say a trade show or a conference, and you noticed this, that could be a question to ask in a survey, so build out a survey. I like Survey Monkey. I like three questions per page, so maybe you do four pages and works out to be 12 questions, and that way, if someone leaves halfway through it, you still got half their responses, and hopefully front-loaded the most important questions first, and then you don’t need a rolodex of a lot of people to send that survey to. You don’t have to send it to anyone except for reaching out to a smaller independent trade association. The large trade associations your industry will not work with you, they won’t see the benefit of it, but there are lots of sizable, smaller, and independent ones. Even in my industry, I was called out by someone saying, “Well, Mickey, in our industry, it wouldn’t work because there’s only Public Relations Society of America. I had to break it to this woman who had 40 some years of experience in PR. There’s over 700 associations around public relations in the United States alone, that many of them are going to be too small or too isolated to matter, like Florida PR firms or Mid-Atlantic, but there are some that represent, say, independent PR firms of 50 employees or less, that would be ideal, that’s probably 80% of the industry, and they have a couple 1000 members, so you’re going to send that link, that Survey Monkey link, to that association, say, “Hey, I am doing this survey, I would love to get at least 100 responses, so that I would be able to include your organization in the press release I’ll be issuing nationally over PR Newswire. The coming weeks, again, these are small and independent trade associations, not a lot of people know about, including industry veterans, so they’re going to see this as a win-win. And more than two thirds of the time, the first association we approach will send it out, and again, if we don’t get the 100 responses, we go back to them and say, “I hate for you to lose this opportunity, we only got 70 responses. Is there any way we could boost this on social media? Maybe do another email send, and they often will go to bat because they’re so close to getting the number that you want.

Mickie Kennedy 10:32
And I generally like to have at least 100 responses for it to have some statistical relevance with the media, but that being said, I have had incidents where having smaller numbers hasn’t been a problem with some really niche industries, and again, the press release, you’re going to analyze the results, you’re going to figure out what’s the most surprising answer in here, or the hottest topic with a number behind it that you can sort of build a single press release on. Generally, I will link to the entire survey, but I want the press release to focus on one or two big ahas from the survey and make that the focus. You’re going to provide an amazing quote as the author of the survey about the results, and you don’t have to agree with the results, you could say hey. While the survey showed that 67% of graphic artists believe they’re going to be replaced in the next five years by AI, I don’t think that that’s going to be the case, but I do think that those who don’t know how to incorporate AI into their skill set are going to be a very serious disadvantage in the next few years, and so you get that out there, and like I said, these, these are right, the media loves numbers, they love stuff that’s timely, and this is right up the alley of what you know journalists are looking for, and so just by doing that, you are guaranteed that you will get media coverage, and so I recommend this for clients who just feel discouraged. They’ve done a few releases, nothing’s really happened, and you know what I said can be as systemic and easy as I explained it. It doesn’t have to be all encompassing. It’s really just asking some thoughtful questions, and then just doing a little bit of networking with a trade association and and then analyzing the results and writing a release. Now I know a lot of people lean on AI these days and I don’t have a problem with people using AI to write a press release, especially if writing is not your skill set. I would prefer that they’re written by humans, but I don’t see it as bad, because the end result that’s going to consumers isn’t the press release, it’s the article a journalist wrote based off the press release. So, but the thing about it is AI writes a pretty good press release, but AI is horrible at choosing what to write about, so if you unleash AI to choose what to write about, you’re going to probably get one of the 97% of press releases that looks great, but will not generate earned media. So, when you go to AI, make sure you know exactly what you wanted to write about, that you want it to be strategic and newsworthy, and I generally do not let it write a 600 word press release in two or three seconds. I will say, hey, here’s what I want the press release to be about. Could you give me the structure? 80% of the time it’ll generate a press release immediately. I ignore it and say, okay, that was great. Now give me the structure of what you just wrote, and then I go, okay, give me 10 versions of a headline for this press release. Give me three versions of opening paragraph, and then if I like one paragraph, but it’s missing something I’d really want to get into the beginning, I say, hey, I like this paragraph best, but could you also incorporate this element, which I think is really important. And then we go to the next paragraph, and usually by the second or third paragraph, I go, hey, I want to have some room in here for a quote, could you provide a quote here? And then usually I do not take what they wrote. AI writes the same type of quotes that appear in 99% of press releases. They’re safe, no one’s going to be fired because of it, and but it’s not a punchy quote. Quotes are the difference between you getting picked up and not. If a journalist is looking at two press releases that are equally newsworthy, and one has an amazing quote, and one has a soft quote.

Mickie Kennedy 14:43
They know that if they write a great article and they put a soft quote in it, it’s going to land flat. But if they write the same article and then put an amazing strong quote in there, it’s going to make that article stand out even more. What makes a great quote? It could be that you. You’re a wordsmith, and you just have a beauty for language, but most people don’t. Outside of that, make sure you’re using strong active verbs. You’re saying something with conviction. If you have a contrarian viewpoint that doesn’t alienate you from your customer base, that’s a great place to put it, because a journalist isn’t going to paraphrase that and speak on behalf of the industry on a contrarian subject, they’ll certainly make sure that they’re putting that in quotes, that it’s attributed to you, and that’s a great way to ensure that you get picked up there, but you know, spend some time with the quote, and you know, make it so that if it was paraphrased, the person who had previously read the press release with the quote would say, wow, I really miss how that was, how that was said, or you know, that that was much stronger before, that’s a good gut test of whether that quote is good or not, and you know, the headlines are really central and most important, I’d mentioned how the news wires are used quite a bit. They’re headline driven, and when a journalist logs into their PR Newswire account, they usually see the default industry feed that they set up. They can also customize it, so pending certain press releases that mention keywords that they’re really excited about in their industry, and also they can set up keywords to exclude, so maybe you cover fashion, but maybe you don’t cover retail and ready to wear, so you might take keywords like JCPenney and things like that, knowing that you know clothing manufacturers who mentioned those companies aren’t the type of companies that you follow, and so you know you want to make sure that the headline is strong, but it’s not strong in the way that we think of article headlines. I see a lot of people that like to use puns and head scratchers, that wow, that’s intriguing. I want to read more. That doesn’t work with journalists. A busy journalist who’s scrolling through headlines doesn’t want to read a New York Post on headline, they want to know this headline is relevant to their industry. So, probably the best headlines are those that get across the most important elements. Again, you can use active verbs and make it a little bit stronger, but they generally, the headlines that get the best responses are those that are just the facts and the information, and so that’s not a time to be creative in the press release, and you know, because of the duopoly of the news wire, and another thing that’s happened over the last 20 years, which is media databases. The news wires currently the best way to get your news out, being PR Newswire or Business Wire. When people buy or license to a media database for a year, they talk themselves into, I call it the shotgun approach. So, instead of a golf club company sending to just the 1400 journalists who cover the golf industry, they start saying, well, you know, who likes to play golf? Bankers and business people, and all of a sudden they’re sending press releases about their golf clubs to financial analysts who will never, in their career, write about a golf club that’s happening across every industry, and the reason that national journalists are really not using their email to get leads and to write stories, they’re leaning more on the newswire, because the newswire is very pure, and you’re not going to have the problem of off-targeted feeds that when they go in and look, it’s going to be basically content that’s very relevant for them in their industry.

Jim Beach 18:51
Wow, Mickey, I’ve never let a guest go that long, and I kept waiting for you to, like, you know, to pause or not continue with great information, and then you would ask the question of yourself that I wanted to ask, and then answer it. That was like 12 minutes of amazing information, so I learned a lot. Great, great information. Switch it up now. How’d you get this business idea? Tell me the entrepreneurial history. We’ll only have about six minutes left. So, okay,

Mickie Kennedy 19:28
so

Jim Beach 19:29
tell me your entrepreneurial history of this.

Mickie Kennedy 19:32
So, I graduated with an MFA in creative writing with the emphasis in poetry, and I was going to be a poet, waiting tables full time. I always waited tables part time, loved it. Graduated, did it full time, hated it. My back hurt, my knees hurt. I pivoted to a safe office job as employee number three at a telecom research startup. They handed me a state of the art $5,000 fax machine that held 100 numbers. A, and a rolodex of journalists that was 150 journalists long, so I was programming and deleting phone numbers for a day and a half, almost every month, sending out press releases, and not much happened, and the owner says, “Yeah, it rarely does, and I’m like, “Well, if I’m going to waste a day and a half every month, I’m going to make sure that we get pickup, and so I realized that what was missing from what we were sending out was a story we were publishing data and numbers, and I mentioned before with surveys journalists love that, but I wasn’t putting it in the contextually in a story, and so we had just published international telecom traffic data from the Caribbean to and from the United States, and I saw a big outlier as a country I can’t even recall right now, but it’s not one that we, you would have heard of, but it had more traffic than all the other Caribbean countries combined, and turns out that was the call center for one 900 numbers, all one 900 numbers were routed through that country, and for those who are listing one 900 numbers 27 years ago were numbers you would call, and you might speak to a recorded horoscope line for 75 cents a minute, or a live psychic for two or $3 a minute, or pet advice, and everything under the sun, including the adult industry, and it was built to your landline, which is your house phone, not us. This was pre cell phones, and so we rewrote that press release talking about that phenomenon, and we got picked up by The Economist, Financial Times, Washington Post, and numerous other telecom trade publications, including Red Herring, and I just continued to kill it like that, sending out these press releases that are getting picked up, and I just saw what it did for this small company, and I felt like I could do this for others, and when I launched the E and E releases was email, and I had reached out and built my own little database, and was emailing press releases to journalists, but I pivoted over the years as I saw email becoming less and less effective with the rise of paid media databases, and I approached PR Newswire and said, “Here’s my idea, and they didn’t close the door on me, and we’ve continued to work as partners. I have some clients that come through and graduate, they become big companies, and I pass them along directly to the sales people at PR Newswire, and they also get people that need writing assistance and a lot more hand holding than they’re willing to provide, and they’ll send them to us, and so it’s been a really great partnership, I think, over 15 years now, and so that’s that’s sort of how I got started, and how I pivoted to do what I do, and my real passion is talking a lot, like I’m doing right now, I love education, I love what I do, I love sharing what I know, and you know, sometimes you just have to get me to shut up, but I love to sing about it and talk about it, and I see it make meaningful differences for small businesses. I had one client who called, and he was an office assistant, and he said, “My boss wants us to write a press release. We do, we build waste management facilities mostly for cities and sent it out.

Mickie Kennedy 23:23
They got picked up in Waste News magazine, and then he called me a few months later and said, “Hey, we got called by someone in Australia, and we’re ended up building two facilities there for two different cities in Australia, and it’s over $30 million job from just a $400 press release, and so these are the types of things just getting discovered in your industry, having someone put a spotlight on you can really make a huge difference, and a lot of people feel they’re too small to matter, but that’s an advantage when it comes to the media, journalists don’t get a lot of shares or accolades when they highlight the next rendition of Microsoft Office, but if they put the spotlight on a new tool or service, or just a little fix that’s out there, often by a small business, sometimes it’s just a side hustle, you know, with an idea of maybe becoming a business, they get more shares of those and accolades because people don’t know about them, and it makes the journalists seem more like a curator, so you know they love to showcase smaller companies, so don’t feel that you’re too small to matter when it comes to media. It’s actually an advantage and easier to get pick up for that reason.

Jim Beach 24:36
And how big is the company now? Whatever you’re able to share with us a number of employees, or

Mickie Kennedy 24:42
so we have nine employees. We do a little over 5 million a year, and a big chunk of that goes back to Gary Dswire, and we provide a great value for entrepreneurs and small businesses. We work with a lot of people who appear on Shark Tank. Think the producers recommended they do a press release before their episode airs, and so we’ve, we’ve worked with a lot of names that are out there, and it’s been a really cool experience, and there’s just a lot of creative people trying to figure out unique niches and unique selling propositions, and trying to do something a little bit different than everybody else, and I like being part of helping them be discovered and find their success with the media,

Jim Beach 25:29
you know. I had a subscription to Waste News magazine that you mentioned, and I let it lapse. I just thought the articles were getting repetitive, and so, you know, trash again, trash again. Every cover was just trash, you know. And I

Mickie Kennedy 25:44
do think that that is a business that is probably AI resistant for the most part.

Jim Beach 25:51
We have come up with a good one. Yes, Vicky, how do we find out more and get our press releases submitted?

Mickie Kennedy 26:00
So our website’s ereleases.com I had mentioned doing strategic press releases, and the 3% that do get picked up. I have a free master class, it’s less than an hour long, that goes through those types of press releases, and it’s invaluable for anybody considering PR, because it’s going to tell you the types of releases you suspend your energy on, and that’s at e releases.com/plan p l a n. And again, completely free. All my social media and contact information is on the lower part of my website, e releases.com And feel free to reach out with my staff. There’s no sales people, just editors. We are can reach us by email, chat, and by phone, and we walk people through their first PR campaign all the time, and we, we are straight shooters. If we, if we feel we are not a good fit, we’re, and we can save you money by not doing PR. We’ll, we’ll tell you, generally, those are people in the health and vitamin supplement industry, because there’s a lot of restrictions about what you can say on the wire and stuff like that. It’s a strange one, but for a lot of people there aren’t those restrictions, but I think that you know starting with that masterclass is a great way to learn a little bit more, and walk away with real, tangible brainstorm possibilities that you could do for your business and your company.

Jim Beach 27:30
Fantastic information, like 700 learning points. Thank you so much for being with us. We’d love to have you back.

Mickie Kennedy 27:38
Nope, that would be great. Thank you,

Jim Beach 27:40
and we will be right back. We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Yo, we had a franchise conversation the other day. It was fairly general. I’m actually excited to have a more concrete and detailed conversation now about a particular part of the franchising world. Please welcome John Austinson to the show. He is a franchise expert and is the founder and CEO of Fran Bridge Consulting. It is a two-time Inc. 5000 Company, and he has been noted as a top 1% franchise consultant, author of the best-selling book Non-Food Franchising. I guess you can figure out what the niche is there. John, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Jon Ostenson 28:35
Hey, Jim. Good morning, excited to be here.

Jim Beach 28:37
So, I think of franchising, I think of McDonald’s and Burger King and food franchises. Am I unusual or am I fairly common?

Jon Ostenson 28:49
No, it’s been my experience that when someone says the F word franchise, people are usually associated with fast food or maybe with a hotel, or you know, and those could be great paths. You know, we’ve got nothing against the food guys. A lot of them are my friends, but it’s my humble belief there are easier ways to make money, and most of our clients come to us and say, “Hey, we’d like to explore some opportunities outside of food.

Jim Beach 29:11
Is food just across the board much more expensive? You need a building, you need a build out, you need a grease trap, lot of stuff to food, usually.

Jon Ostenson 29:21
Yeah, on average it’s a heavier capex investment, you know. You also have quite a few hourly employees, and you know, fairly long operating hours, again, on average. And you know what we found is oftentimes the margins are lower, whether it be due to food waste, whether it be due to the overhead, and so we really like a lot of the other industries out there. There are a lot of ways to make money, right? And most of the time, when we start talking to clients and showing them the different types of opportunities they’re looking to expand in their market, and these are sectors and industries that people never had on their bingo card, they never would have thought of when we say franchise. So it’s so much fun for me and my role to. Really, expose people and help that light bulb go off, and I say probably 80 or 90% of those that we work with end up in an industry that was never even on their radar.

Jim Beach 30:09
That’s interesting. Let’s get food out of the way before we move on. What about Chick-fil-A? Are they still incredibly competitive? You’re lucky if you can get a franchise, you’re only going to get one? Are they still doing that model?

Jon Ostenson 30:23
It is, and you know they’re doing some international expansion right now, and a lot of the markets in the US, I mean, a lot of the good locations are sold, you know, they still certainly have room to expand, but you know, Andrew Kathy over at Chick-fil-A is a friend of mine, our kids go to school together, and you know, definitely think highly of that company in every way, but to your question, it is still very competitive to get into it,

Jim Beach 30:46
right. All right, let’s move on. So, then, non-food.. I don’t even know where to start. What are some of the opportunities there? Yeah, you know, we see for us, I guess.

Jon Ostenson 31:00
Yeah, we see a lot of interest in things like home services and property services, you know, a lot of smart money and private equity getting involved there too, kind of placing their bets on, you know, on industries that are not going out of style, things that are, you know, AI is not going to replace tomorrow, so you know that could be insulation, flooring, cabinets, pool cleaning, done a couple of pool cleaning deals this month. Actually, you know, just so many different niches within that space. You know, anything related to seniors is big, you know, just given that large macro demographic, you know, people will always spend on their aging parents, will always spend on their kids, their pets, and so franchises to support those kind of categories, you know. Certainly, health and wellness is top of mind for everyone. We just did a deal this week for a longevity type business, where they’ve got different recovery modalities, and you know, they also get into peptides and some of the injections. So, I would say ones like that are a little more fashion forward, but most of the time, what we see people gravitating towards are what I would call non-trendy, non-sexy opportunities. I actually joke that non-sexy is the new sexy when it comes to business ownership, you know. People, people like dumpsters, or, you know, insurance adjusting, or environmental testing that works with restoration companies, or, you know, two of the ones that I own, just as examples, one of them does asphalt paving and line striping, so essentially parking lots. Another one provides temporary containment walls around renovation projects, again things that you wouldn’t think of when you hear the term franchise, but that’s really where people are gravitating.

Jim Beach 32:39
All right, I was going to mention before you spoiled it that the richest man that I know, who is a billionaire, is in paving non sexy, and as you said, that you bought a franchise there yourself, that is just an amazing industry. There are always governments that need to pave something, so uh that guy, his dad said that he would give him $500 for prom, and he bought a dump truck instead. So,

Jon Ostenson 33:13
genius. I hope my son will do that. He’s got two more years before he hits prom, but I would love to see him have that ambition and that wisdom right there. I love that.

Jim Beach 33:24
Yes, all right. So, an interesting collection of businesses. So, you know, I just got fired from Coke, and you know, I have my Coke pension, and this is good, John. I’ve already got a secretary and office space for my new business, and I have a logo and a golf shirt. I’ll bring you a golf shirt the next time I see you. It’s already got my logo on it, and I already have Suzanne over there at the office fielding my calls. I’m being facetious now, that’s what I hate when people do all that stuff before they have an idea. How do I know which one of these I want to do so, home services, flooring, pool cleaning, seniors, pets, kids, health. You know, I’m not really familiar with all of the, or any of those. All I really know really well is Fanta. So, how are we going to narrow it down and pick what works for me? Am I just going to go with the highest ROI? Because I really don’t care what I’m doing.

Jon Ostenson 34:18
Yeah, you know, you can certainly Google around online, but what you’re going to see is a lot of noise out there. Obviously, every company is putting their best foot forward, and even if you find a top 150 or top 100 franchise listing, most of the companies are actually paying to be on that list, so it’s just a PR move for them. And so that’s where we come in. Essentially, my role is, if you were going to buy a house, you’d likely use a real estate agent, right? And so essentially that’s role that I play as a franchise consultant, and similar model to real estate, it’s entirely free to work with us, so we get a referral fee from the brands on the back end when a placement happens, and none of that’s passed on to our clients, so that’s very much, I’d say kind of the majority of franchises go through the consulting route, where you have someone that’s specialized, has experience, that has a. Relationships in the industry that understands, you know, in my case, I know these different companies, I see the case studies, I have client experiences, you know, I know the ones you want to be with, and you know, we’re always bringing on new models, and so what I like to do, Jim, is instead of just sitting on the sidelines and talking to clients hypothetically, let’s actually get in the game, let’s look at real businesses that are open in their market, they’re looking to expand, like I said, probably 80 or 90% of our clients will get into things that were never on their radar. So, what I like to do is say, “Hey, Jim, let me get to know you a little bit, and then, based on what you’re looking to do, your financial setup, the role that you’re looking to play in the business, your background, let me bring you, you know, maybe a dozen or so opportunities that are open in your market, real businesses, and when you start comparing and contrasting those, you start to prioritize in your mind the different characteristics you like in the business. So, again, you start to think about it a little bit differently as a business owner rather than just a consumer. And so, typically you would pick three or four to have a conversation with. Franchisors will take you through a bunch of calls or presentations, exposing you to the business. You’ll talk to other franchisees in their system, hear about their experience along the way, and then all through the process, I’m happy to be a resource and can jump on touch-based calls, and be, you know, we can always iterate as needed, and you know, I’ve got funding partners and legal partners I can pull and support you. So, it’s kind of a one-stop shop where we can identify the top opportunities for you to consider, and then let you start doing your thing, comparing and contrasting.

Jim Beach 36:28
All right, for these type of businesses, am I going to be working in the business or on the business? Boy, do I hate that cliche, but I guess it’s appropriate here. Am I actually going to be cleaning pools?

Jon Ostenson 36:41
About half of our clients, we start out as an owner operator, usually with the eye on eventually replacing themselves over time. The other half will enter into what franchises often refer to as semi passive or semi absentee. Personally, I don’t like those terms. I prefer semi involved. I think that’s a more descriptive term, and you know the idea is you put a manager in place day one that’s kind of running the day to day, you know? I’ll never sugarcoat it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. It still takes a lot of work, and really, the amount of time that you put into that business, daily, weekly, comes down to having a good operator in place. If you’ve got a great operator and you’ve set them up for success and incentivize them, that franchise work can carry a lot of the daily support water for you and helping to manage them, but if you don’t have the right person, you’re going to be leaning in until you do. So, we have a lot of clients, so, like I said, probably half of them that will start out, and maybe they keep their day job, maybe they keep their current business, but they get this going on the side. As long as they have a good operator makes it doable, so you know, in some cases, there are some franchises that say we have to have an owner operator, but I’d say probably 75% of those are open to putting a manager in place.

Jim Beach 37:48
Chick-fil-A forces you to be in the store, doesn’t it? They do, and Chick-fil-A is hard to get more than one. Right?

Jon Ostenson 37:56
Right. No, no, it’s an accomplishment for those that have two, and especially the couple out there that have three,

Jim Beach 38:03
right? You mentioned funding, can you help pay for part of my fees?

Jon Ostenson 38:13
Yeah, so let’s level set there on what the investment looks like, you know, if you’re getting into a brick and mortar retail storefront type of operation, you know, your franchise fee, your startup costs, several months of working capital, all built in, so you’re all in investment range. You’re probably in the 400 to 600,000 range on average. However, if you’re getting into more of what we would call a service-based business, where it’s more remote in the field, you don’t have that physical location, and that’s probably what two thirds of our clients are doing right now, is getting into these types of businesses, whether it be in-home senior care, some of those property services ones I mentioned, you know, different consulting type opportunities. In that case, your all-in investment tends to be more like 100,000 to 250 kind of in that range, and some people are using all cash to fund it. A lot of people like the idea of leveraging, though. Probably more than half of our clients will use an SBA loan to fund the majority of that. Banks obviously prefer lending to franchises, so that’s a very common approach. Another option is to use a retirement rollover. Some people don’t want to touch their retirement, others love the idea of self-directing it, but there’s what’s called the Rob’s program, where you can take your 401 k or IRA from a previous employer, roll that over and purchase the business with a retirement plan. Then you pay yourself salary, so you know a lot of different ways to make it happen. Some you can even combine that with an SBA loan. Some clients will do that, so it makes it a lot more doable than oftentimes people may think. The SBA, their favorite loan is a franchise, isn’t it? I’ve done some

Jim Beach 39:45
SBA loans that were not franchises. They love a franchise loan, right?

Jon Ostenson 39:51
They do. It just, again, nothing’s a given, right? But if you’ve got a proven business model and you know a whole lot of documentation around it. It carries a lot more water with the bank than just a pro forma on the back of a napkin,

Jim Beach 40:05
right? And explain what an SBA loan means. You’re not really getting the money from the government, but the government.. dot dot dot..

Jon Ostenson 40:14
yeah, government’s backing the financial institution. So we’ve got a couple of large players out there that we work with it, do franchise loan lending all day, every day, and they’re the SBA is backing it. You know, end of the day, you’re still like with most loans, you know, putting a personal guarantee on it. You know, nice thing is you can always pay these loans back early, so, and obviously interest is tax deductible, but no, essentially the government’s just backing the financial institutions, because end of the day, they want to spur economic development and create jobs in the economy, and that’s actually an important point to mention. A lot of times we will have clients that are leaving their W-2 jobs and saying, hey, you know, they’re comparing their $400,000 all-in bonuses and everything retirement plan salary in the corporate world, and they’re saying, well, I can’t make that much in the first couple years of a franchise, but they oftentimes overlooked it. Hey, but you’re also building an asset that you’ll be able to sell one day, and you get tax benefits of business ownership. There’s so much more you can do from a tax playbook standpoint that you couldn’t as a W-2, because the government incentivizes business ownership.

Jim Beach 41:21
Yes, very well said. What about the numbers? You know, do we need to plan to have five or 10 locations in a particular franchise? Is no, are there economies of scale? Does that make sense? Is should that be my long-term goal?

Jon Ostenson 41:40
Okay, it depends on the franchise. Well, end of the day, franchising gets grouped.

Jim Beach 41:46
Are you my lawyer on the phone all of a sudden?

Jon Ostenson 41:48
Franchising gets grouped together. End of the day, it’s several 100 different types of business models across several 1000 companies, right? So, and you’ve got good players, you’ve got ones that are not as good, that’s where we come in. But no, end of the day, probably directionally speaking, a third of our clients will start out with one location, a third will start out with two or three, you know, kind of giving themselves a little ways, ways to ramp up over the next couple years, and then probably a third will go bigger, you know, I’ve had clients do as many as 10 out of the gate in several different cases, we actually have had a few do more than that as well, and it gives you that path to scale over time. You get the protected territories. However, another common approach, and I think of my client Nathan in South Carolina – he’s a good example of this. Nathan’s the largest franchisee of two minute truck, and so he started out with one location in two minute truck, the moving service, and then over time bought other franchisees in the system, and it’s now up to 12 locations. So that’s another common approach. It’s what I call internal M and A. When a franchisee looks to sell, most of the time that never hits the open market, because another franchisee will buy it first, and so you do see a lot of that internal pulling together, if you will, or roll up by franchisees,

Jim Beach 43:07
very interesting. Did we know each other when you were at Carter’s?

Jon Ostenson 43:12
You know, I feel like we’ve probably connected both Atlanta natives here. I am sure we have had a good run there.

Jim Beach 43:18
Wife did interviewed with you for a job,

Jon Ostenson 43:22
easily could have that was a previous life, but

Jim Beach 43:26
Megan Heidi, or trying to list all my wife’s names here. Love it, love it. Easily could have. We’ve, I just saw that you worked at Carter’s, and that’s one of Atlanta’s big companies, they’re in baby clothing, of course, and baby stuff. When I saw that, I just like, gosh, I feel like somehow we knew each other back then, a decade ago at Carter’s easily. Should

Jon Ostenson 43:56
have, you know, I got out of grad school and never thought I’d be in the children’s apparel industry, but it’s funny where your career takes you, and yeah, I had a great run with those guys, and very thankful for the experience, and can’t say enough good things about them.

Jim Beach 44:09
And then you went into franchising yourself, right?

Jon Ostenson 44:12
I did. So it was about a decade ago that I had my start in franchising, and Jim, I started off on the other side, on the franchisor side, where had the opportunity to come in and serve as president of Shelf Genie franchise system, and Shelf Genie’s custom pull off shelving for your kitchens and pantries, again a little niche out there in the home services market, but really supporting 100, 100 or so franchisees across North America, just saw all these diverse backgrounds come together under a shared system of support, and really fell in love with the franchise model through that experience, and have since then invested in franchises myself, and also started the consulting practice about seven years ago.

Jim Beach 44:47
And now you have franchises all over the country, including Minneapolis.

Jon Ostenson 44:51
I’ve got a handful. Yeah, the one in Minneapolis is actually the asphalt and line strapping business. We own all of Minneapolis, St. Paul. Without one, I am very hands off, so I won’t pretend to be otherwise, but yeah, very handsome. Hard

Jim Beach 45:05
and expensive to get to Minneapolis. That’s one of the most expensive places to fly into in America, from from here in Atlanta, some reason. Yeah,

Jon Ostenson 45:14
which is surprising. Delta hubbing in Minneapolis as well is surprising.

Jim Beach 45:20
Oh, what about hiring people? Are you help with thinking about that? How I’m gonna market’s so tight right now for good people, I can’t outsource this one to the Philippines. How are we going to get our first manager and stuff?

Jon Ostenson 45:37
You know, some people will come in and say, hey, my nephew is going to run the business, or my brother, you know, that’s very common. Others may know someone through their church or community, then others do, to your point, have to hire on the open market, and you know, I give tips of things that I’ve learned over time, such as, you know, posted under several different job titles out there, because you never know what’s what someone’s looking for. You know, titles are free, so maybe one up the title of what they currently have, offering multiple pay package options with different levels of variable compensation, so that they they can take ownership of that decision, which I think is always a good move. You know, so I’ll share some of my learnings over the years, just personally, but then they also get the benefit, you know, in a franchise system of talking to other franchisees. Sherry, I mean, the franchisor may say, “Hey, here’s a job description, here’s our average pay, but in a franchise, oftentimes this gets overlooked, but you’ve got a built-in mastermind of other people running the same business day in day out in their local markets, and you learn a lot just being in that same room and having those conversations. So, good example, when we were at Shelby Cheney, one of our franchisees realized that stay-at-home moms were a fantastic source of designers for us, and they could work part-time, set their own hours, it was flexible, and they love getting out and talking with people in a non-salesy, consultative sort of way, oftentimes, and so they share that with other franchisees. Next thing you know, most of the franchisees had stay-at-home moms on their payroll, so you know, just an example of how you can learn from from others.

Jim Beach 47:16
That’s a great example. Yes, and are all of these sellable entities 1020 years from now.

Jon Ostenson 47:28
Yeah, if you build it halfway decently, you know you should be able to exit, and like I said, oftentimes you may exit to another franchisee within the system. You kind of have this built-in buyer base in a lot of cases, you know. There’s been research done, Jim, that shows that in like-kind industries, franchises tend to trade at a slightly higher multiple than non-franchises. So, I think there’s a lot of value from a resale buyer standpoint, because if you’re buying an existing business and inheriting someone else’s team, yeah, there’s a little bit of risk to that, right? You’re stepping into someone else’s culture, and so a lot of resale buyers like the idea of having that backing of a franchisor. They step in and day one, they’re not alone, they’ve got that partner in the business.

Jim Beach 48:11
Excellent. In your book, you talk about franchising versus entrepreneurship through acquisition. Help me understand this.

Jon Ostenson 48:22
Yeah, no, I actually had an article that was published in Forbes last week on that topic, franchising versus ETA. So, would encourage people to go check it out. You know, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship through acquisition, idea of buying an existing business can be a great move. However, oftentimes it takes a long, long time to find that business. You know, a lot of our clients have been looking for three or four years before they finally come to us and say, hey, maybe we should look at franchising, you know, so it can take a while. One friend of mine actually hired two analysts for two years to go out and find a business for them, and then once you buy that business, you oftentimes you are paying a premium, and there’s some inherent risk to it, because, like I said, you’re inheriting someone’s team and culture, assuming everything’s going to continue as is, but you may lose talent, you may lose key customers, so there is risk that oftentimes people overlook, whereas franchising, day one, it allows you to get in the game, right, you’re not having to wait several years to get going, and with franchising, you know, you’ve got that ability to take a proven business model, but put your thumbprint on the team, day one, you know, your it’s your team, it’s your culture that you’re building, so you know, then, of course, franchising provides the benefits of a proven business model and market product market fit, you’ve got the playbook, you’ve got the community of other franchisees. Certainly, there’s benefits on the marketing side where you’re stepping in day one to marketing that’s already been optimized in other markets. You’re not having to repeat the same mistakes. Technology stack day one. So, and again, not every franchise is created equal, but the good ones really provide you with great value. I. That I think oftentimes makes a lot of sense for those that are looking to buy an existing business. If the franchise allows you to get in the game, I encourage people to think about what’s right for the next season, what’s going to allow you that platform to build off of, and you know, maybe you get into a franchise that you decide you want to buy other franchisees and expand that way. A lot of our clients would come back and buy additional franchise brands over time and kind of do what I call franchise stacking. Others will acquire an existing business or start a business, so you’re not limited, and that’s one of the things I like about franchising. It allows you to get in the game and start building.

Jim Beach 50:32
Exactly, that’s all I want people to do is get off the sofa and throw the remote control away and go out there and actually start something. You can’t benefit unless you start first, so, so,

Jon Ostenson 50:45
yeah, I think there are a lot of, you know, what I would call want to be printers, and, you know, no offense to them, but I think a lot of them feel like they’re gaining an adrenaline rush just by having conversations with prospective sellers, and they, they’re doing their research, they’re consuming content because they’re not building anything, so I always encourage people, hey, quit playing. Let’s, to your point, get off the couch, get real, get in the game,

Jim Beach 51:07
go back in time. And so you did some franchises of your own. Talk about the transition into your current business, where you know Fran Bridge, where you are selling, as opposed to as you said before, on the other side of the table. How did you build this current consulting business?

Jon Ostenson 51:27
Yeah, and you know, I like to think I’m never selling, right? I’m consulting, and you know, I’m kind of serving as a middleman between the buyer and the brand, and again, we get paid by the brand, but you know, I consider the individual to be my client, just very similar to real estate. I saw an opportunity, Jim, you know, it was a.. I feel like franchising, you know, provides a lot of value, but oftentimes people overlook it. They think of it just in the terms of fast food. I hear that every single day, and I saw what franchising did for all those franchisees at Shelf Chaney, where they had different backgrounds that came together, they’re able to step into business ownership with our help, and we kind of provided those training wheels, if you will. So, yeah, I wrote a book called Non Food Franchising, which has been great out there, just really helping to educate. I love speaking, I love educating, and one of the things I realized, Jim, is what I enjoy on a day-to-day basis, I enjoy seeing new business models. I enjoy being strategic. I enjoy working with clients. So, building for Ambridge, I kind of built it around the things that I am passionate about. I’ve led large teams before, I’ve built large, been part of large companies. I had a company myself of about 45 employees. That’s not what got me as excited as being more strategic working with clients, so yeah, absolutely. Love what I’ve done with Fran Bridge, and I mean we’ve been able to help hundreds of people step into business ownership, and there are many out there that said, “Hey, thanks for the experience, but we’re going to hold off buying for now, and a lot of times they’ll return a year or two later, you know, life happens, and we’ll work with them then. So, yes, it’s been fun. It’s been a lot of fun.

Jim Beach 53:06
How do we find out more? Follow you online, get in touch.

Jon Ostenson 53:09
Yeah, come on, come on to our website, Fran Bridge consulting.com F R A N Bridge consulting.com Share your email address. My system will reach out and share downloadable links to our books, so you know, we’d love to offer a free book copy of Not Food Franchising to all of your listeners, and certainly, if you’d like to take a next step, just let her know, and we’ll get you booked on the calendar to have an intro call, and would love to get to know you and help in any way I can. Again, it’s entirely free to work with us, so yeah, come up at Fran Bridge consulting.com and we’ll go from there.

Jim Beach 53:38
Fantastic, John, thank you so very much for being with us, and congratulations on your success, and we’d love to have you back and continue to watch this grow.

Jon Ostenson 53:47
Thank you so much, Jim.

Jim Beach 53:49
We are out of time for the day, and we’ll be back soon. Thank you so much for being with us. Have a great day. Go make a million dollars. Bye now,