The Most Hidden Path to Financial Freedom in America

**Alex Smereczniak** (0:00)
Franchising is one of the most overlooked paths to wealth in America.

**Sam Parr** (0:05)
That's a very bold statement.

**Shaan Puri** (0:06)
They said the most overlooked.

**Alex Smereczniak** (0:09)
There are more millionaires generated from franchising than all combined players ever in the NFL. And there's a number of private equity family offices starting to get further and further into franchising, and they're buying both large franchisees or they're doing roll-ups.

**Sam Parr** (0:23)
You made this bold claim and I wanted to fight you about it now. I'm totally on your team.

**Alex Smereczniak** (0:26)
Traditionally, franchising is looked at as like, all right, it's either McDonald's and Subway and you got to have $3 million to do it. So only the wealthy can actually do it. But there's 4,000 franchise brands. And if you're willing to do the research, willing to do the work, there are a lot of hidden gems of brands and industries that are really taking off.

**Shaan Puri** (0:43)
So explain the path. What's the game plan?

**Alex Smereczniak** (0:45)
This is such a good hidden gem. I don't want to talk about how I did this.

**Shaan Puri** (0:56)
All right.

**Alex Smereczniak** (0:57)
What's up?

**Shaan Puri** (0:57)
Welcome, Alex. Alex is the franchise guy that we have invited on the pod. So I don't know if that's what you normally get called, but that's what we're calling you. So this podcast called My First Million, one of the reasons we originally called it that was because there was all these different ways people made a million dollars. And in my first 10 episodes, I think I had a guy who did it in real estate, a guy who did it with Amazon FBA, a guy who did it playing poker. And I was very fascinated just to hear all the different ways you can win in business for two reasons. One, I wanted a menu of options I could go choose from. How can, you know, which one sounds most appealing to me, which one sounds like it fits me? And the second is, I like just hearing that you could do it in all these different ways because it makes the impossible feel extremely possible. I remember when I was sort of pre-success, it felt like winning was like just this needle in a haystack. I couldn't find it. And then as I've been doing this podcast, I realized it's a haystack full of needles. There's so many to choose from. There's so many different ways to win. You're going to talk about kind of retail and franchising.
Did I do you justice there setting that up?

**Alex Smereczniak** (1:54)
Yeah, absolutely. I honestly up until four or five years ago was a bit of a franchise hater and thought, is that really entrepreneurship or are there viable paths there? And the more I've gotten into it, the more I've realized it's probably the most overlooked path to wealth creation in America. And I've become a big fan of it.

**Sam Parr** (2:14)
That's a very bold statement. That's a very bold statement.

**Shaan Puri** (2:16)
But he said the most overlooked.

**Sam Parr** (2:19)
All right.

**Shaan Puri** (2:20)
Well, let's start with who you are. So you're a guy who made your initial wealth in laundry, in the laundry business. So can you give us the fast-forwarded, quick version of your story?

**Alex Smereczniak** (2:32)
Yeah, I'll try to be short. So I'm originally from small town, Minnesota, town of 15,000 people. Ended up in North Carolina for college. Went to Wake Forest, studied finance, was about to have a pretty kind of boring, plain life, and then bought a laundry business my freshman year of college. Did seller financing, had to learn what that was at 18 Learn what a discounted cash flow analysis was at 18, just talking to business school professors before I got into the biz school. And I ended up buying that business and learned more doing that than any class I took at Wake. We ran it, we grew it, we sold it for a little over 10 times what we bought it for and had an exit our senior year for about 10 times what we bought it for. And that set the path to complete addiction.

**Shaan Puri** (3:18)
Why did you buy a laundry business as a college freshman? Who does that?

**Alex Smereczniak** (3:22)
So I was working for them. I was working for them as a way to make a little extra beer money and was hooked. I was like, this could work at Duke and Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt and you guys are graduating. I want to buy it. And they asked for 30 grand and my jaw hit the floor. I was like, that's the most money I've ever heard of. And I had maybe two grand saved up. So I had to get creative and figure out how are we going to buy this and structure it?