The Most Overlooked Way to Get Rich (Proven Blueprint)⏐Ep. #279

Alex Smereczniak (0:00)

I think franchising is the most overlooked path to wealth creation in America. It makes entrepreneurship and ownership a lot more accessible to the everyday person. $600 million a year. This guy started from zero. This can be what you want it to be. It can be empire building, or it can be a ones and twos-y type thing that kicks off a couple hundred grand a year for you, but still puts you in a better position in life financially. And more importantly, doing something that's fulfilling, rewarding, and yours, not someone else's.

Chris Koerner (0:28)

It's a blueprint for success that's proven.

Alex Smereczniak (0:30)

With this business's case that I'm mentioning, their average revenue is $2.6 million per person.

Chris Koerner (0:36)

Holy cow.

Alex Smereczniak (0:36)

Off of a business that might have cost them five grand to get started.

Chris Koerner (0:40)

I want to hear from you, your three favorite franchise concepts today that the average Joe could afford to buy into, but still profit hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, if not more.

Alex Smereczniak (0:51)

Yeah, let's do it.

Chris Koerner (0:55)

A lot of people out there don't feel like they're ready for full-fledged entrepreneurship, or at least they don't feel like they can take the risk to be an entrepreneur and completely work for themselves. And a lot of people out there also don't want to boss. They don't want to clock in and out every day. They're looking for something in between. And in my opinion, franchising is one of the best ways you can do that. You still have accountability. You have someone holding your hand, pointing the way, giving you a proven blueprint and framework to follow, which reduces your risk while still retaining a bunch of upside. But you're a business owner. You own equity. You own your time. It's kind of the best of both worlds in a lot of cases. And the vast majority of franchises can be funded with an SBA loan, which carries up to 90% financing. So if the startup cost for a franchise is $100,000, you can get 90,000 of that financed. And if you don't have $10,000, you can get friends or family to finance that. So today I had my friend Alex on. All he does is look at franchise opportunities for a living.

And I said, Alex, bring me your three best franchises that are very approachable, affordable, but still can scale to millions of dollars a year in revenue or profit. And he did not disappoint. I was shocked by how much these random franchises make. So let's dive right in. Okay, Alex Smereczniak, welcome to The Koerner Office. Why don't you tell us who you are and what you do?

Alex Smereczniak (2:14)

Yeah, Chris, appreciate you having me today. I'm Alex Smereczniak, originally from Minnesota, based here in Charlotte now, but I am a serial entrepreneur. I started back in college, went to Wake Forest, did a laundry and dry cleaning business in college that I ran, grew and sold for mid six figures. Went and did the corporate thing for a year and a half at Ernst & Young and hated it. I was like, this is not fast enough. It's not mine. It's not fulfilling. I need to do something entrepreneurial again. So I started another laundry company in 2016 when you were seeing all the Uber Forex businesses, like Instacart, Shiftwag, Rover, scaled it to about 18 million a year in revenue and started franchising part of that business. So we built physical laundromats to support all the delivery business and realized we got to open hundreds of these and laundromats aren't cheap. So we started franchising part of it in 2021, sold 118 locations in about 14 months, got a crash course on franchising, ended up hiring a CEO so that I could go work on what I'm working on now. And that is a platform like Zillow that helps people identify due diligence, find lenders for the right franchise businesses to get into, whether that's a 20 grand of business to get into or a $2 million business to get into. Our goal is to help create the next generation of entrepreneurs through the franchise business model.

Chris Koerner (3:35)

Okay. And that's exactly why I wanted to have you on because I've talked to a lot of franchisers, right? A lot of people think of franchise as a franchisee. You buy into a system, but franchisers are the ones that are the system. So I've talked to a lot of franchisers that are tunnel vision focus on their business and they love it and it's the best thing ever. And I get it because that's how business owners are. But you are more agnostic about individual franchise concepts, but you're very passionate about franchising in general as a path to build wealth. So I wanted to have you on because you just have a lot of surface area. You have a lot of experience with franchising and building wealth with franchising. And I want an unbiased take from you. Sound good?