The Underrated Business Model That Creates More Millionaires Than the NFL | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E3 | Part 1

**Hala Taha** (0:03)
Hey, Young and Profitors, when I think back to the early days of YAP Media, I was way too scrappy. I'm talking about working out of coffee shops, bouncing between public Wi-Fi networks, and hotspotting from my phone just to get through on a client call without the connection dropping. But looking back, it was actually adding a lot of unnecessary stress, because you realize pretty quickly your business is only as strong as your connection. It's how you run meetings, serve clients, and keep everything moving. And that's exactly why I wish I had AT&T Business back then. They're built for small business owners who need their Internet to work without second guessing it. And once you've had that kind of reliability, you get real peace of mind. You can show up fully, close deals, serve your clients, and focus on growing your business without any of the stress.
You need a provider that is as serious about your success as you are, like AT&T Business. Built to work, get AT&T Business at business.att.com.
Hey, YAP fam, we're about to launch something that might be my favorite thing we've ever done on the podcast. A brand new series called How We Profit. Now, I've been doing Young and Profiting Podcast for eight years, and my listeners are successful. We are real entrepreneurs with real businesses, and a lot of you guys are crushing it behind the scenes. You may not be super famous. You may not be a billionaire yet, but you've got a business that you've learned how to scale, and we want to hear from you. One of the best ways to learn as an entrepreneur is from your peers, and I found it super helpful to be in these peer entrepreneurship groups, and learn from other entrepreneurs who are at my level, but just in a different industry. So that's what I want to bring to this podcast. I want this to be our own peer group, but on the podcast. So I'm going to be interviewing people who are making anywhere from $500,000 to $10 million a year. They're not super famous. They're not the typical billionaires that are on my show. These are real entrepreneurs who are crushing it behind the scenes. And we're going to uncover what they do to sell, how they get their customers, what their profit margin looks like, how they market and so much more. If this sounds like you and you want to be featured on Young and Profiting Podcast for our How We Profit series, just head to youngandprofiting.com/apply and share your story. Let me know why you think you should be featured on the show. Again, that's youngandprofiting.com/apply. Who knows, maybe you'll be our next guest on Young and Profiting Podcast.

**Alex Smereczniak** (2:27)
It's not Apple, it's not Google, not NVIDIA, McDonald's has minted more millionaires than the entire history of NFL players combined.

**Hala Taha** (2:36)
Wow.

**Alex Smereczniak** (2:37)
There's been about 50 plus thousand millionaires created from the franchise business model.

**Hala Taha** (2:44)
Today's guest is Alex Smereczniak. He's the co-founder and CEO of Franzy, a marketplace platform that helps people find and buy franchise businesses.

**Alex Smereczniak** (2:54)
There is no better time than now to start investing in ownership, whether that's real estate or a business, whether it's franchise or not. AI is going to displace 30ish percent of white-collar jobs in the next five to 10 years, and this is the time to make yourself not replaceable.

**Hala Taha** (3:11)
I'm sure so many listeners, they think they need to have a sexy business that they feel passionate about. What do you say to that?

**Alex Smereczniak** (3:18)
My last company was a laundry business. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and say I was passionate about laundry. I think people listening, you will develop that passion the more you put reps in, the more you get out of it, the more you put into it.

**Hala Taha** (3:30)
I bootstrap my company, but I have friends that are VC backed and a lot of them that are in industries that aren't AI are really struggling now to raise money. So what advice do you have for them in terms of things to focus on?

**Alex Smereczniak** (3:43)
If you are going to raise money, this idea of seed strapping, this hybrid of bootstrapping plus raising small chunks of cash, we're actually doing that for Franzy. You raise a million bucks initially and then two and a half, we're about to close another $2 million round now. So it's these micro rounds.

**Hala Taha** (3:57)
Yeah, nothing too crazy.

**Alex Smereczniak** (3:58)
You're still getting good valuation increases each time. So that's one piece of advice. The second is-