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Wes Barefoot is a passionate entrepreneur with extensive experience in franchising. Wes brings years of experience as both a franchisee, as well as working with Franchisors, where he’s worked across a variety of operational, management and franchise development roles.
With today’s talk, you are going to learn everything that is needed for creating a successful franchise business. You will hear about how Wes found success in the franchising space and went on to help others with their own franchise ventures!
Wes uncovers the world of franchising and walks through his journey – how he found ways to diversify his income. He enjoys consulting and helping entrepreneurs understand franchising models, pros and cons, as well as strategies to become successful.
The world of franchising is vast, with many different options to choose from. Wes breaks down the best way for you to find your perfect franchise and guides where it makes sense to start out in this industry.
If you are interested in creating a turn-key side hustle to generate more income to invest or you want to quit your corporate job and go all in, check out this episode!
In This Episode
- What is a franchise model and how would you operate it?
- How can franchise ownership contribute to a comprehensive passive strategy.
- The structure of owning a franchise.
- Identifying exit plans and strategies.
- What it takes from a capital perspective to own a franchise.
- Wes’ Wealthy Strategy practice that yielded him the best results.
Hey everyone, and welcome to today’s show on Wealth Strategy Secrets. Today we are joined by Wes Barefoot. Wes is a passionate entrepreneur with extensive experience in franchising. Wes brings years of experience as both a franchisee as well as working with franchisors, where he’s worked across a variety of operational management and franchise development roles with several franchise companies. Franchising has had a tremendous impact on Wes and his family’s life, and now Wes loves to help others take control of their lives and create freedom for themselves through business ownership.
Currently, Wes is a multi-unit franchise owner with two different franchise brands and is the president of Path to Freedom, a consulting firm that helps match people up with franchise business opportunities that are aligned with their goals and interests. Wes lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife Kelly, daughters Mackenzie and Mally, and son Mason. Wes, my friend, so good to have you on the show.
Dave, good to see you, man. I appreciate the opportunity. Happy to be here.
Yeah, you bet. You know, I’ve been really looking forward to this episode, Wes, because franchising is a space that I haven’t really pursued, but most of our community of investors talk about how many advantages you get being basically a business owner, how many advantages really from the tax side that can change your situation. This could be something that you could do as, say, creating a side hustle or something. So, really excited here to hopefully shed some light on franchising and everything and how someone could potentially set that up as a side hustle or potentially even a full-time business if they get excited about it.
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll say I love what you’re doing. We connected because you were on my podcast a while back, and since then I’ve started following you and listening to your podcasts and reading the content that you’re putting out. I think what I’m doing to help people and what you’re doing are very well aligned because at the end of the day, it’s all about helping people build wealth, which gives them more freedom and more control over their lives and their livelihood. There’s a lot of different ways to go about building wealth. Franchising is one avenue that’s a good fit for a lot of people, but there are many ways to do it. I believe that having a comprehensive wealth-building strategy is key—you never want all your eggs in one basket. But yeah, happy to be here and happy to shed some light on franchising. We can talk about some of the frequently asked questions or even some of the misconceptions that I run into on a regular basis. Just happy to share my experience and hopefully bring value to the audience.
Yeah, awesome, Wes. So why don’t we kick things off and tell everyone a little bit more about your background? There must have been some kind of light bulb moment for you when you said, hey, maybe let me get into franchises or try to create more freedom for myself and my family. Tell us about that journey.
Yeah, so it has been an interesting journey. I would love to say that I was wise and chose franchising as a career path, but really, I fell backwards into it. As you mentioned earlier, I live in Wilmington, North Carolina. I’d moved away from Wilmington for a couple of years after college, started working for a large Fortune 500 company. At that time, I thought I wanted to climb the corporate ladder, and that was what I thought my career track would be. As I got more into that, I realized it wasn’t how I wanted to spend the rest of my life or the rest of my working time.
So, we moved back to Wilmington. I met a couple of guys who had founded a business and had started franchising that business a few years prior to me meeting them. It seemed like a cool opportunity. That business was not a food business, it wasn’t a sandwich shop, which in my mind was what franchising was. I thought of fast-food businesses; that’s what a franchise meant to me at that point in time. This was a very different business, and it did open my eyes after I started working with these guys that there’s a lot more to franchising than just food businesses. It was fascinating to me as I started working with these guys and understanding the model, I became fascinated with it.
So, I went on to work for a couple of different franchise brands. Most of what I did was in a franchise sales and development role, so I was talking to people all over the country, many of whom were already business owners and were just looking for other opportunities. They were looking for other businesses to invest in, ways to diversify and continue building wealth. That was the light bulb moment for me when I realized, hey, the wealthiest people owned businesses or at least the majority of them. Owning businesses is part of what they’ve done to build their wealth.
My wife and I started having conversations about us wanting to become business owners ourselves. We were starting to have a family at that point in time. As I learned more about franchising and helped other people get into franchise businesses, we realized that could be a great way for us to do it as well. So, we ended up getting into a franchise business about five years ago and have built that into a very successful business that not only provides great income for us but also gives us a lot more freedom and control over our time. We’ve gone on to invest in a second franchise business, and all of that has put me in a position where I can spend the majority of my working time consulting with others, helping them understand the landscape of franchising and how it works.
What I do is I match people up with franchises that are aligned with what they’re looking for. I’m sure we’ll get into it more, but there are a lot of different business models within franchising, so depending on where someone is and what they’re looking to do, there’s really a right way to go about finding the right type of franchise to invest in.
Yeah, no, that’s really good. I have many questions, but why don’t we start with just kind of telling us about what maybe a model franchise looks like? You know, the first thing that comes to most people’s minds is restaurants, right? But if it’s not a restaurant, give us an example of what something else looks like and how you would actually operate something like that.
Sure. The food sector in franchising is massive. There are thousands of food franchise concepts on their own. But outside of that, almost any industry you can think of, there are franchise companies that have a presence in that industry. As an example, the franchises that we own are service businesses. We own a franchise where we do custom shelving and custom closets. We own a franchise where we do insulation and work with builders and contractors as well as existing homeowners. A lot of franchise businesses on the service side are not operating out of a retail location where clients are coming to you; you’re running a business where you’re going to the client.
On the retail side of things, this is one of the ways I help people start to wrap their heads around the different categories of franchises. Broadly speaking, there are two categories: retail and service. Retail simply means you have a physical location where clients come to purchase a product or service. Obviously, food falls under the retail side, but think about all the fitness concepts, gyms, and opportunities in the health and wellness sector. Most of these are retail concepts. Automotive has a huge presence within franchising. Chances are the listeners do business with far more franchise companies locally than they even realize. It’s a game that I play now because I’m a nerd when it comes to this stuff. But just go out for a drive, and you’ll count 10, 15, 20 franchise businesses without even having to look very hard.
On the service side of franchising, you’ve got everything from senior care to child services, child education, home services, home improvement. The list goes on and on. There’s a very wide variety of different types of businesses one could look at when evaluating franchises. Where I start with people, and this is what I’ve found over the years to be the best starting point, is don’t start with the widget. Don’t start with, “Hey, I want to get into this business because I like this product or service.” Start with, “What do you want your role as the business owner to be?” Once you’re able to define that, it’s going to give you some good direction in identifying franchise business models that are aligned with what you want your role to be. We can go into more of what the different owner profiles look like within different types of franchises. In my experience, that’s the best starting point. Once you have that defined, then you can shift your focus to identifying different types of businesses and see what may be a good fit.
That’s really sage advice, Wes. I would not have thought that myself. I would have completely thought the opposite of what you said—thinking about the product or service that you love and are passionate about. But I’m 100% with you, and I think not enough people really think about their own unique ability, their own skill sets, and where they can really create value. Unfortunately, we kind of go through that in our early years in academics—you’ll do some kind of test like the Myers-Briggs test or something like that. But there are so many cool things like the Clifton Strengths profile, the Kolbe test, all of these things to really identify where your strengths are. That’s really one of the secrets about being an entrepreneur—the more you can dial in what you’re naturally wired to do, what your strengths are, and then double down on those strengths. Then you get other people to help you fill in your weaknesses. You build a team around those weaknesses.
Exactly. It’s exactly right. The example I use a lot of times—and look, getting into a business because you’re passionate about it is not always a bad thing. A lot of it depends on what your goal is. What are you looking to accomplish through starting a business? If it’s for more of an investment, you want to create another income stream, you want to build an asset that you could sell down the road, the passion play is probably not the best way to go because chances are you’re not in a position where you can invest all of your working time in that business. If it’s really a passion play, you probably need to be in a position where you’re all in on the business.
The example I use all the time is, a lot of people go through this process: “Well, I love New York-style pizza, and my area doesn’t have a good New York-style pizza joint. Therefore, I’m going to start a New York-style pizza place.” They entirely skip the whole process of thinking through, “All right, what does my life look like as an owner-operator of a New York-style pizza place?” Maybe that works out, but there’s also a very high likelihood that it doesn’t work out so well because once you’re in it, once your pizza place is open, you’re working a lot more hours than you planned to. You’re doing a lot of things that maybe don’t play to your strengths and skill sets, and it’s either a recipe for failure or burnout. It doesn’t always happen that way. The people I work with, everyone wants to get into a business where they believe in the product or the service they’re selling, and they can genuinely see that it’s adding value to their clients. I’m not suggesting that you just get into any old business regardless of what the product or service is; I’m just suggesting that’s not always the best place to start when it comes to identifying different types of business opportunities to explore.
Another great piece of advice. I think oftentimes when people enter entrepreneurship, they think it’s very exciting because they’re starting their own business, but you can find out that you can quickly become shackled to the business, and it’s consuming you in so many different ways. I really love where you’re headed with this, and I like the proactive consultation that makes you think about where you want to be. That aligns with our wealth strategy as well. It all starts with you creating a vision because if you don’t have a target, you’re going to miss every time. Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 20 years? Where do you picture your family? If you don’t create that vision, you’re never going to get there. It’s the same thing with your business. How is your business going to align? You might think that this is a side hustle, but if all of a sudden that starts consuming your weekends and your nights and you’re still doing your W-2, it gets a little bit overwhelming.
There are some concepts, one is really creating a self-managed company where the company is actually running for you and you’re just adding value where your skills are strong. I know you want to talk about creating this almost as if it is a passive income stream. I think that could be the ideal result for some people. So, what would some of the steps be to try to position your franchise to go that way?
Yeah, so there’s different kinds of owner profiles, or at least that’s the way I like to explain it. You have some franchises that are what I would call a “buy yourself a job” type of franchise, right? They’re not really designed to be scalable. They don’t usually require a lot of capital to get up and running. They can be very lucrative, but they’re the type of businesses where if you as the owner are not putting in the time, nothing’s happening. They’re not the business that’s designed to become a business that can work for you even when you’re not working. Very tough businesses to build and sell, but good opportunities for some people. Again, it all comes back to where you are and what you’re looking to do.
Then you have franchise businesses that are certainly designed to be scalable, but in order to get started the right way, the franchise owner really needs to be involved on a full-time basis. I refer to these as owner-operator franchise models. The goal for most people to get into that type of franchise is still to scale. It’s still to build out teams and start phasing yourself out of the day-to-day so that eventually you’re working on the business, not in the business. But realistically, to get it started, the owner probably needs to be full-time involved.
Then you’ve got—and this is the category that’s likely to be more relevant for most of your audience, Dave—the semi-absentee ownership models. These are franchise models that are specifically designed for more of the investor types. A lot of people who have been very successful in corporate America or have had success building other businesses are attracted to these types of models because they don’t require the owner to be involved on a full-time basis, even from day one. What they do require is someone who knows how to build, manage, and lead a team, someone who has some business acumen, someone who can understand the financial side of the business, understand the KPIs, and be able to look at where the business is today, where there’s opportunity to improve, and can look forward strategically and think about how to keep growing the business. You need someone who can really leverage all the systems, processes, and resources that the franchisor has developed to execute the business in their local area.
One thing I want to be clear on, because some people may be under the impression that if they get into the right franchise, it’s going to be entirely passive. I’m a big believer that, at least in the franchise world, nothing is entirely passive, at least in the beginning. Even if you start it on a semi-absentee basis, and the way you can do that is usually through what I call “manage the manager” type business models, if you as the owner are not in it every day managing it, somebody needs to be. So usually you’re just hiring a manager of some sort, depending on the business, and that manager is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day, the rest of the team, and everything that needs to happen over the course of a typical day or week. You’re providing the oversight for that manager.
Well, in the beginning, you have to make sure you have the right people in place. You have to make sure that if it’s a brick-and-mortar concept, you’re working with the franchisor to find the right location, negotiating the lease, working with contractors on a remodel or build-out. It looks different depending on the type of business, but the point is it’s not entirely passive. But if it’s done right, it can become more and more passive over time. In the right franchise, where it’s executed the right way, the income can be very strong, and there are also great exit opportunities for the vast majority of these semi-absentee models. One of the biggest things that business owners struggle with when they try to sell their business is that too much of the business revolves around them as the owner. In the semi-absentee model, when it’s built right, you don’t run into that because you’ve removed yourself as the bottleneck as the owner.
The good news is with these types of franchises, many franchisors have realized over the years that your corporate executives and other entrepreneurs who have built businesses would be fantastic franchise owners, but they don’t have the time to be involved full-time. So, they’ve constructed their entire model to be well-suited for someone looking for something more passive—not entirely passive, but more passive. The other thing that’s nice about that is the skill set required to be successful in that type of model very rarely relies on the franchise owner being an industry expert. Whatever the industry is—say it’s a yoga studio—the really good yoga franchises don’t want their franchise owners hanging out in the studio being instructors. They want business people who don’t even know how to be yoga instructors as their owners, who know how to hire the instructors to work in the studio. So, that’s a good example of where you don’t need industry experience to be successful in the right franchise if it’s the right business model for you.
Yeah, that makes sense. So, you talked about exit planning. What do you typically see in terms of exit plans in these types of franchise models?
You know, it really depends on the person. It’s something I talk about with everyone that I work with. Some people think it’s odd that I’m asking them about exit strategies before they’ve even found a franchise to invest in, but it’s part of what you talked about, Dave, where you want to have a vision. For some people, that vision could be, “I’d like to build something for five years and then try to exit.” Then you can have a lump sum of money coming in, and there’s any number of things you could go do with the money that you’ve made from selling your business.
Other people, it’s more long term. I work with a lot of people who are maybe in a latter stage of their career. They’ve got kids that are getting older. They like the idea of starting something that they could get their kids involved in or possibly hand over to their kids one day. So, I think it’s a pretty personalized thing. But if it’s the right type of franchise built the right way, there’s absolutely going to be options to exit when you’re ready. As a franchise owner, it’s your business. You always have the right and the ability to sell your business. There are some processes you have to go through with the franchisor to make sure that it’s all done correctly and the documentation is handled the way the franchisor needs it to be handled, but it’s your business. The franchisor is never going to tell you you can’t sell your business.
In my experience, the less the business revolves around the owner in terms of production, the easier it is to sell the business. If it’s a retail-type concept, brick-and-mortar, physical location, the pathway to scaling those types of businesses is usually through adding additional locations over time. Those types of businesses are always in high demand. If you’re a multi-unit owner and you’ve got three, four, or more locations up and running with strong financials that you can show, you’re not going to have trouble finding buyers that would be interested in taking a closer look at that.
The other thing that’s nice when it comes to exit strategies in a franchise is your franchisor can help you when you’re ready to sell your business. The beautiful thing about franchising and why it works so well when it’s done right is that there’s so much mutual alignment between the franchisor and the franchisees. The franchisor is incentivized to do everything they possibly can to help their franchisees be successful and to help their franchisees continue to grow their business over time. When a franchisee comes to a franchisor and says, “Hey, I think I may be interested in selling,” regardless of the reason, the franchisor has an incentive to help find qualified, interested buyers. They know once a franchisee is thinking about selling, they’re not as engaged as they were at one point in time. So, it’s in the franchisor’s best interest to get someone else in that’s going to be more focused on continuing to grow the business versus thinking about how to get out.
There’s a variety of reasons people may want to get out of a franchise, but your franchisor can really be an asset in terms of helping you sell the business. In most franchises, the brand recognition and the fact that as a franchise owner, you’re part of this larger organization, and there are so many systems, processes, and resources in place to help the owners, it adds value to the business versus if you had the same business as a standalone and were looking to sell.
Yeah, that makes sense. So, typically, how does the structure work? I’m assuming you pay some type of fees to the franchisor. Can you give us a range of what that typically is?
Yeah, happy to. There are two categories of fees that you need to be aware of when you’re evaluating a franchise. There’s what I call the upfront fees. Those are usually referred to as franchise fees. That’s what you’re paying to the franchisor to become a franchisee, to get access to everything that they’ve built and developed, and get access to the brand. Most franchises have some sort of territory model where part of what you’re getting when you pay those franchise fees is a protected territory. Franchisors like that because they don’t want their franchisees feeling like they’re competing against each other. That’s actually an asset that sits on your balance sheet. When you pay those franchise fees and own protected territories, that sits on your balance sheet as an asset.
Then there are the ongoing fees. These are usually structured as a small percentage of your gross revenue. It’s called a royalty. Those are typically paid to the franchisor on a regular basis indefinitely. I talk to a lot of people who ask, “Wes, why would I want to pay money upfront? Why would I want to give a percentage of my revenue back to the franchisor for as long as I’m a franchisee?” The way to look at it is it’s very formulaic. You need to understand what it costs upfront to become a franchisee and what you’re getting in exchange for that. Then you need to understand what it costs on an ongoing basis to be a franchisee and what you’re getting in exchange for that.
There are franchises out there, in my opinion, where there’s not enough value to justify the upfront or the ongoing fees. That’s a big part of the research—understanding that different franchise companies add value in different ways, depending on the type of business they’re in. One of the businesses we own, all of our products are built custom by a manufacturer that the franchisor owns. My cost of goods is at least 15 percent less than what they would be if I owned the same business and had to set up my own supply chain and work with third-party manufacturers. So, I pay 7 percent of my revenue to the franchisor, but I’m saving at least 15 percent on my cost of goods. That’s not even taking into consideration any of the other benefits. That’s one example of how to look at it. I’m coming out better because I’m a franchisee, even after I pay the ongoing fees. But it is something that you need to really dig into and understand—is the fee structure justified?
And that’s really a mindset shift. We talk about that a lot. As you see ultra-high-net-worth individuals, successful business owners, family offices, and such, people understand the concept of leverage. By being able to leverage other teams, other skill sets, you can really speed up your success. If you bake in that opportunity cost, you can catapult your success much faster than trying to figure everything out on your own. So, I think that’s really great. It comes down to one of our first pillars in our wealth strategy, which is all about mindset. You need to look at leveraging teams as a big asset and an investment in how you can go further. It’s the same thing with the types of investments we’re doing. You’re able to leverage people who’ve been in the industry for many years. They’ve been in acquisitions for 20 years, have super deep relationships, and find great opportunities you’d never be able to find on your own if you were doing it as an expert.
Or it would take you 30 years to figure it out, right? So, the opportunity cost is a huge part of where the value is in a good franchise. Notice you hear me keep saying things like “in a good franchise” when franchising’s done right. There are thousands of franchise companies out there, right? They’re not all done right; they’re not all going to be a smart investment. We’ve already talked about the keys to finding the right franchise for you, but that being said, all franchise organizations are not created equally, just like all investment opportunities are not equal either.
The opportunity cost is huge. I mean, the way I’ve come to think of franchising is that it gives you the ability to run faster. A big part of what you’re actually getting, especially with the upfront fees that you pay to become a franchisee and get access to the system and the training, is you’re paying to avoid making the mistakes that the franchisor and the franchisees before you have already made. Chances are, that’s going to help you get your business ramped up, cash flowing, and profitable much faster than you would have on your own. It’s going to save you a lot of time and money in the process.
Yeah, so, Wes, tell us—I bet a lot of people are thinking right now, you know, they’re probably in the car right now cruising along thinking, “Oh, this could be pretty interesting. I kind of have some ideas in mind.” What would it take from a capital perspective? I mean, obviously, there are all kinds of different types of businesses, but just give us an idea from operational startup costs, the franchise fee, what are some typical ranges that you see?
Yeah, it’s a great question, and this is one that may surprise a lot of people listening because, as we’ve already talked about, so many people think of food, fast food, fast casual when they think of franchising. Those investments can get fairly high, right, in the six, seven hundred thousand, seven-figure plus range. But there are great franchise businesses that you can get up and running for as little as $75,000 to $80,000 all in. There’s a lot of opportunities that fall in a sweet spot of $150,000 to $300,000. When we talk these types of numbers, these are not just being pulled out of thin air.
Franchising is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, so there’s a lot of standardization and requirements that franchise companies have to go through when it comes to talking to anyone interested in their franchise. There’s a document called a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) that any franchisor is required to have and update at least once a year. One of the sections in that document is what they call an estimated initial investment range, and it is always a range, not an exact dollar amount. What that range includes is the initial franchise fees, any startup costs that would likely be incurred to get your business open, as well as a specified amount of working capital that the franchisor wants a new franchisee to have on hand once they’re open. This is all backed up by data from the franchisor and other franchisees.
The franchise fees are pretty standard across the board, whether it’s a fast food concept, a fitness concept, or a home service franchise. The franchise fees are all within five to ten thousand dollars of each other. The difference between a $750,000 franchise investment and a $200,000 one is mostly in the startup costs. What does that look like? Anything that’s brick and mortar, more of a retail concept, especially if it’s a concept where you need to be in the right location and may have to do some sort of build-out or remodel, or if you have heavy equipment or a lot of inventory that needs to be purchased, those are going to be on the higher end.
There is a pretty wide range in terms of how much capital would be required, but whatever the amount is, there are funding mechanisms out there that people can leverage to invest in franchise businesses. SBA loans are very, very common; people use them all the time, and banks love doing SBA loans for franchises because there’s a lot more data they can look at to know whether or not they feel it’s a good loan for them to write. The rule of thumb that I give people is, if you’re looking at doing something like an SBA loan, 20% of the total capital requirements is about what you need to plan on injecting yourself; the rest can be funded through the loan.
There’s other mechanisms out there. One of the things I see commonly is what’s called a ROBS—you may be familiar with this, Dave—it stands for Rollover for Business Startups. That’s a program where you can actually roll over a portion of your retirement funds, use it to start a business, and you don’t get hit with the tax penalties that you typically would for tapping into retirement funds prematurely. I see people do a line of credit against a stock portfolio to get the money they need. There’s a variety of ways to go about it, but in my experience, certainly there are some people that would not yet be financially qualified to invest in a franchise. But there are so many options out there, and the investment ranges vary so greatly. For a lot of people that may initially think they’re not financially qualified, they’re surprised to find out that there are great franchise businesses that they could afford to get into.
The other thing I learned a long time ago is that there is not a direct correlation between how much it costs to start a franchise and the ROI potential. That’s not always an indicator at all.
Good to know for sure. So also, Wes, on our show we really like to talk about achieving peak performance. A lot of our listeners are high-performance junkies. From a personal development perspective, what’s the one practice that’s yielded the biggest results for you?
Man, I’ve tried a lot. I’ve tried a lot of different things. For me, having some sort of a morning routine has been huge. I ask a similar question on my podcast because I am fascinated with this. I know high performers have found ways to help themselves perform at higher levels. For me, my morning routine has changed up. We have three kids, one of them is only six weeks old, so my morning routine now is very different than it was three years ago when we only had one kid. But just having some time to actually be with myself and set my day up right instead of jumping straight into chaos, that’s a game-changer for me. When I do that consistently, I can absolutely tell a difference in how productive I am, how sharp I am, and how well I react to whatever happens around me. That’s key for me.
The other thing I’m doing right now is my wife thinks I’m crazy, but I just bought a cold plunge setup for my backyard. I’m trying to do ice baths at least once a day, and man, I feel amazing when I do it. I hate jumping in it. It’s one of those things—it’s physically good for you, but it’s also good mental training because your body’s screaming at you not to do it, but you know it’s good for you, you know you feel better after you do it. It’s one of those mental exercises where if you can convince yourself to do it, you’re probably going to convince yourself to do everything else you need to do in a day too.
Yeah, awesome. I’m a big fan of that. I’ve done regular sessions of cryotherapy, which is pretty interesting—going to like minus 250 degrees. You come out feeling so rejuvenated, it’s kind of like taking an injection right there. You feel like you’re a year younger.
Yeah, it’s like a body high. I was having some trouble with my back for a while, and I’ve been doing cold showers regularly for years, but that’s not fully submerging yourself. You can only get the shower so cold. So, I finally got an actual setup in the backyard, and within two days of just getting in for a couple of minutes, my back felt totally normal. The issue’s gone. Cryotherapy is cool too; it’s not nearly as uncomfortable as sitting in an ice bath either.
Yeah, and I think a lot of this you can regulate your breathing, and it comes down to a lot of that. You start to become comfortable with it versus that shock. It’s got tremendous benefits for your nervous system and so many different other areas as well.
It really does. My wife thinks I’m absolutely crazy, but I’m like, hey, look…
So do your neighbors, I bet.
I work out with my neighbors, so they’re like, “Hey man, can we come over and use it?” I’m like, yeah, come on. Their wives, I’m sure, think we’re all crazy.
Awesome. So, if you could give just one piece of advice to listeners about accelerating their wealth trajectory, what would it be?
I think it would be to really sit down and spend some time thinking about what you want your life to look like five years from now, ten years from now. A lot of people at the surface level say, “Yeah, I’d love to be wealthy.” Well, money is just a tool, right? So, what do you want to build wealth for? Because look, I’ve heard a lot of different numbers thrown around, so I don’t know what the exact number is, but you get to a certain point where if you’ve got this much money, your life’s not going to change that much if you get X amount more money, right? What do you want to build wealth for? What’s that going to help you accomplish that you’re not on track to accomplish where you are today?
Once you get clear on that, not only does the pathway to actually building that wealth usually become more clear, but it also just gives you the drive that you need to push through the tough times. There are going to be plenty of days where things aren’t going the way you want them to go, obstacles get thrown in the way, and if you don’t have a clear vision or a clear why, it’s a lot easier to throw in the towel and say, “You know what, forget that, that was a crazy idea anyways.” But when you’ve got that clear why, it gives you the drive that you need to actually do what needs to be done to build wealth.
The only other thing I would say is listen to people that have done what you’re trying to do. Read, listen to books, listen to podcasts—it’s garbage in, garbage out. I think if you are constantly taking in good information from people that know what they’re talking about and have done things that you would like to do, you just start to think in a similar manner as them. It becomes easier to visualize yourself doing it. It’s the old “you’re the average of the people you surround yourself with.”
Yeah, the Jim Rohn quote. Absolutely. It’s interesting. One of my friends, Richard Wilson, is focused on the Family Office Club, and they’re building out a platform for billionaires. His goal this year is to only consume media from billionaires for the entire 12 months. That’s the only thing he’s focused on.
I like that. That’s a good goal right there. Solid.
It’s a good way to think about it. Wes, thanks for coming on the show. I want to give you a chance to let listeners know how they can reach out and connect. Do you have a link or contact info or anything you would like to share?
Yeah, sure. I sent some links, so hopefully we can just post those in the show notes to make it easy. I do have a website, it’s path2frdm.com, so Path to Freedom but kind of short form. I’ve got more information there about myself, my services, and my consulting business. I also have a podcast—that’s how Dave and I actually connected. Dave’s been on my podcast. It’s the Path to Freedom podcast, so number 2 Freedom. It’s on all the major podcast platforms; you can find it really anywhere that podcasts are.
The last thing I will say in terms of kind of a plug is my consulting services are completely free to the people that I work with. My model works—my income comes from the franchise companies. I’ve got a very good network of franchise brands that I work closely with, that I’ve vetted, that I’ve researched, and I’ve got a very methodical process that I take people through to help match them up with the right types of franchises for them and then guide them through the research. I’m happy to talk with anyone that just has questions about what this franchise thing is all about and if it could be right for them. I love jumping on the phone and just talking to people, answering questions, regardless of where it goes from there. So, if anyone listening, if this has piqued your interest, if you’d like to learn more, there’s a link on my website where you can reach out. I would love to have a conversation with anyone, even if it’s just very exploratory.
Awesome. We’ll definitely put some links in the show notes for that. Wes, thanks again for coming on today and providing so much value to the listeners. Really appreciate it.
Yeah, I hope it was valuable. Thanks for having me, and thanks for everything you’re doing, Dave.
You bet.