The Exit Plan with Alex Smereczniak
The Exit Plan is the weekly podcast about leaving the 9-to-5 to own a business, hosted by Alex Smereczniak, co-founder and CEO of Franzy.
Every week you get an unfiltered conversation with someone who actually left the 9 to 5 and built something real: how they did it, what it cost them, what they'd do differently, and what the numbers actually looked like. Franchise owners, startup founders, multi-unit operators. Real stories. Real playbooks. No highlight reel.
On this show, "exit" means your exit from the 9-to-5, not selling a company. If you're franchise curious or done trading time for a paycheck, start here.
New episodes weekly. Follow the show so you don't miss one.
The Exit Plan is produced by Franzy, the franchise marketplace where you research, match with and buy a franchise. Get started free at https://franzy.com
Formerly "How I Franchised This".
Episodes
62 episodes
From Assistant Manager to Opening Stores in 3 Years | Darryl Gates, Big Dave's Cheesesteaks
At one of Big Dave's early grand openings, 20 to 30 new tickets landed every two or three minutes. Ticket times hit 30 to 45 minutes against a seven-minute target. Darryl Gates worked the grill for six hours straight, and the corporate team pul...
He Spent 30 Years Training Adults. Then His Son Was Born | Joe Pedatella, KidStrong
Joe Pedatella walked into Spa 23 in New Jersey as a trainer in 1998. He ended up owning it. For nearly 30 years his job was changing adults' habits, one person at a time.Then his son was born, and the question changed. A friend in his m...
He Was Franchisee Number One. Now He Runs The Company
Kyle Chiasson was 22, working a banking job in eastern Washington and on track for his CFP. He describes the feeling as sitting in a nice four-walled office with everything you think you need, withering away inside.Then his mom dragged h...
His Dad's Number Was Always 20. He Didn't Live to See It
Taylor Johns has had exactly one job his entire life. He was making pizza at seven years old in stores his grandfather opened in 1983, a grandfather he never got to meet. The company is named Karolina Enterprises, spelled with a K, after his si...
The NASCAR Driver Who Now Teaches Teens to Slow Down - Brad Coleman
Brad Coleman had a professional racing license at 14. By 16 he was running the 24 Hours of Daytona. He raced for Joe Gibbs, shared the No. 18 car with Kyle Busch, and drove for a team owned by Troy Aikman and Roger Staubach. Then he woke up in ...
Why He Walked Away From a $100 Million Offer - Devan Kline
He moved to Charlotte with no money, no connections, no brand, no LLC, and no bank account. He knocked on a thousand doors, sent a thousand emails, and talked his way into 250 live TV segments across the Southeast, once driving five hours to Al...
He Got Crushed by a Dump Truck, Then Built 200 Locations
He walked away from medical school at 18. By 21, he was stuck in the power take-off of a dump truck, getting MRIs and wondering if he had wrecked more than his body. His lawn care business had no systems, almost no margin, and no safety net. Th...
The Founder Who Turned a Dying Flower Shop Into a $10M Empire
When Michael Jacobson's uncle called to sell the flower shop he'd run for nearly 40 years, the plan was simple: help wind it down. The business was losing money, and Michael was just a bored corporate consultant doing his uncle a favor. Instead...
The Nuclear Engineer Who Found Freedom in a Dog Grooming Franchise
Nuclear engineer to Boston Consulting Group to dog grooming franchisee. Jacob Lee walked away from the elite MBA path to build a Scent Hound empire, and his philosophy is almost too simple: all you have to do is not fail.In this episode ...
$10M From a Franchise Nobody Wanted
Terry Walkerly was told early on that his filtration business would probably never become a large company.Nearly two decades later, he’s built the largest operation in the entire franchise network - a $10M business spanning multiple stat...
Scaling 1-800-GOT-JUNK from $10M to $100M
In this episode of The Exit Plan, we sit down with Alex Read, a veteran entrepreneur and operator who has seen the business world from every possible angle as a corporate leader, a high-growth operator, and an investor. Alex sha...
The Massive Aging Crisis Nobody Is Ready For
In this episode, we break down the massive shift in senior care as 75 million baby boomers choose to age at home instead of in assisted living. We sit down with Dave Pazgan, founder of Liftoff and co-founder of 101 Mobility, to disc...
He Went Bankrupt, Moved With $12K & Built a 116-Location Franchise
Don Varady shares the unbelievable story behind building Clean Eatz from the ground up.After the recession crushed his construction career, Don liquidated everything, filed for bankruptcy, and moved across the country with his wife to op...
5 Franchises You Can Start for Under $150K (That Make Millions)
Most people think you need $1 million to own a franchise. You don't. Most people think franchising is only for people with deep pockets or business experience. It's not. And most people think the only franchises worth owning are the ones everyo...
She Managed $500M Budgets. Then She Left to Run Pool Trucks
🎯 Get a free breakdown of the top 5 franchise opportunities under $150K - vetted with real unit economics, zero broker bias: 👉 https://go.franzy.com/top-5-franchises-under-...
I Worked the Chick-fil-A Drive-Thru With a College Degree - Here’s Why.
Matt Forbush has lived the entire lifecycle of a franchisee. From scrubbing toilets as a teenager to managing a $30M portfolio of 50+ locations, Matt has mastered the "pennies to dollars" math of the QSR world. In this masterclass o...
Introducing The Exit Plan (Formerly How I Franchised This)
How I Franchised This is now The Exit Plan.Because most people aren’t looking for a franchise - they’re looking for a way out.The Exit Plan is for anyone done trading time for a paycheck and ready to build something ...
There Were Only 3 Dave’s Hot Chicken Locations - That’s When He Went All In
There were only 3 Dave’s Hot Chicken locations when Brian Cassidy went all in.He was on FaceTime counting tickets, doing the math in real time… and realized this couldn’t be normal.So in 2020 - while the world was shut down - he s...
He Spotted a Problem Nobody Fixed — Now It's a Franchise
Most people complain about problems. Few actually build a business around them. M...
From Wall Street to Boulder - How Andrew Pudalov Invented a Food Category and Built a 25 State Empire
Andrew Pudalov spent 15 years as a global head of fixed income derivatives trading at Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley and National Australia Bank. Then 9/11 happened and everything changed. He quit his job, moved his family to Boulder with ...
Opera Singer to Crumbl Cookie Franchisee — The Wildest Career Pivot You'll Ever Hear
Taj Suri trained to be an opera singer, worked at Madison Square Garden, managed luxury restaurants at the Fairmont in Silicon Valley, built an entertainment agency pitching TV and film to Netflix and Hulu and then his dad called with an idea.<...
The ONE Question to Ask Before Buying a Franchise
Scott Oaks didn't plan on franchising. He got downsized at 28, put his resume on Monster.com, and a franchise VP found him. Twenty-two years later he leads growth for...
The $49M Exit: How Joe Tagliente Sold the Operations but Kept the Land
Joe Tagliente built a $49,000,000 franchise empire—14 Burger Kings and 4 hotels—and when he sold it, he kept every single piece of real estate underneath it. In this episode, Joe breaks down the OpCo vs. PropCo wealth strategy that separ...
Popsicles in Minnesota? How Tamar Brown Turned a Frozen Treat Franchise into a Family Business
Have you ever bought a business and immediately thought: What did we just do? In this episode of How I Franchise This, host Alex sits down with Tamar Brown, the creative force behind two Frio’s Gourmet Pops territories in the Twin Cities...
The Dangerous Question Every Entrepreneur Should Ask
Three words that will change your life: WHY NOT ME? In this high-intensity episode of How I Franchise This, host Alex sits down with his early mentor and industry titan, Jeff Dudan. Jeff didn't just build a business; he built a category-...