A Financial Epiphany
The Thoughts of a Budding Entrepreneur: "If I Stopped Working Today... I Wouldn't Have Any Income Coming In."
Michael Blank was sitting at his desk when he had his financial epiphany, “I suddenly realized that if I stopped working today, for any reason, I wouldn’t have any income coming in. That terrified me.”
Michael, founding member of webMethods, a business integration software company, took this “ah-ha moment” as his cue and immediately left his job to be his own boss. The 36 year old needed to chart out his financial future and find a way to make a passive income—a steady stream of revenue that would keep coming in without continuing effort.
“When I quit my job, I didn’t really have a plan. I thought I might start my own software company but I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to get in too deep,” says Michael. “I wanted something that was lucrative but also reasonable start up.”
So, on top of real estate investing, he began doing some networking to find additional opportunities. Michael found a few friends around the Northern Virginia area that had made the venture into the restaurant franchising industry.
“This was right around the time when Five Guys Burgers & Fries (www.fiveguys.com) was taking off. I kept hearing about people making money off of multi-unit franchising deals. I was immediately intrigued because none of these guys had ever had any background in the restaurant industry.”
Michael was referred to Fransmart, an Alexandria, Va based franchise development company, for more information on franchising opportunities. It was here where he first heard about zpizza, (www.zpizza.com) an emerging southern California based gourmet pizza chain.
With a low start up rate of $190,500 to $261,500 and a unique niche in the gourmet pizza segment, investors were beginning to take notice of the hot concept on both the East and West coasts. In fact, three additional multi-unit investors were already on the books in the Washington, DC metropolitan area when Michael began to show interest in 2004.
Michael knew he had to move fast before his territory sold to another investor. He quickly snatched up the rights to develop 10 zpizza stores in his home town of Northern Virginia and immediately began to look for an operations partner and prime real estate.
“It’s funny; usually when people are looking to buy a franchise they do a lot of comparisons and research. It wasn’t like that with me. I found a unique, proven concept that I liked and pulled the trigger.”
Fast forward two years—Michael and his regional manager, Chris Hanlon opened three stores between April and August 2006. Their first store opened in Alexandria in April and began to see a profit in just five months. In May, they took over operations from an existing franchisee. Within seven months of the opening date the duo increased the second store’s sales by 80 percent through improved operations and marketing. The third store was built and opened in August and again was profitable in just five months time.
When asked about how he managed to get three stores open in just five months—“To be successful you have to have a great team and Chris was the perfect addition. He is very knowledgeable as a regional manager and well respected by the zpizza franchisors.”
This past summer, Michael was awarded “Franchisee of the Year,” —a prize he shares with Chris—at the annual zpizza conference in Las Vegas.
“When I first started looking for franchises I was interested in finding a business that would accomplish my long term goals of generating a steady stream of passive income. zpizza did that- I plan on investing in as many zpizza stores as I can get my hands on in the future.”
Michael is currently seeking investors to continue to expand his franchise territory and has plans to open another seven plus stores in the next seven years.
-Katie Magers katiem@freshcasual.com
