He Lost the Deal, Got a Second Chance, and Became Franchisee of the Year Twice: Matt Stevens on The Ty Brady Way

On The Ty Brady Way podcast, host Ty Brady asks Matt Stevens a question he hears all the time: what actually makes someone succeed as a franchise owner. Stevens has spent nearly 40 years in franchising, and his answer isn’t one trait. It’s a five part framework he calls AABS plus E, a habit of turning assumptions into questions instead of conclusions, and a financial planning method built around three different outcomes.

He also tells the story of a candidate he calls Rick, who lost his first choice franchise to someone who moved faster, built a second business instead, and years later got the chance to bring the first one into the fold too. Both are still running strong today, and Rick has been named Franchisee of the Year in each system.

From Door to Door Painter to The Franchise Guy

Matt Stevens was walking through the halls of an East Coast university when he saw an advertisement for running your own business. It turned out to be the precursor to CertaPro Painters. He jumped in during 1988, joining about 67 other franchisees across Canada and New England who were managing crews, marketing, selling, and handling payroll on their own. He ran that business for three years before moving over to work directly with the franchisor, a shift that changed his trajectory from baseball toward business for good.

The early years demanded pure tenacity. In his market in southwestern New Hampshire, there was no direct mail, only door knocking. Stevens would manage his crews and run estimates all week, then spend weekends cold calling houses until he had ten estimates scheduled, walking through late winter New Hampshire weather in a short sleeve shirt to stay warm from the walking itself. He kept tick marks, used a 40 second spiel, and left a door hanger when nobody answered. He does not remember a single weekend where he left without hitting his number. That consistency earned him Rookie of the Year for the Northern New England division, a result he still looks back on with pride.

What The Franchise Guy Actually Does

Today Stevens works as an independent franchise consultant, paid by the franchisor rather than the candidate. Without guidance, most people are left scrolling through more than 4,000 franchise brands online with no real direction. Stevens compared the process to a matchmaking service built specifically for franchises, covering both new territories and resales: understand what a candidate is looking for and why, then either find the opportunity that fits, or tell them honestly that it does not exist yet. A franchise consultant’s role is to measure a candidate against roughly 30 different ownership criteria, often steering them toward a business model they had never considered but that fits their life far better than the one they walked in asking about.

The AABS Plus E Framework: What Separates Top Franchise Owners

Asked what separates the top performers among the nearly 1,000 franchisees he has placed, Stevens pointed to five qualities he calls exercising your ABs: Attitude, Ambition, Behavior, and Skill, plus a fifth quality he adds as an asterisk, Engagement. Candidates can show up with excellent attitude, ambition, behavior, and skill and still struggle if they do not engage, meaning they never lean on the franchisor, the regional franchisees, or the people already producing the results they want.

Stevens knows the cost of skipping that step firsthand. In 1988, pride kept him from engaging with people who had already solved the problems he was facing, and he spent hundreds of hours on projects he did not need to handle alone when a phone call could have saved him the trouble. Franchising exists, in his view, because nobody has to do it alone. Candidates are leveraging hundreds of years of collective knowledge and experience, and they already paid for that access through the franchise fee. Working with a franchise consultant is one way candidates put that engagement into practice from day one.

Rick’s Story: A Setback That Didn’t End the Search

The story Stevens returns to when asked for a career highlight starts about twelve to fifteen years ago. An acquaintance, referred to in the episode as Rick, had been downsized from an executive role paying around $200,000 a year. Stevens found him a strong opportunity, called Opportunity A in the story, but another candidate moved faster and signed first. Rather than start from zero, Stevens and Rick went back to work, and Rick purchased a second franchise, Opportunity B, and began climbing its learning curve.

While Rick was still deep in that learning curve, the person who had bought Opportunity A ran into a serious health issue and had to sell, after investing roughly $100,000 into the business. Stevens brought the opportunity back to Rick with a direct heads up that the road ahead would take real effort.

Rick thought it over for three weeks, then bought it. He now owns both Opportunity A and Opportunity B, and he has been named Franchisee of the Year in each of the two national systems, separate honors from two different brands. Stevens describes the outcome as two fantastic businesses, with at least one intended as a legacy for one of Rick’s adult children to potentially take over. Years later, someone offered to buy Opportunity A from him, and Rick turned the offer down because he enjoyed running it too much. Fifteen plus years after the story began, both businesses are still going. Candidates weighing how to become a franchise owner rarely hear a story that shows how much the picture can change after the first setback, and how much staying engaged in the search matters.

Turn Your Assumptions Into Questions

Stevens said the most common and costly mistake he sees is candidates turning assumptions into conclusions. People are hit with so much information from every direction that they stop verifying what they believe and simply accept it, and that habit can turn a great opportunity into one that looks bad, or a weak opportunity into one that looks deceptively appealing. His fix is simple: take the assumption, turn it into a direct question, and bring that question to someone competent enough to give an honest answer.

He applies the same principle to cost. A candidate might assume a franchise runs around $70,000 because that is the franchise fee, when the real total investment for that concept can average closer to $312,000 once buildout, equipment, and working capital are included. On the other end, his lowest ever placement invested just $15,000 in cash plus a $50,000 loan and built the business for seven years. Understanding what a franchise actually costs before assuming a number, and knowing how to evaluate the opportunity itself, are the two questions Stevens says candidates skip most often.

Planning for Blue Sky, Average, and Worst Case Outcomes

Stevens builds three financial plans for every candidate: a blue sky version if everything works out fantastically, an average version he considers the more likely outcome, and a worst case version in case things go poorly. He then checks those plans early and often, measuring weekly activity and monthly results against all three, rather than writing a plan once and revisiting it two years later when a candidate could already be far down the wrong path.

Two habits keep his own business consistent. The first is daily marketing activity, time blocked rather than tied to a specific outcome, because he trusts that steady activity compounds over time even on days that produce nothing. The second is staying in ongoing contact with candidates he has already placed. He mentioned a recent example: a franchisee who had initially been disappointed by his franchisor’s support recently landed a substantial new contract through a relationship the franchisor had arranged, and told Stevens they were having a lot of fun out there now.

Why Personal Relationships Still Win

Stevens sees personal relationships becoming more valuable, not less, in an era of AI, data, and constant advertising. He compared it to the calling card era: when someone stopped at a house and found nobody home, they left a small piece of paper with their name, because the relationship was the point. People want the truth, not a highlight reel, and that is exactly why he tells candidates to keep turning assumptions into questions for real people rather than settling for whatever appears in a feed.

He judges his own days by the seeds he plants rather than the harvest he collects, since the harvest can be unfairly generous one month and unreasonably low the next, even when the underlying activity stayed consistent. His closing thought on franchise ownership: most people are taught to go get a job, but a franchise lets someone be one boss for life, starting at any age, buying down the learning curve by years instead of spending a decade or more learning the same lessons alone. Reach out to Matt Stevens for a short, no cost conversation about which opportunity fits your goals.

Matt Stevens Independent Franchise Consultant, The Franchise Guy

Nearly 40 Years in Franchising  |  4 Businesses Owned  |  Nearly 1,000 Franchisees Placed  |  heisthefranchiseguy.com

Matt Stevens has spent nearly 40 years in franchising. He’s helped more than 3,000 people explore franchise ownership and placed nearly 1,000 of them as franchisees across more than 40 states. He has owned four businesses and served as Vice President and Partner in a $2 billion international franchise holding company. He works as an independent franchise consultant based in Dublin, Ohio, and his consulting is free to the candidate. Learn more about Matt

Published: August 18, 2026  |  Last Updated: August 24, 2026  |  LinkedIn