When I worked as a corporate executive, I thought I was living the dream. I was a VP in a household-name, Fortune 50 company. I had an MBA from a top program. The budget I managed was so big, our CFO treated $1M as a rounding error. I earned mid-six figures every year, and I had a nice 401(k) balance and a vacation home. On the American Dream checklist, I ticked every box.
But in reality, I didn’t have real success. My health was shot. I regularly worked 60 hours a week, with months on the road every year. I eked out a hockey game or school play here and there, but I missed most milestones and family dinners. And that vacation home? I went there every year with my family – and then spent my vacations fielding emails, calls, and project requests from the CEO.
So what opened my eyes and finally pushed me from employee to entrepreneur? In part, I had to learn a few lessons – sometimes the hard way.
Lesson #1: Ageism is real
I first started seeing ageism in my 40s, as it happened to slightly older friends and colleagues. Top performers missed out on promotions or were even pushed out altogether, without a satisfactory explanation. Weeks later, they’d learn that a much younger worker got the promotion or their old role instead.
Then, as I approached 50, it started happening to me. My boss gave a project to a younger coworker because “we don’t want to overload you.” I asked about my next promotion and heard “the company’s just not ready.” I rationalized it at first, took the explanations at face value. But after I lost a big promotion I’d been led to believe was in the bag, I realized what was happening. Lesson learned: in the corporate world, my age became a liability that outweighed my expertise.
Lesson #2: Life decisions matter more than money decisions
When you’re in the corporate world, money decisions are all that matter. The most important question to answer is always “Will it generate more profit?” When you’re immersed in this culture for decades, as I was, it’s easy to start seeing every aspect of your life in terms of dollars and cents. Sure, I was missing family dinners or spending my vacations building slide decks, but that yearly bonus was going to be so much bigger as a result…
Thanks to some smart questions from my wife, and a major health event that almost killed me (remember what I said about learning lessons the hard way?), I finally realized that cash wasn’t king. My health and my family relationships were coming second to something I didn’t even own. Lesson learned: I needed to expand my definition of what a good life really was. I started looking into franchising and realized that I could work less, earn more, and have 100% equity in all of it.
Lesson #3: The only certainty is what I see in the mirror
Conventional wisdom tells us that the employee route is the secure way to go. The biweekly or monthly check, the employer-matched 401(k), the subsidized health insurance: as long as you do your job well, they’ll be there for you until you’re ready to retire. But that was your parents’ and grandparents’ reality. Layoffs are now a tool for balancing quarterly budgets. Companies staff up on a whim, then let thousands go when margins dip slightly.
After a few calls from laid-off colleagues, I started wondering if corporate security was all it’s cracked up to be. I realized that my father and grandfather, who’d built a successful family business, had been onto something. Lesson learned: the only certainty was what I saw in the mirror – myself. I could be laid off, but no one could take away my drive or my expertise. And if I made the switch from employee to entrepreneur, I could use both to their full potential, for the benefit of my family and community.
Lesson #4: 70% is enough
When I first started to research franchising, I wanted to explore every angle. I obsessed over numbers, operational details, and risk scenarios. I wanted to guarantee myself that this was a smarter decision than staying in corporate America. Thankfully, my wife Lauri saw things differently. She has a way of cutting right to the heart of an issue. One night at dinner, she asked me, “Dave, if you keep going on this path, are you actually going to own anything you’re building?”
It was like a switch flipped in my brain. I had 70 percent of the information, and it was all telling me that franchising was a smart choice. Lesson learned: it was smarter to bet the remaining 30% on myself than on a company that was draining me without giving me opportunity in return.
Lesson #5: The playbook works
Anyone who’s worked with me will tell you: I like to push boundaries. I wasn’t a successful marketing executive because I played it safe. I was forever nudging my teams and agencies to try something new, throw the spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks. So I’ll admit that I wasn’t sure I’d like the idea of following a franchise playbook.
As I researched options, though, I realized that the playbook wasn’t limiting. In fact, it was freeing. It took care of the mundane operational details – which software to use, what paperwork I needed for onboarding employees – so I could focus on strategy and leadership. And the higher-risk elements of entrepreneurship – product-market fit, pricing, and optimal location size – were all already resolved.
Lesson learned: the playbook was a way to focus my energy on the skills I most like to exercise. Talking with other franchise owners, I saw how it could shorten my on-ramp to profitability and increase the safety of my investment. And by finding the right franchisor for my skills and personality, I could still maintain the space to be creative and share my ideas.
Your turn to learn?
Every day, I work with people like me: corporate executives who are starting to second-guess the rat race. Many of them have already learned one or two of the lessons above, but they’re still wondering if franchising is the right path for them. Some of them are 100% on board with franchising, but don’t want to waste precious time combing through thousands of options that aren’t right for them.
If either one of those descriptions sounds like you, I’m here to help. My services are always free, and I provide customized guidance to help you move from employee to entrepreneur in a way that works for your goals, resources, and skills. It’s time to stop contributing to someone else’s bottom line and start your journey to freedom.
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