About Matt

Matt Solomon has seen franchising from every side. He spent years as a marketing executive at Panda Restaurant Group, working both franchise sales and consumer marketing, then moved into franchise consulting at FranChoice before starting his own firm, 25/8 Motivate. He is also the managing partner of two franchises he still operates himself. His firm deliberately combines consulting with first-year marketing support — because, as he puts it, most franchise salespeople stop caring the moment the agreement is signed.

What we talked about

The passive-income myth — what franchise ownership actually demands, and why he thinks the retire-then-buy sequence is backwards.

How validation gets stacked — why the franchisees a brand hands you are the wrong ones to call, and who he calls instead.

Matching by data, not instinct alone — the model he built on his own decade of candidate records, and why he compares it to a dating app.

“Find every way to say no” — the instruction he gives candidates before they commit, and the reasoning behind it.

Reading the FDD — why Item 19 can be dressed up, and what he tells people to do with a 235-page document instead of reading it.

An industry primed for a reframe — his blunt case that franchise consulting as practised today serves the consultant, not the buyer.

Sharpest moments

On the promise that sells the most franchises:

There is no passive business in franchising... don’t let anybody lie to you either.

On how he wants candidates to approach a brand they like:

Find every way to say no... because I want them to be that confident when they say yes.

On who the industry’s research tools are actually built for:

All of it really is to generate leads for consultants... they don’t help the person, the consumer.

On what the validation call is worth when the brand picks the participants:

They’re gonna provide you with their best franchisees... you’re gonna talk to those people that are the cheerleaders for the brand.

On where the incentives break:

It doesn’t matter if you sell a franchise to somebody and they fail because it’s not any of your business after that. And so that to me is wrong.

On the “free” consultant:

I’m not free... they bake those costs either into royalties or somewhere, marketing fund.

Key takeaways

• Three things a candidate needs before anything else: capital (the cheapest franchises start around $100,000, plus a first-year marketing and overhead budget), real tolerance for risk, and a willingness to do the work.
• Passive ownership is close to a myth — he has seen it work a handful of times and would never plan around it; buying a franchise as a retirement move usually means not retiring.
• Match the brand’s strengths to your gaps, not your strengths — and technology is the gap most owners underestimate, because a brand rarely fills it for you.
• Validation is the most important stage and the easiest to rig: brands supply their happiest franchisees, so he sources owners near the candidate’s own territory instead.
• He built a matching model on his own historical candidate and franchisee records — comparing a new candidate against past owners who ended up in a brand’s top quartile — and treats it as a complement to instinct, not a replacement.
• Item 19 of the FDD is a single number that can be dressed up; he tells candidates to run the document through an AI agent to surface what needs questioning rather than reading 235 pages front to back.
• One unit rarely makes money — franchising economics work at scale, across multiple units.
• His proposed fix for the industry: tie the consultant’s pay to how the franchisee performs in years one, three and five, instead of to the signature.