Franchise Rock Stars: The Expert Effect

0:00AI was not used in the creation of this podcast. This is The Social Geek, Radio Network. Hello, Geeks and welcome to Social Geek, the most popular franchise podcast. I'm Jack Munson, your host at MarketingConcelia. Today the franchise rock stars are back for the fall season. Daniel Wright, Ali Krauts, Derek Abel, Scott Reamer, and Kristen Pahachek are here. We're talking about being an expert. Do you still have to earn that or can you fake it till you make it? All right, today's show is brought to you by Northeast color. Answer Connect, Pilot and Thunder. As America continues to celebrate 250 years,

1:00join Thunder Lee for American Dreamers. It's the series of short video, spotlighting the stories of some amazing American small business owners. Check it out on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and to Thunder Lee Marketing.com, slash American Dash Dreamers. You know, my favorite hour of every month is getting together with the social geek franchise rock stars to have a little chat about what's going on in the industry, what's going on in the world. And right now we're really looking at fall of 2026 if you can believe it. So welcome back, rock stars. How are you all? That's good. Good to see you, Jack. Glad to have you here again. And we have a kind of an interesting topic that was once again suggested by our friend Derek Abelman. And this is the expert effect. What does it mean to be an expert in your field?

2:01And maybe for us, we focus on franchising as the area where so many of our friends and colleagues are known as experts. Derek, I'm going to start with you. How do you become an expert? And what does that even mean anymore to be the E word? I mean, it's an interesting question to me because I think that expertise and franchising can mean like a dozen different things, which I think is actually the upside of franchising because there are so many concepts running on the same basic model. It kind of allows that expertise to cross-pollinate. So you could take like, for example, like an HVAC territory strategy and adapted to a QSR expansion. And it's the same math. It's just different trucks or a fitness studio trying to maximize member retention, you know, to keep someone paying monthly for something that they could essentially quit any time. And then hand that problem to a pet groomer who wants to turn one off visits into subscriptions.

3:06Again, it's the same psychology, but it's just a different lineage. So I think like in franchising, while some experts do stay in their lane, I think that this industry rewards the ones who don't stay in their lane, sort of the pattern spotters, who see what a fitness brand is doing or a plumbing franchise might have in common. And then they see that before anyone else doesn't, they're able to sort of pull that together. Danielle, right, you and I have talked about this a couple of times. What makes an expert an expert? Is it posting a lot? Is it talking a lot? Is it grabbing attention or is it having something valuable to say? Oh goodness. Experts in franchising, I would say it's you just are everywhere and everything to everyone. And you say one thing that oh, that got me a lot of thumbs up. Send there lots of comments. And now all of this sudden I'm an expert.

4:08Yeah. I think we tend to put the word expert out there like we're changing our sheets, right? It's what defines an expert. I love in franchising, we never define any of these words. We are just let me just get out there and you are because I say that you are. I think personally time experience, yes, if you have time and experience, you're going to have insights that seem, whoa, that's yeah, you're an expert at it because you've been honing in on your craft for a period of time. But I feel like if you have a master class of something, they think you're an expert or I'm on a video of something. Yeah. You and I were talked about like I'm everywhere and everything, right? So yeah, you could say I'm an expert, but I'm the furthest thing from an expert. I just put myself in a lot of different rooms without people. I'll disagree because I think you are an expert because you've actually sold franchises.

5:11You're an expert in franchising, right? I've never sold a franchise in my life. I've been in franchising for 18 years. I've never sold, I've never signed a deal, right? I've helped, you know, 5,000 other people sell franchises, but I've never sold one in my life. You've sold a lot. Kristen has sold a lot, but I've never sold a single one. I support those who actually get results. I guess we'll say it that way. So I think you are an expert in franchising because you've actually done the work and kind of going back to what you were saying about people who set up a webinar or a master class or something and say, you know, I'm an expert because it's like, yeah, well, how many of you sold? Because I haven't, you know, it's just we like, we like ourselves a lot in franchising. And we feel like if no one else likes us, that's fine. We like ourselves a lot. So I don't, I would never pretend to know what you do and how you do it.

6:15That's why we're probably all in this group of rock stars is because. Yeah, we work well together, right? Yeah. Right. And I would, I've been a franchisee myself. So I know what struggles that they have and what successes come from it. But I would never in a million years try to tell someone, well, this is how you should because let's be clear. I don't know. And those franchises anymore. So maybe I wasn't a great franchisee. But everyone that's at this table with us right now is an expert in their vertical. Again, to the definition of expert, like, it's a broad brushstroke. And if you're going to say you're an expert, say you're an expert of something specifically, don't just do, I'm an expert in franchising. But really, are you like, you're an expert in podcasts and PR and lead generation in marketing? I sit at the hand of the master with that, right? Like, I love learning the things that you think about and the way that you go into work with people, right? Just I just don't think it's something that you can just say everyone's an expert at

7:21everything in franchising. Choose your vertical. Choose choose the thing that you want to be really good at and keep learning at it. Expert status doesn't come because I give you the word expert. It comes because you're a constant learner and you're wanting to be better at that craft. And that's how I think you become an expert long term. I think one of the things that I wanted to talk about today was how I think we confused being visible with credible. And that was like the line I was like hyper focused on with this topic, Jack, because I think that social media has done that in franchising. I think LinkedIn has done that in franchising. So similar to the question you're asking about like cross-pollinating insectors, I don't think it's that way anymore. But I think it goes back to that phrase I just used, right? It is being visible with the incredible. And so I think somebody can be incredible at building up their personal brand because

8:21you and I personally talk about that all the time and know the value of it of course. And as marketers we talk to our CEOs all the time about them being a personal brand. But it still doesn't necessarily mean that you trust that person to solve the problem. And that's kind of the elephant in the room for me here a little bit is visible versus credible. Yeah, it all comes back to no like and trust. It's pretty easy to be known, especially if you throw a bunch of money at it and make yourself a t-shirt that says expert or put it on your LinkedIn daily update that I'm an expert in something. But it's a little harder to get liked and trusted, especially trusted. So anybody else is there. And then reverse is true. The reverse is true, right? You can be the smartest person in the whole wide room. But if nobody understands what you know or they know you exist, your expertise has a ceiling. It's not going to get communicated out or shared. Right. Yeah, yeah. Kristen. I started my career in social media and everyone would be like, hey,

9:24Kristen's a social media expert and I'm like, well, be an expert in something that's constantly changing. And as I was thinking about this topic and this conversation, I think that expertise comes more direct to your point around pattern recognition and how you use what you know to make decisions or to anticipate potential outcomes than actually what you know. And while expertise can be seen as something that is gathered over a 10 year or a lengthy career in a particular industry, I'm not sure that expertise is actually a destination. I think it's more about taking the 10 year that you do have, whether it be 20 years or two years and applying it towards an anticipated outcome and risk mitigating based off of those potential outcomes. When I'm here and you say to Kristen, I was just thinking about like credentialed experts versus

10:26experienced experts. And like I think about all of our names like on the screen right now that have CFB after us, right? But there's credentialed experts that can be CFE's and franchising. You could be a credentialed attorney or credentialed CPA. But an experienced expert is also what you're talking about where you can spend years doing the work and seeing the patterns like you said and making mistakes and solving the same kinds of problems repeatedly. That almost makes you the experienced expert without the title, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah. And I mean, I think just as anything that we do, expertise is perception based. There is no, we all think this one person is an expert because of X, Y, and Z and we align on it, right? And so, you know, one of the things that I think is really important when we think about how we're going to go and tackle something is kind of this fake it to you, make it Jack that you you know outlined in the in the start of this. And if you've heard me talk, it's kind of like

11:27face it to you, make it in that you're just kind of doing it with everything that you've gotten all of the information that you've got and you might not know exactly what the outcome is going to be or what the right answer is, but is there truly a right answer in anything but accounting? Yeah, accounting law and I guess brain surgery really have to be critical. But yeah, yeah. Not probably. I hope or airline pilot. I really hope. Is the word expert, does it just not mean as much anymore because maybe it's been overused, Scott? Yeah, I have some thoughts. I don't know what it means. Just like I don't know what the word gourmet means. Nor do I know what leadership conference means. I've no idea what's on the agenda of a leadership conference. There's words that we abuse. And so here's what I was thinking going into this is how ambiguous it is. So some of you know that before franchising, I worked in the entertainment industry and the film business. I had a I was hired for years by film companies. They would give me scripts. I would summarize them. I would critique them off for feedback.

12:29Start up my own business with a partner who also dropped out of film school. We were in the MFA program at NYU taught by a credential professor who got one movie made. We did not graduate. We left for various reasons, but some people graduated. They have an MFA in film and screenwriting. I know one guy he dropped out did not have an MFA, but is one an Oscar for screenwriting. One. So you have a professor who got a movie made who teaches at NYU. A guy who dropped out no credentials but got an Oscar. You have people who have the MFA. And then you know people at my partner myself who have been through hundreds of scripts and help screenwriters improve, but we haven't necessarily written scripts. So who is the expert there in screenwriting? Right? Depends what you need. You think about, you know, when conferences in the franchise industry bring in speakers. Right? Who's the expert? Is it someone who has run franchises or Brandon knows it? Is it someone who can communicate well, someone who studied it, or maybe a famous person who happens to own franchises? Right? We know who tends to get the biggest fees and gets on stage. Who's the expert?

13:35Yeah. I have a similar story with film school, Scott. I got a degree in at the time they called it radio TV film. And I had zero interest in film. Right? I just wanted to do radio. But I got a degree that says I'm an expert in film. I haven't edited a piece of film in 30 years, right? At the same school, the exact same university, there was a guy by the name of Robert Zemeckis, who was there several years before me, who dropped out of the same program. So I have the degree that says I'm an expert in filmmaking. Robert Zemeckis does not. I think he's done pretty well without having that degree in that expert status. I would say so. But here's the question. Could Robert Zemeckis, for all his accomplishments, could he teach film? Oh, probably not. The answer may be no. Yeah, that's a good point. So maybe some of being the expert is also being the teacher,

14:37coach, mentor, like sharing your knowledge with the next generation, not just being awesome at your craft. Yeah, it's like, you know, in athletics, you know, you can have a coach who may not be able to play that well, but can bring out the best in others or a great player who may not be able to coach. So Dean an expert, he's someone who can shoot a basket or someone who can teach others how to shoot and defend it. Sort of depends on the need of, of, you know, the party who is bringing in the expert. Let's bring that into franchising. I see leadership going two different directions. And I'm wondering who's the bigger quote unquote franchise expert, the entrepreneur who came up with a great idea that turned into this fantastic franchise system and brand. Or the CEO who came in afterwards and took that from 50 locations to 5,000 locations, right? Who's the bigger franchising expert? I'm going to say it's the second person who actually could

15:38take a great idea and scale it, not just somebody who had, you know, some wild vision. Any thoughts there? 1000%. I mean, I think having an idea and executing an on an idea and then particularly in franchising that replicate, that's the sauce, the replication, that's the magic, right? That's that's the thing we're all reaching for no matter what it is. And so I think the second person is more of the expert because of that pattern recognition. They can see the parts of this that can be optimized. They can see the the playbook that needs to be written. They can they can just look at a map and it becomes a, you know, a target rich environment. They can see all the territories immediately light up. I think that's that's the true expert and they didn't get it just by working on that one person's idea, whatever, whatever that may have been, they can identify this spots on the map where they should go next because they have traveled that map. But so in some way, they've

16:41been there. Well, and I think you've raised a good point around it being somebody who's done this a couple of times, right? If you are successful at something once, maybe it's skill, maybe it's luck. If you go into a brand multiple times and scale it and do it the right way, the chances of it being luck go down and the chances of it being some sort of expertise or skill goes up. So repeatability or or the ability to actually scale it scale yourself and do the the same thing twice and be successful at it. I would say that that person is an expert in doing. Right, but if you want to learn how to do it is talking to that person necessarily the way to learn because I moderate panels of top franchises all the time and I'll ask them, hey, what's your secret to success? And invariably, their answer is not the true answer. They'll say, well, we're good to our staff. We do a lot of marketing. But having studied them, because it's much what I do, I can see other things that are going on that they may not even be aware of.

17:46Right? So there's some people in experts in building a franchise system, but others who have studied others and they can't do it themselves, but they can communicate what it is that those people are doing right so others can replicate it. It's really a different expertise. Back in a moment after this word from Answer Connect, running a franchise can be a challenge. Mist calls, unhappy customers. There's a solution for that. Meet Answer Connect, your 24-7 professional answering service. Answer Connect will make sure every call gets answered day or night, creating delightful experiences for your customers. With Answer Connect, you're not just answering calls, your building relationships. Answer Connect, your business answered. Call 800-5840-234. That's 800-5840-234. Quick question. If you pulled a P&L from three of your locations right now, would you be comparing

18:49the same things? If one franchisee is throwing cleaning supplies into the cost of goods sold, while another dumps a third of an invoice into a miscellaneous bucket, the numbers aren't wrong, they're meaningless. Pilot works with franchise systems to set up a detailed chart of accounts and stick with it so every location reports the same way every time. Pilot is offering listeners a free review of your chart of accounts and two months of free bookkeeping. Visit pilot.com slash social geek today. Northeast Colors account managers have a saying, signages the last thing on everyone's mind until it becomes the only thing on their mind. When Northeast Colors sounds the alarm on an opening date, it's because signage comes last in most timelines and doesn't feel urgent until suddenly it's mission critical. That's why Northeast Colors account managers start sounding the alarm early, long before most franchisees think they need to, because by the time signage

19:52feels urgent to you, Northeast Colors already been managing it for weeks. Get ahead of your opening date at NortheastColor.com. Daniel, let me ask you more about the title of expert. It feels like that's not something that we should put upon ourselves, but maybe others voiced that title upon us. Just like you did. You're an expert. I'm not an expert, but you're an expert. And everybody's like, oh no, you're an expert. No, you're an expert. It's like the, oh, you're super, it's, I don't know how you get the title, right? Or how you feel like you're deserving of it or how even do accept it, right? It's when you think about, I'm horrible at this. I had a colleague. She's like, she compliments me a lot. And I don't, I don't know how to handle those compliments. And so it's like

20:52the traditional way is to say thank you and just leave it at that. But I'm the, oh no, thanks, but no, thanks, but no. And it's the same thing with the expert. Maybe they feel like you're an expert because you are saying the things that they want to hear or are impactful or knowledgeable, or they're taking that away. And so yeah, we pass it out like candy like you're an expert. Are you, but what call again, back to the definition, what qualifies it? And so I take it if someone, you're an expert. Great. Thanks. And so I'm learning to be better at accepting that like a compliment. So I think, oh, you're pretty today. I'm not pretty every day. No, I'm, you're pretty today. You're an expert today. You may not be one tomorrow. Right. Right. Depends on the results. It's almost the end of the quarter. How are we doing? What do you think about people who, who give themselves the title of, you know, expert is not that bad, but they're, wow, there are some others

21:53out there that just make me cringe like guru or master or whatever, you know, when you see, we talked earlier about AI experts and AI gurus, which if I see that in somebody's, LinkedIn profile, I just unfollow them immediately. But like, what do you think about giving yourself that title in your profile or your, you know, your LinkedIn, you know, sort of short description? Should we use that word or does that turn too many people off these days? Oh, psychology psychology psychology. Um, people put it, I go back in into that. I think people put it there to make themselves feel better about who they are and what they've done or the money that they've invested into their education or the time or the commitment, whatever. Like, I like the word knowledgeable. I'm knowledgeable to, more so than expert, because expert, then I

23:00should be sitting in some college classroom somewhere teaching others to be an expert and what certifications did you get? I mean, like, goes back to, and I say the things and I know that I should not say the things and franchising. Um, but we're all a little bit of island and misfit toys in this world of franchising. So we all want to feel a little bit better about ourselves. And so we put those things in there to feel a little bit better about our position, our status, or, or where we are. And some of us grow up with a little bit more humility and probably should absorb those titles more and we push them away. And honestly, it's because of expectations. Like, I never want to set the expectation for someone that I'm going to give you this, like top tier thing, when I don't really know what that top tier thing is, like, overperform, underpromise overperform. Um, so good for them if they put it in there, I'm always

24:03suspect of it. Because also there was a marketing person one time that says, why not you go out there and say, I'm, I'm first at this or I'm number one at that. Well, what qualifier gave you that? Like, I am the top 100 of this. Really how? Kristen, you mentioned earlier, um, being a social media expert or being called a social media expert, you know, several years ago, it reminds me of what we're dealing with now with all of the AI experts, right? 15 years ago, all of these people were social media experts. Now they're AI experts. And to me, I don't like the idea of being an expert in a tool, which is what AI or social media is, I always used to say back in the day, it's like, you don't call someone a hammer expert, you call them a carpenter, right? It's, it's what you do with that tool, not just, hey, I know the latest thing about back in the day, you know, the Facebook and Twitter, right? So,

25:06so yeah, I think getting away from being an expert in tools and being to Scott's point, more of an expert in the business process. There is is another point for me, which is all expertise, whether it's knowledge of hammers or an expert carpenter, all expertise has something of a shelf life. And there's like, there's this window where your knowledge matches the market and then the market moves without sending a notice that it moved, right? And so nobody tells you when your expertise is expired, it just quietly becomes a thing a newer operator has to unlearn from you. And to that end, like, expertise isn't a title you earn once it's a habit that you have to keep proving. And the experts still standing in your 15 is the one who knew the most in your one, it's the one who never stopped testing. So Steven veteran problem, right? It's like you said, Derek, it's like 20 years of experience while it's really valuable. It doesn't necessarily mean something even stayed

26:06the same that long. So I was going to bring up Pristens Point about social media too, because I think that's a problem across all marketing jack. And I agree with you that it maybe shouldn't be on a tool. But also how do you look towards somebody that you want to consider an AI expert when those of us who aren't need the experts, right? Like we want to turn to the people who are staying ahead knowing that they don't have 25 years of expertise, but things are changing so quickly, how do we possibly stay ahead of it all, especially in marketing? And so I think of this like season veteran problem. It's like going two ways, right? Like we need those quote new experts, if you will, on things that are moving and changing and people are doing their due diligence and learning, because I don't want to sit down and read books about AI, and I don't want to, I don't want to watch the TikTok videos. I want someone I know to trade me on it, right? Yeah, yeah. You go to your trusted influencers and not just people who are on Instagram, but like influencers in your real life. I tend to, especially when it comes to new tools and technologies,

27:06I tend to look at and read and listen to the marketing experts and the business experts that I've already been aware of and who I like and see what they're doing with the latest tools, as opposed to somebody who's just out there talking about tools, because that always just, I don't know, kind of red flags me like, oh, you're just, you know, cool with a new gadget, right? Or a new, the latest app. So, but I might be a sucker for confidence. That would be by all they push back on that is I might personally be a sucker for somebody who's an expert with a like incredibly confident about what they're talking about. I just think when you're comfortable and you're energetic and you have this confidence, some of that's just your ego coming through, but it works, right? Because we're watching, we're watching with social media videos and we're tuning into these people who have this energy or this ego about them that you just, at least for myself, I find myself just falling into this belief of these people who are teaching me.

28:10And that also plays into, you know, the conference circuit and the people who come out on stage and we're like, wow, did you see so and so at the whatever show they were terrific? And it's like, did they really say anything or did we just kind of buy into it because they were really confident and we just like their presentation? Well, they're an expert in something, maybe just not the thing, you thought they were an expert, but they're, you know, you know, and making you feel good, making you laugh for four or five times. Right salesperson, yeah. Yeah. You know, the industry about last week and I was listening to a panel and one of my friends happened to be on it and I've worked with this friend for decades and I would consider her to be a franchise expert. She's been on the franchise or a side. She's been a franchisee of multiple brands like I really think she knows franchising well. But on this panel, she explained that she chose the wrong franchise and how hard it was for her to accept that she sat through Discovery Day was sold something that she thought she was buying that that she ended up not buying

29:12and ended up losing quite a bit of money on it. And I think this is another interesting facet to expertise in that those that are experts or on the journey to expertise, they failed a lot and that's how they get better and knowing whatever they're trying to learn. And so I hear you in regard to like confidence and following those that feel like they always get it right, but under the surface, those that get it right get it right because they've gotten it wrong too. And so I think shifting and saying one of those things that you really failed at in your career, the bad hires that you made, the bad budget decisions, the messy times that have led people to be that confident in what they're doing next and to surface the good from the bad that's hit them. Kristen, I love that. When I think what I've learned the most from my life, it is from failures and it's from mistakes. And I think people who've made them have a lot of wisdom, but very rarely

30:14do they put those things on their resume or in the back of the, you know, on the book jacket, but there's tremendous value in having been through and come out the other side of failure and bad decisions. Maybe we're getting better at being open to hearing those more vulnerable stories. Like a little bit of vulnerability with a lot of confidence that that's kind of a winning combination for social posts and and you know keynote addresses and that kind of thing right now. Because if you share your failure, everybody in the room, even if they don't want to admit it, can relate to that. And I think that that makes me want to say, you know, oh, this is somebody I totally want to follow. Not just somebody who got lucky, you know, some nepo baby that that locked into some big system someday, right? Here you guys talk about the failures too. It also makes me think of a good leader knowing their boundaries of what their expertise is. And so I think that

31:15the whole other topic of if you know your boundaries as a leader, you know when to also say, I don't know the answer to that, but I know who does. And I think that expertise can be so siloed in what you do. And it's important for us to kind of know where our outside expertise lies to pass our relationships, whether it's at our company or other people in franchising. I think it's one of the beautiful things about all of our networks is you can bring somebody in who knows it better than I do. And then I think that gains credibility too. So there's some of that confidence piece of what you're really confident in and what you kind of know that you're the expert in, but the rest of it, if you're also able to turn that over, I think since a lot of that, you as a leader. I want to go around the room and ask everybody how they find an expert maybe in a particular topic. Maybe it isn't just franchising, but it's in a certain area. Allie will start with you. I know with your work with the Women's Franchise Committee, you've brought in a lot of speakers and content creators and things like that for some of the events. What do you look for and how do you find someone who's

32:18an expert in a certain thing? Is there a process you go through to search and hear them out? Yeah, kind of. We're here and up for the 2027 Animal Leadership Conference this year. And for the first time ever, we're kind of focusing heavy on operations, which is really proving difficult because finding franchises and finding the ops people when we all know the marketers and the dev people and the sales teams. It's been a little bit of a challenge for us. And I think one of the things that we're doing well is keeping the thought of diversity open really wide when it comes to how much experience, how many franchises you have opened, what your title is, and kind of looking at different types of diversity to fill panels and to fill different levels of expertise with people when it comes to one sector of operations. And then in my personal life, it's my friends. It's the, you want to recommend a book I never thought I'd read? Do you want to recommend a podcast or a YouTube video or a song even? I placed a lot of value into friendships and what people

33:22already know and love, send my way, which is totally unrelated to business, of course. But in franchising, it's also just sometimes I just scroll LinkedIn and like the recommendations and the four use. And I'm like, oh my god, there's a VP of ops. I never even heard of that person. So it's a little bit of stalking. I like, it's not beneath me to stalk the crap out of somebody that I think, hey, this person's new. And I want that of our whole committee. It's been a big challenge this year and a positive one to reach outside of what our quote normal network in franchising is because it feels so small when you've been in it for so long that I think we're doing a good job at trying to get outside of that bubble and bring in new people and bring in like, well, well, well, people, like the directors that like somebody gave me a chance when I was there, right? And I think about it all the time as we get some type focused on these sweet people. And it's like, wait a minute, you've got these like hungry and energetic women in our case that we're looking for, but just in general, I think like diversifying like what level of people you're interacting with and meeting and getting to know. And it goes back to something you said earlier about

34:24not following experts who were experts in a certain thing 10, 15 years ago because let's face it, especially when it comes to marketing, but also when it comes to franchising, the world has changed twice in the past 10 years, like completely changed. So someone who's an expert in what they're doing right now, not necessarily because they were, you know, the chief marketing officer at whatever brand 15 years ago. So yeah, love that. Kristen, same question to you. What do you look for? How do you find an expert if there's something that you're trying to figure out? Where do you find those people? Yeah, I mean, I find them to write network and like Ali, you know, seeking out on LinkedIn. But I also think that it's important that you recognize that again, expertise is perception based and it's fundamentally brought up brain surgeons because I'm watching the good doctor with my daughter right now. And like if you ask two brain surgeons how to go about fixing a brain tumor and removing it,

35:24like they may go about it in a different way, yet they're both experts at brain surgery. And so, I think it's important that you're not just seeking out one person or one source of knowledge in that you're taking into account multiple perspectives of expertise in order to say, how can I align this to what my end goal is? And so, you know, that would be my recommendation is, don't stop. It just one and also don't don't state that just because somebody has a long 10 year or an impressive background that they're going to have the insight in order to make a difference, it could be multiple perspectives that do. Awesome. Derek, over to you, how do you find experts? Well, when I was breaking into the franchise industry, after I joined the IFA, I got the pamphlet in advance of the convention. And I went through that and I ignored the big line speakers, but I focused on anyone who was leading a panel and then everyone who was on that panel.

36:28Anyone who's doing a breakout, anything like that, and I just combed through LinkedIn and added all of those people and followed all of those people and read any articles that they wrote. My reasoning was that if this person obviously knows something of what they're talking about, or they wouldn't be put in this position within a conference, but also because they were speaking and leading these events or these breakouts or whatever, they were positioning themselves as mentors. They were positioning themselves as people who believed they had something to share that was of value. And that's how I found my tribe. That's how I found what is this saying, like when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. That was it. It was there. In my personal life, if I'm interested in something, I read a lot of books, I read a lot of, sometimes history books. Some of my favorite books to read in that vein are, and I'm going to get this word wrong in pronunciation, but ethnographic accounts, which is to say like, sociology, student or professional

37:36goes and takes a job or goes into the field and lives that, whatever that is, the thing that they're studying for a year, five years, six years. And it's that firsthand experience that I think is really powerful. And similarly, I love oral histories. Studs turquoise is like a complete star in my constellation. Just hearing people talk, especially his book working, which is about work, and how people feel about what they do. It's so powerful because it unthreads a lot of jargon, a lot of industry buzzwords, a lot of gatekeeping, knowledge, games, and it's just someone talking about what they do and how they do it and what it means to them. And I think that that's really powerful. We speak. There's so much to be learned from just listening to people in their own voice. And so that's how I find experts. I find them in a similar fashion. And here's my little tip for

38:38listening to podcasts because I listen to a lot of podcasts. There are a few podcasts I love and I tend to skip the first 10 minutes of an interview because even some of my favorite hosts out there fall into this this chasm of when you bring someone on, you have to let them read their resume for 10 minutes to tell you what they did 20 years ago and what school they went to. I don't care about any of that. I want to know what are you working on right now? What problems of mine can you fix? And I notice, especially if it's like an hour long podcast, if you skip the first 10 minutes of an interview, you'll get right into what problems are out there that you have a solution for. And that's been my tip, especially in the marketing world because all of these experts want to come on and talk about their experience working for Apple or Microsoft or whoever for whatever

39:42time. And it's like, yeah, that was in the year 2005. It doesn't matter anymore. So we jump right ahead on that. Scott, you talked to a lot of people probably more than the rest of us combined from a stage annually. And a lot of people are looking at you as a business leader expert, franchise expert, you know, all of the things we mentioned today, when you're trying to find someone to sort of solve your problems or help you figure out where you're going with something next, where do you turn? Well, first I want to say the rule about skipping the first 10 minutes of a podcast does not apply to this one. Oh, of course, yeah, our first 10 minutes were gold right now to total waste of time. But the first 10 minutes are fantastic. We deleted the first 10 minutes for you. Oh, excellent. Yeah, that's that's a service we have here. I rely heavily on expert. I mean, just so I can better myself and better my business, but also because I do a lot of writing. I'm about to embark on a new book. And I don't want to rely just on my thoughts. And so there are people

40:45who I'm going to be reaching out to who I feel are experts in various areas. And so I always start with my immediate network. Who do I know? And why do I respect them? Usually it's some level of competence. You know, it's not often that I need an expert in in signs, right? But if I did, I'm reaching out to Derek right away. So I always begin with with who I know. I call it sort of like, you know, the Ghost Busters test. Like if you're in the 80s and you had a ghost in your apartment in New York City, Jack, who are you going to call? Right? Like Ghost Busters. There's only one, right? That's who you to so I think who who's instinctively who am I going to call when I have a question when I've got a problem outside of my own network? Honestly, if I'm like needing something to fix my home or I sort of start off with Google and just do the internet and the AI stuff. And then I cross reference to make sure there are multiple sources that point, okay, this one company, this one person, they really are great. Years and years ago when SEO first became a thing,

41:45I decided I want to spend a ton of money to SEO my website. How am I going to find a good company? So I just googled search engine optimization and I said whoever comes up first, they're my company. They figured it out, right? Yeah. They figured it out. So these days between AI and Google, it's gotten so good that usually you're reading enough reviews and stuff. It's pretty good. Yeah. The only danger there is now it feels like we've crossed the threshold into, now there's just too much. And how do you sort through? And if you ask a question twice to the same AI companion, you'll get two different answers, right? So how do we get past that? So maybe we do need those AI experts. So as we go to wrap up today, Derek, I want to throw it back over to you. I know you had a few additional thoughts to share. Yeah. Thanks, Jack. I mean, I think this came up in the chat here. And I did a little bit of thinking about this. So expert, what is an expert?

42:51Because I'm this guy, I am that kind of guy. I did look this up. So the word expert comes from the Latin expiry, which means to test or to try. And that same route gives us the French assay, which is where we get essay, those things you just have to write, but now probably don't. Both of them have the same meaning. It's an attempt. So when I was growing up, my dad actually was a lineman for a power company. And I remember that when he was training for that job, he planted a 40-foot tall power pole in our front yard. And he spent a week scaling back 40-foot tall power pole in a pair of spiked ankle cleats, counterweighted by nothing more than just as built. So every ascent of this pole was ugly and awkward. And every descent down this pole was a barely controlled free fall. And it was the first time that I learned that my parents

43:51were human, that they could fail, that they could get hurt, and that they could fail again. It was terrifying to watch so I stopped watching. About a week later, my dad called me outside, because he wanted to show me something. And he put on his cleats and then he danced up that pole. And then he slid down it like a firefighter, easy as you please. And I asked him how he got so good, so quickly. And he said, I asked someone to teach me and then I listened to what they said. So I believe that the humility to ask the right questions is worth more than the confidence that you have all of the answers. That's the whole trick. It meant you don't know, bail your way through the rest. You fake it, you make it, or you earn it, the real experts never stop climbing. You just have to follow the right number of times before you can dance. Thanks again to the franchise rock stars Derek Abelman,

45:16Kristen Pahachek, Alley Kraus, Daniel Wright, and Scott Greenberg. Thanks also to today's sponsors, Pilot, Answer Connect, Thunderland, and Orteez Co. And thanks to you for listening, telling a friend about us and staying connected on the Social Geek Radio Network.