Tom Mirabella left corporate at 30 and never looked back. Seventeen years later, he’s built Wingman into a 25-person business by doing what corporate rarely rewards: solving problems fast, betting on relationships, and staying obsessively close to customers.

In this conversation, Tom breaks down his escape story, why “local + in-person” is making a comeback, and how Wingman’s franchise model flips the typical franchise script — where the franchisee focuses on relationships and sales while the central team handles fulfillment and delivery.

If you’re stuck in corporate and can’t see a path out, this episode gives you a practical look at what “building your own lane” can really look like — without pretending it’s easy.

Join the Escapee Collective: TheEscapeeCollective.com

What You’ll Learn

• Why Tom left corporate early (and what corporate policies taught him about ceilings)

• The side-hustle-to-business path: how one small project turned into real clients

• How to think about risk when leaving: your monthly “number” vs. replacing a salary

• Why entrepreneurship can swing from best day to worst day in 30 minutes — and how to handle it

• The “digital mayor” concept: becoming the trusted local hub in your town

• Why Tom believes physical locations + community presence still win in a digital world

• A modern franchise approach: franchisee sells + builds relationships, HQ team delivers

• Why customer service and trust are the real differentiators in crowded markets

Key Quotes

• “The problem’s now. Two weeks from now, it’s worse.”

• “As an entrepreneur, you can have the best and worst day within a half hour.”

• “I want you to be the digital mayor of your town.”

• “If you do what you love, the money follows.”

Mentioned in This Episode

• COBRA and how Tom thought about early-stage risk

• Networking groups, chambers, community events, and “planting seeds”

• Using a podcast as a lead generator (and why it worked)

Connect with Tom

• Email: Tom at wingmanplanning.com

• Website: WingmanPlanning.com

• Social: Instagram / Facebook / TikTok / LinkedIn (search “Wingman Planning”)

Hi, Tom, welcome to the Corporate Escapee Podcast.

Hey, how are you? Thanks for having me on today.

It is my pleasure. And I promise not to call your business Wingstop anymore. It's Wingman. you'll see, which I love that is now one of my favorite names for a business. And folks, once we get in into this, you'll understand why, but, thank you for joining us. And today, two things, Wingman, I want to talk about that because you're now offering it as franchise. I think franchise is an underappreciated path for escapees. So.

Wingman.

That's awesome.

want to get into that, but you're like a multi angle guest, right? Because you did escape. would call you an OG of the escapee from corporate. did it a while ago. And so I want to get in your journey a little bit. Some of the things that you did, let's talk about wingman franchising is an opportunity and there's just some other things you work with a lot of small businesses. We should probably should hit record before that, because we were talking about that. So, so those are kind of the three areas I'd love to get into. then whatever else is, is on your mind.

Yeah.

Sure.

Sure, I've been out of the corporate workforce for 17 years now. I was a young guy, I 30 years old, I wasn't married, I didn't really have a lot of expenses and bills. And I was like, let's take a shot at this because I just couldn't think about doing, I was working for two large, one was a Fortune 500, one was a Fortune 10 at the time. And I was doing like,

analysis upon analysis and churn and this and that. And I said, I can't see myself doing this for a long time. just like as much as it was interesting and as much as I was an up and I was a rising star. I was an up and comer. I was a young guy and I was making moves. wanted to show the world that we know what I knew and what I could do. But as I started to do it and you know, I got passed over by promotion because this guy had more tenure than me.

I was a better employee, I could do the job better just because of tenure, I lost that. I remember also one time I got promoted twice in one year and the boss says, I can't really give you a big increase on your second promotion. And I said, just out of curiosity, and I was young, 23, 24 years old, I said, you know, why? And he goes, you know, I'd have to go to the CFO and get an exception because, you know, we've raised your salary. But I said, but you promoted me twice. I said, why do you want to hold me back? And he goes,

Yeah.

Right.

You know, Tom, that's just the way it is. I was like, at the time I was a young guy, I had a nice salary, so I didn't make a big deal of it. But then when I left and I went to a competitive company, they said, well, why are you leaving? I said, well, you know, I got passed over here. You limited the upside here. I said, you don't really value what you're getting. And they were like, well, we really do. And you're really a great guy. And I said, that's cool. We can still be friends. Like, at the same time, like I was trying to

All right.

I was trying to make my mark on the world. was trying to buy a house. was trying to, you know, kind of just get out there. And I was the guy who was in at 730 in the morning and I was the last guy to leave when I worked for a corporation. like, I'm not scared of the, I'm not scared of the hustle. I'm not scared of the hours. but I thought that I should have been compensated differently for some of these things that we were doing. So I left, I went to a competitive company, which again is outside of my grain. Like that's not something I do, but

They called me, they were like, listen, we're looking for somebody like yourself. They said, look, they gave me a nice increase. But then there, was the same thing. That was just, I'll put together this PowerPoint and in two weeks we'll talk to my boss about it. I said, the problem's now. said, now's the time we gotta talk about this problem. Two weeks, it's worse. Well, that's the way we do things. And I said, okay. So little by little, I realized this wasn't for me. Like again,

Right.

Single guy ready to work ready to take on the project and they'll like we got to talk to the boss's boss or you know We'll put this on the calendar in a few weeks And I said I just kind of looked at myself. I was like, am I doing here? Like this is just gonna be a long career and I said I don't really want that I'd rather take some risks as an entrepreneur by trade I always like to you know, hustle and do things on you know, do I had

was young guy, had a paper route, then I was a bartender. I always liked that hustle and the better you do, the better you're compensated. So I always lived that sales kind of mentality. So again, I was like about 30 years old, said, I started to do some stuff on the side. Before like a side hustle was a cool thing, I started to build this like matching service for contractors and homeowners. So if you're looking for a roof,

Yeah.

I would get roofers to advertise on my website. This is close to 20 years ago. And you would find ABC Roofing, you'd give them a call. Well, ABC Roofing started to say to me, hey, why don't you make me a website? Why don't you help me with the marketing? Why don't you put me on the first page of Google? And I was like, well, I have this site, you know, and they're like, it's great. Cool. We'll pay you for the site, but we really want you to do this other work.

And then I started, but I didn't know how to build a website. You know, I had hired a company to build my website. So then I started to try to find some freelancers and you know, some guys are very particular and you know, again, when you start working with the trades, that's an interesting group to work with. But you got, you know, they couldn't, the two people, the trades and the other person, and the freelancer couldn't mesh. So I was like, you know what, let me try to be the middle man and.

See if I can get all the information from you as the tradesman of what you want on this website and then reach out to the developer. Tell them what, sketch it out, tell them what I want. And that became very successful for me because the tradesman and the contractors were like, we get you, you understand us. We talk the same language. So then I started to do that. And then I built a couple of sites and I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. And now I'm starting to do some consulting, but I'm still working at Big Co.

Yeah.

I decided one day, said, I gotta just do this. Now's my time, if I'm not gonna do it now, I'm never gonna do it. And the more, I think the more your salary goes up, the less likely you oughta, again, you go from making a X amount of money to tomorrow you make zero, right? If you're gonna go out on your own. And I think some of these corporate escapees and some of the things they have to realize is, I would think about now, if I had to do it again, have a side hustle, start to...

Yep.

Realize, realize your value, realize your worth, and then get some clients and then the jump isn't as hard. So I had a couple, I had probably, I don't know, I had a handful of customers when I made the jump and I said, all right, well, I gotta do this, this is the amount of money I need. Like, forget money for extras. This is, to pay my housing, to pay my cell phone, to pay my car, to pay my car insurance, I need this amount of money.

Right.

Every month. that's my number. Forget what I was making at Big Co. Forget that. That's that's history now because I want this new life. And then I came in and I said, well, that's the number I need to make every month. And then made it in the first month. And then second month, you get another customer and you start feeling good about yourself. And you're like, this is cool. And little by little, you know, and I, when I first did it, I said, I'm just going to work for myself. I'm going to have, I'm going to have just a consulting company. I'm not going to worry about like.

Alright.

I don't want employees. I don't want this or that. And I'm just going to just work for myself. I'm going to be like a consultant, solopreneur, consultant. I did that for the first like four or five years. And then like I picked up a person who was like an admin and picked up a person who helped me populate some websites, but nothing big. So now I'm in business 17 years this year. 10, 11 years ago, I picked up a woman and I said to her, and she still works for me today. And I said to her,

We're going to, you we're just going to work out of my house. We're never going to get an office and we're just, you know, it's just going to be you, me, maybe a couple of developers. We're just going to build these websites for these local businesses near us. And she goes, okay, cool. Six months later, we're hiring a third person. And my wife says like, Tom, think you might want to look into office space. It's, know, Tony and this other person are here in the evenings while I'm trying to like cook dinner and.

and rest is history.

You know, the house ready for the evening. So I said, okay, so I find this building down the road. I speak to the guy. All right, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to get set up in there. And, that we were there and now this building, this office has five offices. There's me, Tony, and an intern. And I say, what are we ever going to do with all this space? We were swimming in space. So I rent out one of the offices to, the attorney rents back for me and another, business owner that I knew.

rented another office for me, so it starts to fill up. Well, we tell the one person, we said, look, we gotta part ways because we needed space. And then we are like, we're now out of space. We started to hire, so now we have four or five or six people in this small little five person office. But when I say it a five person office, it was like one bathroom. So now people are waiting online to go to the bathroom. And I'm like, this is weird. So.

you

We went from, not going to move out of my house to now we have a line for our bathroom. And so we started looking again and I found a building that was in, it was a real estate building from the 1970s. It was like, like from Glen Gary, Glen Ross, the sales movie. So I'm like, I took on this project and we're going to, we're going to buy the building. We're going to renovate the building. We're going to keep our existing building because we need those five or six people to still work there, but we're going to do this and.

Yeah

I'll tell you, that was one of the hardest projects I have ever done. Again, you're a small business, and by no means am I a large corporation. We have five or six people working at one building. We're gutting and renovating another building that we're carrying at this point now. But I saw the vision. I saw what it could be. And I love, in the podcast, and maybe in the notes, we could take a picture of the outside of the building and see what it turned out to. And I remember people saying to me, and people had some...

yeah.

Rude comments along the way. You know, I renovated the building. made it beautiful, but I never put a sign outside. I never did exterior work at the beginning. And people were like, what's up with that? And I said, I said to them, I said, I can't make, I don't make money on the outside. said, I need my guys to have a safe place to work. And again, I need desks, floors, you know, everything here in the inside, because that's what's going to make me be able to stay in business, make money and, produce your jobs. And they were like, you know, but you know, people, they're just.

say whatever they want. But now when you look at the outside of my building, get compliments daily about how great the building looks, how I turned around a 30 year old real estate company into this, and the owner of the real estate company called me one day, goes, I'd really love to take a tour of the inside because the outside looks great. That was one of the biggest compliments because someone that owned the building before me came in and said to me, Tom, this looks really good.

Right.

appreciate it.

It made that, you know, kind of, all that hard work and, know, it's, you know, I had the eye on the prize. I knew that I wanted to figure out some. So now we have, you know, again, I wasn't going to have employees till now, Tony, till now we're in the second building.

Yeah, let me, uh, before we go into the next phase of this, there's so much I want to unpack before we get too far away from it, because I absolutely love this story. Cause if you're in corporate, guess what? You're not redecorating a building. Maybe you are, but I'm guessing that's probably not going to be on the agenda. And even when, when you were still in corporate, I could just see people in the audience nodding their heads saying, yeah, what, what the hell am I doing? Right. had.

Mm-hmm.

No.

Yeah.

on the podcast, well, late summer last year, 26 year old, right? He was in investment banking, got burned out just in the, and that's still in the training period at that point. He went and started coaching and training, like high school kids, athletes with performance opened up a gym. he completely figured it out much earlier than folks like me that, you know, climbed the corporate ladder for, for decades until we realized what the hell am I doing? And so.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kudos to you for figuring it out earlier than most.

You know, I love everything my parents did for me, but they are the safest of safe people. They live in the same home that they bought 52 years ago. So they're not, they're creatures of habit. They're the salt of the earth. They're the greatest two people in the world. But at the same time, I did not, like, I remember when I quit my job, my mom says, one of my mom's first questions to me is, Tom, what about your health insurance?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was her main question of when forget like Are you gonna have enough customers? Are you gonna do this? What about the health insurance? And I said mom, know when you when you leave a job you can get cobra for 18 months I said so the first 18 months i'll just pay the cobra fee And now add that to my monthly expense of what I need to earn because now you're paying the full boat not you know the discounted rate so I said to her I said i'll just pay the cobra fee for 18 months and then

Hopefully in 18 months either my business is good enough that I can buy insurance or I'm gonna have to go get a corporate job. And again, I was not married at the time, but my wife now said to me at the time, take a shot, what do you have to lose? If you don't like it, you go back and you get into sales for a corporation and you can do fine the rest of your career. And again, so that was a great support. I didn't really feel like I could fail. If I failed, I had to go back to corporate America.

Yeah.

But my pride and my work ethic wasn't gonna let me fail because I didn't wanna let someone say you couldn't do it. I never wanted someone to be able to say, and I had a boss's boss at the time who was like the CMO of the company. He told one of my buddies that I worked with, I hope Tom's out there selling pencils. He's not gonna be able to make it because he didn't want me to succeed in that and go out on my own. And again.

Be successful, yeah.

You know, if any now as an employer of 25 employees, I say to people, listen, if there is an opportunity that you want to take, take it, take, take your shot. Now, if you don't think working for me is the best, that's okay. Like I want to see you succeed. I want to see you put, put together. there's something that really, you know, is a burning desire, go do it. Try it. We get one turn at the around around here. So I don't want to see you take something up and I don't want to see you say to me, you know, 10 years later, Oh, if I would have left wing man, I could have done this. Like,

If I were me.

I want you, if there's a better opportunity and there's something better out there for you, I say that with the customers too. If there's a customer that says that they can get a better deal here or do better here, there's no hard feelings. You'll never have to explain anything. I tell people, anytime that it comes up, it's your business, you have to do what's best for you. And I say that about the employees and I think in corporate, you don't get that same support.

No, not anymore. I'd argue in the early days, it was a little more, they pretended the corporations pretended to care about you a little bit, right. And if you had the right boss, and they're at the I mean, all bets are off at this point. And right, if you, again, my look at the forest returned office is just a it's a layoff, right? It's a disguised layoff, because they don't know who they're gonna lose, because not everybody's gonna want to up and start commuting the office five days a week, they know people are gonna leave and they have no idea if it's

Yeah.

It's good people are the bad people. I can, yeah. And again, once you lose your job, good luck. Cause I think, you know, I've been, don't think we've talked about in the podcast, but you know, these, these layoffs as a business strategy have become common, right? Even good quarter, bad quarter companies are like, we're going to take some people out to improve the bottom line. It's a drug to these companies and they're not.

They're not going to be able to quit doing this. So if you were safe this quarter, are you going to be safe next quarter? And then are you going to be able to find the next job? I just think corporate is going through such a transition that now is the time. And I love your advice. Start with something on the side, earn that first dollar outside of corporate. And even posted today, I said, plan for the worst, hope for the best, right? It's if even if it's not what you want to do, you're going to be surprised at again, and we're just speaking from experience of

Mm-hmm.

thousands of escapees that I've talked to, less than 10 % actually go back to corporate because they want to. Right? So once you get out and you realize you can do the work you like to do and it's not all sales. Yes, you do have to do some things and be scrappy. But the funny thing is even at 30, 40, 50, 60 year olds, they still want to work. They still want to put in the effort. They're just done doing it. The dumb stuff, right?

Yeah.

the busy work or the fire drills, those things. So again, I think if you're willing to work, put in the effort, learn, connect with folks, you can find a way. Because even when you started this company, it wasn't what you were doing in corporate. You kind of taught yourself how to do some websites and marketing. You saw the opportunities like, well, let me go figure it out. And the next thing you know,

As long as you're willing to figure it out and hustle and do whatever it takes, you could do it. I feel like you could do anything. I started out just, this is what we started out with. We're gonna help again, we were matching service. Then that brought us on to please build wall websites. And then I remember somebody said to me early on, friend of mine from 17 years ago said the name wingman, it's kind of offensive to women.

I said, and he goes, you're not going to have any women clients. And I said, well, I said most of my work is with contractors. I'm willing to take that risk. And again, the contractors love the name. I said, I'm willing to take that risk. I would tell you right now, I probably do 50 % of my work is with women business owners. So I have literally a 50-50 split. And then on top of that, the amount of work I do with contractors now is probably like

maybe 15 to 20 percent and I'm in 15 different verticals. So nobody didn't hire me because my name was Wingman. So again, I think sometimes people are going to say things. People have opinions. Everyone's got one, right? So you got to just push through the noise and just go. You have a vision, you have an idea, go with it. And again, you're going to make mistakes along the way and you're going to have to retract and you're to have to pull back. And I don't know if I told you this from our pre-conversation. I don't know if we ever talked about it.

Yeah.

As an entrepreneur, you could have the best and worst day on the same day, within a half hour. You could have a great moment, a great sales opportunity, a great thing with your team, and then you get smacked in your face and you have to call the lawyer later in the day. like, that happens. I think that as long as you can just roll with the punches. You know, one of the guys on my team says the best, goes, you never get frazzled. You never get knocked off your game. And my feeling is don't let somebody...

yeah.

lay a glove on you. Don't just roll with the punch then and then many times I say I have to be like Teflon. I have to just let it roll off me because if I let everything bother me, I'd have a bad, I'd have a miserable life.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, I'd like to too short. And that's the reason you got out of corporate was to, to figure this out. And yeah, I used to joke because we've had some folks come from the collective where they just quit corporate, right? They're starting their thing. And literally within the first week, it's like, anchorman Ron Burgundy was in the glass case of emotion. He was like, this is the greatest day ever. Or what the hell did I just do? This is easy. It's like, my God, this is so yeah, within a 24 hour period, you go through all that.

Yep.

And you know, especially as you start throwing customers now, you know, one thing, and this is the reason I don't know if we can go into it yet, but the franchise, I decided on the franchise because I saw how hard it was to get customers do the work. was the administrative assistant. I was the billing clerk. I was running the credit cards. was scheduling and I was like, this is really hard. And again, go back to my work ethic. I will just, I will just push through it. I don't get tired.

Let's go.

I'll be, I'm the first in last out always. I've been my way for 20 years, but most not, not everyone can do that. So when I decided on the franchise, said, wait a second. When I think about all the things that were hard to overcome at the beginning, if we could give an outlet for that and we can have somebody from our corporate team, take the phone calls and pass the message to our franchisees. If we could have someone run the credit cards so that they don't have to, but again, cash flows king as a small business. So.

All right.

if you could make sure that there was cash flow. And then I said, wait, a lot of franchises are hiring 20 people. So before you even open your doors, you've done a build out, you've bought equipment, you've hired 20 people and you haven't made a sale or a dollar yet. And now you have to manage these 20 people. What could we do? And I said, well, our corporate team could do the work. Now the franchisee is really just a marketing and sales agent.

to go out and find new business, prospect business, go to events, go to trade shows, go to chambers of commerce, B &Is and the likes. And all of a sudden you're gonna change the way that people make connections and you're into it for a lot less than being the business owner and trying to do it all.

Right. Yeah. And no perfect segue into, into this because, um, again, because I think you've even talked about your, your growth of the business shows why there's no one way to do this because I think a lot of us, um, my intent when I left was, all right, I want to replace my corporate salary, but I only want to work 20, 25 hours per week, which I had gotten myself to, right? It took a couple of years, but I finally figured it out to get the revenue coming in.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Then all of sudden the corporate escapee started going and now I'm, you 50 to 60 hours, but the difference is this is all for me, right? This is not for me, but in a sense, I'm not putting it in for a company or a corporate. So if I put the hard work in, I'm going to get the benefit and I love doing this. But, but the point is, as you went through your growth curve, you got to a point where there was a multiple, lots of customers and you had a lot more admin, you had to bring people in. So.

Mm-hmm.

I kind of see the spectrum, right? see the folks that just want a little bit of a side hustle, right? But to do it full time, replace some income, replace the income or go big. And the beauty is you can change your mind, right? You could have gone through this process and said, you know what? I kind of liked my life the way it was before it got too complicated with customers and everything else. I'm going to go. So, but walk me into it we haven't had anybody from the franchise in quite a while.

What was the idea and then get me into kind of the specifics of how it works?

Sure. now, again, that building that we were talking about renovating, we renovate the building. It's beautiful. And I bought that in 18. So we're in it for a year and a half and then COVID happens, right? So now, at the same time, 17, I also invested in a transportation company, which I still own. And we invested in wedding tries. I live on the Jersey shore.

Alright.

very popular, a gentleman came to me that was a client of Wingman said, listen, I'm going to be breaking up with my existing partners. you ever be interested in investing in this? I was like, that's not really my thing, but let's talk about it. We talked about it. We came to an agreement. And again, knowing that a lot of these limo companies didn't and transportation companies didn't have great websites. They didn't have marketing. I could bring that into the business from day one and be able to have some

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

competitive advantages, which has paid off for us. It has worked. now again, I, 18 was a tough year for me because I now am buying a building, renovating it, and I'm now buying into transportation. And if I could look back, I would say probably 18 wasn't my smartest year. And then we get to 2020 and I was like, well, what do we do now? So we're working from home. I have a building that I'm paying big bills on that I have nobody in.

In making investments, yeah.

But again, I'm a big believer in it'll work out. you know, let's just figure out what we need to do. Again, let's just put our eye on the prize. Let's figure it out. And then we'll work through the issues. So we're at this point, working from home. We come back. then I don't know, Chelsea, our chief operating officer and I were talking.

Problem solver.

And I said, well, we got to figure out some different business lines because the existing business with COVID changed. So we took on some additional work to kind of support us. I was, I was, I'm a big fan of, um, no layoffs. Like let's, let's not lay anybody off. I've to this day not laid anybody off. Um, you know, again, these people, they come to work for me because they believe in me. know, I, you know, Tom Mirabella, which is my name and wingman are interchangeable words like.

Right.

Again, they come to me because they want to be part of Wingman because they believe in my vision, they believe in what we're doing. I'm a community guy. I also have a foundation that I started during this adventure. like, I'm just, I'm about being authentic. have, you know, I have the utmost integrity because, again, if I say it, I said it. Like, I'm not one to say sorry a lot because if I, either I said it and I believe it or I said it and...

Right, right.

I made a mistake. like, like I'm all about being authentic, being who I am. So, you know, that part of me is very entrepreneurial. And again, that was one thing hard about corporate America. You know, you're telling a vendor that you know that they're not, you're not going to do something, but you're telling them something that the corporation wanted you to say. Like, I didn't really feel good about that kind of stuff.

Yeah. Right, right, right. And so the vision was we're going to expand and let other...

Yeah, the vision was let's expand, let's take on some additional lines of work to get us through COVID. We get through COVID. And then I said, why don't we open a second location for ourselves? And let's see how we do. Can we get customers in another town area to believe in the same thing that we built in our first location?

So before we get there, just curious, because I actually love the local approach to this. So when you were doing on solo, you were really focused on your local community then with the marketing and services. So you are now digitally going and taking work. You were targeting local.

Mm-hmm.

We take work everywhere and we do have some great referral partners. One of my biggest referral partners is in California. I've never actually been to California, but he is one of my biggest referral partners. We met through a common person. We do a decent amount of work outside of our area, but we are very focused locally and we're involved with all the local organizations. We're in the Chamber of Commerce, we're in the Rotary, we're in the different networking groups.

which we have, which we've received great value from over the years. And, and like I said, we have a local foundation that collects toys and food for those in need. shout out to our wingman foundation and the team there. But so we are community focused. And so our thought is, we take this community focus and bring it to another area and see if we can replicate it. So we're about 15 minutes away, are two locations about 15 minutes away and

People, again, talk about people at the beginning, they're like, Tom, did you lose your mind on this one? Why would you spend money in another location to, they could just Google you. And I was like, I don't think you're going to get all those Google searches. And the way I did, the way I structured building too was because it was 15 minutes away and most of my employees, you know, have, most of my employees have a hybrid schedule. work two to three in the office and two to three from home, depending on their schedule, depending on their

their current job. So I said we could, the way, wherever the proximity was, you could work in either office. And part of our handbook is said that we, when we hire you, that we can put you at either office based on the needs of the business. So we had no incremental labor, which was key to success for the second office, because we have no labor costs. All we're paying is rent. So I said, if we bought, if we bought billboards or we ran pay-per-click advertising or ran social ads,

Right.

As long as it's roughly the same cost as our rent. But there's a door that's open that people could ask questions for. So like if you buy a billboard, it's on the street, but no one could ask you a question because it's on the street. So my thought was if we could have a billboard where people could walk in and ask us any questions, well, let's see how we do. We signed a three year simple lease, nothing crazy. at the beginning, we weren't getting all that walk in that I thought we were going to get.

Then we started our own podcast and now all of sudden people are coming in every week and go, I didn't even know you were here. didn't know that this existed. Oh, what could you do? And we turned our podcast into a lead generator. Um, and in the first like 50 episodes, we probably turned 25 % of them into clients. And I was like, wow, this is really great. And then we started doing lunch and learns there, uh, because the parking was better than our, our current building.

Yeah.

And then we started to do some networking evening, you know, networking. And now all of sudden we'll get all these new clients. And I said, wait a second. We didn't know these people 15 minutes away from us. Six months ago, a year ago. Now, like where the guys about town over there. And again, we brought our fundraising over there and you own this transportation company. we need, and then I got involved with the township in the borough of that we're in and they were like, well, we need signs and banners and we need, you your transportation company.

Yeah.

And now all of a sudden we're fabric of that community. So I go back to Chelsea and I say, Chelsea, said, look, we, I think this is something great. I think we've uncovered something. If you can be the wingman of the town, there's something here. So why don't we start exploring franchising? Because I think that can kind of get us to that next level. And in the franchising process, we've learned

Yeah.

that we're gonna open our own locations too. We're not just going to a franchise model, because I believe in it so much. I think a lot of franchises are like, once they prove the first concept, they're like, let's just do franchise only. Whereas I wanna do franchise, I wanna do franchise and I wanna set these men and women up for success, but I also wanna open my own locations too, because I see that the model works, I see what you have to do to make it work. And also I wanna...

Right.

A couple of my employees have expressed interest in franchises, so I want to kind of figure out a combo model. I don't even know what we'll call it yet, but like a co-ownership because I want them to get, like one of the guys said to me, my goal in five years is to have my own wingman franchise. And then I think about it I say, well, what's holding him back from five years from now? He's like in five years, he's five years older, I'm five years older. But if we got that open today, in a month or six months, what do we need to do? So now my job is to find out what,

Yeah.

Right.

dig into what's holding him back so that can I facilitate and support getting him in.

Yeah. I'm so glad that we went down this path because I think that's right. I think it's mindset with that, well, I haven't paid my dues. Instead of saying, not me? It's hard. But the local, because when I was doing the research for the podcast, I'm like, why is he opening locations? mean, it's so 1900, 2000. But as you're speaking, I'm like 100%. I get it. You become the hub.

Let's go.

It is!

craving that in person and you become the go-to spot for advertising and people gathering. I I'm trying to figure that out with my business. How do I get more people so we can start to do in person or invite business owners to meet with some of the escapees to do. I'm working towards how do I incorporate it and you just unlocked it even more for me talking about it. Because again, I was in the old school. like, everything's digital. Why need a location? But when you said

Luncheon learns people coming in. like, ding, ding, ding. Makes sense.

So that is the key. I also, I'm from the old school, like that customer service is a thing. so I have an assistant that works at my main office, 8.30 to five, Monday to Friday, answers calls, fields, you know, and passes along tech support tickets and sales leads, everything. So I'm different than most of these, especially my peers in this digital marketing arena. They want to work from home. They want to work from wherever.

Yeah.

They want to, you know, like wear their pajamas all day. Like I'm from a different mindset. I'm from a mindset of, you know, we're here for the customer, customer service. So when again, that, that whole idea of that second location, I thought of, and most of my, my peers and competitors would probably say, listen, let's go buy some social ads, go buy pay per click for the same amount of money. But my mindset is let's have in-person activities. Let's have networking events. Um, you know, we, one of our networking events probably had 75 people.

That's fantastic.

Like through 75 business owners. Now we might've pulled them from both locations, came over to an event and you know, they're mingling and they're doing business and they, you know, people call me for referrals all day long. Like the day that I decide that I want to, you know, bow out and sell wingman, I can have a whole business in, my, with all the contacts in my phone. So again, it's not always about business that's coming to me tomorrow. I'm laying, I'm planting seeds. I'm connecting good people with good people.

because there will be a time when they're going to need me.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm sorry I took us down rabbit holes with some of this good, but I do think the in-person is intriguing. Even as solo business owners, there's probably things that we can do. So we may have to do, I wanna table that for another conversation because I do wanna get into, again, thinking about from an escapee standpoint, maybe they've never done anything entrepreneurial, never solo, they wanna do something. I've always looked at franchise as a business in the box, right? You kind of set it up. So why don't you walk us through

One, your model specifically, but I'm sure you do some things different than other franchises, but how would a escapee with not a ton of some of that experience, how does that work? How does that get?

So I just want to add one thought if we could to the in-person too and enter the solo printer that's leaving the escapee. So here at my main building, we had two offices that we weren't using. So I rented them out to two local businesses that now become client. One was a client before and one is a client now. like they did, it's a great spot for them too because they didn't have to invest a ton of money or like again, I had the desks, I had the internet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So like from that escapee who they don't have to think about this huge rent right off the bat. Like if they, and again, I think that there's a value to getting out of your house, getting into a routine. To me, I get up every morning, I shower before seven, I have a routine, I'm in my car by 7.30, I'm in my office. And I think that like there's, I think a lot of people, if you leave corporate, like you're like, I don't work for corporate America anymore, I work from home.

Yeah.

I don't have to do it, but I think that you have to stay regimented. Otherwise you potentially could go down a place where you don't want to be because, you know, in my mind, everything's about every week. I, I based my revenue on the weekly. I'm not, I'm not a monthly revenue guy. I'm a, I'm a weekly revenue guy. And if we, if we don't hit, I want to know why if we do hit, I want to know why. And if we over, if we over project my projections, I also want to know why. that again, I don't want to be at the end of the month or the end of a quarter.

wow, we had a bad quarter. I want to be able to predict it. And if something needs to change, we could change on the fly. But don't so go digging into the franchise a little bit, just to kind of go back to your original question. So the our business in a box is I want them to get a small location. And again, it could be a work share, it be a co-share, could be like one of those buildings where there's you have multiple tenants like. And I think that those buildings are actually the best for this because you meet people like, especially when you're a new

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

a new escapee or a new person that wants to start something, like you need to find people. And I think one thing I do think in entrepreneurship, I think it's lonely. I think you need a support system. You need people to talk to. Again, I can't go to my employees and they're like, sales are terrible this month. mean, first of all, if the employee doesn't see that, well, that's weird. like, I can't say, you know, I didn't expect to get hit with this bill this month.

Right, right.

we're not getting the amount of applicants we need for this position. You can only talk to an employee about so much. And again, I think you have to think about your relationship with your spouse too, because again, there's a lot of things that I want to talk to my spouse about, top line things that go on, the good things, the funny things that happen. But like, I don't want to drag down my relationship with, can you believe blah, blah, blah, blah, Because again, I think that it's nice to have a separation.

Right, right.

so that it's not when you go home at night, you're talking about other things besides work. Yeah. And again, I can talk about work all day long. We've been recording for a while now, and I feel like we just started chatting. And I'm very passionate about what I do, and I love what I do, and I love the customers, and I love the employees. So to me, it's my life. But when you think about this entrepreneur, this person that's going to leave corporate, and they decide they want

The business. Yeah. Yeah.

they want to explore wing man. you know, I don't, as I said earlier, I don't want them going out and spending all this money and like into something that they're, that they don't know like anything about, but so they would come to us. They reach out. have, you know, an FDD, we have an operations manual, we have projections and a pro forma. And again, the pro forma was built on our real results. you know, so knowing that

Right.

It's not just like, we just threw some numbers against the wall and said, this looks good as the performance. It's based on what we've been able to do. And now I look at the businesses, the two locations I separate. So I know, like I was looking at the other day, like, well, what's this location doing month to date? Where were they last year? So I like to look at it. And again, I don't think we have a, like we have two locations, but like I told you, I'm using a mixed workforce.

So I don't have someone in my second location pounding the street every day, knocking on doors and doing that stuff because we just didn't get there yet. But we're doing it through the podcast and the Lunch and Learns and we're using tactics like that to generate the leads. But anytime we get an inquiry online, I try to get them to tell us where they came from so that we can really hone in on that. But so this new franchisee is going to come in.

We want them to get a small storefront or location to, you just so they have a place that, and in that it's small. Like you don't need more than 500 square feet. Now our big building has about 4,500 square feet. Our small building, the second location has about a thousand and that thousand is because that's how it was cut. That's how it was made. But looking in retrospect, we could have gone smaller. I love the location. I, you know, I'm happy there. And again, we have the

It is what it is,

Like I said, we have the podcast there. On an average day, we have four or five employees there. But again, the franchise that comes on is not going to have four or five employees, so they don't need that much space. I want them to be the digital mayor of their town with a location. I want them to have a place where people can come in and visit, talk about things. I think when you look at the digital space, a lot of people...

have gotten burnt by somebody in this digital space. If it was their website, if it was social ads, if it was pay-per-click advertising, I want you to come in and be able to ask questions and understand it. You know, said, somebody called me today and said, well, I'm paying this guy, whatever. I said, well, what are you getting? He goes, I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's putting a face and the name together is it's different, right? It's different is always better than better. And if you need to be better and different, it's a, and it's unique. You're providing that. think it, makes sense.

I said, yeah.

Great.

So, it became like, I think a lot of people with the digital world, they know they need it, but they don't know what they need and they don't know what they get. you know, they'll say to me, I'm running ads with this guy and he's, he's not getting me the performance. Well, then I'll say to them, well, what's your cost per acquisition? What is he, what is he getting customers for? What is this new, what is this paper could come to get? I don't know. How many leads did you get? I don't know. So I want to be like that facilitator. I want to be like this. I don't want to be a vendor to people. I want to be their CMO.

And I want all of my people to be their CMO. that like, if you have a question about your business, you come to me and again, I think that the vendor, client relationships, a tough relationship in general, because I think a lot of times people look at me, look at a company like mine and say, he just wants to get extra money out of the pay per click budget. There's a lot of times I don't want extra money out of the pay per click budget. want to spend it differently, or I want to, you know, spend it like, let's take, let's pull some PPC out and do some email.

Let's do an A, and I say this a lot too. Let's do an A-B test. And people look at me like, I have four heads, what's an A-B test? And I said, like, let's get a control variable and test it to see where the creative's working, where the creative's not. But some of that's hard to do over the phone when someone's not like paying 100 % attention to you. When they're in your conference room or they're in your office, they're paying attention. And then if they don't understand something, you pull up a chart or you pull up something on your laptop and they can visually see it while they're...

I believe a lot of people are visual learners and they can get more out of that. again, when I go back to the franchise, what do I want this franchisee to look like? I want them to be just that. want them to go to networking events. I want them to be involved in their town. I want them to sponsor the little league team. I want them to be about that local presence that could help with other businesses marketing. And I think we live in a world where everybody wants everything better, cheaper, quicker, but

Yep.

they're not always getting the best value by doing it.

Right. Values think import and even with that model, is that because I'm sure there's some folks not marketing people that are listening to what the hell did he just say? Right. What's an AB test? What's is it? I mean, so is this franchise really for marketing based people or is this somebody that's got some good business sense that you can teach them?

Yeah.

It's good business sense. It's people that value customer service. It's people that value your you know, the clients if you don't like there, know, there are people and I've spoken at high schools and and different things along the way and people say well How do you make the most money and I say? Don't do a career to make the money do a career because you love it because then you don't really work and that expression of if you do what you love you don't work a day not as corny as it sounds I believe it because I

I love what I do. So do I have bad days? Certainly. But I love what I do that when I come in, I'm ready to take on any challenge. I'm ready to do this. I'm ready to work with the team. So I think when people are just looking for a money career, there's probably some career that's going to be better to do just if money is your only object. But I think when you look at life and I think if you leave corporate America, like that's really when you can reflect and say, what do I want to do for me? What's important?

Yes.

what's important. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because again, when you're doing that second life, your second act, do something you want to do that brings you joy and happiness because that's why you left corporate America. If you wanted to stay in the rat race, you could stay in the rat race.

And the money will follow. I'm a firm believer that if you do it, you're passionate about it. And again, unless you're in a some space, there's absolutely no money to be made that it will it will follow the more you

It will follow and it's going to take some time and there's going to be some headaches and you know, everybody's path takes a different amount of time. There's no, I also think success is based on the person. you it, what's the, you know, like you hear people along the way and I'm sure you've heard this, oh, that guy makes good money. Well, what's good money is, is, is, is, you know, for a 25 year old, good money is this for a 50 year old, good money is this.

Yeah.

Well, what's your definition of success, right? Everybody's is different or it should be.

For a guy who is in the C-suite, good money's this. What is good money equal? And again, I think it's risk versus reward. What's the risk to get that money versus what's the reward to say, all right, well, this was worth this?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think part of one of my biggest realizations when I left after six years was my sole goal when I left was to make more money. But then I started to discover the value of time because you never really had it. Your whole life was built around corporate. And so all of a sudden you control everything and like, holy shit, this is a lot more valuable than what I was thinking with the money. And then you find that balance and you find the sweet spot and how do I make more money and work less hours? And it's not about putting in hard work. It's just how do you become a little more

Yep.

efficient at what you do. And again, that's what I love about this journey is there's no one path for everybody. And that's the other thing I encourage people is you have to, it's not an outcome, right? The escapee journey isn't an outcome. It's the actual journey, right? If you're not enjoying it along the way, and I don't know where this has taken me. My philosophy has always been, hey, when I left, I did consulting that gave me more energy than corporate, than

The fractional gave me more energy. Then I start to figure out a bunch of different ways to monetize, kind of like you've ventured off more energy. Then when I got into this escapee world, I'm like hyper energized with this now in two years, is that going to change? But man, I don't know if I've been happier over the last five years, just even with the ups and downs with the business and everything else, just

Yeah.

from time, energy and overall happiness. So I long winded answer to enjoy the journey because that's it. Cause you're going to be disappointed, right? If it's just outcome.

You have to.

And you know, I have this thing for the employees called the 135 plan. So part of now my journey is how to help my employees gain what they want. you know, again, I have my revenue plans, my growth plans, my exit plan. I have thought about all those things, but now I have these employees that are between probably 22 and about 50.

So what is it that they want to accomplish out of life? And that accomplishment doesn't always mean that I'm involved in it. It doesn't mean that my company is involved, but I want to help them achieve success. Because again, I don't think that the corporation does that for you. No one ever said to me, hey, let's sit down. And one of the girls says, I want to move out of my house in two years. I said, well, let's talk about that. Let's figure out how that's going to work.

Right, right.

now.

I said, do you want to buy a home in two years? Do you want to rent? Well, I just want to be out in two years. Well, I now said to her, let's have some ongoing discussions. But I have a number of people that are in lending and do mortgage. Well, can someone start to look at her credit and look at this and look at so that she knows these are the steps I need to do to be out in two years. another one said to me, I feel like I love working here.

she's got a plan.

But I think the PTO policy should be a little bit better. And I said, you know, and again, I'm not a big vacation guy. So I'm a, I'm an in the full office 365 days a year guy. So I said to her today, I said, let's, I want you to help me work with our HR provider. Let's rewrite the policy. If it's, if it's an issue for you and you're just comfortable coming and talking to me about it, that's an issue for other people. And I never want to lose an employee. Again, go back to corporate. They don't care.

Yeah.

that you look at the return to office, they don't care. But I don't want to lose a good employee because she didn't think she had two more PTO days. Take the PTO days. So I want to find and start uncovering those things that are important. And again, you know, when you look at these young professionals that are 25 to 32, all their friends are getting married. These people go on these bachelor parties for four and five days now. Then they need time for the wedding and there's five weddings in the year.

Right.

So I get why they need more PTO time. So, but let's start to figure that out and let's start to analyze it so we can come up with a better company and we could be a better wingman together. And you know, when I think about some of the things that they tell me, it's very small changes to make us even better.

Yeah. And again, just the fact that you're listening and willing to make it is something you don't get in in corporate, right? You just just don't.

But I think that that's the times. I feel like that's not important to be. And again, I think sometimes the crazy of the idea, opening a location 15 minutes away, opening another retail storefront, having someone answer my phone, doing these meetings. I think the crazier the idea sounds, the better it is for the business because the business really needs it, but no one wants to take these issues on head on.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you even got my head thinking, man, you could open up a wingman in a lot of suburban towns, hire one employee as your digital mayor, as you will. They could be 100 % company. You can do all the work out of the back office in New Jersey, right? So.

That's what we do. Exactly. you know, when I think about this, I want to find people that want to part, like again, there's going be some people that are going to be true franchisees. There's going to be some corporate locations and there's going to be some people we have this partnership with. I also think that, I haven't done this yet, but I'll let you, your listeners hear it first. I feel like I get a lot of referrals from IT companies and like insurance guys and other B2B professionals. Well,

Could we get space where four or five guys share one rent and we're all in there together and you have wingman and you have ABC insurance and you have B2B phone VOIP and you kind of cohabitate. But again, then you do those lunch and learns and those mixers and those networking and now four guys are bringing 10 people each and now all of sudden you have this great event and people are wanting to do business with all of you.

Yeah.

Yeah. And the ability to stop in, just, you just, I love it. All right, Tom, we've way exceeded your time. Sorry. No, I'm sorry for you. mean, you said I want to be respectful of the guest time, but no, we absolutely got on a roll. So.

I'm sorry.

I hope that this was a good episode for your listeners and anyone that wants to talk, even if they're thinking about leaving, it doesn't have to be any interest in Wingman franchise. I would love to set up a call because again, I did it. I took the hard jump when I had very little responsibility, so was a little bit easier, but I get that and I would love to kind of help anybody that might have some questions or want to know more how I did it.

Yeah, and we'll put that in the show notes for sure. But what's what's the best way for folks to get you linked in straight to email? What's Howard?

straight to email is great. Tom at wingman planning.com. You know, we're on all the socials, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn. And they can visit wingman planning.com to learn more about the company. But I would be happy to, you know, chat with anybody because to your point, I think it's just a great it's a different way of life and

you kind of control your destiny. would never have had a foundation. I would have never invested in another company. I wouldn't have had a franchisee. I wouldn't have 25 employees that love what they do and love coming to work. So, you we did it because, you know, I took that jump.

Yeah, it's fantastic. Love the story. Love to see where this is going to go too. Cause I think you, may be a modern version of a franchise and there's hybrid ways of doing so. You got my mind thinking about things. we'll, we'll have a conversation.

Anything you have, let me know. I'd love to, I love collaborating with you. I, you know, I just to shout out to you for your podcast, for your podcast listeners. I found you on TikTok, which I'm not a huge TikTok guy. I, I guess I had found you when you started talking about the corporate, know, a hundred thousand people getting out of corporate America. And you just, you piqued my interest. Cause I was like, I was one of those guys and I know so many people that are in the rat race and they don't love it. And they just like.

Yeah.

But it's hard to make that jump. So I started to follow you there. And then I started to read your LinkedIn. And I started to see more of your stuff. And I really love what you're doing and the fact that you're helping these people just get out and reallocate time, reallocate what's important to them. Because I think that people get caught up in their career and that's who they are.

Yeah. And can't get out, right? They don't see the way out for sure. That's awesome. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. And you know, that's what I love about this. just never know who you're going to connect with. And like I said, I used to apologize for TikTok. Now I say thank you all the time because it gave me a great opportunity with all this.

Yep.

What's funny is that guy Alfie who works for me, who reached out to you originally, I said to him, we got to get in touch with this guy Brett. He's doing such great stuff. I, there's a synergy between us. So a shout out to Alfie for, you know, just re just, just cold emailing you and saying, listen, let's just chat. I, I, we've chatted three times since, and I just think that we have a lot more synergy together of helping people. And I think you have that same mindset, which I, which is what I like.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's yeah. And I get a ton of those outreaches. And so it just, I can't remember what it was about his email that made sense, but I'm like, I'm glad I connected. So anyway, really appreciate all the time you spent with us today. And yeah, we're going to keep tabs on you. We'll see where you're going. Cause I think there's some in-person things and some other stuff. So.

Yep. Awesome.

Absolutely.

Let me know when you want to do something. I'm happy to collab on anything you have going on. All right. Have a great day.

Awesome. Sounds good. Appreciate it, Tom.