PUBLISHED PRICES · FIXED TURNAROUND · NEVER PAID BY A FRANCHISOR
What this costs
A broker earns $12,000–$25,000 from the franchisor when you sign. Nothing if you walk away. I charge a flat fee either way. Everything I do, and what it costs, is below.
FOUNDING CLIENT RATE · FIRST 10 ENGAGEMENTS
Below market, on purpose. I'm building a track record, and a client who will vouch for the work is worth more to me right now than the margin. Rates go up after the first 10. Scope doesn't.
Intro call
Free
30 minutes
We read your brand's filings together. Including the parts that should worry you.
- Your exit rate against its sector
- How its franchisees' SBA loans actually ended
- The cost line most buyers underestimate
- Whether to keep going at all
FDD Read
WHERE I'D START$750
5 business days
The document review you want before signing a ten-year agreement.
- Item-by-item read, with the terms that quietly cost owners flagged
- Item 19 stress-tested — what the earnings claim includes, excludes, implies
- Real cost-to-open vs the Item 7 range, and the working capital it omits
- Royalty and ad-fund drag over the full term, in dollars
- Litigation, bankruptcy and audit-opinion history, sourced
- A written recommendation — including the case against buying
Deal Review
$2,000
10 business days
The FDD Read, plus the model, the lender package, and 4.5 hours on the phone with me. New unit or resale.
- Everything in the FDD Read
- Buying an existing unit? Three years of the seller's own P&Ls tied out, every add-back tested, and what the unit really clears after your debt service — not the broker's "owner benefit" number
- Three-scenario pro forma with breakeven and sensitivity
- Ramp-to-breakeven working capital, month by month
- SBA 7(a) vs 401(k) rollover vs HELOC, with your personal-guarantee exposure
- Entity and tax structure recommendation
- A lender-ready package you hand straight to a bank
- 90-minute session where we build the model together — not one where I present it
- Three more one-hour calls, whenever you need them — after a franchisee call, before the bank, the night before you sign
- 60 days of email on top of that
Full Validation
Let's scope it
≈3 weeks
The Deal Review, plus I call the people who already own one. Including the ones who left.
- Everything in the Deal Review
- Every franchisee on the Item 20 list contacted — plus everyone who left last year
- Scripted from the brand's own disclosures, so answers check against the record
- Written synthesis of what owners actually said
- Territory and saturation analysis for your location
- Buy, renegotiate or walk — in writing, with the reasoning
WHY THIS ONE ISN'T FIXED-PRICEThe FDD must list every current franchisee and everyone who left last year, so I will have the numbers. Whether they answer is another matter. And forty outlets is not nine hundred. I quote a fixed price on the call, once I have counted the list.
A full workup on a real brand. Every section, unredacted, pro formas included. Read it before you spend anything.
Read a full sample report →How it runs
- 1
We talk first, free
Thirty minutes. If the work won't change your decision, I'll tell you. That happens.
- 2
Fixed scope, fixed fee
Price and delivery date in writing before you pay. No hourly billing.
- 3
Payment on acceptance
Invoice with a card link. Work starts when it clears.
- 4
Delivered, then walked through
The document on the date I promised. Then we go through it.
Don Drummond, CPA · Virginia #43775
Internal audit and controls: SOX programs at XO Communications, governance and risk at Deloitte. Reading an FDD is an audit problem. That's the training. More about me →
Engagements are educational and brand-agnostic, and I am never compensated by any franchisor. This is not investment advice or legal advice. Provided by a CPA licensed in Virginia; out-of-state engagements are subject to applicable licensing rules. These are non-attest advisory/consulting engagements — no audits, reviews, compilations, or agreed-upon-procedures are performed, and nothing delivered is an opinion on or assurance regarding any franchisor's or franchisee's financial statements.