We’re continuing our series of one-on-one talks with this year’s Social Geek Franchise Thought Leadership Award winners.
Sean Falk, President and COO of Careertopia, is here to share what she sees happening right now in Franchising.
We dive deep into:
*What has happened to the Fran Dev Sales role over the past 2 years
*How Private Equity’s move into Franchising has affected hiring
*Talent not “of Franchising” coming into Franchising
*Being purpose-driven
Thanks to today’s sponsors: Thunderly, AnswerConnect, Pilot, and The IFA World Franchise Show with The International Franchise Association.
Shout outs: Kim Falk, Gary Gardner, Tom Portesy, Scott Lehrer, Scenthound, Tim Vogel, Jessica Vogel, VetFran, Doug Dwyer, FranFaith, Todd Recknagel, Kristi Mailloux
Transcript
AI 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 Monson, your host and marketing Consigliere. Today, it’s another one-on-one conversation with the Social Geek Franchise Thought Leadership Award winner for 2026. My guest is Sean Falk, president and COO of Careertopia.
All right, today’s show is brought to you by the IFA World Franchise Show, AnswerConnect, Pilot and Thunderly. As America continues to celebrate 250 years, join Thunderly for American Dreamers. It’s the series of short videos spotlighting the stories of some amazing American small business owners. Check it out now on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and at thunderlymarketing.com/american-dreamers.
You know, about once a month, somebody calls me and says, hey man, I’ve got to get out of this job, or I just got laid off, or I got to find something new, or the CEO hates me, whatever the case may be. And my first question to them is, have you talked to Sean and Kim? So, today I want to introduce everybody to Sean Falk, who has talked about, by me and some of my franchise friends, more than he probably knows, because it’s, you know, man, you better call Sean. How are you doing, Sean?
I’m doing great. Everything’s going great. We’re busy. We’re busy with everything you just talked about.
Yeah, I talked to a lot of people who are looking for a new gig, or just need a change here in, you know, mid-2026. What’s going on out there? It just feels like a lot of change happening.
Yeah, Jack, the first thing I’ll say is, last year, there was a little bit of a shift in hiring. Let me go back just a little bit further and talk about how in most of 2024 and then through about half of 2025, a lot of brands had realized that they had oversold, so they have a bunch of sold but not opens. They really switched their focus to bring more operations people on to get these locations open and start generating royalty revenue. Fran Dev was quiet. They told their Fran Dev people in the brand, hey, slow down selling, we got to get these open. Well, that cuts into all their pay. In 2024, just about every Fran Dev person was on the market. Then you also had the dynamic of a lot of private equity that was lining up to try to sell at the same time because of the hold period. I hate to use COVID, but COVID either had some PE that we thought right before or immediately after. They were all in that five to seven year old hold time. I think that they were being very careful with their profit and loss statements and their spreadsheets. You combine those things and hiring was a little slow. I think what happened was Private Equity realized that there wasn’t a great market out there. They said, hey, let’s hold on to this for another two to three years. So they reopened selling, so the Fran Dev people are happy again, and the operations people are happy because they are trying to get these locations open. So really last year, August timeframe, things started picking up quite a bit. We usually have a slow fall, but it was busy and it’s been busy all the way since. Primarily franchise development and operations has been on fire and leadership roles. C-suite and president, brand leader, stuff like that. It’s been hot.
And do you see that continuing for the second half of this year and maybe even the first half of 2027?
I do. Just like we went into the slowdown, it was tapered. Coming out of the slowdown, I think it’s going to be tapered as well. Some people had to show some more profitability on their financials in order to hire someone. Some people have it scheduled for third quarter already, fourth quarter. I think it’s going to continue for a while. Now that these franchise brands have hired some of those franchise development people and opened up selling again, they have money coming in. They have a $35,000, $40,000 franchise fee that’s coming in. They’re ready to spend that money on some other hires, key talent in their organization.
Tell us a little bit more about Careertopia. You are, like I said earlier, you’re really at the center of the universe when it comes to hiring in the franchise space. What do you guys do and give us a little background on the brand?
Yeah, so first off, it was founded by Gary, Tom and Scott. That’s what we always reference. Gary Gardner, co-founder of Franchise Update Media, Scott Lehrer, former executive vice president at the IFA, and then Tom Portesy, former CEO of Com Exposium.
It’s like the Mount Rushmore of franchising.
Yes, it is, isn’t it? But none of them really wanted to operate it. They just wanted to find it.
So their first hire was you.
Yeah, their first hire was me as the leader of the organization. And the first thing I did was change the name because it was originally known as GT&S Franchise Executive Search.
Thank goodness you did that, man.
The infamous initials. So we changed it to Careertopia. That was about four years ago now. So we do executive search only in the franchise space. So I say director all the way up to CEO. You know, we don’t do as many directors because there’s a lot of them. Bigger pond to fish from. Some people know people and they just hire them. Don’t do as many CEOs because there’s not as many CEOs. You know, so C-suite, VPs, that’s our sweet spot.
Yeah.
Do a ton of those and we really kind of focus on that executive search. We’ll do it for XORs, Zs, or suppliers. The only thing I’ll say about franchisees is we kind of make a cutoff at the store level. We’re not going to hire a store manager, but if a franchisee has an organization, you know, they’ve got 100 stores and they’ve got a regional VP of ops or something like that, we’ll fill those roles all day.
Yeah. I love the idea of focusing on franchising because so often a brand will let us know that we’ve got a new CMO or a new COO coming in or something like that. And you hear that pause when they say, well, she’s not from franchising.
Yep.
And then there’s that pause waiting to see what the response will be. And it’s kind of like, oh, that’s good. That’s interesting. So making sure that people have a place to go where they could find someone who is of franchising. I think that’s really helpful. So I love everything you guys are doing. And I’m glad to hear it’s a hot market and you’re busy, but at the same time, it’s like, wow, I hope this slows down a little bit at some point, right?
Yeah. There’s a lot of movement right now, not just because of the things I said before, but again, if you use COVID as kind of a placeholder, there’s a lot of people that are in that three to five years at one location, one brand, and they start getting a little itchy at that point. Maybe there’s not an opportunity for them to grow there. Maybe they want to go from a senior VP to a chief development officer or a chief operating officer. So there’s some movement happening right now.
Yeah. So you’re one of our Thought Leadership Award winners from this year. And I don’t think I told you this before, but I got to look up the numbers, but I believe you are our number one vote getter from our esteemed group of judges.
So I can’t tell you how many times I voted.
Right, right. But you’re one of those guys who is sort of quietly making a difference in the industry. And by quietly, I mean, you’re not, you know, standing on the tabletops at franchise conferences, taking selfies and doing, you know, karaoke and screaming and all of that kind of stuff. So there’s a lot of people who are following what you’re saying. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that you are, you know, really, like I said, in the center of the hiring universe in this space. It’s an interesting place to be. And you’ve got a lot of influence out there, man.
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I’ll tell you that I’ve been very deliberate in some of the things I’ve been doing lately, let’s say on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, in my eyes, has really become a platform to stand on top of a rock, and preach about how great you are, or what you’ve done, and all that. And I think that the whole industry needs a little bit more humility at times. And I guess maybe it’s because I’m at an age that I’m getting up there in years, and I really want to help others out. It’s no longer about me anymore, and the success that I have. The thing that gives me the greatest satisfaction in my life, and what really is my purpose-driven life, is to see other people succeed, and help create those opportunities, and connect the dots for people. And so, it’s really a season for me of giving back, of being humble, and being helpful to a lot of people in the franchise industry, just like I was given those opportunities along the way. People helped me along the way. I had good connections that really helped me either climb the ladder, or have a relationship with someone, and it’s time for me to give.
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Yeah, it’s interesting. I almost got out of being a franchisee. I had sold my last Great American Cookies location during COVID and was probably without a franchise for about two months before my daughter came up to me and said, hey, I’m interested in maybe being a franchise business owner. And I said, well, I suddenly put like my broker hat on. What are you excited about? And we were pretty deliberate and we knew we wanted to do a dog business. We knew we did not want to do boarding. We did not want to do mobile. And so we started narrowing down the search and we really fell into Scenthound, a brand started by Tim and Jessica Vogel out of Florida. We fell in love with the brand. And quite frankly, in the three to almost four years, we’ve been with the brand. We love it even more. The Vogels have done a fantastic job developing this brand and we have seen great success from it. So we have our daughter that started in Wichita, Kansas. She has two locations that are open. Shortly after she opened her first one, our son came up to us and said, hey, what’s going on over there? So he got involved and now he has two locations open up in the Houston area with his wife Tabitha. And they have two more that they’re going to do. And I keep emphasizing them because they’re really the operating partner. Even though we’re franchisees together, they operate. And this wasn’t mom and dad buying them a little project. They’re on the hook. And we help them out, obviously, financially, but mostly mentoring and just coaching along the way. They’re paying us back aggressively. The locations are profitable. So we love the Scenthound brand and everything that it’s doing for our family.
That’s a good process. You know, mom and dad buying a little project for someone, that is doomed to fail. I also like your selection process of, you know, so often people are like, well, what are you interested in? What are you passionate about? Now I like, what do you not want to do? Right? Let’s eliminate all of the things you don’t want to do and let’s see what’s still standing. So I think that’s a good intentional way to look at franchising.
Yeah, you know, Jack, one of the things I tell everybody when I’m mentoring them, because I still mentor a lot of veterans, I always say fall in love with the business model, not the product. Yeah. You may love a certain thing. I’m not going to throw any brands under the bus, but you may love a certain thing. But if you look at the business model, it’s not strong. And so, you know, you end up buying that franchise and what you ended up doing was buying you a job of 80 to 100 hours a week in the store, where if you look closer at business models, I mean, if plumbers have a great business model, you know, I’ll be plunging toilets all day long if that’s what it takes, right?
Yeah, there’s money in that water. Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned mentoring veterans like yourself. You’re still pretty involved with VetFran and some other organizations like that, right?
Yeah. I have the official title of immediate past chair of the VetFran committee. It’s a great title. No, it’s a passion project of mine. I’ve been doing it for a long time, probably 20 plus years in the VetFran community. I just love for the opportunity to give back to veterans specifically. I think veterans make great franchisees because of all the stuff that they learned in the military of small unit leadership and responsibility for assets, including human assets and capital assets and just delivering on the mission. The brand is the mission that they were used to in the military. As a small unit leader, as the operator of their store, they take the brand in mind with everything that they decide that they’re going to do to make that location more and more successful. You take that background of education and discipline, and you just help them understand what franchising is all about. I think that veterans make a big impact in the franchise community.
Yeah. I do like the immediate past chair title for anyone. It’s like grandparent, you get to move it along, and it’s off your shoulders, but you might still have a say in what happens.
Yeah. We’re doing great things in the VetFran committee. Doug Dwyer is now the chairman and definitely is picking up where I left off and running even faster. So it’s a great committee that gets a lot of stuff done.
Yeah. If anyone’s interested in getting more involved in VetFran, whether you would like to work with the committee or maybe you’re a franchisor that’s thinking about having something special for veterans that join your organization as a franchisee, I can’t recommend them enough. So check them out at vetfran.org is the website that I think we’d want to send everybody to. I want to get to another thing that I know you’re very passionate about when it comes to franchising and family, and that’s faith. I know you’re involved with a lot of things in the franchise industry surrounding that. Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing these days.
Yeah, so FranFaith was started maybe about a couple of years ago now by Todd Recknagel and his wife Kristi Mailloux, and we’ve assembled a group of co-founders. I’m one of them, and we just love to create fellowship. It started at the IFA Conference every year at the Prayer Breakfast. We’re trying to expand on that at other events, but we’re also, this year, we’re focused on some smaller group events or activities. And in fact, this year is the first year that we’re going to do a fly-fishing retreat that’s based in faith and fellowship. No experience is necessary. No equipment is necessary. They take care of everything. All you got to do is show up, and we’ll have a couple Bible studies today, and then we’ll really experience God’s beauty and the nature of Colorado, Buena Vista, Colorado, this year. It’s a three-day event that we hope we are going to repeat yearly, maybe even a couple of times a year if it grows in popularity. We had a lot of people that were interested this year, and we’re taking a small group on July 10th to Colorado. So it’s going to be fantastic.
That’s very cool. I think nothing wrong with having a lot of good parties and things like that at franchise events, but I think there’s something really interesting to me about networking and people getting together who are maybe in business, or maybe could be in business, or maybe they’re looking for mentorship and fellowship and that kind of thing that maybe surround a different type of event like this. So I love to see that happening. And this is the first of many, I would assume.
Yeah. Not only with FranFaith that we’re doing this fly fishing thing, they had a trip to Israel this year as well. But there’s a couple of others that they’re thinking of putting together as a gathering for people of faith and franchising. But I think that you have seen out there this push in the last three years or so, towards more boutique gatherings. Small little cohorts or mastermind sessions that they’re really getting together as a group of maybe a dozen or so to really dig deep and learn from each other. And that’s what I’m focused on in FranFaith as well.
Yeah. We love the IFA Convention, but let’s face it. When there are 4,000 people, how many people per day can you really engage with and have a real conversation with? Not just hand them a business card. So yeah, having smaller gatherings, regional or maybe focused on something different that not everyone else is doing. I just love that idea. Well, Sean, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy day to chat with us here. Again, thanks for your thought leadership and helping a lot of people find their way in franchising and learning from you and hopefully growing their business. I would recommend everybody follow Sean on LinkedIn. You share some really cool stuff there. Like you said earlier, it’s about 1% about you and about 99% about everybody else. So it’s a great place to be. If anyone would like to connect with you or maybe they’ve got some questions about Careertopia or anything else you’re doing, where can we send them?
Yeah, I think the best thing to do is email me. It’s sean at careertopia.com and my first name is S-E-A-N, sean at careertopia.com.
All right, very good. Sean, have a great rest of the summer and I will see you this fall at some IFA events and we look forward to catching up again soon.
Yeah, thanks, Jack. And thanks for everything that you do for franchising and highlighting so many people that are difference makers. Thank you.
Thanks again to Sean Falk of Careertopia for joining me today. Thanks also to our sponsors, Pilot, AnswerConnect, Thunderly, and the IFA World Franchise Show. And thanks to you for listening, telling a friend about us, and staying connected on the Social Geek Radio Network.