Most people don't set out to make a bad investment. They do their research. They Google. They get excited. And somewhere along the way, they end up making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives without the information they actually needed.
In this episode of “The Sidekick Life,” Ryan and Tyler get real about one of the most persistent problems in franchising: the lack of transparency that leaves buyers in the dark – and how Franchise Sidekick is working to change that.
Imagine you're ready to buy a franchise. You pull up Google, maybe search "best franchises of 2026," and start clicking. What you find is a sea of curated lists, paid rankings and brand websites designed to sell you, not inform you. Within minutes, you've gone from curious to overwhelmed.
"There are somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 franchise opportunities out there," Ryan said. "But the reality is most people only know McDonald's, Subway and Chick-fil-A. And getting into those is nearly impossible."
"When you buy a house, everybody has bought a house,” Tyler adds. “You know what makes a good house for the most part. With a franchise, you don't know this stuff unless you've bought one before."
The "ownership wall,” as Ryan likes to call it, is a hundred-foot barrier between who you are before you buy (an uninformed optimist) and who you become after (hopefully, an informed one). The problem is that the internet tore that wall down for almost every other major purchase – hotels, restaurants, cars, jobs – but franchising never got its version of TripAdvisor, Yelp or Glassdoor.
"That hundred-foot buyer's wall still exists," Ryan said. "On the left side, before you buy, you've got the uninformed optimists, excited, hopeful, ready to go. But sometimes they get to the other side and become informed pessimists. Not because franchising is bad, but because they didn't have access to the right information."
Traditional franchise research has failed buyers at almost every step. Lead portals rank brands based on who's paying to be there, not who's actually performing well. Individual brand websites naturally show only the highlights. And even the referrals can be hand-picked.
"The franchisees that you get access to are the ones that are willing to talk, the ones the franchisor connected you with," Ryan said. "Those are usually people that are going to be pretty happy. That's just not the way it should be done."
The contrast to other industries is hard to ignore. Try Googling what it's actually like to be a franchisee of Taco Bell, Dunkin' Donuts or Jersey Mike's – three brands that topped the Franchise 500 in 2025 – and you'll find almost nothing from real owners. What does exist is largely survey data commissioned by the franchisors themselves, shared only when the results are worth marketing.
That's the problem Sidekick set out to solve. After more than a year of development – and what Ryan calls "a lot of money, a lot of headaches, and a lot of time" – they launched Sidekick SeeThrough, a platform built around one simple idea: give franchise buyers honest access to people who've already been where they're headed.
"I want this to be the site you'd send your mom, your brother, your best friend to when they were considering a franchise," Ryan said. "Because they're going to get transparent information."
The platform lets current and former franchisees review their ownership experience across categories like overall satisfaction, training and onboarding, marketing and customer acquisition support, technology, ROI and more. And critically, none of it is pay-to-play.
"We're not asking for anybody to pay to get those reviews placed," Ryan said. "We're asking for anyone who is a current or former franchisee to find your brand, put it in, and the rankings will be completely determined based on that."
And the impact goes beyond helping buyers, it's already shaping how Sidekick Advisors do their jobs.
"Within two months, we started to see some reviews come back and our advisors started adjusting which brands they were showing clients because of what they were seeing in the data," Tyler said.
SeeThrough isn't just a review site. It also includes a franchise fit survey that helps buyers define their criteria, investment level, lifestyle, goals, and then runs those answers through a matching algorithm to surface the brands most likely to be a good fit. Think of it like working with a real estate agent who first asks what you need in a home before showing you a single listing.
There's also a side-by-side comparison tool, so buyers can look at multiple franchise opportunities at once – investment ranges, unit counts, owner involvement, growth rates – the way you'd compare phone models before making a purchase.
The site is only as powerful as the people who participate in it. SeeThrough is brand new, and building the kind of review volume that makes it truly useful takes a community.
"If you've been a franchisee or are one, you can give to the future generations of franchise entrepreneurs by completing a quick review," Ryan said. "We want to turn this into a site where everybody has access to this information."
And for anyone still on the fence about whether to work with an advisor at all …
"Our services are free to our clients,” Tyler said. “The commission gets paid by the franchisor either way, if you don't work with us, the brand keeps it, and you go unrepresented. There's no reason not to be represented."
The bottom line?
Franchising can absolutely change your life. Ryan and Tyler believe that deeply. But it changes your life for the better only when you go in with your eyes open.
"This isn't about selling more franchises," Ryan said. "I want to look back someday and say we changed the way people buy a franchise."
Head to SeeThrough today to explore the platform, create your profile and take the franchise fit survey. Or if you’re a current franchisee, leave a review on your experience working with your brand.
If this episode changed the way you think about researching a franchise, keep listening. We're just getting warmed up.
“The Sidekick Life” is packed with conversations just like this one, real talk, expert guests and practical insights for entrepreneurs at every stage of the journey.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and stream new episodes every other week on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and never miss the conversation that might just change everything.