Nick Leja always dreamed of owning a business. After graduating from college with a degree in electrical engineering, he entered the franchising world as a consultant, representing more than 300 brands. His first step into ownership came when he opened his first Disc Replay franchise in Flint, Michigan, turning a passion for video games into his entry point as a business owner. From there, Leja went on to build a broader multi-unit portfolio, expanding into franchisee ownership across five brands, including Plato's Closet and Superior Fence & Rail, and growing his total ownership stake to more than 90 units across all five brands.

Along the way, Leja said his real specialty emerged: the systems, teams and processes that let a good concept scale.

"I wanted to join franchising because those are proven systems," Leja said. "I knew I wanted to be a business owner, but I knew I also didn't want to come up with the idea and do a startup. I'm probably overly obsessed with systemetizing things. I'm really good at taking systems and optimizing them with a strong focus on simplicity."

Being part of five different brands also gave Leja a front-row seat to what separates a great franchisor from a mediocre one.

"I've been part of good franchise systems and not great ones, so I’ve learned what strategies and support structures are good and bad for the franchisees,” Leja said. "Now, with Disc Replay, I'm trying to bring all of that together — not just having a great concept, but backing it up with truly world-class support for our franchisees."

When Disc Replay founder John Chesny was looking to sell his business toward the end of 2023, he turned to Leja and his partners to act as trusted caretakers and elevate the brand.

"John, the original founder, really cared about quality of life over making every dollar that he possibly could," Leja said. "So when he was looking to sell the business, he didn't really want to sell it to private equity. Nothing against private equity, but he wanted to keep it in the family, so to speak. He wanted somebody who he really felt would carry the brand to the next level while also taking care of the franchisees."

Chesny's offer marked a turning point for Leja and his team, shifting Disc Replay from a brand they had grown within to one they would be responsible for leading.

"When he brought the opportunity at the end of 2023, he said that he was seeing the energy that we have and the different ideas that we're bringing to the table, and he was also looking just to downsize and take some things off his plate," Leja said. "When he asked if I’d be interested, it was a surreal experience. He'd been my business mentor for 14 or 15 years up to that point. When he asked the question, I remember time just stopped. It was like, pinch me, is this real? Is this actually happening?"

The transaction closed in April 2024, and Leja said the past few years have reinforced his confidence in Disc Replay's next chapter.

"Before we started aggressively franchising, there were some things that I wanted to fix, such as our proprietary point-of-sale system as well as our website," Leja said. "We spent a couple of years getting some things figured out. Now I feel I've got a super clean, stable platform, and I'm very excited to grow it."

Leja joined 1851 Franchise Publisher Nick Powills on a recent episode of the "Meet the Franchise" podcast to discuss his franchising journey from consultant to multi-unit franchisee of several brands to franchisor of Disc Replay. A transcript of the interview — edited for brevity, clarity and style — has been provided below.

Nick Powills: All right, Nick. Question one is scripted, the rest is unscripted. How did you accidentally fall into franchising? What’s your franchise backstory?

Nick Leja: When I graduated college, I got my degree in electrical engineering and became a franchise consultant. I always wanted to be a business owner. It’s always been one of my dreams, but I’m not the kind of guy to come up with the idea. I wanted to join franchising because those are proven systems. As a franchise consultant, I represented over 300 brands, and that was how I got into franchising. Then I found a brand that I absolutely fell in love with. So I went from being a franchise consultant to a franchisee.

Powills: How many different franchises are you a franchisee of right now?

Leja: I think my count is at five right now.

Powills: How many total units?

Leja: Probably around 90 units across the country.

Powills: If you go back to being fresh out of college and becoming a franchise consultant to saying, “I own 90 units of franchise brands,” how crazy is that?

Leja: It is crazy. It’s one of those things where every day feels like it just flies by, and I’m like, “I got nothing done today.” Even every week, it’s like, “I got nothing done this week.” But then when you look back at a year or five years or a decade, you’re like, wow, it’s crazy. It’s like magic how it adds up.

Powills: Going back to you being this franchise consultant, at the time you were doing it, it wasn’t like today — the heyday — where it is a huge industry. Back then, you were breaking into a category that was unknown. What drove you to even say that? And thinking back to you saying, “All right, I could do this,” how did you even understand what franchising was?

Leja: I just knew that franchising was a system — a proven system for a business concept. That was why I got into it, because I knew I wanted to be a business owner, but I knew I also didn’t want to come up with the idea and do a startup. That’s just not the way my mind works. I’m like a systems engineer; I’m really good at taking systems and optimizing them, not necessarily coming up with the system to begin with. So that’s how I got the idea to get into franchising.

As far as what made me think I could do it, when I met John [Chesny], the founder of Disc Replay — I’m a video gamer myself — everything just made sense with the business model. It was fun. It was simple. It was easy to understand. I just knew that I could figure it out and work with the system because it was such a strong model.

Powills: Obviously, to get to 90 units — this is going to oversimplify it — you have to be unemotionally scalable. If you’re too emotional about a business, then you can never get out of that unit. You’re stuck there, and every change and every decision has to be yours. As you reflect back, what are some of the lessons where you’re like, eventually I learned X to scale this thing that, if I knew then, it would have made a big difference?

Leja: Starting out, my dad gave me a book when I was either at the end of middle school or beginning of high school called “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki, and he talks about the cash flow quadrant. With that, you start off as an employee and then you become self-employed. One of the problems, according to Kiyosaki, with self-employed individuals is a lot of times they just bought themselves a job. So you became a business owner, but now you’re working 60 hours a week, making less than you were making at your corporate job. It’s like, wait, what’s going on here?

Because I read that book ahead of time, I knew that I wanted to avoid that trap. I knew how to step into that temporarily, but the next step in the cash flow quadrant is to be a “B” type business owner. When you’re a B, you are an active business owner. However, the business is running itself with a team rather than you being the guy.

Before I even started with the first store, that was always my endgame: to become a B-type business owner, because I didn’t want to buy a job. I wanted to eventually create a passive revenue stream to allow me to pursue my true passion, which is writing. As far as lessons learned, there’s a quote that James Clear has — I might get a word wrong here — but I think about this literally every day: “You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

To me, it’s always been systems and structure, rather than me emotionally getting involved or me wanting to be the guy or having a strong ego, like, “I want to be the one coming up with the Black Friday specials.” No, I just want to make sure that the Black Friday specials get created by the team and they’re the right ones. What kind of empowerment can I give my team? What kind of structure or resources can I give my team so they can come up with the proper Black Friday specials, for example, rather than it always being, “OK, Nick, what do we do for this?” I try to make it so I’m completely unnecessary to run it. Whenever I take on a new challenge, I always try to obsolete myself as fast as possible.

Powills: How long did it take you to get to that mindset? Did that happen right away or did it take you a while when you became a franchisee?

Leja: Day one. If anything, I probably disconnected from the business a little too soon because I didn’t want to stay in that self-employed quadrant for too long. I arguably stepped away faster than I should have, and a lot of things broke down.

It took me a lot of time, though, to figure out how to properly structure a business, how to delegate appropriately, how to empower people without giving them too much power and how to decentralize. All those things took me years of learning, studying, being mentored, trial and error and a lot of mistakes. But I had that mindset from day one. It took maybe five to seven years or so — I’m still learning today.

Powills: When I hear you talk, my brain goes to “integrator,” not “visionary.” Odd question, but can EOS — can traction — be wrong? Because the reality is an integrator can still be a visionary. It’s like you just said: You’re a visionary over systems. But really, in order to be good at systems, you have to be an integrator and put the system in place, right?

Leja: I just hired my first official integrator a couple of years ago. One of the things he said during one of our first meetings is that he and I are probably too close to each other. If you read the book “Rocket Fuel” and look at the visionary archetype and the integrator archetype, they’re very different. But I definitely have the integrator mindset as well as the visionary mindset. It’s not typical, and there definitely are some downside complications. Sometimes I can get a little too obsessed with the inner workings, and I start tinkering when I really shouldn’t.

But I do have that ability to do both. I’m trying to spend more time in the visionary role, but the integrator role is kind of addicting. I got to a point where I was the visionary and the integrator for so long, but as we’ve scaled, I just don’t have the capacity to be both. Even though I like both and I’m good at both, I really have to decide what I love. And I think it is more in the visionary role at this point.

Powills: So you get Disc Replay going. How many units do you get up to before you become a franchisee of brand number two?

Leja: It was just one unit. I had one Disc Replay in Flint, Michigan. I loved the business model. I loved the resale — just the whole way the dynamics of that retail model work. But I did want to diversify into a different product line, so I looked at other good resale concepts out there. Plato’s Closet jumped to the top of the list. They were best in class at the time with teenage fashion resale. So we did Discovery Day, I loved that, and we opened up that store in the same shopping center where Disc Replay was in Flint. That was my second business.

Powills: So then you have one of each of these brands. How do you scale from two to the next?

Leja: Next, we did Disc Replay in Livonia [Michigan]. We really liked the Disc Replay model, so we opened it up in Livonia, and then I did Disc Replays in Taylor and Roseville. I really started developing Disc Replays; that was my next big thing that I was focusing on.

I was broke and had no money after doing the second store, and we had bank debt. I’m like, “OK, I need something.” But I just didn’t have the financial resources to do that. Along the way, I met one of my primary business partners, Chad. He’s out of Illinois, and he had a lot more capital than I did at the time, but he didn’t really have the time because of his corporate job. John, the founder of Disc Replay, actually connected us. It was a great partnership. I helped him open up one of his first stores in Michigan, and we got along great. So we partnered; he helped me with the capital, I helped him with the operations and that’s how we kept growing.

Powills: Out of curiosity, you’re pressing down the pedal on Disc Replay, not on Plato’s Closet. Is there a reason why you were doing that? What made you feel more comfortable scaling Disc Replay than Plato’s Closet at that point?

Leja: I am way more passionate about video games than I am about fashion. I don’t pick out most of the clothes that I wear. But the second thing was there wasn’t a whole lot of available territory for Plato’s. Part of it was just a lack of opportunity for Plato’s.

Powills: So if there’s no more opportunity, you’re stalled out there and you’re going to look somewhere else. If I think about what I see primarily multi-unit franchises say on how they validate a brand, it goes: point of differentiation in the marketplace, plus the vision of the founder or the CEO. They want to make sure that the vision is going to continue to grow the business. They want to make sure that the cost to get in and how much I can make is sound — it has to be a smart, viable business opportunity. They have to be able to open where they want to open, because if they stall out there, then they’re going to look at other brands. And the last one is validation: They want every time they talk to a franchisee and say, “Would you do this again?” the answer to be yes. Does that ring true with you as to how you were evaluating things early on?

Leja: Pretty similar, yeah. I read a lot of Warren Buffett, and one of the biggest things he mentions with businesses is he’d rather have a business with a wider competitive moat and a little bit less profitability versus more profitability and no moat, because over time, competition just destroys so many good business models. You mentioned, I think, your first one was a point of differentiation. I use the terminology “moat,” but it’s always like, what sets this brand apart from everybody else? And it’s got to be a durable moat that can’t easily be crossed. So that, by far, is number one.

Powills: I think for you, your personal moat goes back to the unemotional scaling. There’s no way you would have been able to scale one into another concept, and to be on unit two and then eventually have a business partner, if you were too egotistical or tied to the business. It’s like you have a complete franchisee mindset — what I would call the perfect franchisee mindset of: There’s a system in place, I’m going to follow it. I don’t have to make a ton of money. I don’t have to top out at this. Because if I make a little bit less, I can also scale and bring in other people. Even from the franchisor standpoint, where it’s a founder-led business, founder syndrome is very hard to break through. Most franchisees get in there and say, “Well, here are the things we could do better,” versus saying, “I paid a fee and I pay royalty for a system in place.” Do you feel like that’s your magic moat as a leader and as a business owner — that unemotional side of scale?

Leja: Part of it, yeah. Because I am in five different brands and I’ve also been to Discovery Days with many other brands. I’ve found a lot of great ideas with these other brands — things that the franchisor does that I love, where I kind of steal that idea or that concept to bring it to Disc Replay.

For example, Superior Fence & Rail — I love the founder, Zach [Peyton]. He did an amazing job with really caring about the franchisees. Not just top-line revenue, but bottom-line profitability. His heart’s in the right place. The way that he runs his business is incredibly inspiring and admirable. I’ve learned a lot from being a franchisee in some of these other brands that actually do it the right way and actually care about the health of the franchisees versus just building it and flipping it to private equity or something like that.

I guess I’m kind of pulling from all of that to, with Disc Replay, build a system that really does right by the franchisees and does things the right way with the right mindset. It’s not me just figuring it all out. I have so many mentors from so many different brands and industries that I can pull from.

Powills: Let’s flash forward. Opportunity comes for you as the franchisee to take over as the franchisor. Walk us through that process and what made you eventually say yes to it?

Leja: John, the original founder, really cared about quality of life over making every dollar that he possibly could. So when he was looking to sell the business, he didn’t really want to sell it to private equity. Nothing against private equity, but he wanted to keep it in the family, so to speak. He wanted somebody who he really felt would carry the brand to the next level while also taking care of the franchisees. It had always been his game plan to sell it to someone that he knew and trusted rather than a third party.

When he brought the opportunity — it was probably at the end of 2023 — he said that he was seeing the energy that we have and the different ideas that we’re bringing to the table, and he was also looking just to downsize and take some things off his plate. He asked if I’d be interested. It was crazy because he’d been my business mentor for 14 or 15 years up to that point. Even when he asked the question, I remember time just stopped. It was like, pinch me, is this real? Is this actually happening?

So I said yes. Obviously, we got through all the legal documentation, and the business transaction happened in April of 2024. It’s just been awesome for the past couple of years. Before we started franchising aggressively, there were some things that I wanted to fix, such as our proprietary point-of-sale system as well as our website. We spent a couple of years getting some things figured out. Now I feel I’ve got a super clean, stable platform, and I’m very excited to grow it.

Powills: Have there been any “oh shit” moments — like, what did I just do? — as you’ve gone through this, or has it been steadily facing forward?

Leja: Probably the biggest “oh shit” moment was the three hours after I signed the dotted line and it was official. It’s like, oh man, OK, what’s going on here? So I had to process that. Overall, it’s been intense excitement because I have a million ideas. I can’t execute on these ideas fast enough; I just see so much potential for it. That’s always been super exciting.

Powills: When I think of your story, I keep thinking about this: There are plenty of franchisees who have become the franchisor, but the difference in your story, if I unpack the whole thing, is starting out in franchise consulting. You’re looking at brands through the lens of, do they really have my back? I think if I’m oversimplifying this, my line is always, “You bet on the jockey, not on the horse.” You were betting on John. You saw that you liked video games, but you’re betting on him and his philosophy because you saw something different in there, giving you a different lens.

The fact that you’re a franchisee with 90 units in your portfolio — and you’ve looked at all these brands — you didn’t talk about, “I love fencing.” You said, “Boy, I love the founder and what he was building.” You have this rare superpower that exists. Then if I look at the category as a whole — oversimplifying the fact that GameStop had a tremendous moment with what was happening with the stock and then the rebounding — it’s almost like being futuristic on nostalgia. It’s setting a tone, but you can’t buy a GameStop; it’s not a franchise. So now, your category positioning is really good.

I say all this because I just want your reflection on it. I love the category, period. I love the business model that you’re in. But I think that the magic power, not to lift up your ego, ends up being what you’ve gone through to get to this point that gives you a unique lens. Otherwise, you would continue to just become a franchisee of other brands if it was that cut-and-dried.

Leja: Before I comment too much on that and make it seem like I’m this magical human — plus, obviously I’m the face, I’m the one talking to you here — I’ve got a team with me that has been in the trenches with me, that I’ve learned from, and I wouldn’t have accomplished any of this without them. So, yeah, it’s not like it’s just me.

But I would say if you look at the leadership team, the experience and also our vision — what’s on our V/TO and what we’re here for, what our purpose is — it’s not just making money. I’m trying to be the John from Disc Replay or the Zach from Superior Fence & Rail. I’m trying to be like those individuals who gave me an amazing life opportunity by creating the brand and being so franchisee-focused. That’s why I’m here. I would love to provide that type of opportunity to other individuals out there. That’s what gets me excited.

Powills: I’m sure you’ve seen, for lack of better words, asshole franchisees of other brands. The way that you talk about John or Zach, those other franchisees might look at those two people and say, “This is what’s wrong with the business.” But I think it’s mostly a two-pronged issue: One, the franchisee who is unwilling to follow the system should not be in franchising; and two, being able to absorb the things that are around you and take from human beings who are willing to give. I think you’re awesome at deflecting responsibility away from yourself and giving it to your team. Obviously, you’ve got to have some passion for what you’re getting into, so you care about what you’re going to impact in the community. But the way that you’re talking — and I know that you’ve met parts of your team, you have very similar personalities collectively — that’s what a buyer watching this is going to buy into. They have to buy into and bet on you and your team.

Leja: For sure. It’s the decisions that we’re going to make over the next handful of years that really are going to impact the trajectory of everything. You can have a great business model, but if you’re not in sync with the founder’s vision, methodology of thinking or core values, it’s definitely not going to end well.

Powills: Are you still scaling with other brands as a franchisee?

Leja: Right now, I’ve segmented my portfolio into three different verticals. We have the retail vertical, which has Disc Replay and Plato’s Closet. Yes, we do intend on scaling that; it has its own 10-year target. But there’s also an accountability chart that’s fully running, so we’re not peeling resources from other things. We have home services, which is Superior Fence & Rail. I love that business, so I would love to continue to go vertical on that. And then we have the franchising business, which is now acting as the franchisor of Disc Replay.

I am not actively looking to add a fourth vertical. But we would look at anything that aligns with our core focus and our existing three verticals, assuming we have the accountability chart and the structural capacity to execute it properly.

Powills: If you randomly came across the next John or Zach, would that pique your interest to continue to diversify?

Leja: If I came across another John or Zach in a fourth vertical, and if there was the scale of opportunity to justify it, I would definitely entertain the conversation. I am very big on being laser-focused, so I would not want to jeopardize the focus that I or the team have in anything we are currently doing today. If there was something a handful of years down the road that was a fourth vertical, and there was a solution to execute on that properly without sacrificing the focus on the other three verticals, then I would consider it. But if it would involve any type of split focus or any kind of collateral damage, then I probably would pass at this time.

Powills: I’m going to use a line that is typically reserved for staffing, which is, “hire slowly, fire fast.” But what I hear when you’re saying “laser focus” in business, it sounds like it’s the same thing. If you make a decision, whether it’s a vendor, a promotion or something happening from a business investment standpoint, if you carry that same mentality of being slow to a decision and quick to removal to remain laser-focused, is that another part of your magic power? Has that improved over time?

Leja: Oh, 100%. I got distracted by shiny objects so many times. I was all over the board. I was doing storage units, and I was doing this and that, and I got burned several times. I have finally learned the lesson now of the power of being laser-focused, and I’m very, very, very guarded of that at this point.

Anything that comes in — if it’s not in alignment, it just has to be a no. I say no to the vast majority of opportunities that come in. For the ones where I say yes, it’s really got to be a fit. Then, for whatever reason, if a mistake is made — if you say yes to something and you realize, oh no, we got distracted — then, yeah, cutting ties and getting rid of that, not worrying about the sunk costs, and just moving on. That way, you can focus.

The opportunity cost of losing focus is huge. And I’ve seen the power when either me or other members of my team got distracted and then got laser-focused. You see the results in weeks. It’s not like it takes a year of being focused to see it. Within weeks of just being laser-focused on what matters, the results instantly appear. So it’s very powerful.

Powills: How do you do the same thing with happiness? Because you have 90 different businesses that are operating. How do you stay laser-focused on personal happiness?

Leja: Good question. I’m super into mindfulness, meditation and stillness, and not working crazy hours. I don’t have a crazy work schedule. I’ve defined 100% how many hours in a week, or a year, or days in a year that I can give to work and still maintain my own personal sense of balance, and I don’t really stray outside those lines.

If there’s an issue, maybe there’ll be a sprint where I have to turn up the work dial a little bit. I also believe in seasons. There might be one season when I’m a bit more work-centric than I am family or personal, but then the next season, I’ll try to counterbalance it. When I look over the course of a year overall, I’m in balance, but whenever you look at any given quarter, I’m probably a little bit lopsided.

One of the things is I don’t try to be perfectly in balance every single day with work, family and personal. I think trying to be perfectly in balance means that you’re just kind of dipping around everywhere. I accept that on any given day, I might be off balance. But overall, I just know what my 100% work is, 100% personal, 100% family, and I guard that.

Another big thing is I try to schedule my vacations and my time off. I’ll block time off ahead of time. I schedule my priorities rather than prioritize my schedule. I make sure that those things that are really important get locked in the calendar ASAP so that work can’t penetrate those.

I also started taking a sabbatical. Every September, I take a sabbatical. I got this from Gino Wickman, the founder of EOS; he does something similar. I took my first sabbatical last year, and my next one’s coming up this year. There’s a lot of crazy work stuff that I don’t know how I’m going to get wrapped up before Sept. 1, but I know either way I’m going on that sabbatical. That’s a nonnegotiable. That gives me time for a break and to recharge so I don’t get too caught up in work to where it impacts my happiness in a negative way.

Powills: Two questions there. How long is the sabbatical?

Leja: A month.

Powills: How long did it take you to get to this mindset? Because, again, if you say “multi-unit franchisee of five different brands and now a franchisor,” the assumption is, boy, he’s got to be working around the clock. But you just talked about balance and permission to let other people do the job. Was there a breakthrough moment that made you say, “This is how I’m going to live my life”?

Leja: To answer your question directly, yeah, I did have a breakthrough moment a few years ago. It was probably three years ago now, where I had a business setback, and that was pretty paradigm-shifting. I just reflected on what I was doing and what my purpose was. I was caught in the rat race to the point where I wasn’t really taking care of my personal self. So I had a bit of a reset a few years ago; that was part of it.

As far as how to do that, a big learning point that I had: I was petrified of doing the fence company. I really struggled doing this because, with Disc Replay, I learned how to be a sales associate at the front counter. I knew how to do — and I still know how to do — every single position in the company. So worst-case scenario, if someone called in sick, I could go in and fill in the gap.

With the fence company, I was petrified because I don’t know how to install a fence, and I don’t really want to learn how to install a fence, and I don’t really want to be installing fences every day. Also, I don’t know how to operate a forklift. I don’t know how to be a warehouse production team member. I didn’t know how to do all those things, and I just knew there wasn’t enough time in the day for me to learn all that.

When I got into the fence company, that was the first time I ever had a business where I literally couldn’t do the things required to make the business run. I had to rely on hiring team members and relying on those team members to get the thing done. By doing that, I just really disconnected and realized, oh, if I want to accomplish a lot of things, or if a team or a business wants to accomplish a lot of things, I personally don’t have to be the one figuring it all out.

With Disc Replay at the beginning, I learned how to buy everything. I would create all the systems and processes, train everybody personally, and go from there. Everything was relying on me learning, optimizing, documenting and training. With the fence company, I hired a warehouse guy or a fence installer and said, “How should we organize the warehouse? You tell me. I don’t know how to figure this out.” And then I learned the power of leveraging the talent in others.

Watch the episode above or on YouTube.