“Undercover Billionaire” Elaine Culotti Talks Franchising

In the middle of a global pandemic, real estate developer and design mogul Elaine Culotti was driven out to Fresno, California, and left with $100 and an old truck.

She gave up her driver’s license and swore not to use her name or connections. She had just 90 days to make — or lose — $1 million. 

That’s the premise of “Undercover Billionaire,” the reality TV series on Discovery where rich, successful business magnates bet that they can create a $1 million dollar business in 90 days from just $100 seed money.

For Culotti, an entrepreneur since the age of 14 when she began selling antiques as her “military brat” upbringing saw her traveling across Europe, the experience placed her firmly on the outside of the winner’s club she’d belonged to for so long.

Challenged with a pandemic, little money, no connections and only her experience and knowledge, Culotti faced a gut-wrenching undertaking that would see her bring together a community of support in a way not entirely unlike the franchising industry. 

1851 Franchise spoke to the reality TV star and real estate developer about the challenges of entrepreneurship during the pandemic era and a few surprising silver linings she found along the way.

Going Straight To the Top

“What do you do when everything’s closed? What do you do when you don’t have any resources? I’m here to tell you there are a lot of things you can do, especially if you’re entrepreneurial-minded,” said Culotti. 

Going by an alias and made-up backstory, Culotti had $1 million on the line and no chance at landing a good-paying job with her non-existent resume. The only option for Culotti was entrepreneurship, so she got to work. 

The road to business success, for Culotti, was a dirt road, as she found her first work helping a local farmer after talking a local inn into giving her lodging while she formulated her plan. 

But for Culotti, the pandemic proved to be a time of opportunity as much as a time of reflection. 

“One of the most important things to recognize in this environment right now is that no one is doing anything,” Culotti said of the early pandemic, when she launched her business venture. “In COVID, we were closed. The world was closed down. A lot of people were sitting at home, including the mayor, including all the big rock stars. Everybody was sitting at home and everybody was wondering what to do. That was a big opportunity for us to really reach out to the top and blend the top with the bottom.”

With one foot in a farm and one foot in an underutilized inn, Culotti plotted to open a year-round farmers market to help local farmers sell honest food to the surrounding community. With a community-focused mission in mind, Culotti took her pitch straight to the top. 

“We were at the mayor’s office day one,” she said. “At the Fire department day one. City council, day one. Who is gonna help us dig out of this right now? And believe it or not, they all said yes. Nobody said no.”

Culotti on Franchising

Perhaps without even realizing it, Culotti had built into her business some of the key pillars of franchising. First, she found her concept. 

“I want every single person on the planet to eat fresh food. If we just did that one thing, we would all be healthier,” she said. Within that concept, Culotti identified her values and the culture she sought to create. 

Next, Culotti had to consider her market. Fresno, like much of California, is big on wellness and strong in agriculture. During the pandemic, Americans had a big opportunity to reconsider their lives and their opportunities. With a major, global health scare underway and the process of food scarcity rearing its ugly head, Culotti’s concept addressed the issues her community cared about. 

“I think we had a really wonderful opportunity to bond with our family, to look outside ourselves, to look outside of our material world that we live in and start thinking about some of our more esoteric values, the really important values that we have,” she said. “It’s not always about how much money you have in your bank account, it’s about how resourceful you are.”

Finally, Culotti leveraged her concept and the way she was able to address her community’s needs. From there, she could seek out other people with shared values to propagate her message and work with her business. 

Culotti sees the connection between building up her concept and building up a franchise system.

“I’m a big believer that you are going to go a lot further and be a lot bigger and a lot stronger if you are supported by a larger group,” said Culotti. “Franchising is, by definition, exactly that.” 

“You’ve got a professional outfit that’s allowing you all of your independence by supporting you,” Culotti said of franchising. “It’s not always easy. It’s not always inexpensive either, but each franchise that’s out there has built the concept of selling something, and you guys have a common interest. Common goals are the key to success. If you’re successful, they’re successful. Add the fact that you have a large support team and a common goal, and that’s why franchising works.”

As for Culotti’s experience building a business in Fresno, there again she sounds a bit like a franchisor thanking her team for enabling her to manifest her vision.

“I had the greatest group of people that I put together that have such heart and are so hardworking,” she said. “Talk about American pride. They just did not quit.”