Joanna Murray – Full Interview Transcript
Episode 102 | Thriving Through with AJ Riedel | Air Date: April 30, 2025
What Thriving Means Now
AJ: Joanna Murray, welcome to Thriving Through.
Joanna: Thank you! I’m excited to be here.
AJ: I like to start with a question that relates to the title of this podcast. What does thriving mean to you?
Joanna: Well, it used to mean something different than it means to me today, because I went through a cancer diagnosis in 2024. I went through a couple of surgeries and then still had to go through concurrent chemo and radiation last summer. So thriving to me now means being healthy and living my life to the fullest extent that I can. It’s more of a health term to me now than it used to be. Getting up every day, being grateful, and doing the best that I can on any given day.
AJ: Really puts it in perspective, having gone through something like that, to what thriving really means.
Joanna: It definitely does. It’s a term that is used widely in the cancer community, so it takes on a different meaning when you go through what I’ve been through.
AJ: And you truly know the difference between thriving and surviving from a physical standpoint.
Joanna: Yes. Yes, I do.
From Corporate America to Franchise Consulting
AJ: So tell me, what was your path to becoming a self-employed consultant?
Joanna: I worked in corporate America for a very long time. I graduated from college and went straight into the corporate world at 22, did my MBA while working full-time, and was there until about four years ago. I just got tired of it. I was fed up with the politics, fed up with the bureaucracy, and I didn’t feel like it was aligned with me at all. I didn’t feel like I was my authentic self, and if I tried to be, I was showing my true self to somebody who had the power to fire me.
I worked in commercial real estate, specifically industrial real estate, which as you can imagine was very male-dominated. I was often the only woman in the room. I liked what I was doing, but I didn’t really love the culture.
A few things led to me leaving. One was COVID and the pandemic. I was on planes all the time before that, so when the pandemic happened and we were grounded, I was home. I got pets again, spent more time in the yard, more time at the beach, and I really loved it. I made the decision that I wanted to be home more often and on the road less often.
When I went back into the office, I had conversations with senior management that opened my eyes to just how misaligned we were. Politics had really come to the forefront during the pandemic, and it was very clear that my position and theirs was not the same. I was being a yes-woman, nodding along even though I genuinely disagreed, because I knew they could fire me. That’s when a lightbulb went off and I started putting my exit strategy in place.
It was also at the beginning of COVID that I was approached during a virtual party about an MLM. I wasn’t interested at all, but I was home, watching too much Netflix, bored — so I said, why not? I’ll run Facebook parties. I had that on the side, was making some income, building a little team. It was an easy way for me to start thinking about leaving corporate.
AJ: And when you decided to really go for it, you didn’t stay with the MLM. What did you decide to do instead?
Joanna: I kept the MLM going as a bridge while I left my corporate job, knowing it wasn’t my final step. It was there just to have some income coming in. Once I left corporate and was only doing the MLM, I could start thinking about my next move. That’s when I found franchise consulting, which is what I do now.
I am a franchise consultant, and I help people do what I did. I get to help corporate professionals — usually executives, vice presidents and above — leave the corporate world and find something that’s their own, in a way that’s a little less risky and a little less scary, because the foundation is already there. I have an inventory of over 400 different brands that I work with. I help people find what is a good cultural fit, a good financial fit, something that helps them reach their lifestyle goals. And I walk them through the entire process from introduction all the way to when they’re awarded their territory and open up shop. It’s very rewarding to watch people find that joy of leaving corporate and doing things the way they want to do them — just like I got to do.
Six Months In — Then a Cancer Diagnosis
AJ: You were six months into the business and doing pretty well. And then you hit a major challenge. Tell us about that.
Joanna: I had come out of my initial training strong. I had a couple of really good leads, my pipeline was solid, I closed a deal about four months in — which is right on target. I was feeling really good, heading into that six-month mark with strong momentum.
And it was right at that point when I got my cancer diagnosis. The whole world changed.
I didn’t start treatments right away, but for anyone who has been through this — and I think it’s touched almost everyone; the stats are staggering, something like 40% of Americans have had cancer — the diagnosis itself stops you in your tracks. You lose sleep. You’re trying to figure out whether it has spread, trying to get appointments, get scans, figure it all out. It’s all-consuming. So even though my treatments didn’t start right away, my business essentially halted right away.
That lasted for about a year. I was working, but minimally. Just keeping enough of a toe in the water to keep things moving, keeping some pipeline activity going. But I didn’t close any deals and wasn’t working anywhere near full-time for a good year.
AJ: And even if you were working, you didn’t really have the bandwidth. So much of your energy had to go toward everything the cancer required.
Joanna: There were so many appointments. It’s crazy how many there are — blood work, radiation oncology, medical oncology, surgeons. They were deciding whether to do surgery or chemo and radiation. They opted to try surgery first, and I had a couple of months where I thought I was okay. I got back into a working routine. Then I found out I wasn’t okay — I hadn’t gotten clean margins — and had to prepare for concurrent chemo and radiation. Then there was the mapping for radiation, getting my port placed, more appointments. Until you live through it, you can’t imagine how much time it takes. It’s very overwhelming.
AJ: And then going through radiation and chemo at the same time — the chemo knocks you out, and radiation is just the sheer daily grind of having to do it every day. It’s hard.
Joanna: For me, radiation was the worst part. That’s not true for all cancers — but they actually told me that out of all the different types, the treatment for mine is the hardest. They told me they were going to put me through a lot, and they did.
The burns were horrific. But more than that, radiation zaps all your energy. Your body is working so hard to heal from the burns that it takes everything. You’re sleeping all day. They told me to try to walk every day, and it was a struggle to get around the block. That was not my norm at all.
The Other Side — A Clean Scan and Rebuilding
AJ: So now you’re on the other side. You’ve been through all of that. How is the process of rebuilding going?
Joanna: I got through it. I got to the other side. I got a clean scan a couple of months ago, so now it’s just about building my business back up.
It’s interesting, because I had barely gotten off the ground when I got grounded. And here I am doing it again. I just went through a training with my association where they were telling us how everything has changed — what used to work doesn’t work anymore. So I spent a lot of time spinning wheels trying to do what worked for me the first time, and it wasn’t working. The good news is they taught us what does work. I just have to shift gears.
I think the biggest thing is being able to pivot. And that’s true no matter what business you’re in. If you own your own business, you have to be able to pivot. Things don’t always go as planned. Any adult in the world knows that. If you can pivot and go with the flow and learn to change your approach when the environment changes around you, that’s how you find success.
Why Generic LinkedIn Outreach Has Stopped Working
AJ: What were the pivots specifically? What did the training say was no longer working, and what do you need to do instead?
Joanna: It’s all in the lead generation. Before, there were a lot fewer people doing what I do. It was a more unique role, and when franchise consultants reached out to people, people were somewhat surprised — they hadn’t heard of it before and were open to learning about it. You could reach out with a fairly generic message and get a response.
Now, if I’m reaching out to people on LinkedIn with a generic message, they’re getting fifteen of those a week. They just ignore them. There’s no success with any kind of generic mass messaging anymore. You really have to look at the individual and find a way in that’s specific to them — something you have in common, or something about them that makes you think they’d be a good candidate.
The thing is, there are so many people who genuinely want this service. There are people leaving corporate, people who have been laid off and don’t have a choice — they’ve been forced out, but they’ve also been given a severance package and have capital to invest. Many of them want exactly what I offer. They might not even know it exists. So there’s a real disconnect between those of us who provide the service and the people who need it. It’s really about how we connect, how we find each other.
And I think so many people now are using AI to a fault, where messaging sounds inhuman. If you’re sending messages that don’t feel personalized at all, it just doesn’t work anymore. Everybody was guilty of that at some point. The idea was, message everybody, and the people who want your service will respond. But now people are getting so many messages that it doesn’t work anymore.
AJ: That spidey sense goes up the moment you look at something in your inbox and it sounds generic. It’s like, oh, they’re trying to sell me something — and you move on.
Joanna: Exactly. So it takes a little more time to make it truly personal. But when you do, you get a better connection. You come off as more genuine — and I am genuinely trying to help people. But if my messaging isn’t right, especially with people who don’t know me, it can come off as disingenuous, which is obviously not what I want.
The goal is to connect with the right people, whether they know they want the service or not. And it’s not always people who are ready to leave corporate entirely. Some might want to keep their corporate job and do a semi-absentee model as a way to transition out. Some aren’t even thinking about it yet. It’s really about capturing people who are open to thinking about what’s next, who have the same pain points I had — who feel misaligned, who want something more their own, who want a little more time freedom and a little more joy. Because my life is so much more joyful since I left the 9-to-5, and I want that for other people.
You Are Your Ideal Client
AJ: It strikes me that the person you’re looking for — someone who may have been laid off, or who’s sitting in corporate asking “is this all there is?” — that’s not something you can search for in Sales Navigator. There’s no filter for people who are unhappy at work. So how do you find them on LinkedIn?
Joanna: LinkedIn is still the most common place for us to look, because the people we want are often in leadership roles, they have management experience, they’d make good business owners. There are some signals you can look for — someone who’s changed jobs a couple of times in the last few years, or someone who has actually posted that they’re looking for a new opportunity. You can use Boolean search terms in Sales Navigator, which you can’t do in regular LinkedIn.
Personally, I tend to look for people who are more like me. The deals I’ve closed — all but one have been with women. So I’m mostly looking for women who are VPs and above, in a similar situation to where I was. I feel like we relate well. I end up with really good rapport with them. I understand where they’re coming from, I understand their goals, and I understand their hesitations. It helps me walk them through the whole process, because it is a process — you don’t just say “I want to buy a business” and go do it. It’s almost like an interview process with the franchisor.
AJ: In defining your niche, you’ve done something really smart that makes it much easier to relate to and message that person. Your ideal client is you a couple of years ago.
Joanna: Exactly. And when people define a niche they’ve never personally experienced, it’s so much harder to build, because the messaging has to be perfect. In today’s world, what you say is critical. You only have a couple of seconds in a LinkedIn post or a DM, and if it doesn’t immediately make them think, “she kind of gets it” — you’ve lost them.
I genuinely want to help people who are in the same situation I was in. I know how hard it is to go to a place every day where you just don’t feel aligned with your values. I want to help people who feel stuck — who are successful on paper, making good money, done all the right things, parents are proud of them, and yet something is missing. I know how they feel because I lived it. That makes the conversation so much more real.
Where the Business Is Now — and Where It’s Going
AJ: So your consulting practice — you’ve been working on it again pretty heavily for about six months. Is it where you expected it to be?
Joanna: Probably where one would expect it to be. I’m a high achiever, so I would love for it to be a little further along. But given all the changes in the market and the false starts, it’s probably exactly where you’d expect it to be. I have a solid pipeline, a couple of people who are fairly far along in the process. Our lead time is about three to four months, so six months in — really five months of full-time work — I’ve sold one small deal and have a couple more lined up. I’d like it to be more robust, but that’s me being hard on myself.
AJ: Looking ahead, where do you see your business in three to five years?
Joanna: Before my diagnosis, I had been elevated to senior agent within my team and was supposed to be building out my own team — mentoring newer agents and earning a piece of what they produced. That never came to fruition because of the unexpected year I had. So I would really love to see that happen. Build out a team in Massachusetts, starting with maybe five people, and mentor them.
Mentoring is really where my passion lies. That has always been true for me — coaching, training, helping people learn new processes. I have a certificate in life coaching. So I see building a team and mentoring five people who can then go on to build their own practices. I also see a lot of people I’ve helped become business owners, and the impact is really widespread — they hire people in the community, they contribute to the local economy.
I’m moving toward more of a local focus — Massachusetts, maybe New England — because I think it’s nice to meet people in person. I want to be the franchise expert in this area. Be the big fish in a smaller pond.
AJ: What do you think are the biggest challenges in getting there?
Joanna: Finding people who want to do what I do is essentially the same challenge as finding people who want to buy a franchise. There’s no Indeed for people who want to be business owners. That doesn’t exist. So the biggest challenge is connecting with the right people.
I’m expanding my network, doing more in-person networking, letting people know what I do. I’m doing podcasts like this one to get the word out. I do pay referral fees, and I’m getting that out there at local networking events and through virtual networking with people outside my immediate area. There are a lot of people who want this service. It’s just a difficult thing to find them through all the noise.
Rapid-Fire Close: Resources and How to Connect
AJ: One book, podcast, or resource that’s been invaluable to your consulting practice.
Joanna: Atomic Habits. I go back to that one frequently. If you make something a habit, it pays dividends. It’s difficult to build a new habit, but when you do, it pays you back. It’s really about showing up for yourself — making the small things that matter a daily practice, without making excuses, without stopping. Do it every day. It truly makes a big difference. It’s a phenomenal book.
AJ: And where can listeners connect with you and find out more about what you do?
Joanna: They can find me at franchisewithjoanna.com — that’s F-R-A-N-C-H-I-S-E-W-I-T-H-J-O-A-N-N-A dot com. My email is [email protected]. And I’m on LinkedIn as Joanna Murray with Quantum Franchise Group.
AJ: Wonderful. The links will all be in the show notes. Joanna, it has been wonderful talking to you. Thank you for your inspiring story.
Joanna: Thank you so much for having me.
AJ: For those of you listening — until next time, keep thriving through.