Robert H. Cohen: Finding the Balance and Paying It Forward

My journey didn’t start in a boardroom; it started on the ice and in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia. I grew up with a “work for it” mentality that was instilled in me early. When I was 13 years old, I told my parents I needed a new pair of hockey skates. Their response was simple and life-changing: “Then you need a job.”

That lesson stuck. I worked my way through Temple University, balancing a full course load while playing ice hockey. That grit followed me into the U.S. Army, where I served as a Captain and helicopter maintenance test pilot, and eventually into the high stakes world of Corporate America.

The Weight of the Corporate Ladder For over two decades, I climbed that ladder at global giants like General Electric and Siemens Medical Solutions. On the surface, I was living the professional dream—managing $200M P&L statements and leading massive teams across the globe. But behind the titles and the achievements, there was a growing void.

My years at Siemens were a blur of non-stop global travel, followed by years of living out of a suitcase across the country for GE. While I was busy building a career, I was missing the quiet, irreplaceable moments of my four children growing up. I was physically exhausted, and the constant travel began to take a real toll on my health and wellness. I realized I was winning at business but losing at home. I knew I needed to reclaim my life, not just for myself, but for my family.

Finding Joy in the Pivot Twelve years ago, I took a leap of faith and traded the corporate matrix for business ownership, opening my own PrideStaff franchise in Portland. The change was profound. For the first time, I had the power to drive my own compensation without sacrificing the work-life balance I had craved for so long.

But the real gift was the connection to my community. Instead of sitting in airport lounges, I was in my own neighborhood helping people reach their professional goals and supporting local manufacturing firms. There is a deep, quiet joy in knowing you’ve helped a neighbor find meaningful work. Over a decade, we earned nine consecutive “Best of Staffing” awards, but the true reward was the feeling of giving back to the place I call home.

Why I’m Here for You I’ve recently sold my franchise, and my journey has come full circle. I joined The Perfect Franchise because I remember exactly what it feels like to be at that crossroads—feeling successful but unfulfilled, driven but drained.

My career has been a tapestry of military discipline, corporate leadership, and the rewarding reality of small business ownership. I’m not just here to show you a business model; I’m here to help you find the freedom I found. Whether you’re looking to stop the endless travel, reclaim your health, finally be present for those big family moments, or simply looking for a new path forward, I am here to guide you toward your own “Perfect Franchise.”

I didn’t grow up around business ownership or entrepreneurship.

I was raised in a small town in Georgia in a traditional, blue-collar family, where the expectation was simple: work hard, stay steady, and build a stable career. There wasn’t much talk about ownership, investing, or building something of your own. Success meant showing up, putting in the hours, and doing your job well.

That mindset shaped me early. It gave me discipline, work ethic, and an appreciation for consistency—but it also meant that, for a long time, I followed a path that was already laid out for me rather than questioning what was possible.

From there, I attended the United States Merchant Marine Academy, which set me on a path into the Navy and the offshore industry. That chapter of my life was intense, structured, and demanding—but also incredibly formative.

Over the course of my career, I had the opportunity to travel to more than 50 countries around the world.

I saw thriving economies and struggling ones. I saw people working endlessly just to get by, and others who had built lives with flexibility and freedom. I experienced cultures where time was controlled by necessity—and others where people had designed their lives with intention.

That experience gave me perspective.

And more importantly, it planted a question in the back of my mind that I couldn’t ignore:

Why do some people have control over their time, income, and future… while most don’t?

No matter where I went, one thing was consistent—true control was rare.

My career offshore was both demanding and rewarding. It taught me resilience, problem-solving, and how to operate in high-pressure environments. But like many people, I eventually reached a point where I started asking bigger questions about where it was all heading.

After transitioning into shoreside project management, I gained something I hadn’t had before—stability and visibility.

For the first time, I could clearly see the long-term path in front of me.

And that clarity is what changed everything.

Because when I really looked at it, I realized:

I wasn’t building equity.
I didn’t have real control over my future.
And no matter how hard I worked, I was still ultimately trading time for money.

It wasn’t a bad path—but it wasn’t my path.

That realization didn’t come with a perfect plan. It came with curiosity—and a willingness to start looking at alternatives.

That’s what led me to explore business ownership.

I wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel or take unnecessary risks. I was looking for a smarter path—something structured, something proven, something that reduced uncertainty while still giving me the upside I was looking for.

That’s what led me to franchising.

Franchising gave me a framework. A model. A system.

I initially stepped into ownership with a home services brand, where I experienced firsthand the power of systems, processes, and execution. It reinforced something I had already seen throughout my career:

Success isn’t about guessing—it’s about following the right model and executing it consistently over time.

That experience changed how I think about business entirely.

It also made one thing very clear—there are a lot of people out there who are exactly where I once was.

Driven. Capable. Successful in their careers.
But starting to question whether the path they’re on is actually leading where they want to go.

Today, as a franchise consultant, I work with those individuals.

My role isn’t to sell a specific business. It’s to bring clarity to the decision.

I help people step back, evaluate their goals, understand their options, and look at opportunities through an objective lens. Then, we build a structured path forward—one that aligns with what they actually want out of life, not just what looks good on paper.

Because this isn’t just about owning a business.

It’s about creating more control over your time.
More flexibility in how you live.
And a better long-term future that you’re actively building—not just hoping for.

And for the right person, with the right approach, that’s entirely possible.

I grew up in a very nonentrepreneurial family, one that you went to work in corporate America doing the same job day after day for the same company for your entire career. Soon after college, I knew that that type of career was not for me.

Go to college and then find a career and find a high-profile company to work for.

After I graduated college my father who was a VP at Bell Atlantic helped me get a job at MCI Long Distance phone service. It was a particularly excellent job right after college, joining a young growing company that was starting to take off with the breakup of ATT and Bell Atlantic. After about a year I knew my future was in sales but not the kind of sales that was the same thing day after day sitting in an office with little room if any to use your imagination.

What to do next to help expand my passion for sales but also use my creativity.

At this time there was another substantial change in world of Bell Atlantic, they changed companies to sell their Yellow Page Advertising, and I jumped at the opportunity. I was now out in the field working with small to large businesses, mostly privately owned, collaborating with them to generate more business through advertising. I found something that I could really enjoy doing for the next three years, developing relationships with people not just calling on faceless companies. This led to an opportunity to work for AAMCO Transmissions as a Franchise Operations Manager for the Midwest. I was hooked on Franchising within weeks of starting there. Working with families and watching them grow their business and wealth. I learned so much in the three years at AAMCO about the Franchise model, what it took to run a successful Franchise Business and why franchising is not always the right fit for some people.

The Biggest Career move in my life and for my family.

While working at AAMCO I found out that Toney Martino, the founder of AAMCO Transmissions, MAACO Auto painting and several other Franchise concepts, was starting a new brand called Goddard Preschools. Tony had already sold AAMCO by the
time I joined but I always heard of the legend of Tony Martino. I jumped at the opportunity to join them as their first Franchise Sales Manager. This was a big leap of faith for me since I never worked for a startup before with only ten employees and eleven locations. Watching it grow from a startup to the largest childcare franchise in the United States was very rewarding during my thirty-year career there. By the time I left there was close to seven hundred locations and over two hundred employees. It is my time to become a Franchisee. Watching Goddard Preschools grow and seeing how successful the Franchisees became lit a fire in me to open a franchise. After many discussions with Tony Martino, I was awarded a Franchise in Pennsylvania for me and my wife to run while still maintaining my position at Goddard Systems. We ran the school for twenty-two extremely rewarding years both financial and personal. Running our own business provides an income that allowed us to put both of our children through college with no loans, pay off our home and provide us with long term financial freedom that I never expected to have when I first graduated college.

Around fifth grade, my dad turned an idea into a real business. He built a taco stand and set up shop at the Linn County Fair, right in our hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and for the next few years, I was part of the operation. I took orders, handled customers, and watched my father do what entrepreneurs do: solve problems on the fly, build something from nothing, and show up every day with everything he had.

I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but that experience planted something in me. A seed of understanding that you could take an idea, build it with your own hands, and create something that was genuinely yours. It’s a lesson I carried for decades through college, graduate school, through a twenty-one-year corporate career before I finally understood what it had been trying to tell me all along.

A Career Worth Having

My professional journey began in the aviation industry, where I spent over two decades building a career, I was genuinely proud of. Starting in an entry-level role and working my way steadily upward, I developed deep expertise in program management and business development at one of the most respected companies in the aerospace sector. I earned my MBA along the way, took on increasing responsibility, led complex initiatives, and grew into a leader others trusted to deliver.

For nearly two decades, I thrived. I loved the pace, the challenge, and the sense of accomplishment that came with doing difficult work well. I built real and lasting skills over those years — how to manage competing priorities, lead teams through ambiguity, develop relationships, drive growth, and execute at a high level. Skills that would prove more valuable than I ever imagined, just not in the way I originally expected.

But corporate life has a way of changing on you. Or maybe you change on it. Either way, somewhere around year eighteen, things started to shift.

The Last Three Years

The final three years of my corporate career looked fine from the outside. The title was solid. The compensation was good. But I had grown deeply disenchanted with the path ahead of me. Work that had once lit me up felt increasingly routine. The organizations I’d navigated with energy and enthusiasm had grown slower, more political, and less receptive to the kind of bold thinking I believed in. I found myself sitting in meetings wondering why we were moving so cautiously when the opportunity in front of us was so clear.

More than anything, I kept coming back to the same uncomfortable realization: I had spent over two decades building a formidable set of skills in operations, business development, strategy, team leadership, and client relationships — and I was using maybe a fraction of what I was capable of. There had to be better use of everything I knew and everything I had earned. I didn’t want to walk away from my career — I wanted to leverage it. I just needed to do it on my own terms.

That quiet voice that had been there since fifth grade — the one that watched my dad run his taco stand — wasn’t quiet anymore.

The First Leap: Burst Cycle

Before I ever got into franchise consulting, I received a graduate-level education in what it actually means to own a business by co-founding one from the ground up.

Burst Cycle was my boutique indoor cycling studio, and it was mine in every sense of the word. I wasn’t just a co-founder, I was the CEO making strategic decisions in the morning and cleaning the studio in the afternoon. I was behind the front desk welcoming members and on the bike leading spin classes. I planned and coordinated special events, managed schedules, hired and developed staff, and handled marketing. I learned very quickly that entrepreneurship doesn’t come with a job description — it comes with all of them.

There were days that were exhilarating and days that were humbling sometimes before lunch. But through every challenge, I kept discovering something remarkable: the skills I had spent two decades developing in the corporate world translated powerfully into business ownership. Program management became operations management. Business development became sales and community building. Leadership became culture. Everything my father had quietly modeled at that fairground taco stand, the work ethic, the problem-solving, the ownership mentality finally had a place to live.

Signing on the Dotted Line

After Burst Cycle, I took a step that would give me something many franchise consultants don’t have – I became a franchisee myself. I signed up to own a Temporary Wall Systems location in West Palm Beach, and in doing so, I went through the exact same journey my clients are about to embark on.

I evaluated the opportunity. I did the due diligence. I weighed the risks. And then I signed on the dotted line.

That experience changed the way I work with clients in a fundamental way. I’m not guiding people through a process I’ve only studied – I’ve lived it. I know what it feels like to sit across from a franchise disclosure document and have to decide whether you’re ready. I know the mix of excitement and uncertainty that comes with committing to something new. And I know the confidence that follows when you’ve made a well-researched decision and have a proven system behind you. When I tell a client what to expect, it’s because I’ve been exactly where they’re standing.

Building Something That Matters

It was through my own evolution as a business owner and through conversations with other executives who were quietly exploring their next chapter that I found my true calling in franchise consulting. Here was a model that combined everything I was good at and everything I cared about: connecting with driven people, solving complex problems, strategic thinking, and helping others find the right vehicle for the life they wanted.

I started my consulting business in 2018 with a mission that was deeply personal from the very first conversation: to help talented professionals find franchise opportunities that actually fit — their capital, their goals, their lifestyle, their skills, and their timeline. Not a generic match. A real one.

What I bring to every client relationship isn’t just industry knowledge — it’s lived experience on both sides of the table. I know what it feels like to sit in a conference room wondering if this is really all there is. I know what it takes to build something from zero. And I know what it’s like to sign a franchise agreement and start building something you can truly call your own.

Today, I work with clients across the country, matching aspiring owners with hundreds of vetted franchise brands — completely free to the buyer. Whether someone is a corporate executive exploring a parallel revenue vehicle, a professional navigating a career transition, or simply someone who has been waiting for the right moment to finally make a move, I serve as a guide, a sounding board, and a true partner throughout the entire process.

I’ve been recognized as one of the Top 100 Franchise Brokers in the country, and I host The Franchise Life podcast, where I share real stories from the world of franchise ownership and help people understand what the journey actually looks like.

What I Know Now

Looking back, it all connects. A fifth grader working at her dad’s taco stand at the Linn County Fair, watching an idea become a business. A two-decade corporate career that sharpened every skill imaginable. A fitness studio co-founded from scratch that proved those skills could translate into ownership. A franchise agreement signed, just like my client’s sign. And finally, a business that brings all of it together in service of people who are ready for something more.

What I do now, every single day, is help other people find their version of that journey — with the guidance, the experience, and the honest perspective of someone who has taken every step of it herself.

If you’ve ever had that quiet but persistent voice asking whether there’s something more out there for you — I’d love to have a conversation.

Because in my experience, that voice is usually right.

My introduction to franchising did not come from a book or a business school case study.

It came from a teenage kid working the line at Taco Bell in Sacramento.

That job turned out to be an education I never expected.

The owner, Kathy, was not just a franchisee. She was a master franchisor who owned dozens of Taco Bell locations throughout the Sacramento area. I watched her open restaurants, build teams, and scale something that was truly hers. At the time, I did not have the language for it, but what I was witnessing was ownership at scale.

I threw myself into the work. I helped grow operations. I learned how systems drive results. From there, I went on to manage within the Lyons Restaurant chain across multiple locations in the Sacramento Valley.

And I loved it.

But somewhere along the way, I listened to the voice that said there was a more serious path waiting for me.

My grandfather, my father, and my older sister were engineers. It was practically the family trade. So when the restaurant industry began to feel routine, I went back to school, earned my degree in electrical engineering and physics, and stepped onto the corporate ladder everyone expected me to climb.

And I climbed it.

For years, I did what engineers do. I solved problems, built systems, delivered results. On paper, it looked like success.

Inside, something was missing.

The work was fine. The paycheck was good. But I was building sophisticated systems that I did not own.

The layoff did not blindside me. If I am honest, I probably should have walked out before they showed me to the door. My heart had already left the building. When the conversation finally came, it felt less like rejection and more like permission.

In the quiet that followed, my mind drifted back to Sacramento. To Kathy. To the energy of full restaurants and the satisfaction of building something that worked because you owned it.

That is when I picked up Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

What the book articulated was something I had felt for years but never fully expressed. Earning a paycheck, even a great one, is not the same as building wealth. Ownership changes the equation.

The book did not introduce a new idea. It reawakened an old one.

I invested in a Schooley Mitchell telecommunications consulting franchise and got back to work, this time for myself.

The model was proven. The support was real. For the first time in a long time, I felt energized again. I approached it the way an engineer would. I studied the system, followed the process, and executed consistently.

Franchising works when you work it.

That business became the foundation for everything that followed. Through disciplined execution inside proven systems, I was able to build real equity and long-term financial independence.

Since then, I have helped hundreds of professionals evaluate and invest in franchise businesses across the country. I wrote Real Freedom, which became a Wall Street Journal bestseller. And I built Franchise Maven around one principle.

Education first.

Sales second.

Most people do not need another job. They need ownership.

Today, I live on acreage in Missouri. I keep bees. I work the land. I enjoy the kind of freedom that a corporate cubicle never could have offered me.

If any part of this story resonates — the restlessness, the layoff, the quiet voice that says there has to be more — you are not alone.

I have been there.

And there is another path.

I grew up surrounded by entrepreneurship. My mother was a realtor, my father a construction equipment broker, and my uncle and grandfather owned antique shops. Business ownership was part of my everyday life—even if, at the time, I didn’t realize how deeply it would shape my future.

One moment from childhood has stayed with me. I once asked my grandfather if I could come to work with him. He told me no—because I was a girl. Looking back, I can see that the drive to build something of my own was always there. It just took time, experience, and confidence for me to fully step into it.

I went on to build a successful corporate career in recruiting and later in franchising. I worked hard, climbed the ladder, and gained a deep understanding of how businesses grow and operate. While raising my children, I always had some form of side hustle, but I held tightly to the security of a corporate paycheck.

Franchising was never part of my original plan. Like many people, I found my way into it unexpectedly. I began working with both emerging brands and legacy organizations, and from the very beginning, it felt right. Helping others pursue their dreams ultimately helped me discover my own.

Over time, my passion became the emerging franchise space. I found purpose in working alongside founders—helping them identify the right individuals to bring their vision to life and build brands with integrity and sustainability. This work has defined the majority of my career and even led to being asked to step into the role of interim CEO for one of the brands I helped build.

My experience in franchising has allowed me to see business from every angle: what it truly means to invest in yourself, what responsible franchising looks like, and whether the systems and support are genuinely in place to help franchisees succeed. Beyond franchising, I have owned a marketing firm focused on helping small business owners build brand awareness and understand the value of strategic marketing investments. I also own an eCommerce business. Through these experiences, I gained clarity on something that matters deeply to me—having the autonomy to use my skills, align with the right people, and build something meaningful for both my family and my future. Today, as a franchise consultant, I feel honored to share the lessons I’ve learned over the last 30 years. Because at the end of the day, there is nothing more important than giving back and helping others build a path they’re proud of.

I do this work because I’ve seen both sides of the journey. What drives me is helping people make informed, confident decisions about their future. I believe investing in yourself is one of the most important decisions you can make, and that decision deserves clarity, transparency, and thoughtful guidance. At this stage of my career, my work is about impact. Sharing what I’ve learned, asking the right questions, and helping others avoid costly missteps. Because when people are supported in the right way,
everyone wins.