How a 26 Year Old Became CEO of a National Franchise | Tony Zaccario

About this episode

Kyle Matthews interviews Tony Zaccario about his journey to becoming the CEO of Stretch Zone and the challenges of leading a franchise during COVID.

Kyle Matthews interviews Tony Zaccario, president and CEO of Stretch Zone, the largest practitioner-assisted stretching franchise. Zaccario shares his leadership principle “never confuse effort with results,” emphasizing data-driven decisions, franchisee profitability, and removing emotion from business. He recounts joining Stretch Zone in 2016 when it had four locations, becoming CEO at 26 in 2019, navigating COVID across differing state and local rules, and growing the system to about 430 studios in 41 states and Canada with zero closures. They discuss the franchise model’s simple unit economics, a franchisee-first culture, the importance of engaged ownership, work-life tradeoffs, and challenges of scaling teams. Zaccario also describes a 2023 private equity partnership with Princeton and a first-of-its-kind assisted-stretching research study supporting national accounts and marketing claims. 00:00 Effort Versus Results 00:58 Meet Tony Zaccario 02:11 What Is Stretch Zone 02:59 From Startup To Franchise 04:47 Becoming CEO Pre COVID 05:32 COVID Lessons On Brand 07:48 Nationwide Growth Story 09:18 Systems And Scaling Ops 10:05 Career Path To CEO 13:10 Why A 26 Year Old CEO 18:46…

People in this episode

Host: Kyle Matthews

Guest: Tony Zaccario

Topics covered

• leadership
• franchise growth
• data-driven decisions
• work-life balance
• entrepreneurship

Keywords

• CEO
• franchise
• Stretch Zone
• leadership principles
• COVID lessons
• data-driven
• work-life balance
• franchisee profitability
• private equity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Stretch Zone, Princeton

Places: Canada

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