There is a big confusion in the franchise world: franchisees believe that when they acquire the rights to duplicate a brand, they will receive everything they need to be successful. The reality is they only get one part of the formula. This causes unfulfilled expectations, constant frustration, tremendous struggle, hard work, and sometimes sadly, even failure.

But there’s a way to fix that to make the most of these businesses. I have found that there are 12 keys to being a successful franchisee. And I have portrayed them in The Franchise Fix, a book that collects my 30 plus years of experience in this industry, working with franchisors and franchisees and running operations, units, and brands.

Do you want to discover those best practices and how applying them can help you obtain financial and time freedom? 

How The Franchise Fix was born

After a 25-year career in the franchise world, I wanted to take a sabbatical and then go back into the corporate world to...

In these times of staffing crisis, hiring the right people is very important. But being able to retain them is even more relevant. So, if they are not meeting your expectations, why not take the time to figure out the reasons they are not doing a good job?

In a past vlog, I explained why I completely disagree with the saying “hire slow, fire fast” and how the correct approach is to hire slow and fire slow (learn all about it here). This means that before you take the fast lane and let someone go, you should find out what happened and ask the right questions to inquire into why they're not doing right. 

It’s worth the time! Surely enough, you’ll learn a thing or two about your business and how to improve it. In my +30 years of experience in the franchise industry, I’ve come to realize that there are only three potential reasons why the job is not done correctly.

1. Lack of knowledge

When somebody goes into a new company they have to acquire not...

One of the biggest challenges of new district managers is not knowing what responsibilities they have. It’s a vicious circle: if they lack this clarity, they’ll work extra hard not only on what they have to but on duties that don’t belong to them. In consequence, they may neglect some important tasks that would produce the results their district needs.

It doesn’t end there. Not only are they're not achieving their goals and responsibilities; they’re getting frustrated. The sum of these may hurt your operations and efficiency.

Don’t let this happen to your district manager or your business! Make sure these seven critical responsibilities of a district manager are fulfilled so that they can be successful, reach their goals, and, in turn, help your business thrive.

Do you know what’s the average franchise profit percent you can make? Read this blog post to find out!

1. LEAD

When it comes to the responsibility of leadership, district managers...

(Part 7 of the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference)

In the last weeks, I’ve been sharing my learnings of the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference 2021. In this blog post, I’ll share some recommendations for successful succession planning.

Watch the complete Multi-Unit Conference series by subscribing to our YouTube Channel. Review all the related blog posts in our category menu.

Being away from your business doesn’t necessarily mean that you are out of the picture forever. Perhaps you want to take a break and enjoy the fruits of your hard work and labor for years and years.

To approach this topic, a panel of multi-unit multi-brand franchisees shared their best practices. The panelists were:

• Fred Burgess, who operates franchises of Marriott Hotels, Papa John’s, and Twin Peaks.
• Jeffrey Tews, who owns units from Bright Care and Bright Star Senior Living.
• Eric Denver, franchisee of Hand & Stone Massage Spa.
• Paul Booth, franchisee from Ace Hardware and a recipient...

(Part 7 of the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference)

Scott Kelly is a NASA retired astronaut. He's a veteran of four space flights, he commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on three expeditions and was a member of the yearlong mission to the ISS. It's a matter of fact, in October of 2015, he set the record for the total accumulated number of days spent in space. 

The Multi-Unit Franchising Conference invited him to give one of the keynote sessions, and on this post, I’m sharing the main takeaways he gave as part of his lecture.

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1.  Never be afraid of doing hard things

If we are always choosing to do things that are easy, then the likelihood of us accomplishing extraordinary things goes down dramatically because easy is normally not exceptional. Scott knows what he’s...

(Part 6 of the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference)

As part of the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference series, this post will help you understand where the industry stands and where it’s going, based on the insights provided by Darrell Johnson, CEO of Frandata, the premier source of intelligence data in the franchise world.

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This expert shared the analysis of their annual review of the US and global economies, and the effects on franchising in the coming year and beyond, covering seven key aspects: 

1.  Impact of Covid-19

Darrell predicts that Covid is going to be with us for at least another year, perhaps even longer, since we’re expecting a fourth round of this pandemic and less than one-half of the world’s population is vaccinated.

This will bring...

(Part 5 of the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference)

Since a few weeks ago, I've been writing about the main takeaways of the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference, to share with you valuable knowledge and ideas that you can implement in your business. Today’s entry: Scale your organization for growth with 10 best practices from a franchisee panel. 

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1. Trust your franchisor

It will be very difficult to grow if you are in constant fighting or disagreement with your franchisor. Bill Noble, multi-unit franchisee from Pearle Vision, advised: if you want to grow, you should follow the franchise systems because the brand already has the knowledge, experience, and proven reliability that the model works. 

Rather than spending your time to change something in your franchise, trust the model and the path...

(Part 2 of the Multi-unit Franchising Conference)

Attending the Multi-unit Franchising Conference last August was very insightful. As I mentioned in another blog post, I decided to share with you all the knowledge I acquire there, divided into separate entries. This is the second one, where you’ll learn some lessons given by several multi-unit and multi-brand franchisees.

Missed the first one? Learn here about the keynote session: 5 Steps to Make the Impossible, Possible.

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The panel was called “Lessons from the Edge”, where four multi-unit franchisees shared the challenges they faced, and the learnings they got from these last months of the Covid crisis. Let’s review them one by one: 

Dawn Lafreeda, Franchisee at Denny's

Challenge: As it...

You didn’t read it wrong. A lot of leaders believe in the motto “hire slow, fire fast”, but I strongly disagree because people are the most important resource in any organization. When you hire and retain the best people, you have the biggest advantage for your business.

Contrariwise, if you don’t have a strong human resource, you won’t be able to execute any process, system, or strategy to have a successful business. That will ultimately bring you struggle and overwork.

Sadly, many organizations are focused only on profitability, promising that once they make the desired profit, they’ll pay more or provide better benefits to their employees. But they have that upside down. 

In my +30 years of career, I have worked with hundreds of franchisees and I can assure you that the top-performing franchisees are the ones that put people first, not profits. That’s the key to the reach the profitability you expect.

Here are three reasons why...

When you decide to leapfrog to a multi-unit organization, your role as a franchisee evolves. It’s natural: you go from operating one unit, where you are the sole manager and you make all the decisions on your own, to being a leader of a growing organization, with multiple stores, different teams, and particular challenges that will need the design of certain strategies to get solved. But, at the same time, you can’t do all of these on your own.

The transition may be hard for some. In fact, one of the questions that my clients often ask me is: What is my role as a multi-unit franchisee? To help you avoid confusion and know what to delegate and what you should take under your responsibility, take note of the six particular roles that you have to play in your organization.

1. The Developer

When you invest in a franchise, the brand provides you with different processes and operations manual to help you duplicate the brand which I call the Brand Systems, but that’s only...