Although things are turning around with the pandemic more under control, the battle for staffing continues in the retail and services industries. 

• As a franchise business owner, you have to figure out how to win this race faster than your competition so you can provide quality service and products and have happy and loyal customers.

If you give them what they are looking for, they’ll keep returning to your business, your sales and revenue will be healthy and consistent, and you’ll be profitable in the long term. But it all starts with having the right people on your team.  

These are six practical tips to hire top talent. Although anybody can do them, almost no one does. So, if you implement them, you'll be better than most and probably win the race of getting that top talent in your organization. 

1. Be the leader that people are looking for

Easy to say but complex to execute because every person in your organization looks for a specific ...

Turnover is the biggest hidden expense in your business today, especially if you are in the retail and service industries. Why are you not aware of how much it is costing you? Because it is merged into all of the line items and expenses in your profit and loss statements.

• Even though you don't have visibility for it, it is affecting every part of your operations. That’s why turnover has the biggest potential for financial and cultural damage.

With this blog post, I will help you calculate the costs of turnover, walking you through each of the line items that are part of this expense. 

Before we start, find a piece of paper and a pencil, or open an Excel sheet, so you can follow the math and understand and be clear on what is the cost of turnover for your organization. 

Please note: this calculator is just an approximation of how much it costs to lose one employee in a hypothetical business. You can use this information as a model to calculate your turnover expense...

The number of multi-unit franchisees is growing across the global franchising industry. And these business owners require a great district manager as their right hand to help them be successful. 

Why is this position key? Because then franchisees can delegate operations to get the time freedom that the model promises. But beware: to truly enjoy this benefit, the district manager has to be great at their job and meet certain criteria to ensure excellence.

The American Franchise Academy has identified the five most important qualities of district managers. Take them into consideration when hiring your next district manager. 

A piece of advice before we start: look at candidates within your current workforce of unit managers. See who of them has or shows these qualities and use this information as a radar to detect the next leaders of your organization.

1. A leader that inspires 

You need to hire a leader that inspires people. The district manager's job is not...

There is a big hype these days about multi-unit franchising not only among investors but also brands that want to grow with this model. It has gotten so much attention that there’s even an annual event, the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference, solely focused on guiding these types of franchisees to help them grow their multi-unit operations.

Discover my learnings throughout this year’s Multi-Unit Franchising Conference in this playlist!

If so many are taking this path, how much of a good idea is it to become a multi-unit franchisee? The answer depends on what are your business goals and what you want to achieve for your life and your future. 

To help you decide whether multi-unit franchising is for you, let’s review some pros and cons of multi-unit franchising. 

CON: You’ll have more work

PRO: Your job will be more interesting work

When you become a franchisee, it is all exciting. You have a new brand and new equipment, and the franchisor and...

Building a profitable and proven brand is hard! But franchising allows entrepreneurs to own their business and achieve the time and financial freedom they want and deserve. Without franchises, many people wouldn't have the opportunity to make the American dream of business ownership a reality. 

But there’s a catch. Many franchisees come from a corporate background or haven't had a job for a little or a long time. And when they finally invest in a franchise, they realize how different it is to be an employee vs. owning a business.

Why is this? When you work for a company, your role within the organization dictates what you focus on day in and day out. Someone defines your goals and monitors your impact on the overall results. And, most importantly, you're clear on what your job is and the activities you must execute every day to accomplish the business objectives.

When you are an entrepreneur, especially a franchisee, that's not the case. You don’t have that...

Throughout my +30 years involved in the franchise industry, helping franchisees around the world, I’ve come to realize what is the #1 key to success for a franchisee. 

Of all the things that you need to learn and do when you invest in a franchise, if you don't have this, you are going to struggle as a business owner. How can you avoid this conflict? What is the number one key?

The secret is that you care about your people and they know and feel you care for them. It might sound simple, but sadly, sometimes franchisees and business owners forget to demonstrate and communicate this. 

Communicating this is crucial because even though we may do a lot of things for them every day, unless we share it and let them know why we're doing it, they won’t really know. 

With this blog post, I’m inviting you to reflect on what caring for your people truly means and if you are indeed demonstrating it or not. And, of course, I’m giving you tips and information...

Many franchisees struggle to achieve the goals they expected when they bought their franchise because success in this industry requires more than just hard work, time, dedication, and commitment. 

Sure, some investors eventually are able to grow into a successful multi-unit organization and become top-performing franchisees. Still, most franchise owners don’t achieve this level of success. They continue to struggle daily, trying to compensate for the things they don't know or don't have with more work, longer hours, and using the franchise as their job.

Why does this happen? Because even though they know something is broken, they don't know precisely what it is or how to fix it. That’s where the challenge comes with most franchisees. 

The good news is that there’s a solution. We at The American Franchise Academy came up with four steps that will help you determine what's missing within your business and what you can do to fix your franchise so you can...

Although the constant attraction of new talent helps you grow, being able to retain the people is also critical, especially with the staffing crisis our industry is facing. How can you do that? In this blog post, I’ll be sharing five strategies to reduce turnover and have a healthy organization.

People that look for a job are searching for opportunities and benefits, but in the end, they stay for the company’s culture. Taking this into consideration, these five best practices will help you transform your business culture, and therefore, have better employee retention.

1. Select the right people

This doesn’t only mean having the talent, the skills, and the experience to perform properly, but making a good fit with your company. Otherwise, you'll end up looking for people again in three months or so.

To help you discover those candidates, you have to define clearly who is your ideal employee and how does the right cultural fit look like. Based on that, as...

When it comes to managing people, why, when, and how to give raises to their employees is one of the biggest challenges that franchise or business owners face. Why? Because given at the right time and in the right way, raises can impact the company culture positively. On the other hand, not having them can affect the working environment negatively. 

You must remember that there are two objectives when it comes to giving people this financial benefit. First, to give recognition for performance. Second, to provide fair and competitive pay according to the market, to be able to retain those employees.

Think about it! Upgrading a person’s salary when they outperform will get them excited and motivated to be in your organization and willing to continue giving you that extra effort when they come to work. Otherwise, even if you have a great culture and you do everything right, if you don’t offer the pay that the employees deserve, then they might end up leaving you.

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Franchisees who want to grow their organization from a one-unit job into a multi-unit enterprise require the help of a district manager to accomplish the business and financial results they expect. 

But this multi-unit leader often gets frustrated because there’s a lack of clarity in the industry as to what is their role. So much so, that this is the first reason why these particular leaders struggle to be successful.

Why is this? The position usually gets promoted from a single unit manager into a district manager and ends up becoming super general managers, instead of true multi-unit leaders that focus on the things that actually impact and make a difference in the organization. 

To prevent this confusion, we at The American Franchise Academy have identified three specific roles that these fantastic and hardworking team members have to play. 

1. The protector of their people

Protecting their staff is the first thing they have to focus their time and...