No matter the season, business owners should put themselves on alert mode to protect their businesses from robbery, especially during the holidays or the summer, when crime tends to go up. 

• The awful truth is that the vast majority of theft in your business will come from within. This means that either somebody on your staff is robbing you, or letting an external know how to best rob you. That is an absolute business statistic. 

Do you know how to protect your business and how to be ready if you discover a thief among your team members?

In this blog post, I’ll be sharing the rule of 10-80-10 of employee theft in the business industry and some recommendations to shield your operations throughout the year to prevent any losses. 

Follow the conversation on our social media and subscribe to our YouTube Channel to review our business video tips to help you with your day-to-day challenges.

Way back in the early 2000s, I spent time in the...

Business owners need to prepare themselves for the inevitable future and a succession plan is one of the best ways to protect their organizations and the people that work for them, as well as their families. Yet, very few entrepreneurs actually have one.

• Not having a succession plan can cause enormous damage to the company's legacy and the relatives, sometimes beyond repair. And by the time business owners realize this, it's usually too late. 

Life changes. People die and people quit. We have no control over these things. What we do control is how we prepare for them. So if you love your family and you are proud of what you have built, which I know you do, having a succession plan is a very wise thing to do.

To help you be ready, in this blog post we’ll go over the three types of succession plans you should prepare.

Why should you have a succession plan?

I remember when I was leading operations for a large organization and we were responsible to create succession...

There is so much talk about recession, whether we are in it or if it’s coming shortly. But what you need to worry about as a franchisee is how to make sure you are prepared for whatever happens in the economy.

You have to be aware that there might be global, countrywide, or local events that could affect your operations. That’s why you need to think through and act to make sure that your business is as protected as possible. That’s one of your jobs as a business owner: take the time to design strategies to minimize the negative impact of outside influences.

That’s when you work on your business, not in your business. Especially if you are a growing multi-unit franchisee, dedicating time to strategic thinking is critical to protecting your business, your people, and the brand that you invested money in.

Entering into survival mode? Review these tactics to grow in 2022 and beyond

In this blog post, I want you to analyze the questions you should ask yourself....

 The district manager job is the most challenging position in the retail and franchise industry. They require a multi-unit vision to be able to oversee units as a whole but also under their particular situations, challenges, team dynamics, results, and opportunities. 

To deal with these demands and have a high level of excellence, the district manager also needs certain skills to perform better and manage, lead, supervise, identify opportunities, cause change, and inspire people, all within the same amount of a regular hour workweek. 

The American Franchise Academy has detected seven critical responsibilities that district managers must execute to be effective and successful at their job. In this session, we'll cover #5: maintain.

Did you miss the four prior responsibilities? Subscribe to our YouTube Channel to review the rest of the District Manager’s playlist!

Why is this a critical responsibility for district managers?

This duty has to do with...

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...

Having one of your people shot in an in-store robbery gone terribly wrong is not something you ever expect. But it happened to me!

It was my second week of training as the new Director of Operations of a very well-known QSR brand, and, like all new external hire leaders, I was going through the traditional brand operations orientation at a training store.

When I started that day, I had no idea that I was going to wind up outside the hospital’s intensive care unit waiting to hear how my manager was doing – a manager I had not met and whose name I heard that day for the first time. I hadn’t even “officially” taken over the region but there I was, standing outside the hospital emergency room hoping that this manager was going to make it and thinking about what I needed to do to make sure that this never happened again. Not on my watch!

Many things went wrong that day. There was a breach of safety, a bad guy decided to do the wrong thing and...