Recently, in May 2021, I had the pleasure of attending the 2021 Big Frog Conference in Orlando, Florida. This was my 1st in-person conference since the COVID pandemic hit in March of 2020 and it was great to get back out there again! After more than a year of being stuck online, the in-person connections with handshakes and hugs were welcome.
Culture is really important to franchising. It goes along with your organization’s values to drive behavior and impact decisions. It’s there in the communication, respect and attitude of everyone in your organization.
People matter - we know that. Nothing has been more obvious in my career than the fact that people make all the difference.
You’ve started a single-unit business and it’s going really well. You have a good team, the business is easy to manage and you feel like you have the secret sauce to branch out and start expanding into additional locations as a franchise system.
A good franchise model is built on some obvious things: a repeatable business model, valuable brand, solid business economics and the quality of your training and marketing. These are tangible things that can be measured - you KNOW if they exist, or not.