Franchise Market Magazine - Fall 2007 by The Nissen Group

9 WHAT TO DO WHEN BUSINESS IS SLOW… ADVICE FROM JACK CANFIELD, ORIGINATOR OF THE CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL SERIES FA L L 20 07

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for starters

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WHAT TO DO WHEN

SUCCESS IS SLOW BY JACK CANFIELD Life coach and originator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

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POP QUIZ: Can success be sped up? Is there an antidote to slow outcomes despite arduous planning and efforts

made? What’s the secret for seeing huge results right now?

I get versions of these questions frequently from people who feel frustrated at sluggish progress in their success journey - despite all the know-how and principles they rigorously employ. First, let’s get one thing straight. When we admire someone’s success, or even our own, we often focus on the end result and not so much on all the effort (and time) that it took to get there. This can cultivate unrealistic expectations, especially the idea that overnight success can readily happen through careful strategy and an execution of sound advice. I wish that were the case all the time. Truth be told, success typically follows a series of little events and achievements that can seem to take an eternity, that include a few disappointments along the way, and that challenge everything about you to the core - your stamina, courage, integrity, and even your willingness to keep going. If you focus on what’s not working, guess what: You’re likely coming from a place of aggravation as your mind wraps around all that is wrong. You

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may even have negative thoughts like “I’m not good enough,” “It will never work, or “Something must be wrong with me.” What this mentality does is engender more of those counter-productive feelings. And given what we know about the Law of Attraction, you attract what you are feeling. So negative experiences, people, and results will beget more such negative experiences, people, and results. There’s not much success in that. The key, then, is to focus on what is working. To do so, I recommend two simple practices: journaling and meditation. Maintaining a journal (I call it an Evidence Log, Results Journal, or Law of Attraction Journal) is a great way to steer your attention to the positive and continually renew your vision for yourself. Start each day with reflections on what you are grateful for in your life (list them out!), and end each day with notes on what went right (again, write them down), however small. Meditation can be a powerful tool for arriving at solutions to problems and shifting your attitude so you can attract success sooner rather than later. The magic of meditation is its ability to essentially shut down the outer layer of your judgmental, highly-critical brain and allow your unconscious mind to take over. This is where you enter a deeper state of inner peace and joy, and tap a higher level of creativity that can help usher in the results you want. (Don’t know how to meditate? Lots of books and materials are available to guide you through this practice.)

Okay, so let’s say you are doing all these things but you still aren’t happy with your results. Now I ask you, are you taking real action? Well, you may be taking the actions you are used to taking, but therein lies the problem. If you keep doing what you’ve already done, then you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten. In other words, you can’t get to where you want to go by doing the same things that got you to where you are - because the actions that got you where you are will get you to where you are, but not further! It’s a matter of practicing some new behaviors. Shake things up a bit and see if you can take new actions or modify existing ones. Remember the Rule of 5: Every day do five specific things toward your goal. Change up those five actions regularly. Lastly, I want to remind you about patience. Yes, our mothers tried to instill this virtue in us long ago, but life has a way of letting us forget it. It’s natural to underestimate how long a certain goal can take, especially a profound one. When I set a goal to become a millionaire, the year was 1983. How long did it take? Eleven years. It also took time for my Chicken Soup for the Soul series to land on the bestseller lists. And you could say our tenure on the New York Times list was more than a decade in the making. That’s a lot of patience for someone who initially wanted overnight success. Picture yourself washing out a glass with soap and water. You rinse it out only to find leftover suds splashing the inner sides. So you continue to add water, rinse, and examine. But there’s still soap bubbles on the glass. You rinse again and again. You do this www.franmarket.com

repeatedly and your anger bubbles up too, because you think by a certain point it should be clean. The fact is it gets clean when it gets clean. Eventually, though, you will only be one rinse away from the goal. And eventually, you will only be one week or one day away from your ultimate success. Then I bet youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be closing in on the next, greater success point.

JACK CANFIELD (www.askjackcanfield.com) is a life coach and originator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. He is also the best-selling author of The Success Principles and a contributor to the No. 1 New York Times bestselling book and hit film The Secret. He has been a featured guest more than 1,000 broadcast programs

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business attitude

Raising a Right-hand Man (or Woman)

GROOMING YOUR NEXT

MANAGER BY CAROLYN HEINZE 14 Franchise

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With the proverbial good help being hard to find, most organizations look to their existing labor pools when seeking management material. Not only does this save the

Associates, LLC, in San Rafael, California, noting that one of the biggest challenges associated with grooming personnel for management is fostering the confidence it takes to make decisions and supervise others.

time and investment in lengthy interview processes; someone who is already on the payroll is familiar with how the company functions. For franchisees that require a right-hand person to oversee operations – allowing them to focus on bigger-picture projects, such as expansion – this can provide some peace of mind.

Managing is a tough job, and not everyone wants to do it. However, all team members should be aware that there is an opportunity to move up in the organization. “Those criteria should be shared with people if they express interest in becoming part of management,” Rosner said. “Then it doesn’t appear to people that someone’s progression is simply because of favoritism. It’s pretty obvious who meets the criteria and who wants to be promoted.”

Good managers are adaptable, unafraid of making tough decisions and possess a knack for dealing with people – very often, even before they’re in management, they’re that person that the rest of the team turns to when in need of a little coaching, says Mel Kleiman, president of Humetrics, a consulting firm based in Sugar Land, Texas, and author of five books including Hire Tough, Manage Easy: How to Find and Hire the Best Hourly Employees (Humetrics, Inc.). “Managers should learn to take people where they want to go and help them to get there,” Kleiman said. “The easiest way to identify managers within your organization is that they are looked at as an informal leader anyway. They are that person who is not only good at their job, but they automatically help other people to do their jobs. People come to them for advice or direction.” You probably already have a good idea of who in your current line-up you would like to promote. Placing an

“Instead of responding to every question they ask of you by giving them the answer, you ask them how they think a situation should be handled. It develops confidence and maturity in the people who are interested in that job, or who you are grooming, to start operating more autonomously,” she said.

existing employee into a management position, however, isn’t just a matter of drawing up a new contract and giving them a raise: in order for them to succeed, you must give them the tools for the job, and this usually means that you should be preparing them for their new post long before they take over. “In developing a manager or management potential, it in part comes from empowering the people who are working for you,” said Marla Rosner, senior consultant of training and employee development at Michael H. Seid and

Some franchisors make training materials available to their franchisees; other companies develop their own programs in-house, giving everyone the chance to expand their skills in an effort to meet these criteria. “It really behooves the franchisee to paint a picture of the training program and the benchmarks along the way, so that the employee can see what the path would be and see that it’s attainable,” she said. What happens, however, if you’ve got your eye on an individual that is reluctant to jump into the ring? That depends on their source of reluctance, www.franmarket.com

the experts say. Everyone’s priorities are different, and it could be something as simple as a resistance to take on additional hours. In this case, it’s best not to push your luck, Rosner cautions. “If you push somebody who doesn’t really want it, it’s likely that they will end up resisting later down the line after you have invested a lot of time in them,” she said. Sometimes, however, it’s because the employee doesn’t believe they have what it takes, and in this situation the franchisee can offer access to the necessary skills sets. “If the reservations can be resolved through training, the next step would be to talk about whether the person is willing to dip their toe in the water by doing what it takes to be trained, and then evaluate at that point,” Rosner said. In expanding their skills step by step, a potential manager builds confidence.

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Karen N. Peterson, director of American Leak Detection in Jupiter, Florida, runs an operation comprised of three territories – Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties – and a fleet of eight service trucks with her husband and partner, Bill. Karen oversees back office management and customer service while Bill is in charge of field operations. The duo has been in business for 19 years, and after six-and-a-half they both hired managers to help them in their corresponding divisions. Peterson, previously a consultant in human resources, believes that in cultivating an open, encouraging environment, business owners develop good managers. “We believe in giving people lots of feedback, but always in a positive manner,” she said. “When something goes right, we believe in giving them lots of praise. Inevitably,

there are going to be things that go wrong, and we try to figure out ways of presenting what goes wrong as a learning experience.” She also underlines that you cannot create a manager overnight. “We recognize that developing your team members into management is a work in progress: they are not going to – poof! – become mini you’s,” she said. This requires patience and a willingness to give up some of the control – easier said than done for many entrepreneurs. “If you want to groom someone for management, you’ve got to give them some space,” Peterson emphasized. They might not do something exactly the way you would, but nine times out of ten, it’s the outcome that counts. “Maybe they got there on a different path, but if they got to the same good place that you

would have gotten to, you don’t have to lean over their shoulder to tell them every minute detail on what they need to do.” If they do make an error, Peterson emphasizes that it’s important that all members of the management team maintain an united front. “Stand by them and never speak badly about them in front of other employees,” she said. “The management team sticks together, and you

never say anything to any other employees other than good things about each other.”

CAROLYN HEINZE

Listen to their input, incorporate their ideas and ask them how well you are managing them. “We believe in upward management reviews: we ask them to give us feedback on what we can do differently and better in molding them, training them and getting them to achieve what their actual potential is.”

American Leak Detection www.originalleakspecialist.com

(carolynheinze.blogspot.com) is a freelance writer/editor.

Humetrics, Inc. www.humetrics.com www.melkleiman.com www.kleimanhr.com Michael H. Seid and Associates, LLC www.msaworldwide.com

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FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHEN

BRANCHING OUT Into

Multiple Concepts BY CAROLYN

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For single-concept franchisees, expanding into another brand holds promise. Not only can you leverage your existing back office infrastructure to support this new endeavor; in diversifying your portfolio, you are better positioned to withstand the peaks and falls associated with any one market.

Franchisors have long applied this strategy, and franchisees seeking to take on new concepts often donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to look any further than their own back yards. Louisville, Kentucky-based fast food restaurant company Yum! Brands, Inc., for example, oversees A&W, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Long John Silverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. A KFC operator who wants to branch out might very well qualify for a contract with A&W.

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To achieve this, franchisees must possess both the financial and human capital to make it happen. Lyndon S. Johnson, who racked up 15 years of management experience working with brands such as KFC, Burger King and Church’s Chicken before becoming a franchisee as president of Tulsa-based Reciprocity Restaurant Group, an area developer that currently boasts 11 Church’s Chicken locations throughout Oklahoma, says that one of the biggest mistakes that expanding franchisees make is that they are undercapitalized, and they underestimate the management resources that are necessary to execute the venture. “Growing too quickly – not having a solid pulse on their financial position as well as the staffing requirements to expand an additional business (is a problem),” he said. Franchisees should have a sufficient pool of human talent that is earmarked for growth before moving ahead. “Usually in the beginning, you may use some of your existing managers to help bring in the new brand,” explains Dick Rennick, founder and CEO of the Palms Springs, California-based consultancy Team Rennick, former chairman of the International Franchise Association Board of Directors and former president of American Leak Detection, which operates over 360 franchise units in 41 states. “I can assure you that these people can wear two hats for only so long, and then you will have to get other people in the trenches that are actually doing the work.”

engaging in a brand that falls outside of the franchisor’s own umbrella – especially if it is viewed to be competitor. “During the term of the agreement, and possibly post-term, the franchisee is prohibited from operating a competitive business because the franchisee should be dedicated to that brand,” explained Barry Heller, a partner at DLA Piper in Reston, Virginia, whose practice consists mainly of franchise and distribution disputes, both in litigation and arbitration. “Sometimes, the agreements will simply say that you can’t operate a competitive business. Sometimes, they are more explicit: they will say, ‘You cannot operate a business that primarily sells hamburgers.’” In many cases, the term “competitive” is employed to protect the franchisor from excluding items they may at some point deem as a threat to their business. “If you say, ‘you cannot operate a competitive business,’ then it’s up to the court, jury, or

arbitrator to decide whether what that franchisee is engaged in is competitive,” said Heller. Johnson believes that these limitations are growing more flexible. “I don’t think there are as many today as there were years ago, because any prudent, aspiring franchisee today is going to look at options,” he said, noting that the cyclical nature – those aforementioned peaks and falls – of any concept breeds a strong rationale for diversification. “As more brands grow, and when you factor in that there are a lot of mature concepts out there, if someone is aspiring to continue to grow their business, they are going to have to look at other means of doing that,” he said. Rennick agrees that franchisors are warming up to the franchisee’s hunger to expand. “I don’t know of many franchise documents any longer that would specifically preclude you from the opportunity to grow your company, no matter what kinds of brands that you add.”

What becomes tricky is when a franchisee wants to explore other concepts with a different franchisor. Many franchising agreements contain a clause, often titled “in-term covenance against competition,” precluding the franchisee from www.franmarket.com

Provided, he underlined, that the brands weren’t direct competitors, such as McDonald’s and Wendy’s. The best practice, Rennick advises, is to be open. “If you have the entrepreneurial drive for it, and you have made your existing concept successful, I would not go out and begin looking for other brands before talking to my existing franchisor. I would want to make sure that I didn’t upset any apple carts in the growth curve that I now have.” Johnson himself is open to diversification, noting that a brand with a broader appeal would complement his portfolio of Church’s Chicken units nicely. “When I give consideration to other concepts, I look at brands that travel well beyond just their core markets,” he explained. “I look at concepts that have legs to expand nationally and that also resonate to a broad spectrum of customers.” As franchisees continue to explore diversification, an increasing number will begin delving into markets outside of their main areas of expertise, Johnson predicts. “Traditionally, franchisees stay true to their core: if they were in food, they would generally stay in food,” he reflected. “I think we will also see more expansion into areas that are outside of their existing profiles.” If you are a food franchisee, you might decide to go into hair care, for example. “With more and more concepts going the route of franchising, existing franchisees are looking at other options beyond their area of expertise,” he said. This requires franchisees to conduct the proper due diligence – much as

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they would when adding a new unit to an existing line-up. “Oftentimes, people take it for granted that they have been a successful businessperson in one area, and that it will easily transfer into another area without taking the time to fully understand the nuances in a different industry,” Johnson said. Interview other franchisees working in that market to get a feel for what that industry is all about. At the same time, Johnson believes that venturing into unfamiliar territory can pay off if the franchisee has done their homework. “The reality is that in a consumer-driven society, there are a number of different touch points that can impact the economics of a marketplace. If something is in a growth

mode and it has a relevant business model, and consumers embrace it, it’s got a demonstrated track record of success, then it’s incumbent on you to look at it and give it consideration.”

CAROLYN HEINZE (carolynheinze.blogspot.com) is a freelance writer/editor. DLA Piper www.dlapiper.com Reciprocity Restaurant Group www.reciprocitygroup.com Team Rennick www.teamrennick.com

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TOP NEW FRANCHISES

We're proud to present to you our second annual list of the Top 100 New Franchises. Once again, we're bringing you the hottest franchise concepts introduced since the year 2000. For the first time, we've ranked the franchises using a formula that factored in the number of units and growth rate for each franchise. It was close, but Snap Fitness came out on top. Take some time to pore over the list, make note of the franchises that catch your eye and contact those franchises. One of the keys to success in franchising is doing your research and asking questions. There are many franchise options to choose from, so it's critical that you arm yourself with as much information as you can before making a decision. Enjoy!

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