About the Book

This chapter establishes a personal relationship between the reader and the author, both from a relatability and from a credibility perspective. The author relates his personal story of entrepreneurship during which the concept of a growth catalyst is introduced. A growth catalyst is an inflection point, when an individual comes to the awareness that their current situation is no longer tenable, and where the pain of doing nothing is greater than the pain and sacrifice of making a significant change in their life or career. Most readers will relate to this concept because that’s what led them to the decision to buy a franchise in the first place. The chapter ends with a reflection exercise that helps them acknowledge and accept that theircurrent situation, somewhere in their business, is no longer tenable, and engages them sufficiently to get deeply into reading this book.

The first driver is about how to grow a next-level mindset—it’s the “how” in scaling a business. As Angela Brown, a franchisee of Blo Blow Dry Bar, told the author, a lot of growing a next-level mindset “has to do with having a clear vision on where you’re trying to get to. I plan for the entire year, and reverse-engineer action steps to get to my goals. When you think about being a leader, you must have a vision that’s audacious—something that pushes the envelope. If it doesn’t scare you, it’s not big enough.” Angela’s words encompass two critical dimensions—operational management and leadership—and we explore each of these in subsequent driver chapters.

The second driver is about growing awareness. Awareness can include many things, both external (what is going on in the franchisee’s community or region, or beyond, that can affect their business) or internally (such as staff and systems). Top-performing franchisees (TPFs) have learned how to master their sense of awareness and keep it acutely tuned to identify opportunities and challenges that they’ll encounter in their businesses. The reader will see how they can immediately begin to apply the practices that TPFs use to leverage their focus, energy, and resources to continually identify, assess, and capitalize on the best opportunities that land on their radar screens.

A next-level mindset and awareness are closely linked. A next- level mindset enables the franchisee to decide what goals to pursue, awareness enables them to prioritize where to bring their time, money, and resources to bear—and where and when to reallocate when necessary.

The third driver is about helping the franchisee to improving their operational management skills. The interviewees spoke at length on how they improved customer satisfaction, tightened up their operations, and found efficiencies to reduce costs. Graham Weihmiller, chairman and CEO of Business Network International (BNI), offers this insight;

“Top performers are really execution focused. Sometimes you have a new franchisee, they want to change the brand overnight. They want to introduce different products or services. Those things may or may not be on the franchisor’s roadmap. But the franchisee that is focused on execution of the existing brand is probably going to do better. Now, they should always provide ideas and feedback to the franchisor, and the franchisor ideally is going to involve them in the decision-making process. But I think what is key is that the franchisee understands at any given point, their primary role is the excellent and consistent execution of the existing model.”

The fourth driver is about helping the franchisee to grow their people, and in doing so, grow their own leadership skills. The reader will hear an emphatic message from the contributors that their team, and not the customer, is their first priority. A team that is committed, energized, and accountable, and is provided with the right training and environment, will thrive. Leaders who live their values and invest in their people can and do scale up their business. The team members develop additional talents, take on more responsibilities, and drive more growth and improvements.

The fifth driver is about mastering the system, this is not just about mastering the basics, though. It’s about living and breathing the brand, and about being constantly focused on incrementally improving systems and processes, and being willing to share this knowledge with the franchisor and peer franchisees. Innovation is not removed from this process, it is refined to fit within the system that it benefits.

As the reader learns how TPFs master their basics, then get to the next level and master the basics there, they will see that TPFs leverage the collective brain trust of the entire franchise system. The reader will see how and where they can implement some of these strategies in their own business. While this fifth driver may seem similar to the third, “Improving Your Operational Management Skills,” it is very different. The third driver is about strengthening management skills; this one is about learning how to execute the business model brilliantly. Developing management skills is just one part of system mastery.

The sixth driver focuses on helping the reader recognize the critical importance of growing strong interdependent relationships, which is the sign of a maturing and successful franchise business. In this chapter, the process of interdependence is likened to the process to the stages of childhood, teenager-hood, and adulthood. As children depend on parents and family for the necessaries of life and to grow, early-stage franchisees rely heavily on the franchisor to learn how to ramp up their business and achieve stability. Then there comes the time when the business achieves a level of performance where the hard work and the brand have come together.

As teenagers feel and test their independence, so do franchisees once they achieve stability. This independence stage might manifest as “I don’t need to follow the system” or “what value am I getting for my royalty dollar” or “I know better than you” or in a myriad of other ways that they start pushing back against the franchisor’s model, instead of working with it. As they shift from teenager into adult, young adults mature into a state of mutual trust and respect with their parents—a state of interdependence. In writing the book, the author discovered that the richest relationships enjoyed by franchisees are a result of evolving from independence to interdependence. The author also discovered that many franchisees simply don’t evolve to this final stage.

Side Note: The importance of transitioning from independent to interdependent is one of the major themes that emerged from the research. Without exception, every single top-performing franchisee who was interviewed demonstrated and espoused the mindset and all the qualities of having an interdependent relationship with their franchisor. The evidence of the link between a franchisee’s sustained growth and interdependence with their franchisor and with peer franchisees is undeniable, so this chapter features strategies and pathways to help the reader progress further toward interdependence.

The seventh driver is about activating and strengthening Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and performance measurement system of the franchisee’s business. It’s the old adage that you never know if you’ve achieved a goal if you can’t measure it. The measuring of success was a robust part of many of the interviews, though interviewees were unanimous that before anyone can measure success, they have to know what they are aiming at. Every top franchisee is acutely goal-directed, and those goals are aligned with business purpose and values. This chapter provides the reader with several strategies that they and their team can utilize to more precisely chart their course, track performance, and make mid-course corrections. Suffice it to say there are many insights in measuring growth and steps to take to fix challenges and knock down barriers to growth.

This chapter brings the reader to the point of recognizing that they are already living some component of being unstoppable, and inspires them to grasp their next power-up—by helping them define/redefine and connect to their core “why’s”. I finish this chapter with a collage of quotes from some of our industry’s most successful franchisees and CEOs of franchise systems, as those ideas may be catalysts to help the reader launch the next leg of their franchise ownership journey.