Success Leaves Clues: Here's What I Learned at the National Franchise Conference

Franchise consultant Giuseppe Grammatico just returned from the national franchise conference in West Palm Beach, FL—where 400+ franchise professionals, 130+ franchise brands, funding partners, and over 100 franchise coaches gathered for the industry's biggest semi-annual mastermind.

In this full Franchise Industry Insider Report, Giuseppe breaks down everything the industry is talking about and what it means if you're considering franchise ownership.

WHO THIS IS FOR:
Whether you're a corporate executive exploring executive semi-passive franchise ownership, a military veteran looking for your next mission, or someone simply tired of trading time for money in the corporate world. This episode gives you the insider perspective you need before investing in a franchise.

ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Giuseppe Grammatico is a franchise business coach, certified franchise consultant, and 20-year franchise veteran who has helped hundreds of families explore franchise ownership. As a franchise business advisor and consultant for franchise business, he prescreens every brand he recommends through direct relationships with franchise founders, CEOs, and development teams; not brochures or websites. He works alongside 100+ fellow franchise consultants to bring candidates the most current, real-world intelligence in the industry.

📚 RESOURCES:
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🎓 Attend a Free Workshop: https://ggthefranchiseguide.com/workshop

DISCLAIMER: The information on this site is for general information purposes only. Franchising involves risk and careful consideration should be given before making any decisions.


00:00 Success Leaves Clues
00:54 Show Intro and Setup
02:19 Industry Investing in AI
04:13 National Accounts Advantage
05:51 Who Thrives in Franchises
07:29 Free Book and Call Offer
08:28 Sales Skills and Avatars
09:22 No Perfect Franchise Fit
09:52 Behind the Scenes Insights
11:42 Four Themes and Rebates
13:09 AI Future and Wrap Up
15:27 Final Outro

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The Franchise Freedom: Discover Your New Path to Freedom Through Franchise Ownership, Book by Giuseppe Grammatico https://ggthefranchiseguide.com/book  or purchase directly on ...

Transcript

Giuseppe Grammatico 0:00

Another big thing, and this was a major chunk of the conference was that, success leaves clues. This was based off of stories about individuals that got into the franchise and some success stories on how well they've done. I wanna reiterate this, because we talk a, a lot about this on the show, is that you don't need experience in an industry or franchise in order to do well. I always say there isn't a perfect franchise out there in general. People ask me, What's the hot franchise? What's the perfect franchise to buy now?" It really comes down to the right fit for you because if the right franchise costs a million bucks and you have the budget for something much less, what good is giving you that list when something else could be a better fit? Lots of stuff is training, and a lot of brands are taking advantage of AI and saying, "Okay, home services, painting, cleaning, roofing, that's not going anywhere. These are services that are always gonna be needed. But how do we use AI to where you're booking appointments, making payments without having to speak with someone?"

0:56

Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast, where you can escape the corporate trap through franchise ownership. Here's your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, the Franchise Guide.

Giuseppe Grammatico 1:09

Welcome to the "Franchise Freedom Podcast." I'm your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, your franchise guide, the show where we help corporate executives experience time and financial freedom via franchising. Thanks for joining us today. Very exciting episode. For the new listeners, we produce a episode twice a year where we have the opportunity to really pull back the the curtain and talk to to you about what franchise professionals are talking about. We just got back from our conference, West Palm Beach, Florida. 400 industry professionals all in the same room sharing thoughts, ideas, trends, what's working, what's not. We had funding companies. We had over 130 franchise companies out there, along with over 100 other franchise coaches and consultants, amongst others. A great opportunity to share ideas. I call it almost like a mini mastermind twice a year, and we're gonna call this the Franchise Insider Report, a six-month update. So for the new listeners, this may be your first one that you're getting to listen to so welcome. These are one of the benefits you have on the show and when we work together, is that we're able to share these ideas in working directly with each and every one of the brands. To kick things off wanted to start off with a few things. So the first is, the franchise industry is investing. They're not standing still. One of the big takeaways was that franchise companies are reinvesting back into their brands. Their, main source of income is that royalty. They're reinvesting to make the system better, to make the system much more efficient, so that you have that edge when it comes to competing with other companies. So we heard investments, large investments in AI, in automations, where in many cases, brand-new CRMs were created with AI, where chatbots were created and assigned per franchise owner. Automations and systems, for example, reminding customers to set up their annual carpet cleanings or pool maintenance and things like that. Overall operational systems, a lot of talk about that, just making the business much more efficient, in many cases, relying on less staff. Changing up roles, automating certain tasks where maybe it was the call center, answering basic questions or scheduling or even accepting payment. So where the franchisor essentially allow you to focus on growth of the business and not be as involved on the admin side. Marketing support, how can we, via economies of scale, have more purchasing power, if that's certain keywords to be purchased in a certain market, as well as better coaching. Increasing ratios of coaches assigned per just say 10 to one, 15 to one, where you had 10 franchisees assigned to one coach, and that would be your dedicated coach, whether they travel with you, your first point of contact, along with other points, right? There's other, obviously other people within the organization that can assist, even teaming up and working with other franchisees. But having that great support, having that, 10 to one ratio, knowing that, at any given point in time you're stuck in a part of your business, you have that support and that go-to person to really assist. I think that's one of the major advantages of a franchise system, is having that coach and that person in your back corner always there to really help out. Second, and we talked about this quite a bit on the on the last show we did six months ago, was national accounts. As brands grow, it becomes easier and easier to get national accounts because now you're located across the country, and you're able to service a large grocery chain. We'll call it chain of stores, hardware stores and things like that. National accounts is a major advantage. I always talk to my families and candidates that this is the icing on the cake, where if anything falls in your market, that's assigned to you. So it may be bundled to the point where everything is signed, ready to go. You show up and just perform the painting or cleaning. So you see this in commercial cleaning and residential commercial painting. It could be something where you're the preferred vendor in that market, where you would have first dibs to, actually go out and give a quote on that particular job, understanding that relationship's set up, maybe some pricing or at least the insurance requirements are all set up for you. So these are major advantages in having that leverage to work with these brands. Harder to figure out in the pro forma. I treat it more like a bonus, if that makes sense, not knowing what's gonna come into your market. But, these are all things that go live and in place as soon as you sign that franchise agreement. That's another major advantage, and that's where companies are saying, "We've had a national account scene." We were talking to one painting brand that had, one individual spearheading all the national accounts. Now they've grown that to four and quadrupled the number of accounts they service. That's a major advantage and it's hard to have at a local level as a mom and pop. These will apply for national franchises applying to multiple markets. Another major advantage and these national accounts and partnerships that are set up, are just gonna continue to grow and get larger and larger as the brands expand throughout the country. Another big thing, and this was a major chunk of the conference was that, success leaves clues. This was based off of stories about individuals that got into the franchise and some success stories on how well they've done. I wanna reiterate this, because we talk a, a lot about this on the show, is that you don't need experience in an industry or franchise in order to do well. In many cases it's not needed, or it could be frowned upon because it's hard to unlearn, maybe if you were in the roofing business and now you have to learn a new way to do roofing, sometimes it's a little bit more challenging. But you don't need experience. Success leaves clues, as we mentioned. So we heard a lot of engineers. Engineers follow a process they set everything up so that they can execute. A lot of people coming out of the military. One in six franchisees are coming out of the military, military veterans where the process is set up and they can simply execute on that system, on that process. We took a quick look, and one out of five families, so 20% of the families we've helped with over the years are military veterans. So we thank you for your service and it's a natural fit, I'd say in many cases for individuals looking to transition out of the military. Operational leaders. People that are looking to run these businesses semi active, semi passive, whatever you wanna call it. I like semi-active, right? Because you're not full-time in the business. You need to be a good leader because maybe the team isn't large, but you're managing a manager. You have a general manager in place. Maybe you have a salesperson. You're providing oversight, and although the general manager's running the day-to-day, you're still a leader in the business. You're still making sure the business is profitable, efficient, everyone's following through with their role, deciding, later on to invest in additional territories and locations and things like that. So there's a lot there.

7:29

Hey guys, thanks for listening. I hope you're enjoying the show. As a thank you for being a valued listener, wanted to offer you a free copy of my book, Franchise Freedom. This book was written back in 2020 and it's my exact blueprint in helping you find that perfect franchise. I wrote it based off my experiences and wanted to pass that along to you. Want to chat today? You can book a call directly on our website, top right side of that screen, and you can schedule a 20-minute call. We'll dive into if a franchise is a good fit, help you get qualified and figure out what that perfect franchise match may be. So I hope you take me up on my offer. Once again, Franchise Freedom, download the book today for free, or book a call with me directly and we'll help you bypass all that information you find online. Most importantly, figuring out if a franchise is the right fit and then figuring out what that perfect franchise looks like. So thanks again for listening to the show and back to the show

Giuseppe Grammatico 8:28

Leadership is great. Sales, another big one where maybe you're not cold calling, but you're going out on pre-booked warm sales appointments that the uh, franchisor has set up for you. Again, you don't need necessarily experience in flooring or painting, but if you came from Wall Street like myself and had a sales and networking background, that's a perfect soft, transferable skill set, that you'll be able to really take advantage of and do well in these businesses. Again, goes back to the franchise avatar. Who does well in this business? The franchisor can easily tell you who does well, and maybe a couple avatars depending on how you're running it. But these are great. We always say success leaves clues. These are people that follow the system They stuck with the marketing. Marketing isn't always perfect out the gate, it needs to be tweaked but, being persistent and being consistent with some of the marketing and strategies and following through with the system itself. And it was all. We talked about full-time, we talked about semi-active owners, and everyone else in between. I always say there isn't a perfect franchise out there in general. People ask me, What's the hot franchise? What's the perfect franchise to buy now?" It really comes down to the right fit for you because if the right franchise costs a million bucks and you have the budget for something much less, what good is giving you that list when something else could be a better fit? Or if you don't want brick-and-mortar, a lot of staff, we look elsewhere. So there's no hot franchise, but it's really the right fit based off the requirements, that we're putting on the table, making sure that we check off all those boxes. another kind of bullet or takeaway is that collaboration behind the scenes. A lot of what we do is behind the scenes. It's going to these conferences getting a inside perspective of franchising, the industry, what's working, what's not working, changes that are being made, how AI is affecting everything. That's one advantage you're getting because we do collaborate. So when we work together, I bring all this to the table. And this is live, right? This is not just a twice-a-year conference. These are my daily conversations, which is what I was gonna talk about next, is talking with the franchisors. You know, being able to speak with the founder. We just had a conversation on our trip with the founder of Fitness Boutique Fitness franchise, and got to hear firsthand of what they're working on, what's working, what's not, where they're going in the next five to 10 years. That's been huge. Getting, feedback from people we have helped over the years and how their experience has been, what that's looked like, how quickly, did you become profitable, which is gonna vary from one franchisee to the next. But we wanna hear the feedback, so we always stay in touch with any families that we help guide through and eventually invest in a franchise. So we wanna know kind of their feedback. I work with 100 other franchise consultants. We get feedback, "Hey, I maybe never work with that particular brand, but how is your candidate doing in the franchise, and overall, what are you hearing?" So we're getting those that internal perspective that kind of behind-the-scenes information that we're always having, just hearing. What's working on the funding side. We work with multiple funding partners retirement rollovers versus SBAs. Again, not one is better. There's no one size fits all, but what works for specific individuals what works for someone keeping their job. Sometimes they lean towards the SBA because their retirement funds aren't available until they leave the job. Maybe it's not the founder, maybe it's the VP, maybe it's the development rep. We're always getting that inside perspective so that we can, hope to educate our candidates and families as much as possible. As far as the, The biggest takeaway o-overall is this consistent investment in adding technology investing support, building vendor relationships, creating more opportunities for owners. Those are the, the four key themes is, not necessarily adding, but making what they have better. The technology, CRMs until now were basic CRMs, now they're adding customized C-CRMs with AI, so it's constantly improving. Changes are made at a much quicker rate. Support, adding, as we talked about, additional coaches to the team to help support the franchisees. Building stronger vendor relationships, so not just with national accounts, but with this one was interesting. A lot of brands are buying from one or two national vendors and, those vendors are providing a kind of rebates back to the franchisor, and that franchisor is passing it down to the franchisees. In some cases, almost offsetting the royalty paid throughout the year depending on the volume of purchases. So we're seeing a lot of that where the franchisor is taking th-those funds and dispersing that amongst the franchisees. And that helps with economies of scale, that helps with the additional support with the vendor relations. And overall, what did, what does this do? It creates more opportunities for owners, right? It's allowing the owner to be more profitable with those rebates. It's allowing them to maybe get a part of that rebate and reinvest back into marketing, adding another salesperson or eventually getting to that general manager if you're a full-time owner that wants to eventually, become semi-active in the business. It really made the case, in, in my opinion, for franchising The world is evolving. Lots of stuff is training, and a lot of brands are taking advantage of AI and saying, "Okay, home services, painting, cleaning, roofing, that's not going anywhere. These are services that are always gonna be needed. But how do we use AI to where you're booking appointments, making payments without having to speak with someone?" That's reducing the cost to the franchisee, making them more profitable, but also that they can become much more competitive in their pricing. Less staff, less cost. Yes, it's gonna increase the margins, but it's also gonna, be able to have you become much more competitive in pricing. Being open to the change, understanding there's a lot of unknowns. So how do we add additional benefits, support, national accounts, and things like that? This was a lot of great feedback a-across the board. it was great to to have these meetings and we got our next meeting coming up in January of twenty twenty-seven next year, so we'll have more updates then. But if there's any specific questions you have or something you wanna learn more about, you could message me, maybe something we address or answer in a social post. It could be another topic for a podcast, but if it's very specific to your situation, reach out, ggthefranchiseguide.com. You could book a call. You can send us a message. More than glad to answer any questions you have. What we do is really help you figure out if franchising is the right fit, and then figure out what that ideal business looks like from the standpoint of, the investment to the number of staff, to the venue, if it's home-based or a brick and mortar, and the list goes on. And we love to help every one of our families and candidates. Hopefully you found this helpful. I really appreciate all the support, all the questions. We did get a lot of questions, and we do have some one-on-one conversations scheduled for this week. We just got back this week, so everything is top of mind and fresh. So if you just have some general question, you're interested in franchising not sure about the timing, what that all looks like, reach out ggthefranchiseguide.com, book a call, send me a message. Sometimes the calls work best because I do have some additional questions before answering. I wanna get a, kind of a complete picture, and more than glad to help out in in any way possible. So this is the first version here of the Franchise Industry Insider Report. We'll have our new version in January and, looking forward to more updates, changes and answering any of your questions and messages. So thanks again for your support. Looking forward to helping in any way possible, and I'll see you guys on the other side. Take care. Bye-bye.

15:29

Thanks for tuning in. If you want to learn how to make the transition from corporate to owning your franchise, join Giuseppe on the next episode. You can also follow on all social media platforms and achieve financial and time freedom today