Announcing the Franchisee Excellence Awards

Unlock the secrets of top-performing franchisees in this insightful episode. Discover how these leaders achieve consistent success, even in challenging markets, by treating their franchise like a CEO-run business and following proven systems. Join Allison Dudas from Franchise Business Review as she shares real stories from award-winning franchisees across various industries, revealing the key patterns that set them apart.

Learn how successful franchisees hire smarter, foster an ownership mindset, and engage authentically with their communities. This episode highlights the importance of system adherence, resilience, and community involvement as growth strategies. Whether you're exploring franchising or looking to elevate your business, gain actionable insights to avoid pitfalls and accelerate your journey.

Perfect for aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned franchisees, this episode equips you with the mindset and tactics to grow confidently and sustainably. Discover what separates good franchisees from the best in the world.

Resources

• The Franchisee Excellence Awards - winners, and their stories, found here.
• Read: We've got tons of Franchisee Profiles for you to check out.
• Top 200 Franchises of 2026
• Read: How To Use Our Data

Connect with Us:

Visit FranchiseBusinessReview.com
Follow us on Instagram, @franchisebusinessreview
Subscribe to our newsletter
Check us out on YouTube, @FranchiseBusinessReview
Connect with us on LinkedIn

Transcript

In-person participant 1 (00:52)
Hello and welcome back to our podcast from A To Franchisee. I am not Michelle Rowan, your host, but I am your host for today. I'm Allison Dudas. I'm the B2C Senior Marketing Manager here at Franchise Business Review. I've gotten to come on the podcast before and today I am trying to invoke Michelle Rowan's very tall energy and host today. And it's because we are doing a very special announcement

Franchisee Excellence Awards and to announce those with me today is our VP of Marketing, Mariah Morgan. Thank you so much for being here, Mariah. hello. Also not Michelle. Maybe the two of us together can make this Michelle-like. Maybe the two of us together can really invoke her Channel the tall energy. Tall, tall boss lady energy.

So Mariah, can you give us a little bit of a rundown on what these awards are? I would love to.

Allison gets to talk very regularly to franchisors, but also almost even better to the franchisees. On a regular basis, we hear from franchisees about how happy they are with their franchisor, what their experience has been like. And while we love talking to the franchisors, really, this is all about the franchisee and making sure that they're stepping into a life that is incredibly happy and hopefully abundant. So we took that mindset and we said, how do we highlight these 

franchisees better and take a look at the lives that they're living so that others can take this information and make good decisions. So that's how the Franchisee Excellence Awards were born. But we wanted to make sure that as with all things FBR, this is rooted in a little more data and it's not so subjective. So we came up with a criteria that we felt was pretty rigorous. There's a vetting process for all of the franchisees who were submitted by their franchisor for the Franchisee Excellence Awards.

But we received like well over a hundred something like a hundred and twenty something nominees for franchisees who are who were deemed to be excellent by their franchisor. So by the center office, the corporate office and from those over 120 nominations, we pulled out 50, Well, 50 winners of the franchisee excellence awards. So standouts. Yeah, standouts. Just people who really, really stood out for what they were bringing into their franchise.

franchise and we have some pretty specific criteria for what we were looking at. Yes, so we broke it down into four categories. We've got business performance because obviously you can't get an award for excellence if you're not operating your business efficiently ⁓ and hopefully profitably. We've got leadership and team development because we feel like that's just an important part of owning a business. Community engagement because even though these are franchisees and there is a corporate office, they are still part of a community where

wherever

they are, and then their personal stories. So many of these franchisees have a background in one thing and they jump to this new career and have made something great out of it. Some of them have some really touching stories and we didn't want to overlook the fact that these are human beings and their stories really matter to this. Yeah, I love that. And I think for those of you listening, because the people who are listening to this, you're entrepreneurs or you're people thinking about investing a franchise or maybe you're in a job that you don't love and you're thinking about a change.

I think if you're thinking about buying a franchise, don't just ask, is this a good brand? And we talk about that all the time. You should definitely ask, is this a good brand? You should. But you should also ask, what do the best franchisees actually do? What's the roadmap to success here? And that's, think, why it's so critical to look at these standout franchisees, these excellent franchisees. All right, so we are going to highlight, in particular, 13 top franchisees.

really the best of the best and they were willing to tell us a little bit more about them and about their journey to franchising, about their journey to excellence in franchising. And just to note that these 13 franchisees that we're going to talk about are all across all industries. So we have a couple franchisees in business services and staffing. We have some in the travel industry. We have some in senior care. We have some in education.

enrichment, property management, realty, home services, ⁓ pest control, retail, you name it. You name it. So, yeah, so franchising is obviously not just food and beverage, right? It's not just McDonald's. It's so many different things. And to be frank, like you can make, if your hope is to make money, you can make so much money in industries that are not food. Food's a great industry to go into and a lot of people do very well. But I mean, pest control.

you might not be thinking about that, but you should. So they are not the same industry, they're not the same market, and certainly these franchisees do not have the same background, but they do share some patterns. So we can talk about that.

One of the common themes that we see especially in these 13 franchisees, but really all across these 50 winners is that They they treat their franchise like a business not just a job so many came from corporate backgrounds some come from Completely different industries than the one that they're working in now with their franchise But they also did things like hire sooner than you would expect so they hired people

And I know for a number of them, credit their success with finding the right employees so that they could scale. And then they ⁓ track their KPIs, so they track their goals. They made goals for themselves, whether that was...

I'm thinking of like Mathnasium franchisee or Huntington Learning Center franchisee, like that recurring revenue, that membership system that you set up. So they tracked that. How many members do I need to break even? How many members do I need to pay my rent for my space? They track that stuff. So thinking kind of like a CEO. So when you buy a franchise, you are a business owner, you own that business, and you've got to think like a CEO. I think that's an important one as a former business

owner. I came into the franchise industry with this misconception. ⁓ I just assumed that if you buy a franchise, you're sort of like putting the onus of business ownership elsewhere, but actually you're still the owner of that business. ⁓ It's important for you to keep an eye on those objectives, ⁓ monitor your own analytics for business ownership. ⁓ Personally, I think that's pretty attractive. ⁓

Right, right. I think that's a great point. OK, so pattern two, and this is, do like my paper for those of you watching? Maybe I'll do a little ASMR like at the microphone of the paper flipping, bringing it to analog here with the paper print out. ⁓ So pattern number two, this is, I think, the most important thing when you talk about franchising.

A successful franchisee follows the system even when it was hard. ⁓ So they do the onboarding, ⁓ they do the marketing protocols, they do the... ⁓

All the things the franchisor says them. Yeah, all the things the franchisor says they should do, they do. ⁓ So I know that we did this episode with Paul Pickett from Wild Birds about what makes a good franchisee. This was like months ago. ⁓ And we also asked Paul, well, what makes a bad franchisee? And.

You know, I think a lot of people make bad franchisees. And if you really just want to go it alone and you want to do things your own way, I mean, that's incredibly admirable, but you probably shouldn't buy a franchise because the reason franchises are successful is because you follow the system. Yeah, you're not meant to go off-roading, but there's a good reason for that. That is the system works. It has been proven to work and that's why it is successful. Right, right. And it is sort of interesting too, because while there is like this

system there is freedom in it. mean I think about, I'm here with my paper again, ⁓ I think about ⁓ you know Robert Ott who is one of our franchisee excellent award winners with J-PAR Real Estate. He talks about the great onboarding that J-PAR provided him but then he also really loves the freedom that he has so he operates he does business as Raintown Realty in Washington and so there's like that push

and pull, right? Like you have the structure, but then you also get some freedom. I think that that's really true with cruise planners. We have a winner ⁓ of the Franchise the Excellence Awards from cruise planners. Her name is Gianna Burrell, and she...

credits just like the freedom that cruise planners offers her with her success, but it's also all done through their system. So they have this like really amazing ⁓ platform called CP Max that everybody books through and so it's like kind of funnels into this strong structure. Love cruise planners. Yeah. We joke at the office that if Allison were ever to leave us it's because she's starting her own cruise planners. Wait, who doesn't want to travel? Right? Well, I'm just obsessed. I'm just obsessed with traveling.

another interesting thing so we have a ⁓

quad of franchisees that won the Franchisee Excellence Award. This is uncharted territory. I know. I don't think this has ever happened. No, a quad. I know, a quad. So it's like a whole family that owns a FASTSIGNS franchise. So it's Gabby and her husband Bob, and then their daughter Caitlin and her husband Aaron. So they all own this FASTSIGNS franchise together, but they started

because they owned a Fullerton Photographic, so they owned like a photo printing place. And then several years ago, they decided to co-brand with with FASTSIGNS ⁓ So they still kind of offer both things with FASTSIGNS, which honestly, I didn't even know that you could do. I did not either. So it's like these funny examples. We just spent like five minutes talking about how important it was to follow the system and made it sound really rigid. But then I just thought of three examples right away from these winners who follow the system and work in the system. But then they have like

this deviation and this freedom within it. So- Very cool. The family that FASTSIGNS together. I love that. That's what my children would call mom jokes. I love that. So another pattern. pattern one was like they behave like a CEO. Pattern two is they follow the system. Pattern three, they built strong teams early.

And I think that right now in our economy in the United States, hiring across the board is kind of the number one challenge that we hear from franchisees. And that's across all industries. 100%. Yeah, all industries is hiring right now. It's really hard.

Talking to these franchisees and hearing more about their stories, one, they're incredible leaders. So you talked, Mariah, about leadership as being one of the criteria that we looked at. And that's critical here in hiring the right people. And I've talked to a couple franchisees about, like, well, what do you look for? And I'm thinking about,

Alice Garcia and I'm also thinking about Parag and Kunal from

the learning experience and Alice Garcia is from real property management. both of those sets of winners talk about how important their teams are. And then, of course, how they really lead their teams. also think about how with our pattern number one, like behave like a CEO, you also want to hire people who feel

already upon hiring that they have an ownership stake in the business, just behave that way, right? That they have skin in the game. And I think being a really good leader, you make your employees feel that way. Agree. And I think one of the things that I think anybody who works in any corporate environment or otherwise knows the feeling of having somebody who is not culturally a fit for your organization. And that's one of the things we also took into consideration was hiring culture first.

which I think just across the board, no matter what you work in is important, but especially if you are the leader of a franchise.

So it might seem really risky that some of these franchisees, maybe even before they broke even, began to hire people. But I think when you think about franchising and what makes a franchise successful, it's scaling.

And a lot of these winners actually are multi-unit owners. What's a multi-unit owner? ⁓ well, I'm so glad you asked, Mariah. So most of the time, typically when you invest in a franchise, you are just investing in either one territory or one location. And depending on the brand, they talk about territory. So like one of our winners, ⁓ and this is a mother-daughter team, Jeri and Sarah from Dear.

They are a pest control, mosquito control ⁓ company that uses organic, clean ingredients. So very cool. But a company like that, you're going to buy a territory. So you're going to buy a few zip codes. Because you probably aren't going to have a retail space. You're probably going to based out of, at least enough to start, you're not going to have a space. You're going to be based out of your trucks. And so it wouldn't make sense for you to buy a specific location. You're going to buy an area.

And then some of these brands, you're going to buy an actual location, like a Mathnasium or a Or a fASTSIGNS something like that. need a physical Yeah, you need a physical location. So most of the time when you invest in a franchise, you are just buying one of those. That's what's most typical. And then a lot of franchisees. And the franchisees that are the most successful financially, to be frank, are the ones that scale up and they own more than one.

a Huntington Learning Center franchisee, like our winner, Tom Murphy, owns multiple locations. And obviously, in order to scale up, in order to purchase a second location or a second territory, you're going to have to hire, so it's back to that previous point, you're going to have to hire somebody to direct your first location before you go out and you start the other one.

That's what a multi-unit, that was a really long answer. That's what a multi-unit owner is. A unit is either a territory or like a physical location. It might have been a long answer, but I think it's an important one to go through because A, a lot of people don't know what that means and B, there's a lot to it. Yes, and certainly it's good to know. Now some franchise brands right off the bat are going to try to sell you more than one or lock you in to opening more territories right away.

or having even a schedule of you're going to invest in this territory now, but then it's part of your contract to have to open more and more. I know Michelle said this. Michelle, in my opinion, knows everything. She knows all. Yeah, it's that tall energy. And she would caution people against that. And after talking with more and more people, I would too. I mean, think you start with one, and then you see how that goes. And then.

once you scale, once you figure out how to do the system, then you expand. Get in your groove. Get in your groove, because otherwise I think the risk is just you're spreading yourself so thin. You're potentially in so much debt because of the funding choices that you've made. And I don't know. mean, life is too short to be that stressed out. So just start with one. And truly, most of the franchisees that I've talked to, and at this point I've talked to so many, they start with one. And maybe some of them don't even think that they're going to expand into multi-unit ownership.

But then once they're like, man, I'm like nailing this first location, then they grow from there. Okay, so build strong teams early. And then I love this one. community involvement, pattern number four, community involvement as a growth strategy. Mariah, I'm gonna let you take this one because I feel like being the VP of marketing.

you know a little bit about the importance of community involvement as it relates to a successful franchise. Yeah, I I spoke to this a little earlier, but I think it's easy to think, well, a franchise is a chain. So you don't really need to pay attention to community involvement. I 100 % disagree. I think it's incredibly important that you almost work harder to prove to your community that you are a part of it, that you support them, and that you are a brand that is well-loved and

a part of the fabric of the community of the place in which you are located. ⁓ I think often, and this might be a silly example, but you're a parent too, I think about the logos you see on the back of a Little League jersey, and a lot of those are the logos of businesses that are small businesses that are locally owned. You might know the owners and be very familiar with them, and so they might feel extra special to you.

I think it's important to remind people if you're a franchisee that you also are a business owner in the community and just as much a part of that as a mom and pop. You are a mom and pop too in many ways. Yeah, I think that's such a good point. I can think of, especially on this list that we've got of these 13 franchisees, there's two from the staffing world. So we've got Chad Drainer from Express Employment Professionals.

And then we also have Beth Delaney from Spherion Staffing. one of the reasons why they were nominated is because of their involvement in their community. I got to speak with Chad in a upcoming webinar that we'll release. So just a 20 minute recorded conversation where he talks about the importance of being involved in his community. So here you are in his, one of his locations is in West Virginia.

and he is in a particularly rural area. So here he is connected to this community. you are very tangibly making a difference in your community and you're going to become a trusted resource. You're going to become somebody that people reach out to for help.

And I think that goes along too with Senior Care. mean, it goes along with all franchises, but Senior Care as well. And we do have two Franchisee Excellence Award winners from the Senior Care industry, two very different models, but really worth talking about.

We've got Kami and Scott from Right at Home. Right at Home is a senior care franchise that you don't need health experience, healthcare experience to invest in. You really are going to need to be good at working with people and managing people, because you're going to manage the caregivers that are actually going out to people's homes and helping people while they're trying to stay in their homes and age.

So I think about Kami and Scott and their ⁓ incredible ability to be a part of their community. And then I'm also thinking about Cynthia Perthuis, excuse me if I'm saying that wrong, from Senior Care Authority. Now Senior Care Authority is another Senior Care franchise, that's incredible, but operates a little bit differently than right at home. So you act more as a consultant to, most of the time it's to families, it's not necessarily to the, maybe it's the parent or the grandparent that's aging.

but you act as a consultant to help them figure out assisted care, ⁓ living situation, rehab situation. So you have to be so connected. You have to make connections at local assisted care spots. You have to really make sure that you are seen as trustworthy. ⁓

It's a brand awareness thing, especially on a local level. It's important for people to know your name, know your business name, and make sure you're the top of mind answer when it comes to ⁓ deciding who it is that you source for that particular service. Yeah, exactly. I I think about it in our modern world, it's like the online influencer, right? But a lot of these franchisees are really these micro influencers in their community.

All right, so let's go to really the last pattern. And that is a word that we hear sometimes, resilience. Resilience in year one. ⁓ All of these franchisees, when they talk about their first year, they talk a little bit about being shell shocked.

Maybe they were incredibly busy at first. Maybe they were overwhelmed with the training offered by the franchisor. Maybe even just the, could go both ways. They were overwhelmed by, oh my gosh, business is a little bit slow, to, oh my goodness, business is booming right off the bat and I don't have the structure. Ideally, but just not always the case. Right, exactly. So every one of these winners had some tough times.

And you'll get the opportunity. We're going to publish these stories. ⁓ We offer these franchisees Q &As, so they get to answer these questions for themselves in their own words. And we publish them on franchisebusinessreview.com. So you can read a little bit about those. But I mean, all of them dealt with market competition. All of them dealt with slow ramp up, whether it's trying to build out your Mathnasium Learning Center.

or if you are buying an existing franchise, actually like ⁓ Sarah Namani from Mathnasium did and then completely turned it around, you're gonna deal with a little bit of that ramp up time and a little bit of that transition period. But they didn't panic, right? They kept going. And they communicated with their franchisor when things were getting a little bit tricky.

So I think it's really an important thread to note that if you are an excellent franchisee, it doesn't mean that things were always successful or always easy. And I think any business owner will say that. That's ⁓ always what you strive for, but it's nearly impossible. You can't control what life throws at you. You can't control what the world throws at you.

But the nice thing here is we consistently see these performers just continuing to work hard at it, accept the support from their franchisor, and go for it and achieve their dreams. Yeah, great. So just to kind of wrap up here, the insights from these incredible winners, think some were first time entrepreneurs. Some made huge career changes.

to get to where they were and owning a franchise. ⁓ Some of these winners are multi-unit. Some are single location operators. But none were passive investors. There's a myth often found in the world of franchising and sometimes perpetrated by people who should know better that franchising can be an absentee ownership thing right off the bat.

This is not true. Ideally, possibly a few years in, you can really step back. And I've talked to many a franchisee who have done that. But that's not the case right off the bat. It really isn't. You've got to get your hands dirty. You've got to be in it. Even the quad, the Fast Signs quad winners. The family of Fast Signs together.

They're all in it, you know, and they all bring different things to the table. And I'm going to get to talk to them in a webinar coming up. So stay tuned for that. We're only having the mother and daughter on though. I was like, can't, we can't have the whole quad. How are we going to do a recording with that many people? I mean, holy moly. I think these amazing franchisees.

deserve to be studied because they are willing to offer some really sound advice for anybody who's considering buying a franchise. So I hope that you'll take the time to read about them and I hope that, you know, they feel, I'm hoping they're listening now and feel some love from franchise business review They are, congrats.

You've earned it. Seriously, congratulations. Also worth noting, while we're highlighting these folks here, there's so much more to their stories. So please visit the FBR website to check them out because there's a lot worth highlighting. And we just can't cram it all in here. No, we just can't. So I want to leave. I want to finish today with some questions to ask yourself.

You know, if you're a journaler, which I am so not a journaler, but like maybe if you're listening to this in your car, you can think about these questions. So you should ask yourself if you're thinking about investing in a franchise, like are you coachable? Are you willing to be coachable? Can you follow a playbook?

Are you comfortable leading people? Will you engage in your community?

Are you financially disciplined?

Are you prepared for a ramp up period?

And again, don't just ask if a franchise brand is good. You should be asking that, and you should use our site to find out. But also ask, are you ready to be a franchisee? When you read about these incredible franchisees, do they have skills? Do they have elements about themselves that you also have? It's a bit of a soul-searching exercise. Yeah. I'll include it in my journaling tonight.

You do that. ⁓ Well, thank you everybody so much for taking the time and hopefully you will read about these franchisee excellence award winners. And really the difference between a franchise owner and an award-winning franchisee isn't luck. It's about execution and it's about committing and working hard and grinding at least for a year or two.

Sometimes three, sometimes four, sometimes five. ⁓ So do your due diligence. Do your journaling. Do your journaling. You do your journaling. Do your soul searching. I won't be doing my journaling. ⁓ And talk to franchisees. We're like a broken record on this podcast about this. Talk to existing franchisees across the brands that you're interested in. Ask them. Ask them what they love. Ask them what they don't love. They will tell you the things that an FDD simply cannot. Yes. So true.

So true. And be honest about your personal strengths and weaknesses. That's OK. There are definitely some franchise brands out there that might fit your needs. They might offer a ton of marketing support if you just suck at marketing. ⁓ Which we don't. No. Obviously, we're excellent at marketing. Being in the marketing department of Franchise Business Review. No big deal. I know. ⁓ But we wish you good luck.

It's an exciting time to invest in a franchise. There are some really amazing options out there for you. You can look at our top 200 lists for 2026 and you can check out some of them and many of them publish their reports on our website. And those reports will give you actual insight from actual franchisees of that brand. Which we cannot preach enough the importance of downloading those reports. I think like it's easy to think like I just want to see the dollar signs. Right.

but download the reports people because there's so much good information in there and that's really from the mouths of the franchisees. Yes, Mariah thanks so much. This was fun. I love seeing you on a screen. love seeing you in person. It's fabulous. All right. Well, thank you so much for tuning in.