122 | From Reactive to Proactive: Building a Franchise Brand That Thrives | Sally Facinelli

Speaker A: When growth stalls, most leaders reach for surface fixes like new campaigns, a sharper sales deck, even new hires. But the real issues are often deeper, such as misaligned systems, broken handoffs, or unreliable data. That's why we built the Growth Readiness Score. In just five minutes, you'll get a clear score across four critical areas of your revenue operations. And see how you stack up against your peers with benchmark data. Tap the link in the show notes to get started. It's. It's quick, insightful, and often reveals issues leaders don't expect.

Speaker B: Franchise companies that were very proactive in the changes that they made, instead of the reactive ones were ultimately the ones that thrived. If you're just reacting, it's like a fire. The fire's already going. You know that there's a high probability of the fire starting. You can take measures to make sure that the fire doesn't start.

Speaker A: You're listening to Rob's Champions, a podcast created for B2B leaders to help you align your people so streamline your processes, trust your data, and leverage technology in order to grow your business. Hi and welcome back. Today I'm joined by Sally Fasanelli, a growth strategist, franchise operator and advisor known for helping emerging brands scale through stronger systems, leadership and operational alignment. With nearly 30 years of experience across franchising, business development, operations and leadership, Sally has worked with franchisors, franchisees, founders and multi unit operators to build brands that grow sustainably, not just quickly. Sally brings a practical, operator focused perspective to growth and leadership. She's also currently working on a book which we're hoping to see more of. At least I am looking forward to seeing, uh, potentially next year. Sally, welcome to the Revops Champions podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you very much. I'm a pleasure to be here.

Speaker A: So, Sally, you've worked with founders and franchise operators for decades. What separates in your mind, brands that scale sustainably from those that grow too fast and break?

Speaker B: That's a great question to start with. I think, uh, one of the biggest things that you can do is pause. You first you have to sit there and you have to understand where it is that you're going to. Okay, so I know that I'm a brand that I want to sell. It could be dog grooming, it could be, you know, waxing, whatever it is, doesn't matter, but you know where you want to go in the next two years, five years, you know, whatever your growth plans are. And then you sit there and you pause and you go, okay, how is this? How could I get there intentionally what steps can I take to do that? And you look at not only the steps that you can take, but the people. You got to get your people, the right people in there. How, oh, can you do that? That sort of thing. So I would start with doing that. Mhm.

Speaker A: I love that. In fact, I just heard another perfect example of that last week. A really successful brand out of California that's at 200 units. And we were checking in to see like what they were up to as far as like changing their systems in order to drive their scale. And it's like this is like some of the best to your point. It's like the best news to hear back from them saying, actually, you know, they've paused because they want to just make sure that they know what they're doing before they get ready to scale. 300, 400 and 500 units, which I totally agree. That is, that's really good advice.

Speaker B: Well, most people don't want to do the pause. They think that they're going to lose the momentum if they pause. But that's the thing, they're not going to lose momentum. They're going to be able to clearly see things. You don't have to pause forever, just take a very intentional pause.

Speaker A: Right. Well. And I think to your point, the great thing about franchising, no matter where you are and Whether you're at 100 units or 200 units or 300 units, those units are still going to be operating while you're pausing. And part of what you're doing while you're pausing is making sure you can continue to support your existing franchisees, correct?

Speaker B: Mhm, exactly. And if your plans are to maybe change the business in some way to grow to that next level, because there are businesses and I've seen a couple of them. M actually one of my friends just did this radically with her business in the franchise world and she took a very big detour because it wasn't very different from the business that she was already doing. It was in the same vein, but it was the next stage and she was looking at it going, hey, I see where the future of this is. Health and wellness and beauty. I see where the future is going and I want to get there. But this is going to be a big change from where I'm at now with my current franchisees. Now how do I get there and is that going to work? Can I still support the franchisees? Do I need to get them up to scale? Like, how do I work through this before I just go full steam ahead?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Which seems to be that sort of most consistent mindset shift that leaders have to make as they're breaking through these different ceilings of complexity.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Which is very simple mindset. What got us here isn't going to get us to where we're going. And I think you touched on one. I think the most important point, which is the first thing that has to change when a brand hits one of those ceilings is, is potentially the leadership or the structure. You might not have to change the people on the leadership. You might have to add a person and maybe change the roles. But that's typically where the change has to happen. Otherwise, how do you continue to elevate the organization if you're trying to do it with the same people that got you to where you are, knowing that you're probably going to need different or at least more people to get you to where you're going.

Speaker B: Agreed. And I think a lot of people are afraid to do that within their company for a variety of reasons. They're either afraid that they may not know the right people. Making changes in general is scary. You know, they might have a lot of connection, uh, with the people that they already have and, you know, not taking them the whole way with them. Right. You could do this. Right. But if you think that you can grow in the various stages of your business with the same people, you just won't grow. Because the people that are the founders that start zero to what, whatever, you know, 10 units, whatever, 25 units. A little different, very different person. The people that take you to 200 units and, and these, the unit numbers, these are not hard and fast numbers. It depends on the business. But they take you there. It's going to be a different person that takes you to a thousand or whatever, you know.

Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker B: Very different.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think these are all good reminders and I'm sure that there are people listening who resonate with, with, you know, we've all been through that stage where we've held on a little longer than we needed to, you know, before making sure. Yes, exactly. So, Sally, I, you know, you've been heard to say something around the lines of growth doesn't create alignment problems, it exposes them. So where do you most often see alignment breakdown as organizations scale?

Speaker B: Well, you know, so the scaling is what is exposing what's our, what's not there. So it could be a system like you don't have the right systems in place or you had the right systems for when you were a different size and now they need to be tweaked for when you grow or for the next phase, you don't have the right processes. The same thing, same thing goes for systems and processes. It could be technology, systems, whatever the system is, those have to shift. And what people do is they get very comfortable with what they have in place and they expect that to just stay and go with them to the next level. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately. You've got to be constantly doing that. And I think it can expose those two areas. It also exposes people. So again with, uh, maybe you had the right people, maybe it's, you know, not for the next stage, or maybe you have the right people but at the right role. Or it could be simply miscommunication and misalignment. So if people don't have the same shared vision, if the leadership is not clearly defining their leadership, where they're going and sharing that. Because I have a lot of leaders that I talk to, they don't tell their team the vision. And I'm like, why would you not want to tell your team the vision? Don't you all want to get there? You want them to be able to like actually help you get there quickly, you know, in a scalable way that is sustainable as well. But they often keep it to themselves and they don't communicate. So I think that's another huge area that people really break down is lack of communication. Or they, they will communicate, but they won't communicate in a way that people understand and double check that they really understand what they're doing or what they're saying.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean that is, that is so true. So Sally, so now once we sort of get through sort of the leadership challenges and making the changes as a business grows sort of from one level to the next, the next thing that's really important is consistency. So you just touched on communication, which again, if there's one thing that has to be consistent in an organization, it's communication. But if we just talk about consistency for a second, it's uh, consistency is critical. So how do you balance standardizing the things that matter most while still giving operators and teams the flexibility to adapt and um, innovate?

Speaker B: I think you first have to standardize the most critical things to your business, like your brand experience. Again, depending what kind of brand or company that you have, brand experience has got to be always standardized. Who are you as a company? What are things that you want your customers to experience? Those are very critical things. To me. It's like Apple. You know what you're going to get with Apple, it is their brand experiences purely. Everybody knows what it's going to be and that's hugely important. I think that the customer experience is just part of that. Um, and then metrics, of course, I think those are always important as far as standardizing what everybody is trying to live up to, what KPIs, those sorts of things. Because if you don't know, then you can't live up to them if those aren't clearly stated. And then if you have leaders that you trust, first of all, if you don't have them, you need to get them. So if you have the leaders that you trust and then you communicate with them, we all have the same shared vision. We know what we're trying to hit, you know, what are our goals, those sorts of things. Now you can get any experience and not only the customers, but let's talk employees too. Forgot about, we don't want to forget about those, but what do I. We want our employees to experience, you know, as part of our company. Now you can give them the freedom to go ahead and execute and then that way they can execute much faster. They can even make tweaks, improve upon things, you know, being creative. But they're all on the same page. So they start on the same page and now they, now they have flexibility.

Speaker A: So I want to just come back to that brand consistency for a second. So one of the things that we see a lot in franchising is too much focus goes onto brand dev and not um, as much on um, franchisee support, which includes giving franchisees the assets and tools to make sure that they can actually provide brand consistency. What do you think is going on there? When a brand who has everything going for them and all they need to do is keep running that playbook of, you know, upping their game to get from one level to the next, which includes brand consistency, which often starts lacking when you know, when they're growing too fast. Right. So suggest that they maintain brand consistency while they're potentially growing at a high rate.

Speaker B: That's going to be a multi, uh, tier approach. So one is they first they do have to focus on franchisees guidance and support. You can do that through FBCs, franchise business coaches, people call them little different names, but that's basically one of the main names, franchise business coaches that can really help them stay brand consistent actually being on as much boots on the ground with your franchisees as possible. I do think that one of the things, the bigger you get, the harder it is to do this. But as a leader Staying in understanding of what it is like on the ground, in the trenches, that's really hard. So you need to actually go out there, be on the ground at least time to time. I know it's really hard when you have like a whole bunch of units, but as much as possible, otherwise you have these people that they can, they can then go out there and they're very much. They drink the Kool Aid of your brand. They're very much. I want these franchisees to be successful. I'm going to go out and help them, I'm going to make sure they stay on brand standards. And then in addition to that, you need to offer them tools to do that. So if you don't have tools to do that, there's a lot of things you can do and say. But if you don't have a lot of visual tools, how are you going to quantify? Are they actually not only staying on brand standards? Like, yes, they've got the right lookup and they got the right napkins and they've got the right. All that stuff. That's great. But what about the brand standards as far as growth, revenue, those sorts of things? And how do you measure that? So you need to give them tools to be able to do that.

Speaker A: Right. Which comes back to what you were saying about the metrics and the KPIs, because, you know, how do you manage what you, what you cannot measure?

Speaker B: Right, right. Or can't see. And I think that's part of the other problem is leadership will have, you know, and I know I've done this, but, uh, we'll have tools that we can see and we can see pretty quick, like red flags. You can start seeing something will shift. And you can, if, you know, and you've been in the business long enough, you can start to see where that's going to go. It's not nipped in the bud. But if a franchisee doesn't have access to the same data or similar, maybe they don't need the same data, they don't need to see everybody else's stuff. Of course, that's not a thing we want. But you know, or even being able to have them benchmarked against other franchisees, things like that, if they can't see this, then they're running blind. So I think that's really important to have that transparency.

Speaker A: And that would be in also in more real time, we often hear some version of, uh, well, you know, the franchisee was experiencing this issue six weeks ago, but we just found out about it today. I mean, in 2026, that really doesn't seem to be a good excuse. If you don't know what happened at the franchisee level six weeks ago, you should have that data readily available at any time, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, uh, six weeks ago, especially in the world of AI, I mean, AI has taken over. I've been talking about AI for like, six years now. So in this world, if we don't have that data real time, it's already, it's already old. It's, you know, either the problem has grown massively or it's gonna, you know, something else has come in and added to the problem. It's now old data. It's now no longer relevant, and now you need new data to be able to make the changes.

Speaker A: Right. And you can no longer make decisions on that data because it's, It's. To your point, it's no longer relevant. It's. It happened six weeks ago. So, Sally, you emphasize that people don't need more direction, they need more clarity, right? From this. You talk about communication. What does organizational clarity actually look like in practice?

Speaker B: Well, it goes back to, I think, what I was saying earlier, with the clarity and, and sharing your vision. I think that's a huge part of it. I do think that people get a job, they go work for a company, they know their little job, you know, they might know, understand, you know, the people next to them and, uh, above them or whatever, but they know their little area. They don't necessarily understand the entire picture and what the company is trying to do. What are we trying to accomplish? Who are our customers? How are we trying to help them in general? I find that people communicate. It's. To me, it's all communication. It's like marketing 101. People in general communicate. Here, let me throw up my information on you. And you're going to just accept it. You're going to buy my widget, you're going to do whatever. That's not how things work. You need to communicate in a way that people can understand. And when you're at the top as a leader, if you're communicating in a way that they're just going like this, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Because what are they going to do? They're not going to say, oh, I don't get, I don't understand. They're thinking they might look, if they question you, and some people will question, which is great, but if you're not confirming that they actually understand and they have the clarity that you have, and they can see your vision, but it could be simply because they're not hearing you the way that you're communicating. Mhm. You need to, uh, you need to tweak it, you need to change it. You need to communicate in more than one way and you need to understand that everybody has the clarity that you have.

Speaker A: Right. And of course, I think the sort of the advice that I'm hearing there is make sure that the people that you're communicating with are hearing what you're saying by just asking and understanding. Yeah, just asking the question, like, you know, can you, can you kind of tell me what I just explained to you kind of thing just to make sure that they did get it, not that they're just nodding their heads for whatever reason, which is again, it probably speaks to more than just communication and, and clarity. It also is potentially a cultural thing. Right. Where maybe there's something misaligned on the culture that people are for some reason too scared not to question and they just say, yes, I understand what you're saying, but they don't really understand it. And then you wonder why things go up the rails.

Speaker B: Yeah. One of the things I ask when I am worried that somebody. And I've had this experience when I've, I've had an employee that we were misaligned very. And I, and I unfortunately did not do this. I learned to do this through, through that, sure. But I will ask some simple questions like what are. And I might ask this in a different way depending on the situation, but what are you hearing me say? What does that mean to you? Because I do find that people, words mean a lot of different things. The same word, the different person might meet something completely differently. And I want to, uh, understand that they actually are on the same page. I'm like, wow, if I ask that kind of question and they come back over here, left base or right base in this case. Uh-huh. Uh huh. They're not on the same page. Then I need to come back and I need to find a different way of communicating or, you know, asking questions or, you know, something like that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you know, communication, to your point, is such a, such a critical part of leadership, but it's, it's such a, you know, widely misunderstood. I mean, leaders who get it, they get it, but those who haven't figured it out yet wonder why people don't seem to be hearing what they're saying.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But obviously very critical if you want to scale Celi. So you've seen firsthand how shared visibility can improve performance. So what separates organizations that simply collect data from those that actually use it to drive better decisions?

Speaker B: So I think a lot of companies, they just, they collect the data and then, um, they may not understand the data or what it's telling them. I find that a lot like we've got all this data, they might be overloaded on data and they've got, they just, but they have no idea what to do with it. And that actually is way more common than it should be. But if they can actually put that data to a, uh, shared understanding of what the goal looks like, that they're trying to go for the future goal, a very clear defined understanding of what they're going for. And the data means the same thing every single time. So if you're comparing bananas, you're comparing bananas to a banana, you're not comparing them to, you know, grapes or something radically different. Now everybody understands, okay, I get the data, I see the data, the data means this and then you're using it every time. I think that's a great start. But the biggest problem is you can have systems, you need a system that will give you this data, the, the data that's actually important to your brand. Everybody has the same data, of course, and you know, use that. But if you have those right systems, you've got the data, you got the key, the key, uh, indicators that you want to watch and you want to notate and you know, have your business drive on. But then it's also the adoption of that. Are you using the same data points, but are you using that same data point every single time? So now you can have comparable things. I find that people don't adopt using those systems unless they're forced into it sometimes.

Speaker A: Yeah, we see that a lot. Just having a lot of data doesn't necessarily mean that you have the right data to your point to make the right decisions. Right. And I think what we've seen also as brands go through these different phases of growth, the data that you're tracking when you're 30 units, or let's say under 100 units, to the data that you're tracking when you're at 150 or 300 units, it's going to evolve and it's going to be probably you're going to, you're going to be tracking different data at different levels between corporate and franchisees or multi unit franchisees that they're tracking different. But I think that's one of the things that does, you know, in addition to sort of leadership and of course processes that break that have evolved. As the brand grows, I think the data does shift a little bit. Maybe at the unit level, the data stays the same, but as you're growing at a corporate level, there might be different data that you look at and you want to make sure that your data is more defined that you're tracking, let's say three metrics versus trying to attract 20 that really have no value to the organization.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a little overkill too. And it's overwhelming. Depending who you're talking to too, again. Right. So it's all depending on your. Who are we working with? So it's the franchisees. They're going to definitely have a different set of data points. And as you grow, like you were saying, you know, things shift and you're seeing the shift in your brand and you need to shift those data points with it. It could be your customer shifts. Now people are like, oh, my customer never shifts on waxing company. Actually your customer may shift. You've got to shift with that. And you know, you've got to watch those trend and those data points as well.

Speaker A: You touched on this a minute ago. There's going to be probably more shift coming pretty soon because of what's happening with AI. So maybe we'll still get into that here. But so over the course of your career, it's going to be 30 years this year. What's a leadership belief you've changed your mind about from where you started 20 or 30 years ago to where you are now?

Speaker B: So this one was a big one. So like when I first started, I really thought as a leader, I needed to understand every little detail of everything about the business, every little thing. Like I needed to, you know, have done it all myself. And then I found out that, wait a minute, I, I don't need to know it all. I need to of course, understand my business and I need to understand, um, you know, the, all the key indicators in my business. The most important thing is hiring people that are better than me at, ah, whatever it is I'm hiring them to do. And they have answers usually if they're the experts. And then also I find that the other biggest thing a, uh, leader can do, that's second to having hiring the right people, is to ask questions. They know how to ask good questions. They don't have all the answers, but they have, they have the ability to ask really great questions. And then, oh, I get an answer and now I learn how to ask a different question and that can really lead me to where I need to go.

Speaker A: That's really good. I like that. Sally. So let's, let's shift a little bit now to AI. So you've done a lot of different things within the franchise space over the last 30 years. You're sort of in the middle of taking a bit of a break until you figure out what's kind of next for you while you're also writing the book. But you're also, you're doing it at a really interesting time because of the impact that AI is going to have on all of us, including those of us in the franchise space. What are you most excited about? As you think about sort of whatever is coming next, but how you think AI might. Might impact, uh, the franchise space?

Speaker B: Hmm. M. What am I most excited about? I know so many people are scared about AI they think it's going to take away their jobs or. And it will take away some jobs, but it's also going to create other jobs. I'm most excited about what. Okay. Watching. The franchise industry has always been really far behind the times as far as adoption, uh, to technology. And this is the only thing I've seen. I mean, we're usually like 10 or so years behind. I have seen so many people just eat this up. And it's probably because we're all very entrepreneurial mindset. Everybody's just adopting this, eating it up really quickly. I think it can. AI in general has so, so many use cases that we can use it in our entrepreneurial world not only to understand our businesses better, to like, for me, I'm add. Super add. I know a lot of other leaders are very ADD as well, but it, yeah, right. It will help us. I don't know if you've used it this way. I'll put some things in and I'm like, I just need you to organ help me organize my thoughts. Like, I know what I want to say and all my thoughts are like a hundred of them all at once. And it kind of does. This puts them in a line for me. Right. So just helping, uh, align this a little bit better or maybe like, hey, where are our gaps? So I think help. I think that to me is exciting. There's so many exciting things about AI though. I was talking about it six years ago on a podcast and I was telling everybody then I was like, it's already here. You're already interacting with it and you just don't know it. You think it's a person you're interacting with and that's like, that's like old news. And people like, you know Just now seeing how amazing it is.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, one of the other, I mean, biggest shifts that I've seen in the last few months, um, and if so, let's just say even since like ifa, which was what now is it now, three, four months ago, the biggest shift, which I think is also a positive one. So early this year, up until around ifa, you just touched on it like there was this big fear and it still exists. But I'm, um, but I'm, I'm happy to see that it's, it's, it's changing where people were saying, well, AI is going to take my job. Where what I'm seeing now coming from leadership teams across the spectrum is that's not the intention of leadership teams. Leadership teams are trying to figure out how to deploy and employ AI to make their people better, not to replace them.

Speaker B: Right. More efficient. Right, more efficient. That doesn't mean more crazy work insane hours. But more efficient just means like perfecting. It's like, you know, anything else. You've got to perfect it, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, work. Yeah, work on the things that you, that only you can do as a human that you know, that AI isn't able to do. And why wouldn't you want to work on things that are more strategic and more valuable to your own career as well as the company and let AI take care of the uh, more sort of mundane tasks and things which again have to be done by somebody or in this case something. So why wouldn't you delegate that to AI and so that you can focus your time on, you know, if you're more on the, on the extroverted side, spend more time with people, adding uh, value to people and let the AI do sort of the more mundane tasks.

Speaker B: 100%.

Speaker A: Yeah. So, Sally, so, and then looking at, looking ahead, how do you think leadership and franchise growth models will evolve as businesses become more technology driven and complex?

Speaker B: Well, I've already seen this happening. They're already going to help, it's going to help them become more efficient but drive more revenue growth. So maybe they're, if you're a franchise location and you have a uh, revenue cap of maybe what was a half a million dollars before annually, maybe they're going to now be able to find the holes of where those, you know, what could be stopping that growth or maybe something new, what could help them get more growth? It could be a new product, could be a new anything, but it will help them with the revenue growth of an individual location. If you're looking at it from that perspective, I think that's one of the things that we'll see a huge shift in. You're going to see all of the efficiencies come through. Um, a lot of it was all based on human understanding, which is great. But one human understanding or a team of humans is different than AI access to all of the data that it has access to, which is quite a lot of data. Right now you're looking at those efficiencies under a very large microscope and you're able to see this over here works for these companies that I've never even heard of and it was a massive, massive growth change for them. Let's implement, um, those things that apply to our business. I think that's going to be huge. Just accessing like the data knowledge, you know, that's huge. That'll be a shift.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Which I guess, you know, you said something earlier around, you know, the tools that give you access to real time data. What do you think has, you know, why do you think certain leadership teams within franchise brands, why do they delay or, you know, postponed investing in the tools that give them real time data? Do you, what, what do you think it is?

Speaker B: Uh, depend on the person. But I think there's a, it comes down to either, uh, fear. I think fear is the most important thing right there, there. It's either lack of understanding, which is fear. So if they don't understand something, they're afraid that they're either going to not understand it, not be able to catch up with it, not be able to use it, appear to be looking stupid, whatever. Fear of something. Right. So I think that's a huge area. And then also lack of knowledge. If you don't know what you don't know or don't know how to use something, or the ability out there, then you. Most people don't adopt, don't even try because they don't know how would they, how would they be able to if they don't have any idea? So I think that stops a lot of people maybe sort of cost or something like that is of course always a factor for a lot of businesses.

Speaker A: Yeah. One that we hear more often. It's not a priority from a sort of investment perspective. There are other things that they feel like they need to do beforehand. But do you think that is in the stage of AI and having your data in a much more cleaner state so that it is actually able to help you to make better decisions and make decisions in real time? Do you Think that is likely to move up the priority list for franchise leadership teams that have maybe been, been keeping that lower on the list? Or do you think that, or don't you think that that's going to change just because of AI?

Speaker B: I think it's going to change. Truly. I think this is probably one of the ones that would actually make a shift where a quicker way, quicker shift. I think it's always changes. Typically people, they won't do something, they'll move up the priority list when it becomes a problem, when it becomes a major pain point, that's when it moves. Now it's like, oh my gosh, I have to do this right now. Well, it takes time. But this is one of those things that I think, uh, it's so quantifiable and not quantifiable at the same time, but it's also quantifiable because you can really use it to make major shifts in your business. We're not talking like little tiny percentages. We're talking major shifts that. How can they ignore it? I do think there's our legacy people or brands or whatever, but I use that term very lightly that may shy away from it, you know, just because they are like, how do I turn this giant cruise ship? How do I make that nimble of a change so quickly? Well, it's, it's a lot quicker than, and a lot more, there's a lot more capabilities than they might think now with, with how AI is so, so very many use cases and you know, flexibility and stuff like that.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, which, which reminds me of two things that we, that we see a lot. One is, you know, I mean, and I, and I know you, you, you using the term legacy sort of more, more broadly and for those of the, for those folks listening who aren't familiar with that term, it's so, you know, legacy is brands that have taken, have made the decision to grow more slowly and have a longer term sort of view that's not, not all about growing quickly and selling or whatever it is. You know, so it's. There's the other thing that we see that's kind of related to this question is what is the difference between franchise leadership teams that are proactive and franchise leadership teams that are reactive?

Speaker B: You saw this during COVID a lot. The franchise companies that are, uh, the people that were very proactive in the changes that they made instead of the reactive ones were ultimately the ones that thrived, not survived. They thrived. The other ones survived. Some of them did. Some of them Didn't.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But this is a big area. If you're proactive and you can see further down the road of how something that this change that you make today.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Or what's coming down the pipe, you can make changes now, you're going to start thriving. You're going to be ahead of the game. If you're just reacting, it's like a fire. The fire is already going, you're reacting to the fire. You have to put the fire out now. Well, if you know that there's a high probability of the fire starting, you can take measures to make sure that the fire doesn't start. It's, it's kind of the same.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which you uh, know and what we, even, even before we, we started really specializing in the franchise space, you know, we've been implementing CRM systems for, for mid market companies and all kinds of industries. And you know one of the, and and we see this all this is not just, this is not only in the franchising space. Right. That you see you know, different, different flavors of leadership teams.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: You know some of them are more proactive and others that are more reactive. But the, the one thing that often comes down to is which is, which leans more on the, on the reactive side is. Is leadership teams that are that um, the, the pain of change has to, has to be, has to be less than the pain with that what that they're going to endure if they don't change. Right. And, and, and that's often measured like you know, quantified financially. Um but it's interesting how they, they haven't actually quantified what it might cost them if they don't make the change sooner because you know, and it sort of touches on a few things we've already talked about which is if you suddenly you know, and of course the bigger the brand, you know, in other words if you're at 500 units it's going to be more important than if you're at uh, 200 units. And if at 200 is bigger than if you're at 40 units because if you have 200 units, for example, that and the Frank where the franchisees aren't necessarily. They don't feel supported and they feel frustrated every day that they don't have the tools to do what to do and run their business profitably, that's going to be, that's going to be very painful. Right. Whereas if you, if you were able to fix this before you got to that point, then not only would it not to your Point, not only would it be more frictionless, but these franchisees would all be thriving and therefore the whole network would be thriving. So what do you think it is that is not happening? That they're not quantifying the potential pain of not building these systems sooner that'll help everybody grow more easily once the new system is in place?

Speaker B: What do I. I'm sorry, so what do I. What do I think? What was the question in there? I missed that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I was thinking too much about what you were saying.

Speaker A: Yeah. So what, like, what are they missing as far as doing the calculation of, like, you know, if we don't make this change, it could, you know, they don't. They don't. They're not quantifying, like, all the help that they're going to have to provide with time that they don't have because they haven't yet hired the people to support the franchisees and that the whole thing is just extremely painful. Right. Of like, where you have franchisees contacting corporate every single day saying, you know, I'm not getting the support that I need. This is not working. That's not working. You know, you're not giving me the data that I need because the system is. The system isn't working. Why, why does a, uh, you know, how. Why aren't they able to quantify that at the corporate level? The. Because the cost of putting a system in place to make that pain go away is not that great compared to the pain that they're enduring every day having to deal with unhappy franchisees. Not to mention the fact that they won't be able to sell any more units if that's the state of the brand.

Speaker B: Yeah. So why, uh, would they not do that? So I think they're very focused. I mean, everybody's going to be, again, a little bit different on this topic, but I think that they are very focused elsewhere. Their mind is depending on the role. Let's say my mind, it would be on growth. I'm worried about bringing on new franchisees. That's my whole mindset. Not me personally, but that's my role. The friend of. I, um, am and even a lot of leaders. That's the whole way that they, you know, everything is around franchisees growing. They're. Yeah, it's all framed up. Well, what about the franchisees we've already got, you know, and how happy they are and all of that? They don't see that. If you keep those guys happy, that whole organization improves and grows, including Fran Dev. The happier the franchisees you already have. The better it is, the easier it is to get more franchisees, those sorts of things. So maybe not focusing on the right areas and getting too focused on your own little box, that's another area. So people do tend to stay in their box. Like, this is my world. Here's my blinders. I'm going to only look at whatever my my world is, and I'm not gonna under. I'm not gonna see how if I make this shift, it's going to affect everything else. I think that's a huge thing. I think that adoptions hu. Like, you know, uh, they do worry about time and effort to put into launching a new, like, system of some sort, some technology system. Yeah. And not understand that, yes, today, tomorrow, and then, you know, a couple of weeks or how long it is to roll out the system. New system is going to be painful. But that pain is now going to quantify into all this time and effort. I'm saving, my team is saving. And also it's going to help my franchisees in the case of a franchisor. And how are they going to become more profitable? How are they going to become more efficient, and how are they going to scale the business better? I don't know. Why don't they look like that? I think it's a variety of reasons that that holds them back from that.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I was just thinking, like, if you kept sort of going down that value chain that you were kind of thinking through there, you know, if they did all that, uh, it, you know, to your. To the point you made earlier, it would help the Fran Dev team too, because as soon as they have, you know, happy existing franchisees, it's going to be so much easier for them to sell, you know, additional units because they're going to be, you know, getting referrals and all the other things. And when a new franchisee is interviewing and existing franchisees, they're going to be getting good feedback versus. Yeah, this might not be the one for you to invest in. So again, it's. Everything seems to come back down. If you're measuring how to make your existing franchisees successful, the rising tide sort of floats all boats. Sally. Okay, so as we wrap up here, what is one more word of advice that you'd like to leave our listeners with? Again, from your, your 30 years of franchise perspective and where you see things going forward, what is the advice you would have?

Speaker B: I think that if I could tell it kind of as a twofold piece of advice, first slow down to understand whatever it is that you're dealing with, whether it's implementing a new software system, um, whatever it is. This could be used in so many different ways. First, slow down to understand. Then you listen to understand as well. So I want to listen. I want to gather data. I want to understand what I'm fully seeing. Once I do both of those things, I think gathering that information, then I can make a thoughtful decision about where I'm going next. Whether it's changing the direction of my franchise company implementing a new software system, how it allows those really thoughtful pause. Allows you to tap into your gut. And we all have gut feelings that if we were to pay attention to them, would lead us down the right path. And so I would say, number one advice for today.

Speaker A: Yes. Now, I think that's really good advice because I think. Because I think one of the other great things that happens when you. When you pause is you reflect on what you've already achieved. And whereas, you know, too many of us get caught up on. On where we're going and we forget about what we've already achieved. But when you look back during that pause and reflect on what you've achieved, that often gives you the answers and the confidence to where you're going.

Speaker B: True. Yeah. That's great. That's a great point.

Speaker A: Yes. Sally, thank you so much. It's been. Been really good to have you on. And, um, I'll be watching. I know this. It could take. Could take a few months still, but I really look forward to seeing your book come out next year. And of course, I look forward to seeing where you land here soon once you find the right fit.

Speaker B: All right, appreciate it, and thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Speaker A: Thanks, Ellie.