Franchising Today Interview

: John Krukowski; Columns; 24 May 2017

Franchising Today Interview

Interview for Dummies

The new Franchise Management for Dummies helps make sense of the legal,

money, location and other issues a would-be franchisee must understand.

By John Krukowski

Franchising is attractive to many people who want to launch second careers or be their own bosses. What they quickly discover, however, is that there is much to learn about their new venture. Helping to make sense of it all, Franchise Management for Dummies was released May 1 by John Wiley & Sons.

We reached out to one of the authors to get her take on the state of today's franchise industry.

Publicity

Stand out in a crowd:

Create positive publicity for your franchise business and personal brand.

By Heather Ripley

“There's no such thing as bad publicity,” P.T. Barnum supposedly said. In today’s world of sudden social media infamy where one misstep can outrage hundreds of thousands, few business owners would believe that. Successful franchisors or franchisees are increasingly aware that their brands and reputations are just as important as any services they provide or products they sell.

Millennials

Why franchising might be the perfect career choice for millennials.

By Harriet Mills

When you picture a typical franchisee, you probably conjure the image of an established professional looking to break out of their corporate gig or a baby boomer staging a second act to create additional income as they approach retirement. For decades, these types of people, along with other individuals with the net worth to invest in their own business, were the ideal candidates to buy into a franchised system, but that’s started to change in recent years.

Franchise Success

Watch out!

The six mistakes that too many franchisees make and how to avoid them.

By Kyle Zagrodzky

I’ve been in the franchise world for a long time, and I continue to see new generations of franchisees make the same mistakes again and again. Despite the fact that they are smart and talented would-be entrepreneurs, sometimes franchisees repeat mistakes with the same regularity as Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Training

Why the franchising industry needs training more than ever, and how to deliver it.

By Matt Bingham

The franchising industry has been completely transformed over the decades. One of the most famous examples is the metamorphosis of McDonald’s: Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald’s in 1955 in Des Plaines, Ill., and now the franchise is a multibillion-dollar business with thousands of stores in more than 100 countries, with a large percentage of those stores owned by individual franchisees. Today the franchising community as a whole accounts for more than $800 billion in annual sales and makes up more than 40 percent of all retail sales in North America.