Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue III, 2012 | Page 70
By Kerry Pipes
Made For
B
line
On
urton W. Folsom uncovered
something revolutionary about
capitalism in 19th century America. And in his books, he debunks
commonly held views about the role of
capitalism in the social developments of the
Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age.
Nowhere does Folsom make his case
more clearly than in his 1998 book, Empire Builders: How Michigan Entrepreneurs
Helped Make America Great. In this book,
he wrote about a number of great business
leaders who made their state and nation
into a great economic power by the end
of the 1800s.
What does any of this have to do with
franchising? Plenty. Folsom’s understanding
of the critical importance of entrepreneurs
and how they affect their cultures helped
frame the development of EmpireBuilders.tv, Franchise Update Media
Group’s new online video series of interviews with successful multi-unit and multi-brand
franchisees.
“Folsom focused on a number of great business leaders
who, through their failures and
successes, made their state and
nation into a great economic
power by the end of the 19th
century,” says Therese Thilgen,
CEO of Franchise Update Media Group.
“The visionary entrepreneurs in the
book—John Jacob Astor, Herbert Dow,
and Will Kellogg—produced tens of thousands of jobs. They built up Michigan’s
economy when many of the early leaders of
the nation thought Michigan would never
amount to anything,” she says. “Then it hit
me that franchisors—and in particular the
multi-unit franchisees who have it all on
the line—are today’s Empire Builders.”
Thilgen says the goal of EmpireBuilders.tv is to showcase the lessons learned
and the personal stories of the multi-unit
66
Multi-Unit Franchisee Is s ue III, 2012
TV
Empire Builders
tell their stories in
new video series
franchisees who have taken huge risks, and
failed and overcome repeatedly—and show
the way to success for the rest of us. Thus
was born the idea to create EmpireBuilders.tv as a “three-dimensional extension”
of what Multi-Unit Franchisee magazine
has been doing in print with its profiles of
multi-unit operators since 2004.
The online videos are divided into
short segments focused on a specific topic
or question, such as why these individuals
chose franchising, what drives them, their
leadership philosophies, how they measure
growth, their biggest and smartest mistakes,
even what they do for fun.
Key franchising players such as Gary
Grace, T T
ed orres, Aziz Hashim, John Metz,
Ricky Warman, and Charles Smithgall
were some of the first to be interviewed.
Their stories are powerful, poignant, inspirational, and sometimes funny. Most
clock in at 2 or 3 minutes. They are nononsense, quick looks into the worlds of
these top operators.
Supercuts franchisee Gary Grace talks
about becoming a franchisee in 1980 with
a single salon. Over 31 years, he’s opened
135, beginning in southern California and
extending to New York and Hawaii.
John Metz discusses his first experience
with franchising, when he bought a Howard
Johnson’s property with a restaurant that
he planned to tear down. As he says in one
of the videos, “I learned that franchising
was a much better way to go than trying
to be independent.” Since then, he’s also
become a franchisor.
Aziz Hashim speaks candidly
about his procedures for evaluating potential new brands. “We
are always looking for brands that
meet our criteria. Every year we
do a very robust business plan
and decide which brands would
work for us. Then we go after
those brands, engage with those
brands, do more research with
those brands, and look for opportunities within those brands.”