Franchise Smarter: Systems, Tech, and the Royalty Revenue Mindset | Patti Rother

Brought to you by our friends at ClientTether – making follow-up, automation, and sales acceleration easier than ever. Thanks for sponsoring today’s episode!

In this jam-packed episode of The Advisory Board Podcast, host Dave Hansen welcomes the one and only Patti Rother—franchise development powerhouse, operator-at-heart, and founder of Root and Rise Franchise Development. With 18+ years of experience across brands like Panera, Blink Fitness, Scent Hound, and Garbanzo, Patti is redefining how smart brands scale—efficiently and sustainably.

🚫 Scaling Gone Wrong: The Pitfalls
Patti kicks things off by challenging the default mindset of "sell more units = scale." Instead, she advocates for intentional growth, built on robust operations, regional focus, and financial foresight. Her message? If your support systems aren't in place, you're not scaling—you're bloating.

She warns against:
Relying on franchise sales to fund ops (red flag 🚩).

High sold-not-open ratios, which kill validation.

Skipping backend readiness just to chase growth metrics.

Signing franchisees who aren’t fit to operate—or worse, never open.

⚙️ Build the Machine Before You Run It
Patti lays out a better path: build for where you're going, not where you are. From real estate to tech stack to operations playbooks, think 30-units ahead—even if you’re only at 3.
Her mantra: “Happy, open, profitable franchisees solve everything.” It’s the kind of advice you wish more brands followed.

💡 Tech & AI: The Silent Workhorse
As a self-professed "tech nerd" with AI developers on speed dial, Patti shares how automation, workflows, and smart CRMs can multiply your team without hiring.
Use automation to follow up with value—not just “checking in.”

Curate the discovery process for candidates with intentional content.

Stop letting six-figure video assets collect dust—use them to tell your story.

Franchise ops? Same playbook:
Create SOPs, organize them smartly in Google Drive first, then migrate to LMS later.

Use Looms, avatars, and mass video to teach, support, and engage.

Build for training, not just telling.

🧠 The Patti Mindset: People First, Always
Underneath it all, Patti’s heart is in operations. She believes in making systems serve humans—not the other way around. Give people bandwidth, and you unlock innovation. Burn them out, and you lose your best asset.

From chasing the no in FranDev to regional rings of growth to royalty self-sufficiency as the true north, Patti drops a masterclass in thoughtful franchising—with just the right mix of experience, wit, and tough love.

🎧 Listen now and learn how to grow your brand without breaking it—courtesy of one of the most trusted minds in the franchise space.

📍 Find Patti on LinkedIn (Patti Rother) or at franchise.dev to connect or collaborate.
And don’t forget to check out our sponsor ClientTether—for those who want their follow-up to actually follow through.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guys, I want to welcome you to another episode of
the Advisory Board podcast where we bring in the brightest
and the best brains from franchising to you so that
you can learn from them how to grow a sustainable
brand that will last. And I've got with me Patti Rother.
You've probably met her, and if not, shame on you.
But she's phenomenal and there's a lot I want to
share with you about her. As we introduce her, We're

(00:22):
going to be talking today a little bit about like
how do you scale a brand without burnout and blowed?
What are some tools and tricks and things you can
do that will help you create scale and accelerate scale.
We might talk about AI. You never know, you know,
with Patty, it's kind of hard not to. But Patty
has been around in the industry eighteen plus years now.
She's been with many organizations that are known and respected.

(00:44):
She's actually just started her own brand. It's called Root
and Rise Franchise Development. Now I'm going to give her
a chance to tell you more about that, but I'll
just say this, Patty's been leading or had senior roles
in a ton of brands that you know, Noodles, and Co,
Garbanzo Panera Scent, how Blink Fitness, Frios, Gourmet Pop. So

(01:04):
I mean she she's got the type of experience that
a lot of emerging and growing brands really want to
tap into, which is I think, well, well, I'll let
her tell her story about why she founded him, but
I think I think you'll find she's got some great
insights in that area in the industry. She also spent
a lot of time serving and helping toplift up other people.
She's the vice chair of the IFA's Pride Franchise Leadership Council.
She's on the Women's Franchise Committee. But now for the

(01:28):
fun stuff. She was just posting and sharing about her
her personal life a little bit, but been married for
seventeen years, her wife and three kids. All they live
in Colorado. You might not know this, but she's a
bit of a witch doctor and like an herbalist and
just like a nerd of she's like a closet gardening
and landscaping junkie and influencers. So if you guys are

(01:49):
into that kind of stuff, we spent probably too much
time before this episode talking about that together. So anyway,
we love Patty Patti thanks for being here and tell
us a little bit more about what you're working on
right now before we just been to the topic.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, thanks so much. I'm happy to be here and
it was fun to just chat already. I'm excited about
what we're doing. I'm essentially building a business where we
can step in as your fractional chief development officer and
help oversee sales, real estate, construction and design, and really
just help brands solve the problem that sometimes is franchise

(02:23):
development as a whole, whether that be bottlenecks in getting
people over the finish line to become new franchisees or
then getting those people open and operating and successful. I
am bolstering that with a lot of technology because what
I have found over the years is oftentimes there is
a bigger issue in the lack of systems or technology

(02:46):
support behind the brand of efforts, and so often I
find myself fixing tech stacts before I can really do
the fun work of the franchise development or construction real
estate piece. So what I justcid to do is to
bring in some incredible tech folks and AI developers directly
to help me bring that level of expertise to the

(03:09):
brands that I work with, So you benefit both from
kind of my expertise and development, but also a lot
of tech support behind me to make me wildly efficient
and also hopefully make your brand and your tech stack
more efficient.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
So I'm excited about what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, well, I love it. And guys, we'll share a
little bit more at the end about how to get
in touch with Patty if you have questions, But bear
in mind you want someone like Patty in your corner,
especially if you're a growing brand, or you're a lot
of brands right now they're like ill leave, volumes are down,
we're kind of plateauing, or we're backsliding. We're not growing
the way we thought we would. It hasn't been the

(03:44):
easiest start for the year for most people, and we
could explain that away one hundred different ways, but the
reality is, if you feel like you're stuck in that space,
then you probably want to give Pettia call. And she's
also the type of person that would sit down with
you and talk to you and give you some advice
even if she's not going to transact with you. It's
one reason why I wanted her to come join me
on the show because I trust her that way. So

(04:06):
glad you're here with us, and let's dive into the
topic a little bit. So a lot of folks struggle
to create scale, or they scale by burning themselves out,
or they bloat their teams, and there are all these
bad ways people scale. Do you mind sharing some of
your insights, like maybe start with lessons you've seen in
the industry and and how you'd recommend people start to

(04:29):
think about scale a little differently.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, I mean I think even just starting with scale,
what does that actually mean? I think so many brands
fall into the trap of selling units is the way
to scale. If I can just sell more, then that's
gonna kind of launch this whole process and solve a
lot of the issues. I really think it's a both
and scenario. Being well capitalized as part of that and

(04:56):
not having to rely on unit sales as your means
of revenue to then build the systems of support you
need in order to get them open and operating and
frankly successful. But it really is about thinking about that
foundation to support where you want to be right, Like,
start building it now before you need it at scale.

(05:18):
So that's like your legal infrastructure it's your operations and.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Support for franchise owners.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
You want to get people open as quickly as possible,
profitable as quickly as possible, and happy, open, happy, profitable
franchisease will fix everything ahead of the line in terms
of sales and real estate, all of that. So if
you can build the foundation of support and be thinking

(05:46):
as if you're a larger brand and build the system
you need before you need it, that is such a
game changing piece for brands that are kind of in
it right now. I also think so many brands because
they're focusing on this selling and putting a lot of
effort in the lot of their budget toward that one
piece where they miss is the operations and opening piece.

(06:12):
So what I've walked into and helped a lot of
brands where they get to a certain open and operating
point like.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
Seven, ten, twelve, But validation, which.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Is not something they had a factor in when they
were full selling, is now the biggest barrier to growth
future growth because what they did was they focus so
much on the front end they forgot about the back end,
and now they have franchise owners that may be struggling
or are unhappy or maybe not just producing the revenue
that they thought they would be by now, and that'll

(06:44):
kill your sales pipeline really quickly.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
We all know this to be true.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
But even as consumers like I can read fifty positive
reviews and read three negative ones where I'm like, hmm,
I don't know, is this a place I want to eat?

Speaker 3 (06:57):
Is this a product I want to buy?

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Like, our brands are literally wired to believe the negative
thing over the positive thing. So they could talk to
five amazing, happy franchise owners and two bad ones who
are just going to say things that maybe don't validate
what you've been telling them, and that messes up.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
A lot for your sales team.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
So even just thinking about the systems of support to
build the machine you need in order to be a
brand at thirty locations open, fifty locations open, and having
the foresight to do that ahead of time.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, and can we talk about order here? Because I
think most brands, well not most, but a lot of them,
especially emerging brands that I talked to, they come off
of this mindset of I just spent all this money
right to become a franchise, and I've got to start
getting some money back on you to start selling units,
and they're kind of primed to think that way. It

(07:54):
depends on which channel they come through right to become
a franchise. But should they be building the back end
ops first or should they start selling franchises first? Which
comes first?

Speaker 2 (08:08):
The chicken or like exactly what I was going to say,
it's a chicken in the egg scenario. For some folks,
they are might have chosen to franchise too early, meaning
that if you need to, if you cannot build what
you need in order to get them open and operating
without selling and using that revenue to help build, you

(08:29):
might have just started and kind of launched into it
a bit too early, in my opinion. I also think
there is a scenario where if you're very intentional about
who you're selling to, the regions you're selling in, and
you can be really disciplined about that, there is absolutely

(08:50):
a way to grow intentionally a little bit like a
like concentric circles from where your base might be, so
that that support that's needed is in flying people across
country and isn't figuring out supply chain and a part
of the country that maybe you weren't ready to start
serving with whatever product it is that you're pushing. That
allows you to be really intentional and strategic about what

(09:13):
you need in order to get the moment and operating,
but obviously you got to get the sales going to
offset the potential cost over here, there is a way
to do it both and with intentionality. And I am
so one of those Frando of people that like, if

(09:34):
I'm putting a marketing dollar behind a potential lead, it
better be exactly the person I would want to sell. Like,
I'm fine with people coming across organically or you know,
through different vehicles on their own, But if I'm putting
a dollar behind somebody, I want it to be in
a market where we're available, a market that we think
would make a great spot and a successful location. I

(09:57):
wanted to be somebody with the background that I would
want them to have, or transferable skills that I would
want them to have, and niche down that marketing audience
so much so that you're being really intentional with your
marketing spend and your dollars even deciding like if you're
going to use consultants and broker groups, potentially letting them

(10:17):
know exactly who it is you're going after and only
those people, so that you can even make the most
out of those relationships as well. And again, like I'm
happy to pay a commission on a lead that I
otherwise wouldn't have ever had, but be really intentional about
kind of who you're going after so that you're not
throwing a ton of money at trying to sell that
you would otherwise be spending and building the infrastructure to

(10:40):
get them open and operating as quickly as possible and
with as much revenue as possible.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
Right, Like that's the game over here, I.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Think actually I just posted about this recently, but like
the game is in franchisees, the game is royalty and
you will not ever get to fifty units, one hundred units,
whatever goal you have kind of pie in the sky
if you're not thinking about royalty revenue, that is the
goal is. That's how you're going to run your business
and how you're going to be successful. You have to
have open and operating locations in order to do that.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Well, sustainability, right, and boy, we got it. We got
to backtrack and cover a couple of these things you've Bret,
You've dropped on everyone today because you almost glaze over them, Like, yeah,
of course, Like moving through but a lot of people
don't get what you're saying, and the at least they're
not modeling it. But the whole idea like royalty independence
or royalty self sufficiency is the goal, right, that is

(11:31):
the goal. And if you can figure out a formula
that gets you to that so you can scale while
you're staying royalty self sufficient, you've got yourself a highly
sustainable franchise that will grow into the sunset, right until
somebody comes and writes a big check or you pass
it on to the next generation, because it's a legacy
business for you, right, Like that's the wind. And I
know brands that at eleven units or or fewer are

(11:53):
royalty self sufficient. And I know some that have been
in the in the hundreds two hundred plus and they're
living off a franchise fees.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Right.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
It's nerve wracking right there. Yeah, And it also compromises integrity,
right at least it has the tendency to lean people
that way. If you're in a position where you have
to sell or die, then are you going to be
as selective as you need to be as you're bringing
people into the fold that will then help you with
what you talked about earlier. The validation fly will right

(12:23):
sometimes not sometimes And.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
By the way, the royalty self sufficiency number is going
to keep changing because hopefully as your unit count grows,
as locations are starting to open, you are also matching
that with additional headcount, right like you go from one
FBC to now two and then three because you have
the ability to spend more on the support that you're providing,

(12:47):
which again creates the value for that franchise and why
they're part of a franchase system instead of doing it.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
On their own.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
So it's all it's it's constantly like you're looking at
this metric and making sure that it's even right. The
franchise fee, the majority of that should be spent getting
them open and operating. It's that level of support and
training that you're providing to get them from franchise a
going and signing to grand opening. If so much of
it is going to the marketing spend and the commissions

(13:16):
and the payouts for everybody else, and you're left with
a very small portion to actually prepare that new owner
to get open, you're going to struggle because you're not
able to support them the way that they probably need
with a brand new business, which again kind of then
that's a snowball that of issues that continues down the line.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
Oh yeah, I think of it like an investment, right so,
and Runway so, and you're, you know, back in entrepreneurial seat.
So Runway is big, Like how much cash do I
have to to move the deal, move the business forward?
And how long can we float? And like in this
world of launching a franchise, that money is like the
seed fund, right Like, that's like the seed investment for

(13:58):
that brand to get them off the ground. And if
you need an fbc SO like a franchise business coach
to work with them for ninety days before they start
producing enough royalties to cover the cost of that person,
it might be six to nine months if you spent
eighty percent of that because you're working with an FSO
who was only working with brokers, and or your upside
down on it. I know some brands that have kind

(14:20):
of been sold to bankruptcy because they had negative cash
flow every time a unit got sold because they had
this major overhead with all these other partners and they
sold a ton of units, but they were going out
and getting two three four million dollar loans and financing
their growth and digging a deep hole, and you put
yourself in a position where the only option you have
is to sell at that point or make huge payments

(14:44):
and have no cash flow for three to five years
to get out of the hole. So it's tricky, it's
really tricky, but you got to go ahead.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Keep keeping an eye on that sold not open number
is so important too. Right in my experience, now, franchise
owners are coming in more educated than ever. There's just
so much information about franchising and so many incredible leaders
and people talking about it as an option for entrepreneurship
and why it makes sense. It is really easy to

(15:15):
get stuck in this boat of like, we've sold so
many look at how many we've sold. This brand is
so hot and people are so into it, and then
it's like ten open and operating. You're like what, like,
how do you have two hundreds sold and ten open?
Like that's not it's not the bragging piece that you

(15:35):
think it might be. Keeping that in that snow, especially
even internally as a franchise e, right, Like they're understanding
how many other folks are open and operating, because those
are the people that they can call and get advice
from and be like, how'd you figure out how to
get that many members in the month of May?

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Like, what's your secret? What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (15:54):
That's value to those people within the system too? And
if you can't get folks open and operating, that's a
huge issue you need to address. And it really does
go back to the system, right, like you need to
build the system to get them open before you're selling
a ton of units, because that's that's the key. The
opening is the key, not the sale. That was that
was honestly the easy part. The harder part is now

(16:17):
getting them open and operating, happy and profitable.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Well and and tell, and let's backtrack for a second.
You said that twice now, and I want that's one
of the things I really wanted to circle back to.
Why is that so important? And and the reason why
I ask is so many people like, well, I got
to go sell you unit, sell you units. And there
are all these organizations out there like we'll sell units,
will sell units, and some of them really can you know, Yeah,
And they don't give a dang about what happens after

(16:41):
they sell them. They just want to get They want
to collect their cash. And and then like, hey, good luck,
go get them tiger. But but they I had one
one is at a conference. There's a big conference, and
this group is up there bragging about how many units
they sell and but also how awful Snow is. And
then they flipped like no joke. The next slide was
I'm showing you a sample of a brand that they'd

(17:03):
worked with, and it showed how many they'd sold and
how many were open. And I was like, you were
just talking about how awful Snow is and you've like
a twenty percent open rate right.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
Now, right right terrible.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
So I think what's important to maybe back up to
is my career in franchising started in operations, so I
was in field operations. I worked for franchise owners first
in restaurants. So my brain is an operations brain. It's
not a sales development brain, which is really interesting and

(17:34):
unique kind of in my role too. It's only been
about ten years that I've been focusing just on like
the franchise sales and development side of the equation. And
when I finally made that choice, it was actually at Garbonzo.
They had two positions open.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
When I interviewed.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
There was a VP of sales and there was a
VP of ops, and they were like, choose one, which
one do you want to pursue because we don't we're
not going to have a both day and scenario like
I had had until that point. And sales was where
I just knew I had a ton to learn, like
I didn't. At that point, I felt like I could
kind of run a restaurant in my sleep, like it
was just I had figured it out, and sales I

(18:11):
just I still had so much that I wanted to
delve into and figure out and explore, and so I
chose the sales path and I kind of haven't looked
back since, but I think because of that operations brain,
I look at development more than just like initial lead
to close because and especially now that I'm involved more

(18:33):
on like the real estate and construction side of things
with many brands, and with many brands I'd worked with
in the past, I know how quickly sales can stop
in its tracks when validation is broken, Like it is
the number one thing that'll completely have you miss your goals.
And that's where everyone is making their money as well.

(18:56):
Right Like a franchise doesn't sign to be a franchise
to just hang out with this territory that they can
open units in that they're never going to open units in.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
Nobody goes into it thinking that.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
And you know, there's so many things that I consider
within the development pipeline and the process there that a
lot of salespeople probably aren't thinking about because I've been
on the receiving side of that. I've been the person
coaching that franchise owner who like maybe had no transferable
skills to bring to the table to run a restaurant, right,

(19:29):
And you're like, who thought this was a good person
to sell a restaurant to? Like, poor guy has no idea,
Like how do any of this works? So even just
the lens that I'm looking at when I think about
franchise development is wildly different. And I think too, like
the number of locations you sell someone you know, Like

(19:50):
as a salesperson, it's easy to be like, you could
open five, but in reality, like do they actually have
the cash and the runway to be opening five over
the course of the next years, Like is that a responsible, intentional, integrity,
full thing to do. Probably not, But sometimes the salespeople
aren't educated in kind of what it looks like on

(20:12):
the back end, like how does SBA blending work? And
how do they get the lending for the second location?
How long do they actually have to be open and
operating before a bank will be like cool, we can
add that as an asset instead of a nihliability to
then lend you the next challenge of cash.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
There's just so many things.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
That I think you just don't get exposure to if
you haven't been on the op side of things that
I bring to the table.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
That's just a little bit different.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, well, it's the end in mind, right, you have to. Yeah,
And when we were franchise zoners, we owned a couple
of territories of a fun brand and we did it
a little bit differently, but we were doing great. Actually,
I think fastest launch of anybody so far. But we've
sold in January and they've launched a bunch of new brands,

(20:57):
so maybe somebody else has hit that fast and hard.
But we were doing validation calls and there are several
people where like I, as a franchise franchise owner, I
would call the CEO and by hey, not with a
ten foot poll dude, I would not sell to this guy.
And also, like I've been enfranchising for a while, now,

(21:18):
like I've coached salespeople, and like most franchises, you really
need if it's especially a service brand, you've got to
have a sales oriented mindset or at least people's skills. Yeah,
to a restaurant must have people skills, Right, it's a
people business first and then second at least that's why
I hear a lot of people describe it. But yeah,
I was trying to prevent bad deals from going through

(21:39):
even because I knew. But a lot of people just
talk about how often their businesses and then go back
to work, and then somebody comes into the network that's
going to require ten times as much support and produce
half as much outcome, And that brings the whole opside
of the business now to a screenchain too, right.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
I mean, that's such a good point that you bring
up in something that is so important when you're thinking
about scale is the systems and the process and those
SOPs that you build have to be for a specific
type of potential owner, right, because if they have entrepreneurial experience,
if they've been franchises before, if they've been in the
restaurant industry before, what you need to give them is

(22:16):
wildly different. If you're having to teach them how to
read a P and L for the first time, if
you're having to teach them how to manage hourly workers
and like gen z ers and figure out how to
do that when they've been used to managing vps and
people with years and years of experience, wildly different scenarios,

(22:36):
and so that level of coaching and support and training
and everything that you have to write down is such
a bigger lift depending on who you're selling to, and
if you're small and you're scrappy and you only have
a little bit of capital to use on that support,
thinking about and being more intentional about who you're selling

(22:57):
to makes a huge difference, because if you don't have
to tell someone how to run a small business, if
that's just inherently coming with their experience, all you have
to teach them is how to do this very specific business,
you don't have to worry about all the other pieces
that come along with it. So it goes back to
that intentional nature of like the marketing dollar and where

(23:18):
you're building and why being so careful about that like
avatar persona, whatever you want to call it, because it
impacts so much more down the line where you're like,
oh my god, I don't I didn't realize we had
to have a training module on X, Y and Z
because none of these people know how to do this
very simple thing. It's really interesting to see kind of

(23:40):
what happens once once those folks become the open and
operating people, Like what comes to light in terms of
the support needed and the training documents that maybe you
didn't think we're needed, or now an asset that needs
to be built.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
And it's okay, right, okay, patio is like there will
still be operating docs, a sh'll have to help somebody
create after the fact. There's there's no way around that.
But if you're and you said this earlier, so I
want to come back to it, especially in the food
industry or brick and mortar or or any frankly, any franchise,
I think of it like the same way. Either, Like
Beijing has these these concentric circles, and that's how they

(24:16):
define neighborhoods, and like if you're in the first one,
that's like all the hyper hyper successful wealthy people's ring too,
like extremely successful wealthy people, and the further out ring
seven is like, okay, now I'm getting into like the
rough neighborhoods. It's not beautiful out here anymore. But like
you as a franchise or you have to create those
those rings on a map. And I usually tell people

(24:36):
five mile five hours in the car max, Like you
don't you don't want to sell anything outside of that,
because you've got to be able to go hold hands
and you got to do ride alongs, and you got
to help them build the business. If it's like a
home service business, you got to show up and help
estimate offence. Man like someone's got to. And if you're
if you start selling people in Anchorage, Alaska and Honolulu
and Tallahassee, Florida, you're gonna live on a plane and

(25:00):
and you can't sell any more units or you got
to go hire someone earlier. But like you said, if
you're deliberate about my strategy geographically as well as demographically psychographically, right,
like you create these rings that have to overlap, and
that also helps your marketing get a little smarter. Right.
I mean, Patty's not she she knows because she's been there.
But like once you define that properly and you hit

(25:21):
that locale that region properly, I think simplify so much,
and not just the sales, but also and then the
support and ops that follow well.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
And it also enables your sales team understand when to
say no, which is a really really important skill. Like
I tell people all the time, I chase the no,
like I'm not chasing the yes.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
I'm chasing the no.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Because it helps me get through and stop spending time
with people who may not ever buy.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
But if you know exactly who you're selling to and
what skills they need to have and where they.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Need to be located, it's so much easier to then
just say like, hey, not right now, we'll keep in
our system, we'll contact you down the line when that
market opens up, or or you know what, I don't
know that you have the skill set that we want
for our own franchisees this early in the game, And
it helps you be so.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Discipline and it's such a gift to your sales.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Team to be able to be like, say no more
than yes, and say yes to these really incredible people
who are going to help us be successful in the
long run. It takes discipline. It's really hard to say
no when someone's willing to write a check for a
lot of money which will help you grow. But it's
such an important skill, especially early on in the game,
because those first few groups of franchise owners are going

(26:36):
to be so important to the future growth, like their success,
their input, their innovation. They're you know, calling you and
saying I just spoke to somebody that I don't think
you should sign and being valuable in that way. As
you grow and skilled the own your own business, that's
huge and if you sign the right people, they can
be a massive asset to your growth.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah. I agree. It's the flywheel, right I describe well,
well other people have to said this before me, but
the initial ten or however many it is, five to ten,
they're the flywell for your real successful franchise development. They
also create the cash flow through successful business operations that
give you the money to improve your marketing and add
the more support people. So you really have to think

(27:17):
of them as your most important asset. You can't do
anything if the first ten are struggling.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, and they're really the ones who are selling the
next ten twenty two like they're consider them on your
sales team because they can either help you be successful
or not, and it's mostly up to you.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Whether that's the case.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, I totally agree, Patty. So we've talked a lot
about trying to help people be more efficient in the
way they approach this. What are some of the i mean,
the tricks of the trade things that you found help
you create scale. As you're helping people that work on
a FRANDEV and the franchise operations, how do people get
to that point where they can really do it quickly
and smoothly.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, I mean so much of it for me has
revolved or on technology and just utilizing technology the way
that it's meant to be utilized. I've walked into so
many brands, whether it was in a C suite level
role or you know, as a consultant, you know, fractionally,
where they have.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
An incredible tech stack.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
They have all the tools, they're just not utilizing them
well or even capitalizing on what they have. I've also
walked into so many brands where there's a ton of
like repetition or duplicate.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
Things that they're using.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
In terms of technology, like you already have g Suite,
but you're paying.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
For Zoom, Like why are you paying for Zoom? You
have Google Mates, it's already there, and you're paying for it.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Silly things that actually will add up pretty quickly when
you're trying to scale efficiently and making sure that your
dollars are all being spent wisely and obviously AI, but
it before AI even gets involved, Like if you don't
know where your system is broken, if you don't know
where the efficiencies can be found because your process is

(29:02):
so buttoned up and your systems are so buttoned up
and your tech is doing exactly what you need it
to do. Bringing in AI is not actually going to
fix anything. You need to know where to insert it
to make you faster and better and more efficient. But
so many brands are like skipping the hard part and
the not sexy part of making sure that their systems
are set up correctly and they're using their tech stack

(29:24):
really well.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
To then be able to insert AI.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
But for me, like the reason I have become such
an expert and a lot of like tech things is
because it has the ability to make my job so
much better, easier, faster when the tech is working for
me and not against me. And in so many cases
I've walked in and like they have a great CRM,
they're just scratching the surface on how to be using it,

(29:50):
Like they don't have workflow set up, they don't have template,
an email set up, they don't you know, there's no automation,
there's no you know, ongoing pinging and the follow up
that's needed in Frian dev. That can seem so exhausting
when you're like checking in on that application again, it's
me again checking in on that application.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
Were you able to do that application?

Speaker 2 (30:10):
If you can get automated and have really incredible templates
that follow up with people that aren't just like a
one off email that you're sending every single time, not
only can you hit more people, but you're telling a
better story, Like hey, while you're working on that application,
I figured watching this video would be super helpful. It
was taken at our last conference of two of our
amazing franchise owners. Like, that's a great follow up for

(30:32):
somebody where you're waiting on their application and maybe something
that'll get them to move, whereas just me personally reaching
out every time probably isn't the most effective way to
be doing it. And so yeah, for me, tech has
been everything. It's it's something I'm super passionate about, obviously,
but it's honestly been what has probably positioned me in

(30:53):
a bit of a different category in franchise development too,
and just made me really successful in that space because
I know how to use the technology to make me
better and to multiply me, which is really important.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
Right, Like I've.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Often been the FRANDV team of one, and it seems
like I might have ten people on my team because
I'm just utilizing technology the right way.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
Oh yeah, well you're preaching to the choir. Carry on.
I totally support it. And you mentioned two aspects I
want to highlight of effective franchise development. Then I want
to flip the script and then apply the same question
to the op side. And that's the part I think
most people don't talk about as much because, you know,
friand DEV. Everyone's like, oh, hey, you got automate follow up,

(31:34):
you got a text, call, email, blah blah blah. I
have those conversations, you know, forty hours fifty hours a week.
But the thing that you said is value, Like you're
really saying like you've got to give value with every touch,
And I just want to highlight that. It's a tacked
to a very tactical thing that she said, but man,
it's important. Some people are. I've actually told I told
somebody wants I will fire you if I ever see

(31:56):
an email as as just following up like that is
the most useless on the planet. It makes you an
unprofessional salesperson. You should always say, hey, Steve, I've had
a lot of people who had questions about this. I
thought you might find this useful. Hey, while you're working
on that application. Nudge right, nuge, here's something that from
like that was such a brilliant way to approach it.
But I just wanted to highlight that approach that I

(32:18):
don't see a lot of people doing very effectively, which
is lead with value, Lead with value, give, give, then
take right, and a lot of people just don't do
it that way. So thank you. I thought it was
a great insight.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
Yeah, and I think too.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
There's just I run into so many situations where there
are so many assets. There's so many podcasts, there's so
many like press releases, there's so many incredible stories. There's
like a folder full of videos that nobody's ever utilized
or edited or they've spent.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
Hundreds of thousands of dollars on them.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Then they're just sitting there and I'm like, why aren't
we using these incredible assets to tell the story. They
want to hear it from more than just the salesperson.
They want to get in information along the way. And
I would rather be curating that delivery of information based
on where they are in their deal stages than having
them just like randomly search the Internet or use AI

(33:12):
or you know, scope things out on LinkedIn, whatever they
might be doing. I want to curate that path for them,
Like why wouldn't you take advantage of that?

Speaker 3 (33:20):
And technology is how you do it. You just set
it up and off it goes.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
And in every stage they're getting all of these lovely
little pings that again are offering just as much as
they're asking, right, like offering more information, offering more education,
as much as you're following up on the last task
you sent them.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Oh man, yeah, Like a friend of the sales process
sometimes is like you want to invite people. They're hungry, right,
they want to come over for dinner, So you invite
them over to your house for dinner and you're like, hey,
we're seeing at the table eating. The food's in the kitchen.
Go get some food, and like you make them work
for it and go try to hunt it and find
it and they come out with like crackers and peanut
butter and you're eating the filet migno and like it's
you've got to take them into the kitchen. You've got

(33:59):
to there were the frees. You got to prepare it
for them, you got to hand it to them, you
got to serve it up, and like you really have
to flip the script and be the servant and give
them everything you think they need along the way. Like
the top five questions or reasons why people don't buy
from you and the top five reasons they do. Each
one of those is a separate follow up touch in
your sequence period, Like it's it's easy, but people don't

(34:21):
do it. And these assets that are sitting in their
pantry right then, no one's eating, Like video is keing
right now? You want to triple your email engagement video
easy answer, And that's the same on fran deevs is
on unit operations like right now, switch now, if you
don't mind, Patty, let's wrap up with some ideas on
franchise operations. How do you apply the same nurturing automation

(34:42):
tools to franchise operations to create scale and elevation There
where a lot of people aren't right now.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, I mean I think leaning on technology again there
is so important and if you're able to, there are
ways to do the things in a way that's really
scrappy and you know, can can save you a ton
of money. You don't have to launch a learning management
system or LMS like day one when you're an emerging franchise.
It's just not necessary, right, But thinking about when and

(35:11):
if we're big enough to have a learning management system,
what's the training paths we would put them on.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
Let's put them all in.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Folders and make sure that, like the real estate folder
in my Google Drive is really organized, and I've got
everything that they need, and we're going to do video
calls and we're going to have a schedule and we're
going to have a spreadsheet that tracks all of it.
But that when you're ready to switch that over, you've
kind of worked out exactly what it'll look like.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
So the building of the LMS.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Is so much easier, it's more cost efficient because you've
already built the system. It just lived in a simpler
place and now you're up up leveling and kind of
building out a really cool LMS tool.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
I tell ops people all the.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
Time, like AI video and making yourself an avatar and
delivering information where you know, whether it.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Be a loom video where you're walking them.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Through whatever it is, whatever tool they have to learn,
but also just delivering mass messages like don't make everything
a novel of an email, Like send a video for
a change.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
Guess what it might.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Be viewed more than your massive email and.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
There's a way to track it differently.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
So there's so much in operations where delivering the information,
validating that it's been seen, read, understood, and then you know,
making sure that then it's been implemented in some way.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
That's that's really been the key for me.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
And I can tell you when I was in kind
of the franchise seat and in the operations view, we
were just surviving the day, right like at the end
of the day, like you're serving the food, you're taking
care of the customers, like that marketing promotion that you
think is really really cool, Like we're just trying to survive.

(36:58):
I remember at Panera bread like one of the most
annoying things that we would have to do in operations
was when they would constantly change, like the pop in
the restaurant, so they would like send you the new
banner that hangs above the cash register, they'd send you
the new panels for like all over the restaurant.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
You'd have to like.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Pull down that display and like put the new one up,
and then you'd have to throw all of the old
stuff into the dumpster and make sure that everything was
set up perfectly. There was like I kiel like displays
that you have to like sort how to put together,
and all of us would stay way late after close
trying to set up all this freaking pop. They would
do it like what felt like once a month, and

(37:36):
constantly in my head as an operator was like this
is such a waste of labor, like that I need
four people to stay after hours, pay them overtime to
just like change out the frickin' banner. I don't think
it makes that much of a difference in terms of
like where people are spending their money. But sometimes the
things that we think about at like the exact level
that we're like this is gonna be so great, it's

(37:57):
going to make such a big difference, or franchise owners
are gonna be so stoked about it, Like, actually, are
not the things that are moving the needle. I think
using technology and AI in the places where automation pushing
of information is really valuable, where putting like the humans

(38:18):
in the human seats out in the field with your
franchise owners shoulder to shoulder in the field, you know,
video calls that are really supportive and organized and have
follow ups and check ins and all kinds of things
to help your ops teams stay on point is really important.
I think too many people are like pushing the wrong
things and focused on the wrong things and not just

(38:41):
listening to their franchise owners and like the operators of
their locations, like what actually would be helpful because we
have a ton of ideas, but we're not the ones
out there, you know, getting quotes on the fence and
serving that bowl of noodles and not understanding that that
new piece of kitchen equipment that we thought was amazing
in our test kitchen actually doesn't work when it lives

(39:03):
in the true restaurant.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
So yeah, there's so much.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
That you can do with tech and AI on the
off side that I get excited about that I don't
get to play with nearly as much because I'm not
in that role anymore.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
But I Yeah, there's a ton to be done there.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, I agree. No, anytime there's big there's data to analyze,
anytime there's there's follow up and dialogue, anytime there's something
creative that needs to be created, content needs to be written.
There are so many ways you can leverage AA right
now without any without even getting a real expensive tool.
That's kind of a no brainer. Did you know Monica
Roth Gerry, Yeah, of course, you said almost verbatim something

(39:39):
she said on my podcast like six months ago. She's like,
I remember some of these freaking banners and signs and
like thinking how worthless this is. Yeah, Sometimes I think
the if we have the right efficiencies set up, if
we have the right processes, is that it I for reason,
the right tools to create back office home office bandwidth
so that we can do more than just sometimes you

(40:01):
know how it is in the franchise or office, it's
just as frenetic right like, where there's just not time
to stop and think, and there's also time to listen.
And that's the thing that I keep seeing over and
over again is the brands that have created enough efficiency,
like you've been talking about this whole time on the
frand of and on the unit like launch and Franchise
Operations FBR side of things like if if our FBC side,

(40:22):
if you're on if you've done a good enough job
creating efficiency there you have enough time to be to
be deliberate and to listen and to hear what's going
on in the market, and to spend time with your
franchise owners in a way that you can. Then, I mean,
your biggest asset isn't the business model. It's the brilliant
minds that you've brought in to operate the business model

(40:42):
that are going to make it better in my opinion,
So yeah, give us a couple of if you don't mind,
maybe rip on that concept for a minute, and let's
wrap up on that of how can what's the net
result right the desired state if you do this these
things and build efficiencies, what does it give the brand
in the end?

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Yeah, I mean, I think, honestly, like I think about
turnover a lot, Like I remember just even being in operations,
the most stressful thing was when people would leave. You
spend all this time training them and onboarding them and
they would walk away. Franchise oors face the same thing
at their home office when you spend so much time

(41:19):
getting someone kind of up and running, and then for
whatever reason, they leave because their job is harder than
they thought, they have to do too much manual work.
All they do is go on back to back calls
and they don't even have time to pee. The kind
of balance that is now needed for people to have
kind of this ability to go to work.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
And leave work where it was.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
And you know the fact that all of us are
on all of the time because our phone gives people
access to us at all hours. There's a piece that
comes when you have systems built, and you have automations built,
and you have things that are happening despite the humans
having to push the button to do the thing that
needs to happen. That gives your team freedom to be

(42:06):
able to focus on the things that they're really passionate about,
that they do really incredibly well that you want them
spending their time and energy on. That also lets them
have a life like I can be doing this podcast
and there is a ton of stuff happening right now
in my work world that doesn't need me to physically
be pushing send on an email or manually updating the

(42:26):
thing that needs updating, and I can be chill and
I can focus on you and not worry about you know,
all of this stuff happening in the background with multiple
clients and just people needing me. Your team deserves the
same right, So I constantly with my operator mindset, I'm
always looking at like how do we just make the
system better? Like how do we just build the machine
and let the machine run, and then put my people

(42:49):
in the place where they're most valuable, where they're pushing
the needle on the way that I want them to
push and not spinning their wheels like in an email
inbox or on like efficient calls where no work is
being done, but it seems really busy all the time.
Like that's not what I want to be seeing for
any of the brands that I work with. But even

(43:10):
you know, when I was leading brands or in some
of those c suite positions like my own team, being
like make a frickin video and send that to everybody.
You don't have to individually call every single franchise you
to deliver that piece of information, Like that is not
a thing you should be spending your time on, or
that's not like the value I need you to bring
bringing to the table, And it's so true what you

(43:31):
mentioned already, which is like, you want everyone's brilliant brain
coming and offering brilliant solutions and innovations and ways to
do things better. When the human brain is bogged down
by minutia and pushing papers and tasks, you are losing
the most valuable side of the humans around you, whether
it be your own team, your franchise owners, potential franchise owners.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
Like all of that.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
I want someone to come to the table and have
enough freedom and margin in their day to still have
that creative, innovative, brilliant brain like coming to us with
ideas constantly.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
You don't have to pursue them all, you don't have
to do all the things.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
It's just when you give people the margin, specifically because
you've added so much efficiency to their day, you're ultimately
getting a better human who will most likely stay longer
with you because the culture that you've built is like, hey,
if we can do that automatically for you, Like why
are you? I tell my team all the time, I'm

(44:34):
both I have two clients. I manage teams on both sides.
My job is to remove barriers, Like that is it?

Speaker 3 (44:42):
That is my job.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Tell me where you're stuck, tell me where you have
something that feels really manual or that's like a time
suck right now, and my job is to make that
go away, to give you back that time. That's what
I spend the majority of my time on. And I
think as leaders, if we're thinking about things that way
and thinking about technology that we bring on that way, like,

(45:04):
is this ultimately going to give my team backs the
time that they need to be really good at their job,
or is it just going to create more barriers because
the tech isn't going to work, or we're not going
to implement it the right way, or we didn't even
choose well on the partner we're bringing on because we
didn't know what questions to ask. Ultimately, I feel like, yeah,
that's the goal, is like you've built the machine, the
machine is working, everyone's happy, productive, and you know, my

(45:29):
FBR scores are off the charts in terms of highly
satisfied employees and franchisees. Like, that's the goal, right, It's
a scaling business that continues to scale.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
We don't have a crazy snow.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
We're opening operations efficiently and franchise owners are doing what
they imagined they should be doing when they signed up.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Yeah, rule number one right, make your franchise owners wildly successful,
and everything else tends to work itself out and yep, yeah,
it's talkingly simple, incredibly simple, but yet really hard. Yeah, totally,
You're awesome. Thanks, So I think we could go for
another hour. It's like picking brains diving deeper. I mean,
we didn't even really get to talk about ay I

(46:09):
as much, but you have a lot of good content
out there. I'll point people towards you if anyone wants
to reach out to you right now, because like I
would like to pick her brain more, I have a
snow problem, or I'd like to figure out how to
accelerate my friend of and balance it with operations. How
should they reach out to you?

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah, easiest way is probably to find me on LinkedIn.
Patti Rother patty with an I I think I'm one
of the few Patties and franchising.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
And then our website is really easy.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
It's it's franchise dot dev, so really easy to find
us there as well and set up an appointment if
you need to.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
But LinkedIn's probably the easiest way that people find me.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah, if you use post A couple of great things
in the last two days that I just saw this morning,
So yeah, you're easy to find. Thanks again, Patty, You're
for sharing some insights and I sure appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Thanks so much for having me Dave.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yeah,