For more than 20 years, I climbed the corporate ladder in a Fortune 50 company. I gained all the trappings of traditional American success. I had the VP title, the corner office, a salary of several hundred thousand dollars (with bonuses on top), and sat above hundreds of employees in the org chart. But I cashed in my retirement and walked away from it all to bet on myself as a franchisee.
Why in the world would I do that?
There were a number of reasons. Even as a VP, I had to ask permission to leave early for my kid’s soccer game. I once rescheduled a family vacation because my boss’s boss wanted a “quick alignment meeting” that turned into a 3-week project. I led campaigns that generated tens of millions in profits for the company – and I owned none of it. Ultimately, the pressure literally almost killed me.
What It Meant to Be a Corporate Colleague
When you’re in the corporate world, Knives Out isn’t just a movie title. Everything is cutthroat.
The corporate hierarchy is zero-sum. With a finite 12% bonus pool between us, my fellow VPs and I couldn’t afford to cheerlead each other. If I shared my efficiency playbook with one of my peers, he was likely to use it to convince the CEO to reduce my budget for the next quarter.
For 25 years, my colleagues and I guarded our vendor contracts, headcount allocations, and margin workarounds like they were state secrets. We were jealous of each other’s breakthroughs, and some of the most cutthroat among us would actively try to sabotage another team’s success (or at least the board’s perception of it).
In a way, who could blame them? The risk of being discarded was so high. When someone else’s department did well, it could ruin your chances of a promotion, or make you (or your entire department) look expendable. Our employer treated layoffs like a chess game, moving people and departments around or sacrificing them entirely with little notice to “make the company more competitive.”
Just one example of many: at one point, I worked for a VP who had built our entire eastern division from scratch and put in 19 years of service. But a new CEO decided the company needed “streamlining,” and on a random Tuesday, he was walked out after a 15-minute meeting with just two weeks’ severance.
What It Means to Be a Franchise Colleague
After two-plus decades of this kind of environment, perhaps it’s no wonder I entered the franchise world expecting the same kind of secretive, defensive posture. Instead, I found true collaboration.
My first hint that things were going to be different? Due diligence. When you go through this part of the process, the franchisor provides you with a list of current franchise owners, and you have the option to speak directly with them to learn more about the company.
Still thinking in cutthroat terms, I expected it to be a pointless exercise. I figured these other owners would agree to take my call, but no one would actually share any real numbers or insights with me. I expected them to be cagey, but instead they were candid. They were generous with their time, real with me about challenges, and eager to share their own tips and resources.
Even after my own franchises were up and running, the collaborative spirit continued. Take these two stories as an example.
Two months after I opened my first salon suite location, our main point-of-sale software went completely dark at 4:30pm on a Friday. In my corporate life, a critical software failure like this would have meant submitting a priority ticket to central IT, getting an automated confirmation, and waiting until Monday morning for someone to care. And the entire time, I’d be trying to hide what happened from my peers, in case anyone decided to use the information against me.
But as a franchise owner, I picked up my phone and sent a short text to our regional owner group. Within four minutes, two operators who had dealt with that exact software bug called my mobile phone. One walked my manager through a workaround. The other texted me the direct phone number of the software company’s head of field engineering. Forty-five minutes later, were ringing up customers again.
On another occasion, three months after I opened my second franchise location, our primary HVAC compressor died on a sweltering Thursday night in July. If you know the South in July, you know that operating a salon without air conditioning simply isn’t an option – for the safety of the tenants as much as for the comfort of the customers. But our local repair tech quoted a five-day wait for parts.
Remembering what had happened with the software, my first thought was to call a fellow owner. He had launched his business several states away, just six months before me. He answered on the second ring while eating dinner with his family, gave me his direct distributor contact, and told me the exact warranty clause to cite to get a technician on-site by 7am the next morning.
Why the Difference?
I’ve often thought about why the two environments – corporate vs. franchise – are so different. The reasons for corporate cutthroat culture are obvious. But what makes franchise owners so willing – even eager – to help each other out?
After all, none of the owners who helped me made any money off my success. We all operated in different territories and managed our own balance sheets.
Here’s what I finally realized: with a franchise, all the individual businesses operating independently make up a collective brand. And when the brand is resilient, all the individual businesses benefit. So it’s in everyone’s interest to make sure everyone else succeeds.
In addition, you’re all operating from the same playbook. The franchisor provides the same manual and training to everyone. No one has the option to hide it from anyone else. There are no secrets, just support.
The Hidden Value of a Franchise Network
When you’re researching a franchise, you may not see this benefit at first. Like I said, it didn’t really come to light for me until I was in the due diligence phase. But that’s also partly why I’m sharing my story now – I want prospective franchisees to know about this incredible support from the start.
When you’re part of a franchise network:
- You don’t have to pretend you know everything to protect your job.
- All your peer operators are testing marketing tactics and labor models in real time, so you benefit from more than your own direct experience.
- When economic shifts or operational problems hit, you have a virtual Rolodex full of practitioners who’ll share what actually works on the ground.
- You own 100% of your business and make your own calls, but you never have to navigate challenges by yourself.
If you’re an executive carrying all the stress of leadership without any genuine peer collaboration, you are fighting with one hand tied behind your back. Book a call with me today to learn how you can untie your hands and work at your full, free, wealth-building potential. It just takes 20 minutes to start the conversation, and my services are completely free.
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