It is all about doing the right thing. Learned that from my late father.

The Franchise King
Joel Libava

I respect you because you are NOT a member of the IFA and because I do believe that you do LEVEL with your clients, many of whom are retired VETS, and will warn your clients about the dark side of franchising, even if this works against your own best interests in many instances.

I am not against franchising if the franchisee truly understands the risks and the trap that is presented by a long-term contract, ten years or more, on a business investment that has odds for first-owner franchisees of 50% failure in the first five years.

You are paid by your clients, aren’t you, and not by the franchisor. Is this correct?

Regards and good luck!

Carol

I have Emailed Mr. Gibson once, or twice? –can’t remember — when I thought that the WSJ was giving the wrong impression to prospective franchisees in certain articles that were correct in every respect, except, perhaps, all of the facts bearing on the subject matter of risk for prospective franchisees were not clearly covered.

That is, in the WSJ coverage of the SBA failure rates, it would help if the WSJ clearly pointed out that the SBA failure rate for franchisees doesn’t represent the actual failure rate for first-owner franchisees because it doesn’t reflect the failure rate of those who borrowed against their home equities or 401’s, etc. and then failed to thrive and voluntarily terminated or were terminated by their franchisors. The fire sale of the assets of these failures goes unnoticed when the franchisee either goes into bankruptcy or continues to pay on the home equity loans.

It is good that the WSJ has recognized the twitter of those who have been exposed to the “dark side of franchising” and that the bigger business media can be influenced by the Franchise Blogs to do a deeper investigation of the franchise model and franchisor-franchisee relationship, as developed under the law.