Use legal, organizational and technological leverage to move your franchisor

Multiply your efforts by using the laws of our society intelligently.

Accelerating Relationship Leverage

A private for-profit corporation (anonymous franchisee shareholders) AND a 100% locked-down, franchise law-specific indexed document database (wiki) pivoting WITH a highly public attorneyless franchise network.

Benefits

• solves the information and resource imbalance endemic in franchising,
• takes less than 3.0 per cent of franchisees needed to start as shareholders,
• valuation of for-profit calculated annually (franchisees will clamour for 0.1% share in 5 years),
• allows innovators and early adopters to carry at first,
• focuses attention on a single, credible voice for franchisees that is respected because it is in the franchisor’s  self-interest to do so,
• shareholder anonymity balanced with managerial control (no one shareholder can highjack the agenda),
• accesses the most cautious investors (overcomes stigma of betrayals and organizational collapse),
• retains franchisee “equity” (for-profit franchisee corp. directly aims to support and increase re-sale value),
• prevents much of future franchisor opportunism: self-interest with deceit (franchisee cost avoidance),
• voluntarily shifts capital from franchisee’s “equity” (temporary, illusory) to group equity (real),
• more able to reform system rather than just legally fight and be forced to leave,
• facilitates: vendor programs, franchisee self-borrowing, stock purchase PADs, training, life:work balance,  buying/selling franchises,
• each franchisee is issued a membership in the attorneyless franchise network and a share in the for-profit corporation (one share),
• enables former franchisees to invest (if desired),
• strategically positioned to defend against private equity vultures,
• builds trust with shareholder group (external investments, reducing risks, development),
• accesses and retains expertise that dues-paying organizations cannot afford, and
• capitalizes on the fact that CDN, ON Court decisions have shifted economics on dispute resolution in franchisees’ favour.

Costs

• takes time, need for long-term perspective,
• 24 franchisee shareholders to start “risking” 2% of their cash they’ve made in the last 10 years,
• requires patient shareholders (no interest payable initially).

Why franchisees need $1-million cash in the bank

To have profitable peace with  your franchisor, you better be preparing for war.

Listen to George:

Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me.’

If you turn the other cheek, you will get a harder blow on it than you got on the first one. This does not always happen, but it is to be expected, and you ought not to complain if it does happen.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

- George Orwell

Only interested in a Band-aid solution to franchisor over-reaching?

Write your issue bitch on a post it and put it on the wall.

Choose the most severe one and sue your franchisor.

• Won’t they just take the $ back via another way in a few months?

Thirty problems? Hell no: 1 problem with 30 manifestations.

The 1 Problem: Opportunism

• the unfair exercise of franchisor discretion within the necessarily incomplete contract.
•  self-interest with deceit.

To stop opportunism: create and maintain an indexed document database/wiki that is owned by a well-run and monitored franchisee association.

• Indpendently, command the information high ground and you’ll buy your business back rather than rent a few $ in short-term litigation.

Otherwise, Dance band on the Titanic.

How to drive the franchising elite insane

Chris Hedges has seen power collapse often.

• Each system — leaderless movement

Video:

0:49 – movements reveal fundamental truths, expose corruption, decay

1:40 – the end comes quickly as he foot solders of the elite look the other way, the elite are defenseless

2:53 – characteristics of Occupy Wall Street: non-hierarchical, won’t be baited into violence, can’t be destroyed, full transparency, rotate leadership

4:55 – no danger of being co-opted

Hedges on Truthdig

Start occupying your own franchise system

Only talk to an attorney you have a legal relationship to.

Their job is to snitch to the 1%.

We know there are undercover cops in the crowd. I think I was talking to one last night, but it’s like, what are you trying to accomplish? We don’t have any secrets.”

“The undercover cops are the only ones who ask, ‘Who’s the leader?’ ” she said. “Presumably, if they know who our leaders are they can take them out. The fact is we have no leader. There’s no leader, so there’s nothing they can do.

“There was a woman [in the medics unit]. This guy was pretending to be a reporter. The first question he asks is, ‘Who’s the leader?’  She goes, ‘I’m the leader.’ And he says, ‘Oh yeah, what are you in charge of?’ She says, ‘I’m in a charge of everything.’ He says, ‘Oh yeah?  What’s your title?’ She says ‘God.’ ”

– Chris Hedges, Why the Elites are in Trouble

99% of legal fees serve franchisors.

My project work in franchising

There was no map or rule book in testing the limits of the industry.

By nature, these were all unreasonable actions from the conventional viewpoint.

To me, they were just taking one step ahead of the other.

• national franchisee association (Canadian Alliance of Franchise Operators),
• defined Big Franchising,
• manual archive of published articles,
• investigate government guaranteed loans (predatory franchise lending),
• multi-million dollar one party lawsuit,
• group lawsuit (Grand & Toy, Tupperware),
• request made to for support from Ontario government (letter/proposal: Information Sharing Project),
• class action,
• digital archive of documents (WikidFranchise),
• national attorneyless franchisee association (NBN),
• franchisee-created trademark system wiki,
• a franchisee-funded private equity structure (The Grange Fund).

Not bad.

[At Play]

Hiring a legal top gun is moronic

If you haven’t already created a sustainable, 2nd opinion-balanced independent franchisee association.

They’ll get you money…maybe.

But the franchisor will claw it all back once the legal cowboy leaves Dodge.

And you may be in a much weaker net position.

[Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

I don’t know much about money

But I do know about getting work done.

I’m a franchisee power worker.

[Winsor McCay]

Lapdog, Watchdog & Network franchisee groups

Once a franchisee figures out he can’t do it on his own, they have 3 choices (2 are born losers):

1. Advisory Councils: Financed and lead by franchisor. Illusion of meaningful input.
2. Independent Franchisee Association: Financed by franchisees but lead by attorney. Short-term. Born to fail because of information and economic imbalances.
3. Attorneyless Franchisee Network: Financed and lead by franchisees. Long term, digitally based, information needs subcontracted via several sources. Start with weblog. Example.

– see also Attorneyless Franchisee Networks: The next Evolutionary step in franchisee advocacy

Image thanks to davidarmano.com

Others sacrificed for your benefit

Do you think employers voluntarily gave employees an 8 hour day, 5 days a week?

It was fought for by good people, inch-by-inch, sometime in the past.

Just like don’t bitch about farmers with your mouth full, shut the hell up if you’re not a dues-paying member of an independent franchise association.

Otherwise you’re just a cry-baby.