Opportunity Knocks and Liars’ Loans: required reading to understand modern franchising

John Lorinc wrote the book on franchising from a franchisee’s investor viewpoint.

I’m glad to see it is still available to buy online and is in many Canadian libraries.

The hidden banking side is revealed in Chapter 4, The 90% Solution: Franchise Economics, some of which I excerpted in a WikidFranchise.org post.

What did the business press have to say about Lorinc’s work?:

1. National Post: Opportunity Knocks: The Truth about Canada’s Franchise Industry, is an impressively researched look at the myriad of franchises that mushroomed across the country in the past decade. An award-winning magazine journalist, Lorinc has produced an engaging account that charts both the spectacular successes of some franchisers and the utter failure of some franchisees. How franchises seduce those with the most to lose, Jennifer Lanthier, November 2, 1997
2. Globe and Mail: At its worst, Lorinc says, franchising is a haven for the unscrupulous who prey on the unwary – typically recent immigrants willing to labour long hours in dreary businesses, unaware that those operations have little chance of prospering – using them as pawns in a shadowy real estate game. Rather than reflecting an insatiable consumer demand, he inquires acidly, is it possible that all those new doughnut shops may reflect a quiet understanding between landlords and franchisors that the best way to fill fallow commercial property is to sell franchises to credulous investors? Franchise book of interest to anyone who pays taxes, Ann Finlayson, November 1, 1997

Finlayson strikes a cautionary note, specifically about the hinted at misuse of the Canada Small Business Financing program, CSBFP:

Does all this matter to you? Yes, it does. In 1993, in the wake of vigorous complaints by small-business owners that Canadian banks were reluctant to finance them, Ottawa raised the ceiling on loans guaranteed by the Small Business Loans Administration to $250,000 and its guarantee rate from 85 per cent to 90 per cent, sparking a bank lending rush to franchisees and shifting the risk of franchise investments onto taxpayers’ (your) shoulders.

The Risk: Only a fraction of the Liars’ Loans are ever claimed by the banks, thereby grossly understating Industry Canada’s default statistics (Franchised v. Non-Franchised loan performance). The franchisee thinks he signed a government-backed loan but it never gets registered as such. As their bankruptcy, loss of life savings, marital and family breakdown escalate over the life of their 12 to 18 month franchise career, the franchisee NEVER looks to Box 9 of the CSBFP loan application form (Projected Sales ) as the source of their trouble; where the lie is put into the “Liars’ Loan”. The proceeds of these engineered-to-fail loans is split upfront by the franchise banker with the bank, banker, franchisor and sales agent. If questioned, the bank shreds the paperwork and waits for the lawsuit.

And, seriously, how many of these Immigrants as prey losers could or would ever sue a Schedule 1 chartered bank?

• Only one I know of: a father and son PhD/B.Eng. team I worked with. The  Oudovikines (pronounced: ou-doe-VEE-kin), RCMP Commercial Crime Unit affidavit, Country Style, CIBC, lawsuit

The Return: Smashing quarterly earnings goals, record profits, high turnover in the small business division of each of the banks, and making franchise lending the most lucrative form of commercial lending in Canada. Private gain/public loss enabled by a criminogenic environment, moral hazard, regulatory capture…

Lorinc carefully mentions the “windfall profits” in this arrangement of churning:

What’s more, some banks and franchisors have put the SBLA program [predecessor government guaranteed loan program] to questionable use during foreclosure actions against franchisees, says one former owner who has been through the process. When a bank calls a loan against a non-performing franchisee, the 90% guarantee effectively relieves the bank’s receiver from trying to get the best possible value while disposing of the owner’s assets. With most of the loan covered by the Canadian taxpayer, the assets – fixtures, kitchen equipment, inventory, etc. – can be sold quickly at a deep discount, possibly below market value. This allows the franchisor too step in and buy back the property at better-than-firesale prices, thus generating a windfall profit when the store is later re-sold to another franchisee.

An important work that, depressingly, is as relevant in 2012 as it was in 1995.

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Disclosure: My lol pecuniary interest here and here. Cross posted on FranchiseBanker.ca.

Could franchise bankers also act as gangsters?

Are Canadian franchise bankers capable of engaging in “cartel-style anticompetitive corruption” in their $100-billion sales per year marketplace?

Every current or former Canadian franchisee who has had a Canada Small Business Financing loan may want to ask themselves some questions. My posts at  FranchiseBanker.ca (specifically: Banker “everybody is doing it” corruption admitted in the LIBOR scandal) might help frame your thoughts.

Without the Canada Small Business Financing program, many fewer deadbeat franchises would have been sold in the last 20 years.

Industry Canada asked me to jot down my concerns a few years ago.

Franchising Opportunism, a 20 page non-technical paper,  was the result.

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]

Are franchise bankers running a peep-show, a clip joint?

Franchising is low-grade entrepreneurial pornography.

Read Franchising Opportunism and you judge. The horrendous losses on unregistered guaranteed government loans are self-financed on inflated appraisals.

A clip joint or fleshpot is an establishment, usually a strip club or entertainment bar, typically one claiming to offer adult entertainment or bottle service, in which customers are tricked into paying money and receive poor goods or services, or none, in return.

Typically, clip joints suggest the possibility of sex, charge excessively high prices for watered-down drinks, and then eject customers when they become unwilling or unable to spend more money. The product or service may be illicit, offering the victim no recourse through official or legal channels. Wikipedia

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. John Kenneth Galbraith

See Canada Small Business Financing Program and U.S. SBA 7a Loans [and UK and France and...]

Franchise lenders are swill

Some systems hardly have any franchisee debt.

This is particularly true of ones that converted employees to franchisees.

That changes once franchisors listen to their bankers explain how much they both can make (ie. interest kickbacks) if they leverage as many franchisees to the teats.

The primary control method of newer (maybe more formally educated?) franchisees is debt. Hundreds of thousands of supportable debt, if the franchisor who controls their gross margins, lets them service their debt.

It’s ugly:

1. prime plus 5% (“love to give a better rate but it’s unsecured, don’t you know“),
2. immediately callable (demand loan = short leash),
3. plus personal guarantees up the wazzo (“just need the missus to okay the paperwork…“), but
4. secured by NOTHING but the franchisor”s “good faith” (ok as long as the present management stays put but all deals are off if…).

If you want to unlock the chains, start asking your “preferred” lender some questions (on a public blog, btw) about their lending duty under the Bank Act.

Franchise bankers: a breed apart.

A little more sensitive than you run-of-the-mill doofus franchisor: don’t like being fingered for loan pushing, collusion or predatory franchise lending.

• Franchising Opportunism, Les Stewart

 

Franchising more than helps flush +$100 million CDN annually down the toilet

A good Canadian Press article called Ottawa’s loan program for small business still troubled: report by Dean Beeby.

The revenue paid to Industry Canada was supposed to cover the default claims paid out, but the math has never worked in Ottawa’s favour.

Claims paid out have risen steadily over the decade, and now top $100 million annually, while revenues have consistently lagged, costing taxpayers a net $335 million so far.

Put another way, cost recovery is currently at only about 60 per cent rather than the 100 per cent that was planned, and is in steady decline.

“The gap between claims and fee revenues will continue to exist and most likely expand,” predicts the KPMG report, dated Oct. 30 and obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

The program’s portfolio of loans has become ever more risky over the decade, now catering especially to newly established small firms with weak credit scores and little collateral, many in the food-and-beverage sector.

These loans are used extensively in franchising although the franchise bankers frequently don’t even bother to try to register or make a claim on the phantom loans. The difference between new and used equipment nicely covers the money split between the mob (see here for details).

I’ve kept a close eye on the Canada Small Business Financing program and how the franchise industry misuses it (see my 2005 paper called Franchising Opportunism)

Program results from 1999 to 2008 using Industry Canada’s own Annual Reports (franchised v. non-franchised loans):

• Franchise Loan Claim Rate was 26.5% higher (than for Non-franchised loans).
• Franchise Loan Default Rates resulted in over $22.9-million more Claims (Non-franchised rate).
• The mean Franchised loan was 43.4% higher than Non-Franchised.
• The mean Franchised claim was 11.9% higher than Non-Franchised.

Comparing the years 2008 to 1999:

• The Claim Rate increased 858.2 times for Franchised (245.1  times for Non-franchised loans).
• The Franchised Claim Rate accelerated 3.5 times more than Non-franchised loans.

I’d be happy to send anyone the spreadsheet.

The U.S. Small Business Administration’s 7a. loan program seems to be sticking their citizens with a $70-83-billion public debt, too.

If we forget, We will continue to repeat our mistakes

We created WikidFranchise.org to house the documents that I have collected and to start a dialogue.

A wiki‘s strength is in its volunteer editors.

Time will tell whether other people find this franchise industry-only indexed archive useful.

It has some merit for teaching and learning about the business risks that sometimes run counter to the overwhelming advertising message to say “yes” to every half-baked concept.

The latest, saddest example I added to WikidFranchise today is from the Washington Times’s Elise Anderson, entitled: Jobless seek future in franchising.

As Elizabeth Winterhalter and her husband, Monte, packed up their house in Glastonbury, Conn., for their move to McLean, they were eager and anxious about trading the pain of unemployment for the promise and peril of something they had never tried before — running a franchise.

Good grief.

I wish the Winterhalter, Dillen, and Prioleau families all the very best as a personal and financial outcome but I hope Ms. Anderson follows up with them in 6 or 12 months. As for the expert that Anderson solely relies on?: Alisa Harrison has been with the franchise industry for a total of 1 1/2 years.

Banks won’t do Franchise loans: It is true that there are no normal or even government-subsidized (SBA) loans to be had now.

The reason: an emerging crisis that implicates the 7(a) Loan program of the U.S. Small Business Administration which has a long and consistently scandalous history.

Predatory franchise loans are becoming visible to everyone: loan brokers, banks, re-packagers and politicians. The public bailout of the franchise industry’s greed is what is freezing everyone in their tracks: not a recession. Pending fraud indictments tend to chill even the shadiest franchising financing scam.

Estimates of a public bailout of $70 to 80-billion will seem quaint if an accurate, non-biased accounting were to ever take place.

Don’t expect to see any breaking news stories about this on Franchise-Chat.com or BlueMauMau.org either: these off-message stories are skimmed off before they hit any franchise RSS feed. Keep the kids busy talking about the evil empires (MBE, Quiznos) or arbitration reform or how franchisees are to blame.

What I do: I took the article, coded it and saved it in WikidFranchise. Here are the business risks I assigned to it:

1. Cannon fodder,
2. Desperation causes bad decision making,
3. False hope,
4. Financing with 401k money is totally reckless,
5. International Franchise Association, IFA,
6. Only one side presented,
7. Loss Aversion: people dislike losing much more than winning (the same $),
8. Professional journalistic standards,
9. Retirement savings gone,
10. Severance package financing dream,
11. Sold during time of psychological vulnerability, especially unemployment,
12. Sold only to people with no small business experience (very naïve),
13. Success or failure is within the direct control of the individual franchisee,
14. Unproven business model,
15. Unskilled and unaware of risks, and
16. Who pays for the research?

Many families are going through very desperate times and are searching for help.

• This article is just plain cruel.

I collected the already-published documents to give a sense of history for new investors.

WikidFranchise.org is a revolutionary tool for those willing to use it.

Deer: Are We Trade Show Activists?

A good question but a better one is:

Can we afford not to understand how we got roped into a losing deal?

I think you better Get Smart or you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of the next buffet.

• In confidence games, it’s a fact that more than 50% of the chumps are good for at least a 2nd fleecing.

I took a look at a trade show advertisement this week and the posting was picked up on Michael Webster’s weblog.

Anyone who contacts me is invited to join me in interpreting how a trade show works. Live.

It is a very sophisticated and well-thought out selling environment that is used to qualify candidates; economically but mostly psychologically.

Your lack of awareness of the dangers [ignorance?] is really your admission ticket.

The first step in protecting your family is education.

I’ll be relying on the Six “Weapons of Influence”: social proof, authority,commitment and consistency, reciprocation, liking and scarcity. Bring your copies. You’ll get a tutorial on not only the Science of Persuasion but on relevant cognitive biases (especially confirmation), The Tipping Point, behavioral economics, Theories of Unusual Events and Risk Homeostatis, heuristics (eg. human thinking shortcuts that usually help us but sometimes result in catastrophic errors) and 10 years of intense industry analysis.

Agenda

1. We’ll go over the basic confidence game role structure and process: house, roper, inside man, shill, chump, fixer, etc.
2. Why it is so critical to have independent legal advice before you sign (goes double for deals less than $20,000).
3. The selling value of comparing (anchoring) a new system with the best, most successful franchisor: McDonald’s.
4. What something called “Prospect Theory” has to say why you will stay in a losing business much, much longer than you could ever imagine.
5. Why you should only sign when there is an Independent Franchisee Association, IndFA present (versus the lapdog Franchisor Advisory Council).
6. We’ll decode the hidden messages within the marketing material (worked for an advertising design studio + Ivey MBA + McLuhan disciple).
7. I’ll explain the role of the current SME loan guarantee program.
8. Why Canada is a safe harbour for white-collar crime.
9. How this recession is shattering the conventional wisdom that franchises sell better, the worse the economy gets [HINT: new sales, now, are the worst on record].
10. Why the hook has to be planted in the male first.
11. How shame is invoked to silence particularly new Canadians.
12. Why exceptionally thorough pre-sale due diligence is much more limited than you think and could in fact increase your chance of business failure.
13. The role of the expert seminar.
14. Why the most rational and dodgiest should absolutely force a copy of Ontario’s franchise law into your hands.

All of these fraudproofing skills are entirely understandable, applicable to many situations and will last a lifetime. I was taught by the best.

In these days of Bernie Madoff, BIM, CitiGroup, etc., I don’t think you (or anyone you know in the traditional or new media) can afford to turn not to learn more about the Science of Persuasion and applied psychology.

Offer to Sellers: You can join us as well. I will gladly discuss my views in front of anyone, at anytime. These persuasion techniques have been proven scientifically and it’s time that more people understood how skillfully they are applied in franchising.

If I were in your shoes, I’d much rather guarantee us free rein rather than be seen to be resisting evaluation. That old hand-in-the-lens shot sells television shows but is, by its airing, basic proof of guilt.

Consumer education is good and only the fraudsters have anything to hide.

Cost?: Nothing

Just call me at 705-737-4635. Bring the whole family. les.j.stewart@gmail.com

PS: Do me a favour: Sign up to receive each new post (see top right, RSS feed). FranchiseFool is now read in 44 countries. Not bad for a single Canuck in one year, I think.

— UPDATED for Fall 2009

Time trumps all franchise Fraud

Con men understand very well when their targets are the most vulnerable.

It’s a game for them: Their comparative strength (trump) is knowing how to manipulate your human weaknesses for their profit.

With hundreds of billions of dollars being thrown into the world’s financial institutions with zero accountability, the risk of funding a franchise fraud  (in my mind) is be greater now than before the www recession.

Michael Webster at Misleading Advertising Law makes a very good point at his post, Selling Franchises to the recently Laid Off:

One of my concerns in this economic environment was with how the newly laid off would react, what they would do, and how they would make decisions.

With nearly 60,000 reported layoffs in the United States alone, it is of pressing concern that these individuals understand the how to avoid failing for the franchise fraud.

Michael provided some extremely useful advice in a recent Blue MauMau interview named, Fraud Expert Says Those Wanting to Be Own Boss Easily Scammed.

First, with high unemployment the blood is in the water for unscrupulous sellers:

With the economy seeing the highest unemployment figures in nearly four decades, Webster thinks once those unemployed have access to credit, there is the potential for record numbers to be ripped off. In order to avoid being swindled, his first piece of advice is to think of buying a business as one option among many investment opportunities.

Michael warns against getting out of the pan and jumping into the fire and relying solely on your own research, which can become distorted (confirmation bias):

WEBSTER: There are times in our lives when for whatever reason we want our aspirations to be achieved immediately. For many, the most compelling overriding value is the need to be in complete control of their economic lives. Simply put, they never want to be fired again.

Those people are sitting ducks.

The con criminals know this and wave phrases like “be your own boss” and “in business for yourself but not by yourself.” Prospects pick up on such words of puffery. Buyers blow it up into full-scale fantasies of business ownership. And then to compound the problem, they perform bad due diligence by sloppily selecting evidence that only confirms they are making a good decision.

You need a professional 3rd party to help you and you need to take your time.

A buyer should take their time – some six to eight months. Read the franchise disclosure document. Get the best professional help to explore the opportunity and its accompanying documentation. Ask questions. Do not jump! Get a part-time job doing anything if you need to so that you don’t feel like you have to buy this franchise. If the opportunity is any good, you’ll figure it out.

Time will trump all frauds.

Excellent advice from someone with great insight.  Michael had also suggested in previous posts to actually work for a franchisee within the proposed system for several to six months and that you should budget up to $5,000 for professional advice (on not only the contract but also the business deal).

Michael’s caution against being sucked into a phantom dream is very important. Follow his advice and this will greatly reduce your chance of experiencing a financial nightmare.

Risk Compensation: Why franchise laws & regulations cause more risky investing

All franchise laws should be immediately repealed.

Everyone would be better off knowing that they’re in an airplane with an empty parachute.

Specific franchise laws give a false sense of security that, paradoxically, causes investors to behave in a more risky way than if there were no laws.

BTW: The push for franchise laws (with very rare exceptions) has always been by the franchisor and the franchise bar, not by franchisee investors or their advocates.

1. The U.S. has had state and federal franchise laws for +40 years.  Alberta, Canada since 1971, Ontario since 2000. The outcome is the same: still very high investor risks.
2. Relationship laws have existed since 1956 in the U.S. The toughest state law (Illinois) doesn’t seem to have had much positive effect, one way or the other.
3. Direct regulatory federal laws in the U.S. and Australia, although they have the statutory power, are not used, except on the occasional token, hapless, no-name franchisor.

The primary mechanism that causes this INCREASE in risky investment behaviour is found in a theory called risk compensation:

Risk Compensation is an effect whereby individual people may tend to adjust their behaviour in response to perceived changes in risk…Another way of stating this is that individuals will behave less cautiously in situations where they feel “safer” or more protected.

The more we feel safe, the more risk we feel we can take on without additional costs. [Wikipedia]

Risk compensation is most clearly shown in studies of cars equipped with ABS brakes. The stated intent of mandatory ABS brakes was to reduce injuries and death due to collisions.

• The irrefutable evidence, however, is that drivers (unintentionally, for sure) compensate for having ABS brakes systems by driving faster, following closer and taking corners more sharply (ie. they increase their risky behaviour).
• The collision rates stays constant because of the human tendency to compensate for improvements not only in brakes but seatbelts, bicycle helmets and even parachute design safety improvements.

Note: Booth’s rule #2:

• The safer skydiving gear becomes, the more chances skydivers will take, in order to keep the fatality rate constant.

Everyone’s first instinct is to cry for a law or an improved law against human behaviour. Risk compensation theory indicates that this is a fool’s errand and it is consistent with my study of franchise law over the last 10 years.

Opportunistic franchisors and their advisors know this human, perfectly non-rational characteristic to compensate for perceived “safer” situations.

Predators rely much more on their abilities to read human nature accurately, than do their prey. (It is wise to remember that there are only 2 principle ways to succeed: doing good work or cheating.)

Additionally, the Authority of the State is most clearly manifested in a law or regulation. Since the state holds a monopoly on coercive action (exercised by the police, military, courts, etc.), any franchise law signals a state “sanction” of sorts.

In this way, the state’s ultimate secular authority and legitimacy is attributed to the most poo-filled franchise system. It gives credence and camouflage to an industry without control or standards.

The Science of Persuasion: In the very important book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Bob Cialdini calls authority his 5th of 6 “Weapons of Persuasion”:

1. The logo of the FTC, the ACCC or the Ontario Legislative Assembly confers a legitimacy that can be exploited by some (badge of authority).
2. Government guaranteed loans confer an aura that “This must be okay because the government and a Big Bank is risking their money, too” to even the most wicked scam (authority).
3. The threat of  a lawsuit triggers (1) the fear of poverty and shame (bankruptcy) but also (2) of being perceived by other as behaving in an anti-social or near “criminal” way (social proof).
4. Oh how charming everyone is, before you sign and how much you’ve become a shithead when you start to question the status quo (liking).
5. How franchises that you should be paid to run, can instead be sold for 100,000s of  $ because of some “secret sauce” spiel (scarcity)

There is much hard science behind being persuasive that can be used for good or ill.

Take a look at this 3:11 video book review and imagine how Cialdini’s 6 Laws (reciprocity, commitment & consistency, authority, social proof, liking, scarcity) are used to snare franchisees.