Information is much, much more valuable to franchisees than any franchise law will ever be.

Start the dialogue, record the franchisor’s every move and retain that information through successive ownership changes.

Start educating  your members in the two businesses they run: the store and the franchise relationship.

I started WikiFranchise.org in Feb 2009. I keep it open although most wikis are closely held.

Those with a greater command of the information, wins every time.

• weblog
• smart phones
• wikis

 

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).

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.

Where’s the Wiki you made of your franchisor’s documents?

THIS is only the question a potential franchisee needs to ask existing franchisees.

An interesting article from the New York Times called A Wiki Takes Aim at Obama .

Many companies and organizations, including the United States Army, have seized on the Wikipedia model to encourage their members to build up information collaboratively. This seems to be an early effort to use the idea behind WikiLeaks, a repository of secretive or difficult-to-obtain documents, for a specific political end.

As I understood and have advised since last summer, every franchise system should have their own franchisee-directed wiki of franchisor’s documents.

Facebook and WikiFranchise

It’s a funny world.

In my fevered little brain…WikiFranchisg.org

[Running Dive]

I am McWikiLeaks

If you see something, scan/OCR/index something.

The technology just collapsed everything down to one person per system.

[Adbusters]

Hope does not reside in the individual

It’s in the obsessed, anonymous group of nerds with no life.

I am so sick of the bullshit franchising  SEO and competitor trolling.

As if it will stop the collapse.

[Julian Assange Coloring Book]