Franchising is processed as if it were a prison.

Phil Zimbardo says evil comes from hierarchy.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

• Franchising harms people, over time by both sides (see Clay/Prisoner 416 and mock guard talk: start at 2:46). No regret, guilt. Only after upon reflection.
• Prisoner 8612 @ 1:36 (after 36 hours ‘incarceration”)
• Let me in on some knowledge…I know you’re a nice guy (You don’t know that).
• People didn’t say anything.
• Prisoner 819 did a bad thing… I have to prove I’m not a bad prisoner.
• The situation degrades over time.
• How program dissenters are treated by peers and guards (one sign of resistance: Prisoner 416). The guards go crazy. Not a hero but a troublemaker.
• The Stanford Prison Experiment Slide Show

Problems with authority. Breaks from reality. Damaged feeling function. Lack of trust. Anger. Barrenness.

What do you think they chose? Most elected to keep their blanket and let their fellow prisoner suffer in solitary all night.

The Gambler’s Fallacy: past events do not change the probability that certain events will occur in the future.

There is zero assurance that a friendly franchise system will not become predatory over time.

I believe (and I’m not alone) that there is even odds (1/3)  of:

1. losing money,
2. breaking even or
3. making money as a franchisee.

Our brain sees patterns that are just not there. We’re wired to link the things we see as if they were related (McDonald’s success relates to newest dog poo-removal scam..hence the use of “the next McDonald’s of lawn care…” analogy).

Simply being exposed to the claim of low risk/high success can influence you to buy a poo-filled franchise

Communications designed to persuade mislead and damage you using untruths and half-truths is called propaganda.

Social psychologists define something called priming: unconscious memories influence your behavior. Sometimes fo a very long time. Through repetition (a form of brainwashing).

Franchising trade magazines and trade shows influences potential franchisees to see franchising (in relation to independent business) as lower risk and higher success. Banks write their booklets in a very pro-franchise manner. McDonald’s success and its use as a bell weather (“the McDonald’s of the poo-collection industry”) primes candidates to attribute success where none exists.

Neither of these “truths” is true but that’s irrelevant. By the time the candidate franchisee is looking the low risk/high success bias is part of their DNA. They’ve created a stereotype.

As the scientifically-based research indicates, just looking at words associated with either youth or old age influence how you behave.

What kind of chance do you think you have at a trade show or a franchisor’s open house when every tiny detail is controlled for a positive sales effort? No one’s brain is very good at defending against these extremely powerful persuasion trick and traps. The technology of franchising is the science of neutralizing your defenses and then when the financial loss happens, re-assigning blame from these techniques to you (ie. On Cooling the Mark Out).

—BBC Replicates Bargh’s Famous Priming Study at The Situationist, John Bargh

You’re a kid again once the lizard brain takes over

Under pressure, you recognize the bully’s voice.

And time melts away.

[click it, cOnfus3 m3]

Anyone’s spirit can be shattered if mental pressure is applied skillfully enough

Franchising is like being in a war zone.

My experience and training suggests that running a franchise provides the same type of mental conditioning that happens in total institutions (ie. patient in a mental health hospital, recruit in military basic training, life on a naval vessel) without any form of appeal.

Many former franchisees see their time as a franchisee as they would imaging doing time in prison would be like. Most will confidentially talk openly of being mentally tortured. Many require significant mental health intervention to recover some degree of normalcy. Even years after their experience, the mere mention of their experiences triggers the strongest emotional response possible, many of which revolve around shame.

clinical depression :: affective disorders :: violence (self & others) :: divorce :: hospitalizations :: estranged children :: broken extended families :: suicide

Dr. Meerloo’s insights ring very true to me as a former franchisee and provide tremendous hope because they use a quantifiable and scientific approach rather than a one-dimensional, ad hominem attack- and shame-based legal view.

The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide and Brainwashing (free online), Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D., 1956

In Book: It is Dr. Meerloo’s position that through pressure on the weak points in men’s makeup, totalitarian methods can turn anyone into a “traitor.” And in The Rape of the Mind he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people’s minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized “rape of the mind.” He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion…

The first two and on-half years of World War II, Dr. Meerloo spend under the pressure of Nazi-occupied Holland, witnessing at firsthand the Nazi methods of mental torture on more than one occasion. During this time he was able to use his psychiatric and psychoanalytical knowledge to treat some of the victims. Then, after personal experience with enforced interrogation, he escaped from a Nazi prison and certain death to England, where he was able, as Chief of the Psychological Department of the Netherlands Forces, to observe and study coercive methods officially.

In this capacity he had to investigate not only traitors and collaborators, but also those members of the Resistance who had gone through the utmost of mental pressure. Later, as High Commissioner for Welfare, he came in closer contact with those who had gone through physical and mental torture. After the war, he came to the United States, where his war experiences would not permit him to concentrate solely on his psychiatric practice, but compelled him to go beyond purely medical aspects of the problem.

As more and more cases of thought control, brainwashing, and mental coercion were disclosed…his interest grew. It was Dr. Meerloo who coined the term menticide, the killing of the spirit, for this peculiar crime.

This is a beef cow. Its ear is tagged to assign accountability if a steak kills someone.

Franchisees are not tagged, counted or valued in Ontario.

In all legitimate commercial activities,  If you want something you better count it. Can you imagine anybody not counting money in a bank? An auto industry without ISO standards?

cow People are More important than franchisee People

1. Each cow is carefully counted, tracked, protected from disease,  and measured from birth to slaughter. There is sufficient regulation in place to protect public food safety. It is accessible for academic study.
2. Franchisee are increasingly butchered for their life savings (bisons on the prairies).

Why should a government care about what an industry says when the elite refuses to maintain an independent, transparent method for tracking their franchise investors success or failures? This is particularly interesting when the Canadian Franchise Association, CFA suggests that they represent both franchisors AND franchisees which begs the fundamental existential agricultural question:

What half-assed farmer doesn’t bother to count their stock even though they have all the resources in the world to do so?

Mr. Cynical Bastard: It’s all about the flesh trade being passed off as a milking operation.

How anyone can legislate when there are zero credible quantitative measures to go by, is beyond me. The 1998 stats define the term “wonky”: the CFA simply takes the numbers the IFA commissions and divides them by “10” to Canadian-ize them. * This is the basis for overseeing/ignoring 40,000 (?) Ontario familys’ life savings.

* notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. has roughly 100 times Canada’s GDP and that there were, allegedly, 5,000 new lawsuits per year in Ontario  in 1998.

It’s enough to make a wolf smile.

Listen to a good Dr: Robert Hare says you should avoid subcriminal psychopathy and, if forced to deal with animals, keep them on a very short leash. That heaviness you’re feeling comes from a close encounter with what has been traditionally defined in Western society as evil.

As the majority of smart Ontario capitalists know after 4 decades of highly-publicized fraud:

Don’t rent any unilaterally changeable business model where your success or failure is never counted by anyone (eg. don’t fly on an airplane if a publicly accountable count of accidents is suppressed by the the airline trade association).

Double that when the “experts” want to trap in an ironclad  zero-sum situation (you lose, someone else wins) created by your own life savings (sunk cost).

(false) Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Is preying on a military  family’s post-service vulnerability the sign of insincerity per se?

From a New York Times classified ad:

Come join a network that has pioneered and led the industry for 30 years. The UPS Store is the #1 Business and Postal Services Franchise for the 20th consecutive year (2010 Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top 500 Franchise List). The UPS Store is the #1 most popular franchise with veterans in the IFA’s Vet-Fran Program (2008 International Franchise Association). With over 4300 The UPS Store and Mail Boxes Etc. locations nationwide, our network continues to lead the market.

Baiting the Fish: Note how Cialdini’s “Weapons of Influence” are used to lure pensions and life savings capital:

1. New York Times (authority of a traditional media outlet),
2. Entrepreneur magazines’ Top 500 franchises (McMedia: authority for the unskilled and unaware),
3. 30 years… (franchisor success means individual franchisees will succeed, see Dunning-Kruger above),
4. Vet-Fran program (liking: acceptance, a member of the fraternity, endorsed/vetted by the “government”),
5. International Franchise Association (expertise/authority, funded 100% by franchisors and their friends), and are especially
6. vulnerable to the authority siren song from 2 directions: vivid, personal success born from supporting a strict command-control structure  while lacking the airy-fairy concept of discerning legitimate from illegitimate sources of authority.

Vets believe very strongly that people get what they deserve in this life (Just World fallacy) and would, therefore, strongly but heavily discount any non-authority based advice on a pre-sale basis. Going on “civvy street” is one of  life’s major transitions involving new/strange: work, employer, location, one/two incomes, schools, income levels, physical/mental challenges, diminished family/friend support.

Setting the Hook: The next marketing stage is an “exclusive” invitation to a very sophisticated, one-day seminar at head office (a “discovery day”). Just like in a gambling casino, these environments are very, very well thought-out, for one side’s benefit only. A real investigative journalist (John Lorinc) published an excellent description of this circus in a real media outlet (The Globe and Mail) in 2000. The Sure Thing describes the extremely effective individual and social psychology that allows predatory franchising to flourish in plain sight.

I’m glad to know great spirits like Peter Thomas or Carol Cross who, by making wise choices for their future, help me make mine.

— Samuel Johnson 1709 – 1784

The science of persuasion

Robert Cialdini‘s work is important to understand.

His 6 Weapons of Influence:

1. reciprocity, (giving a United Way pin)
2. scarcity, (limited quantities available)
3. authority, (basketball shoes)
4. commitment,
5. liking  (Tupperware example) and
6. consensus (social proof).

Understanding these techniques goes a long way to understanding franchising.

Can an empire be saved by shaming investors like Ariel Buk?

There are costs involved in maintaining investor confidence and commercial relationships. Some people need to learn to “take one for the team”.Ariel Buk and Sonia Karabin may need to understand that they should cool down, be quiet and go away about losing a $85,000 deposit on a non-existent Ontario, Canada franchise. They and, by extension, the many hundreds of other “failed franchisees” need to be taught their role in this confidence game by the industry stakeholders: take one for the team or risk being shamed.

1. James Daw presents the story in yesterday’s Toronto Star article,  Ice cream dream becomes nightmare about Mr Buk’s experience with Piazza Gelateria and Café. This is shrewd. For example, Mr. Daw opines:

They [husband and wife] should have looked more closely at the business opportunity, and their decision to use mainly borrowed funds after Buk had lost his job.

They should have considered the minimum $300,000 cost of a lawyer to sue for a refund if things went wrong, and the chances of recovering anything from a relatively young numbered company.

2. Robert Cialdini lists authority as one of Six Weapons of Influence. My experience is that attorneys are given a  lot of authority by new Canadians. Many of us see past their pretensions, BS and fear. [Examples of authority.]

Ben Hanuka of Davis Moldaver LLP is quoted as saying:

“Very few mom-and-pop franchisees ever go to that length (of hiring experts to research a franchise opportunity),” says Hanuka. “It sounds too complicated to them.”

All it well with the world the reader is assured. Go back to sleep because these people get what they deserved. The blame lies with:

1. the anonymous, individual “other” (mildly retarded immigrant scapegoat) deserved what he got (“your success follows from your blind obedience to authority” dogma)  and not that
2. stakeholders align their self-interest in maintaining a facade of legitimacy: not a fake, or a Potemkin village scheme which has preyed upon identifiable groups, in plain sight,  since at least 1971.

Social Psychology-based Hypothesis: Elite stakeholders deflect systemic wrongdoing by using the largely-internal mechanisms of On Cooling the Mark Out by Erving Goffman (shame-humiliation effect) while using the public’s widespread fallacy of the Belief in a Just World, BJW (Melvin Lerner, retired University of Waterloo, Canada) in the country’s largest daily newspaper.

Every dying empire resorts to displays of public humiliation.

Why were people crucified in Jesus’ time?
Crucifixion was a Roman custom used on the worst malefactors and rebellious slaves. Judea was a tributary to Rome at that time. It is recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus that after the last rebellion of the Jews and the capture and razing of Jerusalem, the countryside was practically denuded of trees the Romans crucified so many. WikiAnswer

Detail: Crucifixion was often performed to terrorize onlookers into submission. Victims were left on display after death as warnings. Crucifixion was usually intended to provide a death that was particularly slow, painful (hence the term excruciating, literally “out of crucifying”), gruesome (hence dissuading against the crimes punishable by it), humiliating, and public, using whatever means were most expedient for that goal. Crucifixion methods varied considerably with location and time period…

While a crucifixion was an execution, it was also a humiliation, by making the condemned as vulnerable as possible. Although artists have depicted the figure on a cross with a loin cloth or a covering of the genitals, writings by Seneca the Younger suggest that victims were crucified completely nude. When the criminal had to urinate or defecate, they had to do so in the open, in view of passers-by, resulting in discomfort and the attraction of insects. Despite its frequent use by the Romans, the horrors of crucifixion did not escape mention by some of their eminent orators. Cicero for example, in a speech that appears to have been an early bid for its abolition,  described crucifixion as “a most cruel and disgusting punishment”, and suggested that “the very mention of the cross should be far removed not only from a Roman citizen’s body, but from his mind, his eyes, his ears.” Wikipedia

Humiliation is the most unpredictable, violent and destructive human emotion. It can result in many types of loss (see Bob “Bhupinder” Baber, WikiFranchise.org)

Evil in franchising? Look to the system not the individual

Social psychologist legend Philip Zimbardo makes an excellent point in this TED video.

• Remember Abu Ghraib?

He asks the question: Does evil reside primarily in…

1. the apple (the individual),
2. the whole barrel of apples (everything) or
3. the barrel-makers (power brokers, the system, situation)?

I have concluded abuse within mom-and-pop franchising has evolved and resides mostly with the power elite: the franchise bar, the Fixers.

This is why modern franchising is Unsafe at any Brand.