Alicia Orleski

I think it's a super rewarding industry, and it's unassuming. When you're in the franchise space, especially at the early stages when there's a very small, lean team, you touch every aspect of business without even knowing it. Coming into this space right out of school, it was pure luck for me, but I've been very grateful for it. You just don't realize how much practical hands-on experience you get on how to open a business and operate it. I don't think you can learn that without being an owner yourself. You can't, even if you're in a corporate seat within a big company, you just don't touch all aspects of a business. Coming into this space, you will learn accounting, finance, construction, legal, marketing, branding, operations, training. You learn so many things, and you learn how to build programming, infrastructure. You learn how to public speak, you learn how to brand and message and train. You learn so many things, it's very interesting. And it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fast-paced work, and I think when you can come in here, it doesn't really matter what industry the franchise space is in, you really can be very much equipped to learn what it takes to create your own brand, create your own business, or be in a support role. It's a really rewarding path, and it's ever-changing. It doesn't get boring. If you can live and thrive in the chaos, I just think it's an interesting industry. It's a small industry, even though it's large, and you get to meet a lot of great people, a lot of great founders, a lot of great leaders, and it was just a very eye-opening industry.

The biggest struggle on the franchisor side is getting buy-in and trust with your franchise partners, because they're a partner, not a staff member, you can't fire them. They have to believe in you and trust you in order for them to listen to you. You can tell them what to do, but you have to hope that they'll do it. When you're working with an owner who's writing a check and investing a lot of their money and time in your brand, you have to treat them with a level of respect and buy-in as almost like they're part of the process. It really takes a true leader that has empathy and feels like they're on the same level. You're not leading with hierarchy, you're not leading with title, you're working with these people to make them more successful than you are. The franchisors that don't succeed are the ones that lose trust in their partners, and then those franchisees go rogue. On the franchisee side where I'm currently sitting, the biggest struggle for sure is cost. Development now has changed. It's a landlord-driven market, leases are very expensive, and construction costs have gone up probably over 50% than even they were 5 years ago. Labor is very costly to open a brick-and-mortar business nowadays. The amount of cash it takes to open up one unit, the ramp-up period to operate and get positive cash flow is now taking longer. People are taking old information and looking at a development schedule that is far too fast than what it should be now. You can't go open 10 units a year unless you have a substantial amount of cash. The struggle is trying to get real data that sticks, and not old, outdated data. But the opportunity is that the competitive landscape now in brick and mortar is not one against the other. It's actually trying to find partnerships and like-minded businesses to thrive. The true new founders coming in get that. No longer are the days where we're fighting against each other and saying everyone's a competitor. Find the new mix that you're all in this together, because everyone is struggling on the cost end, and there's ways to collaborate amongst like-minded businesses to share on cost, share on profit, share customers. There's so much more upward potential if we think about it that way than isolating yourself and your brand. In the near future, there's more collaboration, partnerships. Health and wellness is for everyone, and it's to better everyone's life. All of these businesses do not need thousands of customers through their door every month to make money. You don't need to own the market, we can own the market together, but then share on costs to make us all profitable.