CHAPTER FIVE

PAYING THE COST TO BE THE BOSS:
BUYING INTO A FRANCHISE

In 1964, CBS rejected Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek concept in favor of a show called Lost in Space by Irwin Allen. Science fiction was big back in the mid-‘60s and Allen had not only produced a number of popular sci-fi films in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, but had already adapted one of them successfully—Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea—earlier that year for ABC. Gene Roddenberry on the other hand, while an avid science fiction fan himself, was best known around town as a writer for shows about cops, cowboys or soldiers. At the time, rejecting Star Trek was a smart move for CBS.

Gene then took the concept to NBC, who bought it and had the pilot in production by the end of that same year. It starred a wonderful actor named Jeffrey Hunter in the lead role of Captain Christopher Pike. The network passed on it in early 1965, but took the unusual step of paying Gene to write a second pilot—the first one was “too intellectual”—and thank goodness for that, because Captain Kirk didn’t exist until that script. NBC liked this pilot episode—called “Where No Man Has Gone Before”—and premiered the show in the fall of 1966. The show ran two more seasons before our luck ran out in February 1969, shortly after we finished filming Season 3. All told, we lasted 79 episodes.

By all measures, Star Trek should have faded into obscurity after our cancellation like most of the other science fiction shows from the period: Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel, Land of Giants. Our show was different though. In the 45 years since the original series went off the air, Star Trek has spawned five spin-off series, twelve feature films, more than 75 computer and video games, at least 500 separate novels, a Sears catalog worth of merchandise and an entire convention circuit. It is, as they say, a cottage industry. I don’t know why we were different than those other shows; I don’t know why we developed such a loyal fan base, but why is not the point of this story. The point is to illustrate the power of a franchise.

If there is one person who understands the power and value of a franchise, you’re looking at him. (OK -- reading him.) Besides starring in all 79 of the original Star Trek episodes, I went on to voice my character in the animated series a few years later, appear in eight of the twelve films—one of which I directed—and co-write 11 of the Star Trek-themed books. In a very real sense, the Star Trek franchise made my career and everyone else’s in the regular cast. The irony is, this was an understanding I came to, and appreciated, only later in life.

At the time, it didn’t feel like Star Trek made us, it felt like we made Star Trek.

With the exception of James Doohan (Scotty) and DeForest Kelley (Bones), the rest of us were in our late 20s and early 30s when NBC picked up the show. We’d all guest starred on a number of popular (and not so popular) shows in the years leading up to that first season, but none of us had experienced our big break. We had no idea if this would be it, but we knew it was a risk. NBC had something like 24 pilots ordered that season and while sci-fi was indeed popular at the time, no one had the first clue which shows would make it. In ’64, the year NBC bought the show, CBS canceled The Twilight Zone. The next year, ABC canceled Jonny Quest and Outer Limits after one and two seasons, respectively. Anything was possible, and most of it was bad.

NBC brought us to air with a modest 17-episode run. We had great ratings with young viewers and decent reviews from the critics, but we didn’t gain as much traction with a broader audience as the network had hoped, which put us on the chopping block almost immediately. Whatever peril the Enterprise may have found herself in each week was nothing compared to the vicious universe of network TV. Before the end of the first season, the network ordered a dozen more episodes and renewed us, but put us on at 8:30 on Friday nights for that second season. There went those young viewers I just mentioned. Not that I blame them. What would you have rather been doing on a Friday night when you were a teenager: watching TV or going out? (And that was back when music was still good.) Still, we managed to survive budget cuts, scheduling changes and an aborted cancellation for another season—thanks to our small, but dedicated fan base—before NBC finally pulled the plug.

All of this is to say that work on the original series was not all tribbles and hot, green women. It was hard work with an uncertain future. Being in the middle of it, helping carve a new path for science fiction television, I did not see all the opportunities Star Trek was creating—that required a little hindsight and a lot of distance—but they started to spring up almost right away. We went directly into syndication despite having fewer episodes than most studios require; within a couple years, a number of different games came out and novels began to get published. The animated series was launched in 1973 and by the middle of 1975 Paramount had paid Gene Roddenberry mid-7 figures to write the first feature motion picture script. In less than a decade, Star Trek had become a franchise.

What made the Star Trek franchise so powerful to me as an actor and so valuable to the creators who owned it, was that each successive Star Trek endeavor was proportionately less risky because it was built on the success of everything that came before it. No one had to reinvent the warp drive, so to speak. No one had to spend the time or money to create an entirely new universe. All we had to do was honor the universe that Gene and the original cast had created, live by its laws, do something new and fun within the broad confines of that universe, and we were more likely than not to succeed.

This is the essence of the franchise model: giving people more of a good thing. And it is a great option for anyone looking to go into business for themselves without the risk of starting completely from scratch. It begs the question though: what exactly is a franchise?

There are three types:

Licensing franchises – these are like sports teams and beverage companies where the parent company offers up a license to use their branding and trademark in association with the franchise’s normal business operations. If you can make and sell New York Yankees hats without getting arrested, you’ve got a licensing franchise.

Distributorship franchises – think of car dealerships and gas stations, where the main company lets you set up shop and sell their products in your region. You can make a lot of money this way if you’re good. That’s why most people who own distributorships don’t just own one place, they own several.

Business Format franchises – this is the kind of franchise that most people think of when someone talks about owning a franchise. McDonalds, Subway, 7-11, Oil Changers, etc. You pay them an initial start-up fee and a cut of your profits every month and in exchange they basically give a successful business-in-a-box with a proven model, an established brand name, and a battle-tested operating system.

We’ll focus here on the last of these three — business format franchises — because they provide the quickest and surest path to small business success for those of us over 50. They especially appeal to folks who are tired of the rat race like Thomas Betts and Dave Bateman were, but don’t have quite the same appetite for risk. They’re also ideal for people who have previously thrived inside corporate systems but are now interested in doing their own thing and being their own boss in the next phase of their lives. It’s way to be both corporate and independent at the same time.

That’s how Tim Groves put it to me when we sat down to discuss the opening of his newest Doctors Express clinic in Greenville, South Carolina. The idea behind Doctors Express is simple: an urgent care business without the hospital or the long emergency room waits. What makes the idea novel, though, is that each Doctors Express is placed in a retail setting; essentially a storefront like a Starbucks or a Baskin Robbins. But instead of selling treats, they sell treatment. “Everyone needs a doctor at some point,” Tim explained, “so why not design a clinic that fits their needs and lifestyle. Everyone wants everything quick, convenient, inexpensive these days, so we put Doctors Express clinics where you’re going to be doing different kinds of errands anyway.”

Besides the obvious benefits of ease and convenience, what makes this concept work so well is that it allows the doctors to focus on the medicine and the franchise owners to focus on the business. No one wants their doctor worrying about whether he bought enough printer toner to make it through the week. And guess what: Doctors don’t want to think about it either!

“A lot of them coming out of school, or even established doctors, have a hard time seeing patients and trying to manage a business on top of it,” Tim told me. “This way our doctors see patients all day and I take care of the investment of actually building out the office.”

“So does this make the doctor your employee then?” I asked. I’ve met a lot of doctors in my day and I didn’t think many would ever consider themselves employees.

“Yes and no,” Tim said. “In my case our lead physician is also my partner. It’s like a joint venture. But we have three other doctors that work just on an hourly basis. A lot of doctors do this actually.”

I stand corrected. But what was most surprising to me was not that doctors would be employees, rather it was that before Tim had even jumped into the franchise game he’d already analyzed the risks and taken the path he was more comfortable with. He could have dived in headfirst, owned 100% of that initial franchise and made everyone his employee. If he wanted to be his own boss and do his own thing, what better way than owning it all? With 100% of the ownership, of course, he would bear 100% of the risk for its failure. In his mid-50s when he opened the first Doctors Express, that gamble was a bridge too far. By taking on a partner, he could mitigate the risk and avoid over-extending himself financially. And by taking on a partner who was a doctor, he also found someone who could fulfill the services that were the entire mission of the business. Better to own half of a thriving success than a hundred percent of a goose egg.

These initial business decisions by Tim reminded me very much of the questions Michael Grottola and Thomas Betts asked themselves when they prepared to take their first next steps: What are you good at? What assets do you have that you can leverage? What kind of risks are you really willing to take? Because Tim had a lot to lose.

After 23 successful years in the hotel industry, Tim was sitting at the top of the proverbial food chain. He was a high-ranking executive with Extended Stay hotels, in charge of sales and marketing for 686 properties around the country. During his tenure he had successfully grown the company to three times its original size. There was plenty to be proud of, but it all felt rather empty to Tim and he couldn’t articulate why that was. It was a good job. The money was there. His employers encouraged autonomy, instead of treating him like a cog in a wheel. As Tim told me, “They always told you to think like you owned the business. Think like an owner.” They, in effect, told him to be his own boss.

Over time, Tim got in the habit of doing that. He weighed each of his decisions carefully, considering their impact on the bottom line as if it were his bottom line. He expertly rode out the highs and lows of the hotel business, which runs in cycles tethered to the economy, with the big picture always in mind. He made personal sacrifices to benefit the company. He had already uprooted his family from L.A. to Atlanta, to Greenville, South Carolina and travelled constantly to visit hotels sites and regional offices. It’s what he would have done if the business were his. His mindset and his work ethic had brought him a lot of success but little fulfillment.

(And let’s be clear: Telling employees to think like owners is, at heart, a crummy move. Will you be paying them like owners if their ideas and hard work bear fruit? No? Then don’t confuse things.)

Finally, after years of thinking like an owner, Tim wanted to start living like one: “I could own my own business and be able to do things completely the way I want.” Maybe that was his answer.

“I really would like to be owner.”

But an owner of what? Nothing leapt out at him. All he was sure of was that he was ready to check out of the hotel business. The hospitality industry runs with the same cycle as the economy, riding high when the market is up and bottoming out when the market is low. And, as the man in charge of sales, Tim lived and died with it. The stress had already taken a toll on him and now, in 2007, with the country heading into recession, the market looked bleak. This alone would have brought enough pressure to bear on his job, but his company had just been sold and new owners brought a new set of expectations. High expectations. Extended Stay hotels had just been purchased at its peak but it was about to hit a down wave. Tim wasn’t a surfer; he didn’t look forward to that ride.

“No matter how great you were, when things are going down and the revenue is going down, they’re going to look at the guy who is responsible for revenue.” Tim realized that this might be his opportunity to get out while the getting was good. So he began to weigh his options.

He wasn’t looking to start over, to switch industries and claw his way into the C-suite again over the next decade. He wanted to build something that would be his. He realized: “I want to be able to have something that I grow, that I personally own.” He knew how to grow a business and he knew how to keep customers happy with great hospitality, but still he didn’t know what that business would be — only that it wouldn’t have anything to do with hotels. So what opportunity did he jump to?

Nothing. Tim left his job with no set plan to do anything but unwind and spend time with his family. It was a decision he needed to make for himself. When the time was right, he would chart his new course. As Paul Newman famously said, “Sometimes nothing can be a pretty cool hand.”

After a couple months, Tim was fully rested and even more thoroughly bored. It was time to get back to work, this time as his own boss. He was so bored, he even started reconsidering his former industry. “I could do a hotel consulting business,” he thought, “I know a lot about sales and marketing, and they’re always looking for new ways to drive revenue into these businesses.” It made sense. A consulting business would allow him to grow his own business while putting his decades of experience and Rolodex of connections to good use. It seemed to promise a fresh start without having to start over. But was it really the fresh start he needed? Consulting would require extensive travel that would steal time away from his growing daughters. He would be a one-man show as all responsibility fell on him. Tim realized, “I’ll be right back on the road again, and all the business will be between my ears. I’ll probably be just swamped with all kinds of stuff going on.” It also meant returning to the industry that had burned him out. And there was the recession to think about: the highs would not be as high and the lows would be lower. Even as a consultant, he would have to ride the cycles of the hospitality industry and he had no interest in doing that.

Maybe that would have to be his starting point: He wanted to work in an industry that was always in demand.

Tim took advantage of seeing a career counselor—paid for as a provision of his departure package. He wanted to use the service as a sounding board, someone to bounce his ideas against to see if anything stuck. It was like therapy, without the box of tissues. And it produced a fateful question:

“Have you ever thought about buying a franchise?”

Tim sat back in the chair at his career counselor’s office. “Not really.”

As in, not ever. Tim had literally never thought about it for a second.

“There’s a guy who does these seminars that explain how it all works. It would be a great opportunity to learn more about it. Then, if you’re interested, he’ll meet with you and discuss what your revenue goals are, how much you’re willing to invest, and what you’re good at. He can even match you up with franchises that might be a good fit.”

“There are people that do that?”

“There are.”

There was even a seminar coming up soon. Would Tim like to go?

“Sure.”

Tim’s knowledge of franchises was minimal. He knew Marriott offered franchises, he had eaten at Subway before, and the basic idea appealed to him. The things he needed to get his business off the ground would be provided; everything else was up to him. So he went to the seminar and began to explore his options.

You might say that the idea had set up a franchise in Tim’s head. With the help of his broker, Tim quickly whittled down the options. Patio screens didn’t interest him at all. The food and beverage market seemed rich, but he saw a problem there, too.

“I thought about having a fast food franchise for a second,” Tim told me, “They’re great but there’s one on every corner. I just thought food and beverage is so competitive. I’m still amazed that more of them open all the time.” Entering into a highly competitive field exceeded the risk level that Tim was willing to take on.

He kept flipping through brochures. Starbucks. Transworld Business Advisors. Doctors Express… He almost tossed the information aside with the others. “The first thing I thought was, ‘Medical, I don’t want to have anything to do with it because I don’t know anything about it.’ But then Tim started looking at it a little bit more. Sure, he didn’t know anything about the medical industry, but his skills fit the company and the company fit his desired lifestyle. He took it seriously enough to fly to the company’s headquarters in Baltimore to meet with the leadership. (Luckily, he was still willing to stay in a hotel.)

The idea behind Doctor’s Express made sense to him. It was a familiar concept done in an entire new way. “Urgent care is not a new thing but still, a lot of people don’t know about it. It’s meant to be in between a primary care position and the emergency room.” Doctors Express promised to make urgent care even more convenient, accessible, and inexpensive. By now Tim was nearly sold. “Everyone needs a doctor at some point,” and here was a service that could cater to that need while making it easier to get to. Best of all, he didn’t need a medical background. His role would be to manage and grow the business and let the doctor’s manage their patients. His background was a perfect match for the demands of the business. Best of all, he could bring with him something that was sorely lacking in the medical industry.

Hospitality.

“We try to provide great hospitality skills to our staff. When someone comes in, they get treated like they’re checking into a hotel. We smile, we greet them, we give them great service, and we try to give them great service all the way through.” A doctor’s office that’s pleasant to visit? Now that is rare. And Tim knew it was a great way to set Doctor’s Express apart.

He had found his franchise.

Still, it wouldn’t come without risk. Tim’s store would be number 15 in the country and the first of its kind in Greenville, SC. This presented a challenge in terms of getting his name out there, but it also meant that he wouldn’t have much competition. Doctors Express also guaranteed him a population radius of 50,000; a nice wide market. And the barrier to entry was a high one—“It’s not cheap to buy all this equipment and build all these things out”— so there wasn’t going to be another Doctors Express opening up immediately. And if another Doctors Express did eventually open in Greenville, it would bring the opportunity for collaboration, to share costs and make life easier for both owners. Yes there were risks, but they were mitigated. Tim pulled the trigger.

The Doctors Express franchise model made it as easy as possible for Tim to start putting his storefront together. He didn’t need to understand the ins and outs of x-ray equipment because the homework had been done for him and a discount rate had already been negotiated. He had even been given a proven business plan. As Tim explained, “They give you a template, “Here are all the vendors. Here’s who you get your x-ray from. Here’s who you get your supplies from. They negotiate volume discounts so you don’t have to recreate the wheel on every single aspect of your business.”

You’ve got to love the franchise model. How else could a burnt-out hotel executive in his mid-50s build a state-of-the-art medical facility?

Still, all that corporate help couldn’t spare him from a steep learning curve and the terrifying moments that so often come with entrepreneurship. For Tim, one of them came soon after he opened his doors. And it came in the form of one thought: “Uh oh.”

Everything was in place. The office was staffed. There were even appointments in the books. But the company still wasn’t online with every insurance network. The process had taken much longer than he ever expected. The problem was that none of the insurance companies knew who he was. This was the one thing Doctors Express couldn’t pre-arrange for Tim because insurance coverage varies on a state-by-state basis. And it was taking too long to move through the process. “There was a lag time between when we opened and we were accepted on all that,” Tim said.

So, for many patients, the only money Doctors Express could collect was the co-pay the patients themselves forked over — a tiny fraction of the true cost of the visit. Financially it was a terrible business proposition. But that’s when Tim’s hospitality background, his insistence that every patient enjoy a positive experience, kicked in.

“We just said, ‘We want to make a friend out of these people, so we’ll take them.’ If we aren’t accepted with that insurance, we’ll just take them for their co-pay, treat them for $20, and make them feel great about it so that they’ll come back later.” His customers were treated well and left happy, hopefully to tell their friends about their positive experience. His background in an entirely different industry was serving him well.

In the meantime, Tim was writing checks out of his personal account to cover payroll, rent, and to keep the lights on. “All that stuff entrepreneurs do when they start out,” he says while shaking his head. “You think, ‘Well, this is fun.’ Tim took another page from his hotel experience and created direct mail and Internet marketing campaigns to grow business while anxiously hoping to get past the red tape. Postcards had been sent, ads had been placed, and word of mouth was spreading, but would it turn around fast enough?

On one of many sleepless nights, Tim turned to his wife and asked, “Have I lost my mind? Did I make the biggest mistake of my life?”

His wife sighed, “I’m not sure. I’m not divorcing you yet.”

That was a relief.

It took about a year to get the growth arrow going up and to the right. In fact, it turned around so fast that Tim is planning to open a second Doctors Express franchise. It will be the third storefront in the Greenville area. Marketing costs are shared among all three, which makes the startup cost of Tim’s second franchise considerably lower.

“We’re doing pretty well now. That’s why I’m doing a second one. I’ve certainly made a lot of mistakes. Now that I’ve gotten it in my mind, I’ve perfected it to a degree: how to open these things and how to get it going faster, I’m a lot more confident in opening the second one. I feel it’s going to do well financially.”

Why wouldn’t it? It’s a business in a box, and he’d already torn one box open.

Like Thomas Betts, Tim had burned out. Like Michael Grottola, he had decades of experience in one industry that he could leverage into another. Like Dave Bateman, he had relocated looking for something more. Like Geri Brin and Julie Cole, he used the Internet as a platform and a tool to build his new business. And it all started inside the comfort of an executive suite he didn’t have to leave.

That last part probably sounds funny to the subject of our next story. Cliff Brahm didn’t have the luxury of picking his exit date. The company picked it for him. I’ll let his wife explain.

“Downsized?”

Her disbelief echoed Cliff’s own. This wasn’t a conversation Cliff had expected to have that afternoon. Cliff was shocked; shaken at his core. He had called home to break the bad news as gently as he could.

“I can’t believe they would do that,” his wife said. “What are we going to do?”

Good question. Luckily they didn’t have to decide that day. His company had given him a good severance package and a promise to help him transition.

“We’ll find a way through this. We have a severance, and we’ll find the next great step.”

In the days that followed, Cliff tried to figure out what that next great step would be. He was great at his old job in retail merchandising, had built out a strong network of connections over the years and an even stronger reputation. In a matter of weeks, he had received an enticing offer to move into a VP role at a new company. Cliff excitedly flew out to meet his potential new employers. “God, this is going to be great,” he thought, “I’ll be back working again, it’s an industry I know, I have a lot of connections, and it’s perfect.” The visit went well—“I was so pumped”—and Cliff flew back to Cincinnati ready to prep his family to move to Charlotte. But then, thirty thousand feet above Kentucky, something started to feel not-quite-right.

“I just didn’t want to get back into the rat race. After being in it for 49 years, in many different positions, higher level, lower level, I don’t want to be in this boat again.” He wanted to make decisions for himself. He never wanted to worry that someday his boss would come through the door and say, “Thanks for your time but we’re moving in a different direction.” Cliff wanted to build equity in something that would be his, to be the decision maker. “I wanted to control my own destiny.”

He was literally up in the air.

By the time he landed, Cliff knew he couldn’t accept the offer. The decision scared him, of course, but it made him optimistic too. With the full support of his wife, Cliff planned to open his own business. Unlike Tim, Cliff was not seeking to leave the industry he had come from. “I could do the same business. I had a lot of success and I had people lined up that wanted to jump on board with me, from a sales and an operational standpoint.” He was going to take his expertise and put them to work for himself. Cliff started putting together a business plan for his own retail merchandising business.

Cliff built outa plan for his start-up, a ground to nation-wide business that could grow quickly. He just needed the money—$400,000 to get started. He chose to go the small-business-loan route at his regional bank. The bank chose to go the “we’re not going to fund it” route. They deemed it too risky given the recessive economic climate. Cliff was back at square one.

Was the plane’s cabin low on oxygen when he made this decision? No matter; it was too late to second guess himself.

Undeterred, Cliff set his sights on options that carried lower risk. “I can’t get a loan at the bank,” he thought, “I’ll go to an established business, like a franchise.” He made his interests known and asked his friends to keep an eye out for anything that looked really promising. It didn’t take long for a phone call to come.

“Get on to your computer, look at this website but don’t react to the name.”

This had to be good. Cliff opened his laptop. “1-800-Got-Junk.”

“Oh, God.” Cliff’s heart sank. Had he really fallen this far? But as he perused the colorful website filled with pictures of guys sitting on cool-looking trucks, something clicked. Cliff could actually see the need for this kind of service. After all, everybody has junk, the detritus of our consumer culture. Hot-water heaters gone cold. Computers storing nothing but dust. Disgusting mattresses. Boxes of mementos from times you no longer care to remember. A wood pile from back when people burned wood. All the stuff we own but hate — here was a company, staffed by reputable people, that would make it disappear. Customers could trust that anything that could be reused would be donated, all recyclables recycled, and all trash would be properly disposed of. His own basement could certainly benefit from the services of 1-800-Got-Junk!

Cliff dropped his superior attitude. Maybe one person’s junk really was another person’s treasure – his.

Cliff saw much more than the junk hauling business itself. He saw the potential for building a brand, and that played directly to his strengths. He knew what his role could be and knew it was the right fit. It was time to have another conversation with his wife that Cliff never expected. The former executive of a large corporation was ready to go all in on a junk collecting business. Sanford & Son on wheels. If Cliff’s wife was supportive before, she was now eligible for sainthood. But now he had to impress an even tougher audience: the

1-800-Got-Junk management team.

While the company was new to Cliff, it had already received a lot of publicity. They had been written about in the Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine. Interest from potential franchisees was boiling over, which allowed Got Junk to be selective. “It was hard to even get a hold of them,” Cliff told me. “I’m on the teleconference with 50 people—50 prospective franchise owners—plus their management team. And their management team is telling everybody about the company. And then after the meeting, if you were interested, you needed to get in touch with them, and then they would start the process with you.” There were two other prospective owners from Cincinnati on the call with Cliff. He wondered, “So what happens two nights from now, when there are another 50 people? How many other people from Cincinnati are going to be on the market?”

It felt like a do or die moment and he knew he had to be decisive.

When the call was finished, he walked upstairs and told his wife, “There are two other people from Cincinnati. If we don’t act now, that’s ok. But somebody else will.”

It was junk or be junked. They made the decision right then and there: they would do the junking.

Cliff was put in touch with one of the company founders, Brian Scudamore, to get started on the application process. The two developed a plan and discussed budgeting before sending Cliff into a second, in-person interview in Vancouver. After the second interview, presuming that everything went well, Cliff would hand over a big check. “But it was the toughest one-day interview that I had ever been through.” He would later learn that, of the 20 people in his interview class only one quarter had been accepted. The rest were literally not good enough to haul away the trash!

But Cliff had made it. Over the next month, he and his wife got business applications, licenses, and ordered trucks; everything they needed to bring 1-800-Got-Junk to Cincinnati.

They started small. Armed with two leased trucks and a “war room” in their basement, Cliff and his wife mapped out the entire city and planned their marketing efforts street-by-street. “It was a guerilla marketing program in the beginning,” he describes, “Our trucks were very colorful and said 1-800-Got-Junk all over them. We would go to specific neighborhoods or areas, park the truck, and hang up a big banner. Then we put on these big blue clown wigs—” I had to interrupt him. “Clown wigs? Come on.”

Cliff smiled, “Clown wigs. That was me every morning.

I loved it.”

It’s a part of the 1-800-Got-Junk culture and if someone is not willing to put on a blue wig, they are simply not a fit for the company. (Maybe that’s where IBM went wrong. Pocket squares and skinny ties are no match for a cobalt-colored Afro.) Cliff understood that. He had to honor the philosophy and culture that helped Got Junk stand out. “We want the person who’s going to say, ‘Give me that wig.’ Because not only will they do great marketing, which builds our brand awareness, but they’ll dazzle the customer once they get there as well. When we started out, no one knew we existed so our goal was to build brand awareness. Thousands of people had to know about us today that didn’t know about us yesterday, and tomorrow, thousands of people have to know about us. And that was our job. That was our mission.”

If there had been any doubt that Cliff was all in on his franchise, the blue clown wig surely scared it away. He and his wife were 100% dedicated to running a growing, successful business and Cliff credits its success to that mentality. “We could not fail. We had nothing to fall back on.” Cliff is an entrepreneur at heart and has the stomach for a higher risk profile but he appreciates the backstop that comes with owning a franchise. “Had I started the business that I talked about on my own, there would have been plenty of times that we wouldn’t have had that structure behind it. And, if you have the right fortitude, you can still make it that way, but the nice thing about a franchise is if you pick the right one, the system is good.”

The franchise system gives you the backbone, it gives you the model, and it gives you people that are there to help you. And there are plenty of times you need help, whether you’re on top of the world or in the bottom of a ditch. For Cliff Brahm and his wife, the nicest thing of all was that they had the best of two worlds: the security and resources that come with being part of a larger company, and the freedom that comes with being an entrepreneur.

You’re your own boss, but you have a team backing you up.

Kind of like LeBron James.

Tim Groves and Cliff Brahm were extremely successful businessmen who’d gone about as far as you can go inside Corporate America without actually running the place. They lived in different parts of the country, worked in entire different industries, and experienced slightly different fates. Yet they shared an overwhelming desire to call their own shots, to build something that was theirs. The franchise model made that dream a reality; it turned the possible into the actual. Its lower risk, built-in support system and proven business methods worked for these two men.

One of them cured his mid-life malaise by starting medical business. The other hauled his frustrations away to the dump. What handy metaphor could a franchise business do for you? Start thinking!