Voiceover Artist 0:00
Welcome to web and beyond cast, where small business comes to learn about marketing and managing on the web and beyond with your host gray Sidney-Smith

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:10
Hello there small business owners, entrepreneurs and community. Welcome to Episode 20 of web and beyond cast. On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about franchising. Again, I have back with me, Pfizer and Kemal from the franchise consulting company. And as you know, franchising is a form of small business ownership that really doesn’t get a lot of love in the economic development space. And so I wanted to just do this series with Pfizer. And so we can get a little bit more understanding of what it looks like in this episode we’re going to talk about is the idea of faisons six step process for picking the perfect fit franchise, Say that three times fast. But for those of you who do not know five zone, I would highly recommend that you snap back to our first episode where we talked about that, about her process of thinking about franchising as a small business owner, a little bit about Pfizer, and though Pfizer is a nationally renowned public speaker, and career strategist, as CEO of the franchise pros, in partnership with a franchise consulting company, buzzin, coaches people nationwide on making the transition from employee to entrepreneur. And so with that, welcome to web beyond cast baizen.

Faizun Kamal 1:23
Fantastic Ray, it’s a delight to be here with you again, my friend one Yes,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:28
absolutely. So I know that you have the six step process, and you are the expert on the process. And so I want you to walk us maybe through maybe what the steps are, and then let’s dig into some of the particulars that will help someone who is thinking about franchising, really get into the process and understand what is necessary to go from zero to owning a franchise.

Faizun Kamal 1:49
Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, Ray, one of the things my friend that I find in the years that I’ve been doing, this is why people most people know what a franchise is, because they see them everywhere. When you start to dig, however, a little bit deeper than that, most people get stumped. And they say, Well, I don’t really know what a franchise does, or the way it operates. And most certainly, when I’m speaking with someone who is looking to buy a franchise for themselves, the question becomes, what do I do? Are there steps that I follow? Do I have to do this all on my own? Is there a to use the phrase is there a method to the madness. And the beautiful thing here, Ray, and frankly, this is one of the things my friend that I love so much about this industry. And there are quite a few things. But this one thing in that when I work with someone who does not have that background in franchise ownership, they may never have owned the business in their lives before. This is This looks like a big, tall, scary mountain to them. And they don’t quite know how to begin that accent. And in my book, as you rightly stated, I’ve broken it down into bite sized pieces. So if you’re looking at the elephant and you’re saying I want to eat that elephant, well, you can just go the whole animal down, you have to start biting it off in little chunks sized pieces. And that’s what we do. It’s a very simple process, Ray. But it’s a very effective process. I say to my clients, this process only works if you work it, otherwise it doesn’t. In terms of the first first step, it really begins with you know, the very famous phrase Know thyself. Ancient Greeks, right. When someone first comes to me, Ray, it’s really a simple conversation. So if you came to me and said, Zune, you know, I’ve been thinking about starting a franchise, but I have no idea where to begin. My first question to you is not going to be about a franchise, it’s instead going to be Oh, that’s interesting way. Well, tell me a little bit about you. What do you do? What have you done in the last 1015 years of your career? What industry have you been in? So you know, in the work that you currently do, Ray, give me a sense of what does a day in the life of Ray look like? And in these questions, Ray, what I’m trying to what I’m trying to pull out, what I’m trying to assert in is, what kind of skill sets does this particular person come to the table with? You might say, you know, five Zune. I have been the Vice President of Marketing for ABC Company for the last 15 years. And I have a small team of people that I manage, and there are these discrete marketing projects that I run for my company, and I manage them from start to finish. Um, it just was few things that you’ve shared with me, Ray, I’m able to pull out a couple of