The ideal way for businesses such as Starbucks or Sweetgreen – or yours – to scale depends on a whole range of factors. These include strategic goals, market demand, financial considerations and the ability to maintain brand integrity and quality control while expanding. Neither Starbucks or Sweetgreen has chosen franchising as their expansion model, preferring to own their own outlets. My question is: Why?

Jon Evans of Uncensored CMO is excited to be interviewing the CEO and founder of what is the world's coolest canned water brand, Liquid Death

How is your business adapting to the changing business environment brought about by artificial intelligence (AI)?

One of the advantages of franchising is that it enables businesses to scale quickly.

Despite warnings about its risks, artificial intelligence has already become the Next Big Thing. Whether we realise it or not, we’re already exposed to it in our daily lives. And there’s a pretty good chance that if you’re not already using it in your business, your competitors are.

Winning business awards is about so much more than recognition and reputation. It’s about the journey of business improvement, excellence and growth—not only for your business, but for you and your team.

If you don’t think your business needs any form of improvement, you may as well shut it down right now.

Part 2 in our series on Franchisee Selection: Why It Is the Most Important Decision Franchisors Make It doesn’t matter how good your systems, training and support are—if you don’t select the ‘right’ franchisees in the first place, none of it is going to produce a high performing franchise. Yet as a franchise consultant, I can't believe how many franchisors rely on gut feeling or, worse still, chance in the way they select franchisees. But what do the 'right' franchisees look like? As I mentioned in the first article in this series, that depends on the franchise business, according to Christiane Gaul of the University of Applied Sciences in Kufstein, Austria, in her study Partner Selection Process in Franchising . Of course, the kind of candidates a franchisor looks for will be different for a lawn-mowing franchise than a professional services franchise. Let's look at who the 'right' people are for some well-established franchises...

“And the Supreme Franchise of the Year Award goes to…” I dare not breathe. Why is there always that interminable pause before the winner’s name is announced? My client has already won all three awards that I entered them for – Field Manager of the Year, Franchisee of the Year and Franchise of the Year in their industry category. But will they walk out with the biggie…? “Signature Homes!” I can’t begin to describe the elation I feel every time I help a client to win a franchise or business award. It’s as exciting for me as it is for the client. Businesses enter awards competitions for different reasons – recognition, credibility, ego, media exposure – but to me the most important reasons are the ability to benchmark yourself against the best and use what you learn to continuously improve your business. I take my hat off to those who keep entering awards despite failing to win but keep getting better every year until hopefully… finally… One of the keys to writing better awards entries, I’ve found, is to understand the criteria for the awards and what the judges are looking for. Of course, the criteria depend on what the award is for – leadership, customer service delivery, marketing, innovation, the list goes on. But I have found that the most common awards frameworks or models in the general business excellence category are the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model and the Baldrige Excellence Framework.