Tom DuFore: 0:01

Welcome to the Multiply your Success podcast, where each week, we hope growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, tom Dufour, ceo of Big Sky Franchise Team, and as we open today, I'm wondering how you are building the enterprise value of your company and what types of marketing and PR are you using to help create this enterprise value? Well, our guest today is Zach Fishman, and he shares with us some of the levers to pull to build your brand's enterprise value. Now, zach has been involved in the franchise space since he could walk, literally devoting his life to understanding all facets of the industry. Currently, zach is the Chief Growth Officer of Fishman PR, the world's foremost PR firm specializing in franchising, and the franchise elevator, the world's preeminent emerging brands PR firm.

Tom DuFore: 0:56

In his spare time, zach is also the co-founder of the Franchise Young Conference, which is the only conference for millennial and Gen Z franchise executives. He's the host of Modern Business Podcast, an award-winning podcast focusing on showcasing franchising's most exciting entrepreneurs, and his partner and COO of the Franchise Supplier Network, where he specializes in matchmaking franchisors which best fit suppliers. Now, zach and I have known one another for many years in franchising, and so I'm so thrilled to be able to share his knowledge and expertise with you on this episode. You're going to love this podcast interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it.

Zack Fishman: 1:36

Hey, tom, thanks for having me on the show. Really appreciate it. So my name is Zach Fishman. I am the, amongst many things, the chief growth officer for both Fishman PR and Franchise Elevator. Really excited to be on the show today. I'm normally used to doing my own podcast. Been doing it for a long, long time. We're doing a bit of a home and home, so I'm excited to be on yours first. We got a lot to talk about today, so let's get into it, I suppose.

Tom DuFore: 2:01

That sounds great Well, and really, I think, a big piece of our conversation. We're talking pre-show and obviously we've known one another in franchising for a long time. It's really this idea of PR and understanding how to build value, I guess, for organizations. My experience has been with a lot of clients, emerging franchisors and even growth-focused franchisors oftentimes view PR as more of a lead generation piece, and there's so much more to that, so I'd love just to open the conversation with it there and have you start filling in some gaps for us.

Zack Fishman: 2:38

You're giving me a little bit of deja vu because I feel like that this is a conversation that I have a lot, but it's an important one. You know, when I first got into this business about five and a half years ago, you know PR was starting to make the transition over from a lead generation activity into something that's more education centric. You know, when the agency that you know that my mother founded in 91 really first got its start, my father, who kind of came in not long after to really be the financial and sales engine of the agency you know it was lead gen because really it was and there wasn't really a great way of tracking it, but that's just what it was known. As you know, you would get an article somewhere in some newspaper and somebody would call you right at your corporate office and that's just how it worked. You know, and I think that over time it has just evolved much more. The candidate journey has become a lot more complex. There's more touch points, you know you hear a lot about. You know and really like the dawn of digital marketing within the franchise development space.

Zack Fishman: 3:40

You know you heard a lot about just kind of like a new method of being able to put your name out there, but there wasn't really a lot of education and talk about SEO and what that really meant for a brand and really I guess in a more in layman's terms, it's really, you know, kind of laying out the long and illustrious journey that a franchise prospect can have and you know the many stops that they have along the way.

Zack Fishman: 4:06

Rather, that is reading an article or listening to a podcast or seeing an ad or going to a trade show. It's just gotten much more complex, no matter what type of brand you are industry or size. But I think overall that's something that has been an education piece for me and it's been a lot of time spent on. My end is really just explaining to even the most sophisticated of prospects how PR is looked upon today and how it's measured. It's really changed a lot and really its prominence in the industry has changed a lot too, just in terms of you know what it does for a brand, no matter if they're just getting started and they've never told their story before, or if they're a brand that's been, that's been owned by three different private equity firms in the past 10 years, right, so it doesn't really matter, it's just changed for everybody.

Tom DuFore: 4:56

That's a great point and I'd love for you to talk a little bit about some of those maybe specifics, how things have changed and what's different from several years back, which you talked a little bit about, where it was transitioning from this lead generation idea to where it is today. So what are some of those? Maybe? Oftentimes marketers right, they're looking for metrics. So maybe we talk through some of the metrics that maybe have changed in terms of how you gauge what success might look like.

Zack Fishman: 5:25

Yeah. So I think that really in the early 2000s you saw this massive rise in online marketing, really quote unquote. Rather, that was a portal or that was an ad through Google or, at the time, aol. There was a lot of advertising with a lot of the print organizing with a lot of the print advertising that you were seeing normally. They were bringing it online like an entrepreneur in USA Today that was really the start was just trying to get people to be found in more places than just the newspaper or on a radio spot or on a TV, you know, on a commercial or whatever it was. And I think over time that has evolved a ton where it's not just about ad value, which was often how a lot of PR was measured was based off of the you know the ad value of a hit, aka you know how valuable that was and how much an advertiser would maybe pay for that. It's a really old school metric that is still used a little bit today.

Zack Fishman: 6:24

But now I would say the difference between digital marketing and content marketing and PR a lot of that has collapsed a ton. You've seen a lot of the industry consolidate a little bit. There's been some acquisitions between my competitors and some mergers between my competitors, my competitors and in large part, that is just due to the fact that the industry is kind of becoming one thing where it's more important to be an integrated marketing agency than to be just, you know, a jacket. You know to be doing one thing really well. We've done that through partnerships and not through actually formal mergers, but everybody in some semblance has really done that, and I think that's in large part due to the fact that it's really hard to track PR without actually understanding and owning or being in partnership with the person who is running your digital experience, especially on the franchise development side. It's just, it's a very nuanced world and it's very, very tough to do it without it, and so a lot of the reporting metrics we look to are through SEO reporting that a lot of these digital marketing agencies are spending a lot of time spinning up for you.

Zack Fishman: 7:29

It's about how long you're actually spending on the website versus before. You were actually. You know working through PR, how you know it could be anything. Even you know around, you know effectiveness of the ads and potentially utilizing some of the things that we're securing, you know, for some of our clients and how often those are actually being clicked through. It's about, you know number. It can be, in some cases, actually all about you know just deal velocity and the average deal length and how long that's taking and is that decreasing? Because if your candidate is going to be more, is going to be more. You know understanding of what your brand is all about. Generally speaking, that means that they're spending less time in the sales process because they have more of an understanding and education as to who you are as a brand.

Zack Fishman: 8:18

And I would say, subjectively speaking, it's always, always, always very helpful to be able to answer objections as well with brands and so, if you feel like that people are asking you less questions in the sales process because maybe they're being answered through PR, that's a really, really helpful metric to be able to track to, you know, and there are some things and over the years that a lot of people have worked very hard to you know, bring some quantitative to my industry and I would say, most importantly, it's really competitive analysis through the media.

Zack Fishman: 8:52

So what they do is you take kind of like a score and you take a score of what the actual placement has garnered through you know, seo reporting and Google analytics and all of that stuff and then you're actually attributing a score to that and they're measuring that score. You know that combined score with your competitors. So, for instance, if you're a pizza concept Marco's Pizza and you're looking to compare against Domino's and Papa John's and Pizza Hut, then you're taking a lot of media that you have that is business centric and you're really comparing that combined score against them to really figure out who is actually owning the media landscape for that particular category. So there's a lot of things that have advanced a ton, but I'll say it is still a little bit murky. But when you are working with an agency, a we have a couple of really amazing partners. You know across all different. You know investment levels. You know, I would say, the more that you're investing to generally, the more data that you have as, as things go.

Tom DuFore: 9:55

Thinking of it from the perspective of there's the franchisor that kind of has two pieces oftentimes that they're looking for maybe even three, but one for many, especially for growth-oriented franchise systems With new franchisees. You have your franchise development or recruitment focus. You have the focus of just promoting the brand at large in terms of just getting word out about your company or the general services that your franchise network provides. And then I think of it from the local franchisees perspective. Your local franchisees are looking to grow their local business and their local presence. So how does all of that and there may be other dynamics I'm not even mentioning here, but I think of those big three at least that pop into my mind how do you help fit all of that into what you're describing and talking about here?

Zack Fishman: 10:49

Yes, I think it really depends on the industry within franchising that you're in. You know the first and foremost, a lot of brands. Really, the lifeblood of what they do is two things it's making sure your franchisees are successful and it's making sure that you're growing as a brand right. You're growing your footprint across the country or in the world in some cases, and so it's partially informed off of that. And where I always start is the franchise development side, so understanding what type of candidate they're looking for. That really informs how they play with each other. So for brands that are looking for that multi-unit, multi-brand operator, more often than not their customer is going to be a very, very, very different person than the person that they're looking to get as a candidate. And so the consumer side aka on the local, when a location is opening, or on an ongoing basis on behalf of the franchisees, or just from a national brand perspective, you're really often finding in those cases that that strategy is quite different. You know you are looking to in a lot of ways brands like that often don't utilize PR quite as much or quite as heavy on an ongoing basis. It's either A they utilize it very little, or B they are utilizing it super heavily with a lot of different campaigns, and they have a really robust calendar. Food and beverage is the best example of that. That you find is that food and beverage always has something going on, always has an LTO going on.

Zack Fishman: 12:17

But you often find that in many instances, people who have a bigger investment level and are looking for a more sophisticated franchisee it's either you know they have a really sophisticated department and they have a really really full consumer calendar or they do next to nothing at all because they're really focusing on the growth side. For brands that it's a little bit more. You know the candidate is actually your, is actually the candidate that you would have as a franchisee, is your customer. It's a lot more. It's a lot. I would say it's a lot more of a gray area. You're often finding that brands are doing that together. Those are the brands that you know.

Zack Fishman: 12:54

In a lot of ways that's what Fishman PR was built on in many senses, and same with our emerging brands agency Franchise Elevator. Many of those brands are in personal care. They're reliant on discretionary spending. We're going to see how those brands do in the next year-ish or so, but overall a lot of those candidates often end up at times being their customer, and so you're finding that those calendars, in terms of what we are putting out there and what we are thinking through in terms of strategy, and what we're reaching out to the media often blends together a little bit more, no matter if it's a national or a regional effort.

Zack Fishman: 13:31

It's a great question to ask, but I would say the one thing that is becoming more du jour over the years is that there's been instances in which it's been really really hard to hire specialized talent especially, but talent just in general. So a lot of people are doing almost employee relations or employee recruitment, public relations as well, and it's almost looked at as a completely different avenue for them to really present themselves not only as a great brand to invest in as a franchisee, not only a great brand to invest your discretionary income into, but it's a great brand to work for too, and so that's just another added facet that we find. But overall, I would say it depends on the actual prospect itself and what the brand is thinking through and what their goals are.

Tom DuFore: 14:17

One of the things that I'm curious to get your opinion on and it's something you brought to my attention which is this concept of enterprise value for a business, an organization and, in our world, a franchise organization. How does what you do and this broad concept of PR and publicity, how does this impact the value there, the enterprise value of an organization?

Zack Fishman: 14:40

Yeah, so in much the same way that you're trying to present yourself in the most positive light for a potential customer or a potential candidate, you're doing the same for investors as well in many cases, and so a lot of the work that we've been spending a lot of time on and especially in the past 10 years or so, as the space has become more professionalized is just to look for ways to be able to create, you know, positive velocity from an investor standpoint too, and so there's a couple of ways that we've done that. Spotlighting the leadership team, that they're folks that they can actually trust, is a really big piece of what we do. You know, discussing some of the franchisees that have actually made the brand who they are is a really big impact, is a really big thing that we want to discuss. You know, really showcasing the technological sides of the brand and discussing how they are nimble as it relates to what's happening in the world of technology is a really big piece. Brands rather, they build their own or they're buying things off the shelf spend a lot of time doing, because private equity loves the idea of a brand that has the ability to be nimble and change on a dime, especially when they're the ones telling you to do that. That's a really big deal, and I would say the two others have to do with what's going on in the world, right? So you know how pertinent or how relevant is your brand. That speaks to the total addressable market that a brand could have.

Zack Fishman: 16:01

And you know a lot of investors are really trying to measure a brand based off of A you know how long can it capture the fever of the US and B you know, does it even capture it at all in the first place?

Zack Fishman: 16:13

Right?

Zack Fishman: 16:14

So they don't really want fad, exposed brands.

Zack Fishman: 16:16

They want brands that have staying power and so being able to speak to what's happening in the news and you know the demand differentiation for a brand is a really big piece of that and in some ways, a lot of investors spend a lot of time thinking through you know how connected a brand is to the community overall, and so that community aspect for some investors I'm not saying all, but some means a lot to them. So showcasing what they do and ensuring that they are ingrained in the local communities as much as possible and showcasing stories behind that that a brand can do. Of course, there's certain things that you can't mention when it comes to numbers. But you know, really highlighting, really highlighting again the success of a brand and the ways that one can, either through the mouthpiece of a franchisee or whatever it might be, is a really great way for us to showcase, you know, what a brand can actually do and that it would be a good investment for a PE firm or a strategic platform or a family office to get involved in.

Tom DuFore: 17:22

How could someone reach out to you and find out about what you're doing?

Zack Fishman: 17:25

Yeah. So there's a couple ways. I would say the best way is probably to email me just at zfish, z-f-i-s-h, at fishmanprcom. I am really prolifically posting on LinkedIn, so definitely feel free to reach out to me there and I'd be happy to you know, engage with you further and, you know, really through my LinkedIn.

Zack Fishman: 17:44

The number one thing that you know I've been spending a lot of time on over the years is that my business partner and I have a heavy newsletter that we had been running for quite a while that has a lot of my musings in there as well as his in terms of my outlook, and it's often lot of my musings in there as well as his in terms of my outlook, and it's often intertwined with my personal life as well. You know I'm not really that great at getting out and kind of doing an elevator pitch, because I find it to be a bit inauthentic. So this is a bit of a different muscle for me. But I would say that you know I really like to infuse my personal life as much as possible into what I do. You know I live and breathe a family business every day. So franchising is my family and family is franchising to me, and they often have quite a blurry line there. So those are really the places you can reach out to learn more about me and what I do on a day to day.

Tom DuFore: 18:34

Well, Zach, this is a great time in the show and we make a transition. We ask every guest the same four questions before they go, and the first question we ask is have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from?

Zack Fishman: 18:46

it? Yeah, definitely job. I really looked around at my colleagues and felt like what their behavior was was something that I, you know, should obviously adopt. I was a 22 year old kid. I didn't really know what I didn't know. And I had all this intellectual, I had all this institutional knowledge on franchising because I grew up in it, but I didn't really know how to be a professional, and so what I teach my people is that there is no reason for you to look around and just do what everybody else is doing. You need to set your own path and chart your own path and be your own person and, you know, set a standard for yourself and not allow others to set it for you.

Zack Fishman: 19:35

You know I have a notoriously crazy work ethic, but it wasn't really always that way. I was somebody who, you know, was honestly a little bit lazy in my first job you know, I won't lie and I think that that was partially because I felt like it was okay, because a lot of other people around me were that way. There was a lot of transitions in a company and you know I felt like, you know, this isn't my problem, this is just the world kind of telling me that I can just kind of kick back and, you know, let things come to me. But in the reality, you know, and I'm which I would quickly learn, which I'll get into in your next question, you know, I, I learned very quickly that I needed to take the world. I needed to take the world by the collar and try my best to put my own imprint on it.

Tom DuFore: 20:21

Well, the next question is the flip side of that right Taking a look at a make or a highlight you'd like to share.

Zack Fishman: 20:28

Yeah, so going into that. I think that in my next gig, which is really where I met you for the first time, I spent a lot of time looking at the mirror and trying to think of what I really wanted to be when I grew up. I was a 24 turning 25 year old kid when I first got started with that, with my next role, and I thought to myself I wanted to find something I was a little bit more passionate about. I think that was A but B. The biggest thing was is I wanted to find something that was going to be hard. I wanted to build. I wanted to learn what it was like to put blood, sweat and tears into something and to really see success. I hadn't really felt like I had had success quite yet. I had closed two deals up until that point at my old job, which was a way, way bigger sales, way larger sales cycle, but it just didn't feel fulfilling to me, and so I went to the basically the best way to do that, which was a technology that basically had absolutely no customers up until that point, and I for lack of better word worked my ass off and really learned how to do customer segmenting, how to actually speak to somebody on the phone and in the real way and actually understand, you know how to sell properly. I went through a lot of sales school and with a lot of franchising's most wonderful resources there was all these things. I put a lot of work into myself to really understand who I wanted to be today, and I think that experience, as I like to say, was my MBA. You know I didn't get a proper MBA, but that was really the way that I learned you know what I wanted to be when I grew up, what type of salesperson I was going to be, what type of executive I was going to be. It was really informative for me and was the most wonderful learning experience, and so you know that was a major win and really prepared me to play nice in the sandbox with everybody, no matter if I'm related to them or not. Oh, that's great.

Zack Fishman: 22:34

Well, let's talk about a multiplier that you've used to multiply yourself personally, professionally or organizations you've run. My fiancee often makes fun of me that every single time that somebody in her life is looking for something, she just sends them to me, because I'm always going to be prepared to give somebody my opinion or an answer. I think that that I would say that my multiplier is that those lists allow me to be the ultimate connector. I'm always prepared for whatever is coming my way, especially in franchising. Always prepared for whatever is coming my way, especially in franchising. Rather, it's somebody who's looking for a job in the franchise development space but they only want to be using brokers as their primary lead generation source.

Zack Fishman: 23:14

I have it all segmented out based off of that.

Zack Fishman: 23:18

If a private equity firm is looking for a very particular type of brand and they're looking to get some subjective due diligence from somebody about the brand and what the executives are like within a very particular industry call it infrared sauna I know all four of the brands that are there are organized in a little spreadsheet and I know exactly who to speak to and I have all the information on that.

Zack Fishman: 23:42

If it's a piece of technology that somebody's looking for, like a real estate mapping technology, and they want to know the differences between all of those things, I have it all very neatly organized.

Zack Fishman: 23:52

But all my entire life is really around the idea of being the most prepared that one humanly can and I spend a lot of time on that and it's a lot of updating and making sure that everything is organized in the way that is both digestible to me, but also I always pretend that what I have in terms of my list can be understood by anybody. If they have no context in defranchising, they can just pick it up and they'll know exactly what it's all about. So there's no you know, shorthand in there that only I would understand. It's all something that anybody can use, and so that's my biggest multiplier, I think, is just really being organized and having things segmented out as much as humanly possible, and that's the hard part, right, it's very hard to do that in the moment, but I always take the time to make sure that everything is updated and everything is in tip-top shape. For even you know my grandma if she decided to look at it, she would kind of have an idea of what it was all about.

Tom DuFore: 24:51

I did not know that about you. I know you're the connected guy, right, I know you're connected and know lots of folks as a go-to, but that just reinforces when in doubt reach out to Zach, he probably knows somebody. So I love it. Well, the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?

Zack Fishman: 25:09

I think about this question a lot because I think that as I'm moving and changing in my in, in, in, you know, I'm really turning a chapter in my life very, very soon here, as by by the time this comes out, I probably will have done so already. But I think that you look at the world a little bit differently and I often used to look at success, you know, when I was younger, as just making a lot of money. And I think that now I look at success as being able to find the perfect balance between spending time with the people I love most and being able to support them in the way that they deserve to be supported. So I think that that answer has just changed a ton to me. I don't really have a lot of interest or care all that much about being first on the list as it relates to hosting the events I host or being the person that people know when it comes to X, Y and Z, as previously discussed in the last question. The entire reason I do all of those things is to make sure that you know I'm able to build up the enterprise value for myself, and I'm able, and that in turn, if I get to a certain point, will allow me to be able to, you know, improve and spend more time on the relationships that matter most to me, right, and people in franchising do matter a lot to me, right.

Zack Fishman: 26:30

There are people that not only are colleagues and not only people I work with and clients, but they're, you know, lifelong friends in a lot of ways. Looked at as another, you know, really, brothers and sisters that just happened to be born to different mothers and mothers and fathers, right, and I think that that just goes to show how important franchising is to me, and I don't look at it as black and white, where I turn off my personal brain and I turn on my professional brain every day. It's very much. It's very much, you know, combined. I have one cell phone with the same number for every person. But that's really what success looks like to me in the long term is being able to, you know, be a successful person but also, at the same time, successful enough that will allow me to be able to spend the time with my family that I want indeed.

Tom DuFore: 27:18

Wonderful. And as we bring this to a close, Zach, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?

Zack Fishman: 27:24

I would say nothing in particular. I think that the one thing that I didn't talk about quite enough that would be probably pretty important to discuss is that I think that the rush towards the space becoming more professionalized has forced a lot of people to look at what they do every day and figure out how they're actually helping to raise the bar for the brands that are in our industry of franchising. And I think that PR is not really the only place where this is happening. It's happening and you know it could be. You know the types of people that you're hiring. It could be the types of technology you're putting into place. It could be anything right. It could be. It could be the events that you're attending.

Zack Fishman: 28:06

There's all sorts of lenses that you can put. You know that you can put through this idea of enterprise value. So I encourage everybody to really think through. You know what they do every day.

Zack Fishman: 28:16

Rather, it's if you're a brand and you're looking to build, find ways to build up your enterprise value. Look at the entire picture and not just at your tech stack, at the people, but it's about the service providers that you have and the places that you spend your time and things like that. Like everything should be under the lens of that in my perspective, and so that's really the. That's really what the 2020s has been all about is just the idea of looking to you know. What I view as happiness for myself personally is what a lot of people should view their businesses through. As it relates to a lens is that you know how can I make my business so successful that I have the ability to spend all the time in the world that I could humanly want you know, with the people that I care about most, right? So I think that matters for business owners and for on a personal level too.

Tom DuFore: 29:04

Zach, thank you so much for a fantastic interview and let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when Zach talked about how PR has changed and is changing, and I really liked how he said digital marketing and content marketing and PR are all consolidating into one type of new form of marketing and it's creating strategic relationships, acquisitions and other opportunities. So I really liked how he talked about this kind of converging kind of almost like three rivers converging into one where they're all blending together, converging into one where they're all blending together. Takeaway number two is when he talked about the enterprise value for an organization and how you can help support that through PR, and he said, in the way in which you present yourself to potential franchise buyers or potential franchisees, you're also presenting yourself in that way to potential investors or potential suitors that might invest in your franchise company or buy your franchise company years down the line, and so he said that their firm does this by highlighting management teams, community involvement and other avenues he discussed. Takeaway number three is when he shared his multiplier and I loved it. It was so simple and yet so profound at his multiplier and I loved it. It was so simple and yet so profound. He talked about that he is a list maker and has lists for everything in his life Checklists, sorting lists, contact lists. It sounds great, so, and it sounds like he might be the most connected guy in franchising, which is a pretty great position to be in, so he might be someone to reach out to if you need a contact.

Tom DuFore: 30:44

Now it's time for today's win-win.

Tom DuFore: 30:50

So today's win-win comes from the end of the episode when Zach talked about the rush in franchising to become more quote, professionalized, unquote, and he said this is happening across franchising and this rush to become professionalized is raising the bar for franchising in general. So I think it's just a great little nugget and takeaway, because it's going to be a win for you as the franchisor if you begin professionalizing sooner rather than later. For example, hiring an organization like mine, like Big Sky Franchise Team, to help you professionalize your operation when you get into franchising, instead of trying to quote, figure it out on your own, unquote, or working with other professionals in the space to help accelerate that professionalization. It's not to say that you won't get there, but working with other consultants and so on can help you get there a little more quickly. And so that's the episode today.

Tom DuFore: 31:48

Folks, please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review and remember if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level. Please connect with us at BigSkyFranchiseTeamcom. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.