What Franchisors Get Wrong About Supporting Their Owners

What do franchisors get wrong about supporting their owners? I think franchisors sometimes focus too much on the relationship and not enough on the success of the franchisee. That sounds like a strange thing to say, because relationships matter enormously in this business, and I have a lot of long-term friendships with a lot of our owners. But there’s a difference between wanting someone to like you and setting them up to succeed, and those two things aren’t always the same.

I sometimes use the parent-child analogy, even though I know it can come across as condescending, and that is not my intent. But as a parent, you aren’t trying to be your kid’s best friend. You’re trying to set them up to be good at life long-term. A good franchisor relationship works similarly. I love our franchisees. I genuinely care about them. But my job is to help them grow and be the best they can be, and to be a steward of the brand we all represent. No lawsuits, everyone likes us, so everything is good? That is not the most important thing. It might not even be in the top three.

The research backs this up. According to Franchise Business Review’s 2026 Franchisee Satisfaction Study, which surveyed more than 26,000 owners across 330 brands, franchisee satisfaction scores directly correlate with operational performance. Brands in the top quartile for owner satisfaction don’t just have happier owners; those owners outperform the rest of the industry. The gap between high-satisfaction and low-satisfaction brands is not a soft metric. It shows up in their numbers.

What real support looks like versus what looks good on paper

A lot of franchise support structures look impressive in a brochure and fall apart when an owner actually needs something. There is a version of support that is very structured. You talk to this person; that goes to this person; it escalates to this person. I understand logic. Processes matter and I am not against them. But sometimes you forget that you are working with small business owners. They aren’t Microsoft. They aren’t Apple. They need an answer fast. If the answer takes three or four days, that doesn’t work for them and it’s not a good reflection of the franchisor.

This is not just my opinion. When the IFA surveyed nearly 3,000 franchise owners for its 2026 Value of Franchising report, the areas of support they rated most valuable were access to a peer network, franchisee training in sales, marketing, and operations, and technology platforms that actually help them run the business. Not complexity. Not hierarchy. Access, training, and tools that work.

Our approach at Signarama is informal, with a flat hierarchy when it comes to supporting owners. Every owner has my number. They can call me. Our VP’s, Business Advisors, and the rest of the team are accessible in the same way. We take a group effort approach to support. If an owner wants me to get on a call and review their P&L, talk through a staffing situation, or just think through something, I’m fine doing that. And that is true of everyone else on our team.

Now, I am not the guy for everything. If you have a tech problem, I am going to send you to the right person. I do not pretend to know what I do not know. But the point is that owners should never feel like they are stuck at the bottom of a support ticket queue when they need something real. Speed matters. Accessibility matters. And sometimes an owner just needs a person they trust, not another process to navigate.

“Sometimes an owner just needs a person they trust. Not a process.”

When an owner feels like they are on their own

When I hear from an owner who feels unsupported, there is usually something underneath it that is harder to say out loud. Most of the time, I actually sense embarrassment. They have invested their money, time, and family’s security into something, and it is not working as they hoped. And they don’t want to admit that. That is a hard place to be, and it is more common than most franchisors will acknowledge publicly.

So, part of what I try to do is break through that. We are doing this together. We are the same brand. Let me help you. Be vulnerable. Be open. Let’s actually look at what is happening and figure it out. The reality is that we have a lot of owners who went through genuinely bad stretches and came out on the other side. It is not a failure. It’s just life. You go up and down. Things happen that are outside your control. You make mistakes. That is business. The ones who make it through are the ones who own it, ask for help, and keep working.

I also want to be honest: not every struggle is purely on the owner. We’ve made mistakes over the years. There are things we have done well and things we haven’t. And when the data and the feedback point to something we need to fix, we fix it. But at the end of the day, the franchise owner who works really hard and takes ownership of their business who succeeds. I can lead the horse to water. I cannot make it drink.

What growing up in this business taught me about the relationship

I have been around franchising and my whole life. I grew up watching my grandfather and father grow franchise companies. And I’ll be honest; I think early on I believed it was more transactional than it actually is. Like, they do what we say, and we move forward. That’s not how it works. That isn’t how it works at all actually.

The thing I understand now that I did not fully appreciate then is that you have to earn the right to lead. If your owners do not trust you, if they do not believe you have their best interests at heart, everything is harder. Every change you need to make is a fight. Every new initiative starts with resistance instead of momentum.

That is why things like the FAC, our franchise advisory council, and our marketing fund meetings are so valuable. They give us a forum where our best owners can speak honestly. But I want to be clear about something: it isn’t enough to create a space where people feel like they can give feedback. You actually have to do something about it. I have seen franchisors, my peers, sit through honest feedback from their owners and then go back and do exactly what they were already going to do. And the owners know. They always know.

Sometimes you are going to be wrong as the franchisor, and you need to suck it up and change course. You aren’t an oracle in some forest who knows everything. That would be nice. That is not how this works.

The data supports what I experience here. FBR research shows that franchisees who feel supported and heard don’t just perform better; they stay longer, expand to additional units, and become the strongest validators for your brand in the market. That is not a coincidence. Trust compounds.

“You have to earn the right to lead. If your owners don’t trust you, every change you need to make is a fight before it even starts.”

The part that is hardest to scale

We have over 300 owners. Anyone who wants my cell number can have it. And here is what I have found after years of that policy: they do not abuse it.

What ends up happening is that I am texting people about football. About life. Because we have worked together for 10 and 15 years. We have a relationship. That is what the brand is built on.

But I’m also not going to pretend that scaling is not a real challenge. The hardest part is the newer owners. You wish you had more time for each of them. There is no perfect answer to it. You build the right team, so no one falls through the cracks. You travel. You show up. You stay accessible. And you keep reminding yourself and your team that the person on the other end of that call or text built their life around this business. That deserves to be taken seriously.

Key Takeaways

• Franchisors who focus only on being liked are missing the point. The job is to help owners succeed and protect the brand everyone shares.
• Structured support that looks good on paper can fail owners who need speed. Accessibility and trust matter more than org charts. And according to IFA research, franchisees rate peer networks, practical training, and functional technology as the most valuable support they receive.
• When an owner feels alone, embarrassment is usually underneath it. Creating a culture where people can ask for help without feeling like failures is part of the franchisor’s job.
• You have to earn the right to lead. That means listening, acting on what you hear, and being honest when you are wrong.
• High franchisee satisfaction is not just a culture metric. FBR data shows it directly correlates with operational performance across every key business measure.