Today we’d like to introduce you to Bob Griffin.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I’ve been interested in small business and franchises since I was a kid. I always liked the idea of building something from nothing and helping others. In college, at UGA, I worked for a lot of small businesses and franchises. When everyone left town for summer or spring break I would hunt for all the better-paying businesses. It gave me a chance to see how good owners ran their stores and how quickly things could go wrong when there wasn’t proper training and planning. Paying attention to what made a good business run was the start of my career.
After college, I started an educational publishing company with my parents. Once it was up and running, I moved back to Metro Atlanta and working with owners in franchising. Atlanta has many of the largest and best corporate offices for franchises. I had the opportunity to work with amazing franchises and franchisees and saw the best and the worst and learned how to help owners increase sales and lower costs.
In 2009 I started Business Bulldog as a think tank to create ways to help owners get the training they needed to be better leaders and owners. Many times people buy a franchise location or start a small business for the wrong reasons and then suffer through in business until they learn to make it work or fail and lose money, family tied to the business, and more. We use a trademarked system called “TME” to help owners learn to make better decisions. The better an owner can make decisions about how to plan their business, the better they can make it work. It can be a slow process to rid an owner of bad habits and realize that they don’t get to use their business as a giant ATM to grab money from the cash register and run.
Last year Business Bulldog Media, a subsidiary of Business Bulldog, published a book, The Prom King Bought a Franchise, to help franchisees get unstuck and work with other franchises, work around them or work right over them to grow sales and increase customer counts. The book likens franchising to high school. All of the same personalities from high school followed you into franchising. The geeks, jocks, cheerleaders, and bullies are still around and making your life difficult. In high school, you found ways to work with them or around them. The book shows ways to collaborate with fellow franchisees, but not to get stuck if collaboration doesn’t work.
Business Bulldog is adding services this year to help people find the right franchise to buy and to help owners sell their franchises without the stress that transitioning out of a franchise can cause. We are also developing a new podcast on franchising that disrupts franchise business models.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Working with franchises and franchisees has been a struggle. There are many franchises that are slow to grow from their original business models and new franchisees who don’t work well inside a closed system like a franchise. As a consultant, I was tasked with helping franchisees follow the system and to bring their new ideas to the corporate office to review and test.
Working one-on-one with franchisees and small business owners can be tough. I was chased through a store one time when a new franchisee, who was indebted to everyone he knew, didn’t like an answer I gave him. He wasn’t open for business at the time and was slowing his progress by not following the new store opening guide I had written to avoid the problems he was having. He chased me to the parking lot where he grabbed a rifle and fired in my direction. Luckily, he was worn out chasing me around the store and didn’t have the energy to aim.
Many times, the owner’s problems outside of the business follow them to the sales floor. Money, relationships. And pressures from being the owner can all change the culture of the business. Removing the pressures isn’t something that a consultant can do. We can help the owner learn how to deal with stress and create a culture of managing tasks to free time to deal with personal issues.
Please tell us about Business Bulldog, LLC.
Business Bulldog was started in 2009 to help business owners grow profitable businesses. We work on decision making, sales development, marketing, growth planning, and operational cultures. Many times, franchisee come out of training at a corporate office and still don’t know how to lead as the owner or develop an enjoyable culture that employees like to work in and where customer like to spend money.
Franchisees can feel like they are alone in business. Even in a franchise that has thousands of locations, Business Bulldog connects them with other owners who have the same stresses so they can work through them as a group. Our monthly meetings have a limited number of members so the group can have time for each member to share best practices. We have meetings with all franchisees from one franchise and diverse groups from non-competing franchises.
Our larger training sessions teach our proprietary system, TME. We use this opportunity to show owners how to deal with the need to manage a business well and how to do it with a faster planning time allotted. This method has saved thousands of dollars on wasted effort when building a strong business that works for you.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I am not sure I could shorten the learning curve on what we do at Business Bulldog.
Working side by side with franchisees and business owners gave me the ability to see how owners think and how to deal with anything that comes along to disrupt the day.
Contact Info:
- Website: BusinessBulldog.com
- Phone: 404-547-9996
- Email: Bob@businessbulldog.com
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