Franchise Friday Podcast episode 219 with Sarah Van Aken of BrandONE

Franchise Friday Podcast episode 219 Melissa Interviews Sarah Van Aken, VP of Franchise Development at BrandONE

Sarah Van Aken is an inspiring and solutions-focused Senior Executive, Advisor, and Board Member with nearly 20 years of success across the full business lifecycle of consumer products, technology and sustainability. Her broad areas of expertise include innovative business design & transformation, culture change & change management, strategic planning, brand strategy, and exits.

Sarah supports organizations and individuals through powerful transitions. Whether that is enterprise value growth and exit planning for organizations or supporting individuals through life-changing transitions to reach their fullest potential. By embracing human potential — our greatest asset — at the individual and organizational level, she is able to drive measurable and lasting results. Her belief is that a brand is the soul of your business. As the soul, it is the life force that engages human potential and thus drives every aspect of your business. Sarah has a unique understanding of this relationship and experience in transforming that force into value for the organization. Those same principles apply to her work supporting individuals.

BrandONE provides accelerated growth for exceptional brands. With over 100 years of experience, we are franchise development experts dedicated to helping franchisors achieve their objectives.

On the surface: we accelerate growth for emerging franchise brands by matching them with high-quality candidates. The whole story: in addition to recruiting high-quality candidates, we cultivate relationships across the franchise industry, providing our brands access to the expertise they need to refine their operations and infrastructure. This way, when the franchise award process expands, they’re ready to support the influx of new franchisees and continue to grow.

WE ARE KNOWN FOR ATTRACTING AND PLACING THE HIGHEST CALIBER FRANCHISE PARTNERS INTO FRANCHISE SYSTEMS.

We achieve this not only by our thoughtful approach to understanding the entire business but through a strategically designed lead generation and education process. We then leverage our vast consultant relationships and digital lead generation expertise to attract your ideal candidates. We work with candidates from start to finish as they investigate your franchise opportunity. We give them full and complete information so they can learn and understand everything about the business. Ultimately this enables them to make an informed business decision. When they become part of your franchise family, they know everything about the brand. A huge differentiator for BrandONE is the education process. We believe in education. We don’t believe in selling a franchise.

“Our mission is to empower exceptional and viable brand partners to achieve sustainable and responsible growth. Our vision is to enhance the lives of franchisors and their franchise owners with businesses that make the world a better place.”

As Sarah says: I’ve been an entrepreneur for most of my career. I started and exited a couple of businesses in my 20s. Knowing nothing, I learned a lot the wrong way before I started doing it the right way. I started a real estate brokerage. I specialized in first-time homebuyers. I leveraged that into the fashion business, my passion and dream. I had several clothing brands. I did a lot of custom uniforms for celebrity chef restaurants. I exited that business in 2013. And then became president of a design firm where our core business was greeting cards. We sold 125,000 greeting cards every day. I was there to do a turnaround, grow the company and get it sold for the owner. We got the company sold to American Greetings a few years ago, but in that process, I got bored. I realized that I not only liked helping brands grow, which I’ve been doing my whole career, but I really liked helping people through transitions. I started a two-year coaching cultural leadership program and became a certified Exit Planning advisor. I’m good at supporting people through those significant transitions.

I’ve known Peter Barkman, one of the managing partners for BrandONE, for many years. Over Lunch, he asked if I would like to help in the launch of Brand One. At first, I was skeptical about franchising. I’m not particularly eager to follow the rules. I can’t be in franchising. Peter convinced me to go to their discovery day. I did, and I loved the brand; I decided this could be fun to do for a while. And here we are three and a half years later. And it’s really a lot of fun working with the brands we work with. We get to help some pretty unique brands grow. To support both the brand and all the successful people who became entrepreneurs and take back control of their lives. Many of them were in corporate America and were scared of losing their jobs due to being downsized. My clients want to do something with value and meaning, and I help them get there.

According to Melissa: We have a common theme of realizing that we like helping people make that transition and helping them find the next thing. You helped them move on to the next step of life, get out of that business or candidates transitioning from corporate America or whatever they’re doing into business ownership through franchising. I also love that you’ve walked in their shoes in a few different ways from the entrepreneur level, making the mistakes learning, reinventing, and then looking at franchising even though it was not something you would have thought of doing. And in this new role, you have been humanizing the franchise development process, which sometimes can seem very cookie-cutter. Sometimes it can be chaotic for the candidate because it’s really about what the franchise developer wants and doesn’t consider the candidate. However, you and The Entrepreneur Source are talking about meeting the candidate where they are and at their pace. We are coaching; We are educating. We are on the Journey for the client, which makes all the difference.

More About our Host, Melissa Pang