Franchise Friday – Episode 213 with Brandon Breath and Marissa Frois about IFA 2023

In this episode, Melissa Pang talks with Brandon Breath and Marissa Frois about IFA 2023

Meet Brandon Breath:

Career Ownership Coach | Small Business Owner | Changing Lives by Showing YOU what IS Possible | 2022 Coach of the Year & IFA Franchisee of the Year.

In the current economic environment, many people are in the midst of, or thinking about, career change. For some, self-sufficiency may be the best alternative.

As a Career Ownership Coach, I help people realize their dreams of self-sufficiency in a safe environment. Through a process of education, awareness, and discovery, I help my clients clarify their personal income, lifestyle, wealth, and equity goals and evaluate their options. With a relationship of trust and in a safe space, I coach my clients to understand what motivates them and to evaluate what is really important to them. I facilitate transformation in my Clients by asking questions and thus helping them gain clarity. Further, I help my clients stay on track while thinking outside of their comfort zone so that they can reach new goals and horizons.

Marissa Frois CEO at The Entrepreneur’s Source

In my role as CEO, I bring my unique talents of organization, attention to detail, problem-solving and creativity to assist our Visionary to manage and help implement his goals and ideas throughout the organization. I provide leadership and integration throughout the rest of our organization to create accountability and harmony to help fuel the overall growth of our system.

The Entrepreneur’s Source helps individuals achieve their Income, Lifestyle, Wealth, and Equity goals through Career Ownership. With over 35 years of experience, we have helped hundreds of thousands of individuals explore self-sufficiency and reach a point of clarity about their professional future. The Entrepreneur’s Source, led by Visionary Founder Terry Powell captures over 33% of the billion-dollar coaching/advisory market. The Entrepreneur’s Source Career Ownership Coaches™ provide education, coaching, and resources to individuals who have the desire to achieve their dream of becoming self-sufficient through career ownership. This allows our clients to explore career options that meet their goals, needs, and expectations by utilizing our unique Discovery Experience.

2023 IFA Annual Convention

The IFA Annual Convention provides opportunities to explore every aspect of the franchising world. Attendees experience franchise-specific business development ideas, strategies for personal growth, and unique networking situations. You get all the franchise-focused education, all the franchise-centric community building, all in one place.​

From Melissa Pang

We just got back from Vegas; we got back from the International Franchise Association convention. And it was a phenomenal event. It was awesome. We’re going to get into a little bit about the perspective of what we thought there was a very special event that we also want to discuss here. It is kind of the main event in franchising, it happens once a year, and it’s a place for franchisors suppliers, franchisees, and friends of franchising to all come together and really share practices, knowledge, and things that we’ve learned over the past year. We can network and actually see each other, meet each other talk to each other in person. And we always leave exhausted, yes, we’re also feeling such a high almost just seeing the industry, the franchising community comes together like that, and you really feel energized after that. It truly is a phenomenal event. But I would love to hear about the event and your takeaways from each of your perspectives. And I’ll start with you Marisa as CEO of The Entrepreneur Source.

More from Marissa Frois

I would agree with you. I mean, coming away from that event, was amazing. I mean, just seeing old friends getting new friends from the event, the breakouts, all the fun stuff, which I’ll get into in a minute. I figured I’d just do a quick explanation about what is the IFA so the IFA stands for the International Franchise Association. It’s the world’s largest membership organization, for franchisors, franchisees, and also for franchise suppliers. They provide industry-leading events, of course, this convention probably being the biggest one that they have, but they also provide advocacy, education, and growth opportunities to the franchise community. And their mission is to protect, enhance and promote franchising.

But going back to the convention itself, it was a record year for attendance, there were 4000 people in attendance, which was awesome. We actually got to participate in the Leadership Conference, which kind of kicked off the event for us. And that was hosted by the Women’s Franchise Committee. And that was just a great way for us to kick off that event. We were actually sponsored as part of that event. They had some roundtables happening there, we had a specific use case that we were given. And we had to really put on our thinking caps and act as if we were the owner of a specific company and just talk through some different strategies and things that we would do to help evolve a certain company and then at the end, they revealed what that was. So that was wonderful.

We also got to see a lot of our franchise friends there and we made a lot of new connections as well. Great keynote session. We heard from the IFA’s President Matt Holler. He shared some great industry statistics, about where the world of franchising is going. And some information that we could then take back and share with our own franchisees which were great.

I saved the best for last, the most exciting part hands down, was watching our very own Brandon Breath be honored as one of the IFA’s Franchisee OF THE YEAR recipients. The IFA’s President Matthew Holler said franchisee OF THE YEAR recipients represent the best in franchising. This is the highest honor IFA awards to individual franchisees and these local business owners exemplify the power of franchising and its countless positive contributions to communities around the world. And I cannot think of anyone that would be better suited to receive this honor than you, Brandon.

More from Brandon Breath:

Sure, well, I’ve been with The Entrepreneur’s source for almost four years. Before that, I had 25 years in traditional big-box retail. I’m based out in New Orleans. I’ve always kind of operated in the southeastern part of the United States. I made that move from retail into more traditional corporate American healthcare. And I was there for about three and a half years, beating my head against the wall every single day because it was absolute misery. And there was a moment in time that I distinctly remember when my phone rang, and it was someone from The Entrepreneurs Source saying, Hey, do you want to have a conversation, explore something different? I’m like, absolutely. I went on the journey and went through discovery. It was Marissa’s presentation on what she was doing around marketing and how she was taking the company to kind of new direction. And I thought she really knows what she was doing and was just so dynamic. Getting to spend more time with Marissa and getting to know her better and watching her rise within TES has been really gratifying.

It was pretty humbling to be recognized as one of the IFA’s Franchisee OF THE YEAR recipients. I was recognized by my peers at our conference late last year. And then to turn around and have that recognition elevated to a national level, it does feel very special. The way that you all even put together the nomination by using quotes from other coaches about me and some of your comments about me, made it very special, it just feels fantastic. I really believe in what we do and the validation of being recognized for doing it is terrific.

I will say one of my big takeaways was Chris, the CEO of McDonald’s. He talked about the state of franchising. As CEO of this really massive organization, his focus was what should I be doing as a franchisee to help spread the word to help people understand the franchise space. The other thing for me was getting to talk to franchisors of all different sizes and levels about who we are and what we do. And doing it from my perspective, as a coach working with clients that we bring into people, that was really great conversation. And I really got to see that light bulb go off for a few people. We really talked about the fact that franchising allows people of any race, any background, any socio-economic standing, to get into business and do something for themselves. We don’t necessarily celebrate that enough. And I feel pride in being part of this world of business ownership through franchising is very exciting, very rewarding. I walked away from it, feeling really fantastic about what I do every day.

Franchise Friday, where you can watch or listen as we explore franchising, entrepreneurship, and small business ownership, speaking with the franchise industry thought leaders and subject matter experts that shape the Future Of Franchising. #FranchiseFriday – For more about our podcast, visit our website: https://futureoffranchising.com/ Produced by Franchise Source Brands International and The Entrepreneur’s Source.