2260 - Top Opportunities for Women in Franchising Right Now with Females in Franchising's Brittney Lincoln

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1:05With us right now, it's Brittany Lincoln. Brittany, you are the VP of Franchise Development with Limitless Franchise Growth and Partner, and you are the founder of Females in Franchising. You're found on the web at femalesinfranchising.com. Brittany, it's great to have you. Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here. All the way from Denver, one of my favorite towns. I go to visit quite often. But Brittany, what are you, before we kind of get into your experience with franchising, some of the stories and some of the folks that you've worked with and kind of help how you help out, before we get into that, what have you been doing for fun lately in Denver?

1:45So my husband and I are big music people. We actually met at Red Rocks Amphitheater, got engaged at Red Rocks Amphitheater. So not only can you go and see shows there, but in the summertime, you can do yoga on the rocks. They have silent discos on the rocks. They do movie nights so we can bring the kids and watch a film. So I would say our summer is being filled with everything Red Rocks because it's a super special place to us. I believe that music keeps you young. I, you know, my wife and I go to at least two shows a month. Like we see a lot of, we're in Orlando and we kind of got, we were like hooked into like tribute bands.

2:24and so yeah we we see we see tribute or we just saw a prince tribute artist last week friday and before that we went to goth prom with a cure tribute band depeche mode nine inch nails tribute band um yeah we're like so into it it really is like so much fun you know what i love about going to see live music is you know they say that uh you know that we're divided or whatever man you just do not feel that when you go to see a show. It's like, you know what? None of that stuff matters right now because we are all united in this, you know, kind of this love of humanity. We're all kind of just like, you know, getting all of this out of our system and celebrating and talking about these, you know, these, these, these themes that we all share.

3:09I just absolutely love that about music and live music in particular. Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you really quick. Yeah. go ahead yeah i was gonna no i was gonna say we saw a queen tribute band there and they were amazing i mean oh my gosh really love yeah what was the name of the uh act okay i'm gonna have to look it up for you because i forgive me i don't remember but they were amazing and i think they toured i was gonna say if they come to orlando go because i mean the guy was like freddie was like transcending through him okay it was the outfits the attitude like it was okay It was all the thing.

3:44And it's, I'll tell you, attitude with Freddie Mercury, it's like, it's 99 % attitude. Really? It's like, it's so funny because there's a tribute artist playing this Saturday called Absolute Queen. We've seen him before. He's okay. He's no Freddie Mercury. He's got the voice. He's got the wardrobe. He's kind of got the look. but the energy with Freddie Mercury, it's like when you see, you know, him perform at Wembley during Live Aid, I mean, it just, it just to own Freddie Mercury, to own an audience like only Freddie Mercury do is just, we've just, I don't think we've really had too many art, like Prince was at that caliber, but then just, you know, artists at that caliber to just own the stage so hard.

4:37That's a hard act to follow, man. It is. We do love. Yeah. All right. Well, Brittany, let's talk about franchising. Tell me about your work. Yeah. So right now, I like to say there's two halves that make me whole. So as a partner and VP at Limitless Franchise Growth, we help new and emerging franchisors either come to market or scale. We become their development team. We do a lot of different things. And so we're helping these new brands, right, basically become household names, which is really fun, and also help people become entrepreneurs along the way, you know, the people that buy in and become franchisees.

5:13And then my passion project is females in franchising. And so I've been in the industry for 13 years. I've been on teams where I was the only female salesperson, sometimes the only female employee, it's still a male dominated industry. And don't get me wrong, love my guys, love my male counterparts. But I want to shine a light on franchising and get more women into it because we're underrepresented in pretty much every facet, whether you look at C-suite or ownership or vendors. And so I'm going to launch it this fall. So my website, my socials all have a wait list. If you are a woman that works in franchising, owns a franchise, has a business, want to be a vendor to franchises, then reach out.

5:50I'm going to have a platform on Circle and it's all going to be about bringing women together. We all kind of speak the same language in franchising, but But what I've noticed, and this last thing I'll say on it, is there are a lot of networking platforms for like C-suite or female executives in the corporate world. And there are a lot of networking platforms for female entrepreneurs. Franchising is like this super unique little middle ground where we don't quite fit into either of those things when we work in franchising or we own a franchise. And so I want to create that safe space that is just for women in franchising, where we'll all speak the same language and be able to help each other.

6:28And so I've got lots of fun stuff planned, which we can talk more about, but that's what I'm doing right now. Well, share with me a little bit about maybe some, I want to say, you know, kind of, I always say like idiosyncrasies or just like, you know, what is novel? I mean, you mentioned one aspect that sometimes you're in an environment where you're the only woman in the room. And I don't know if there's dynamics like that that exist or sensitivities or opportunities, do you mind maybe just exploring this topic of gender in the franchise world a bit more? And also, I mean, obviously this extends into the entirety of business.

7:08Yeah. So I'll give you some stats and I will say, you know, a lot of times these things get aggregated every year, sometimes every other year. So on average, you know, right now women are only making up about 20 % of C-suite. When you look at the franchisors. So today there are over 3000 individual franchise businesses that exist in the U S those are the franchisors, right? When you then look at franchisees, right? The people that own these businesses, they're over 800 ,000 individual franchise establishments. Now, some people own five, some people own a hundred. Those are all getting lumped into the 800 ,000.

7:42But from what I can tell the research I've done, less than 30 % of those 800 ,000 establishments are owned by women. And then when we look at founders, this is the most interesting and recent thing I've been researching. As far as I can tell of those 3000 plus franchisors, less than 10 % of them are female founded companies. And so I started just, I recognized right through my journey, like, wow, I'm not seeing a lot of women working in franchising, working in sales. And then when I started going down the path of like, well, are we really truly underrepresented? And it's like, oh yeah, we are in a lot of different facets.

8:16And I think one, it's just a career that not a lot of women know about. I think two, right, you might know some of the stats, very few women get to, if they start a business, get to seven figures, less than 2 % of VC funding goes to female founded companies right now. Like they're, the stats are not fully in our favor in a lot of different aspects of business. And so I love this industry. I feel like I've kind of grown up in it and I want to bring more women into it, but not just like women that do what I do. I want women to think about it for wealth building, you know, maybe buying into a franchise.

8:49I want people to think about it from a, you know, could I be a vendor, right? If you're a marketing vendor, if you're an HR vendor, whatever it is, if you can get in with a franchisor and support their franchisees, the ripple effect from that could be huge for your business. And so I just, I feel like I have this responsibility to shine a light on it. I've loved being in the industry, but I think as women, we naturally seek out sisterhood. We sort of naturally seek out community. Men do it too. You just aren't always quite as good at it. Or I think a lot of times men think we've got, you know, I've got to just like do it on my own.

9:24But women just don't always have all of the options, right? There's just not always like other than LinkedIn, essentially, right? That's the networking platform that we all know about other than these smaller masterminds, member groups, things like that. But when I looked out, I couldn't find anything that was just, you know, dedicated to franchising and women and franchising. And so I just think that having that common ground, having a, you know, basically a resource that I wish I had 13 years ago, I'm kind of thinking about who I was when I first joined and I didn't know anyone. And I was the only female salesperson.

9:57That's, I think, what kind of sparked this. And I have amazing female co-workers right now. And I have for the last seven years that I work with at LFG, but I want to pay that forward. And I want the girls and the women that are working in franchising that are at home doing Zoom calls all day, right, working remotely that don't have that, to have that network. Because I know it just, it can help you flourish in your career and mentors. I think this is a stat across both genders, but if you have a mentor, you're five times more likely to get promoted in your career than if you don't. So things like that just have gotten my juices flowing and have made me want to, you know, create this space specific, you know, to my industry and then bringing, you know, women together in my industry.

10:44Well, Brittany, what, you know, speaking of franchises, can you give us some quick trends on what's really hot right now? What are the opportunities? I'm looking through your LinkedIn feed. So I have some guesses, maybe some franchise areas that you're kind of bullish on. But for someone that's exploring the world of, you know, possibly maybe they've got a business and they're looking for a second stream and they want to start a franchise, which is a great idea, like rather than starting else, you know, something from scratch, you know, you can plug into an existing system. If you already have the business know-how, you have some okay credit.

11:23This might make sense for some folks. Yes. I love to call franchising, and I say this very lovingly, but entrepreneurship-like. You're still doing what 99 % of the population won't do, right, by looking into starting your own business and becoming a business owner. But you have a franchisor, right? You have a playbook. You have systems and processes and people supporting you, and you have peers, right? probably one of the biggest things you talk about, I would assume, and your listeners can relate to is entrepreneurship is lonely. You know, a lot of times you don't have anyone that can relate to what you're going through.

11:58Your employees certainly can't, right? When you're the founder and you're the owner. But if you become a franchisee of a system, not only do you have the franchisor supporting you, you have peers. You literally could call someone up in Orlando and I could be like, hey, Josh, how did you handle this? How did you go through that? And yes, there are entrepreneurship groups that bring people together, but unless you have the exact same business, you're not always speaking the same language. You're not always able to share ideas and best practices. So it can be great trends right now. I would say service is hot, right?

12:29Like I'm a millennial. I paid someone to hang all the pictures in my house. I pay a plumber. I pay, I don't do anything myself. So I will say home service just because not many people are entering in the trades. You have some really great companies out there. You also have people like Cody Sanchez that are not only promoting, right, buying into small businesses, but she's actually invested into some service franchises. And so you have some of these kind of more popular mainstream people preaching about franchising and how it can be a great route to go, whether you buy in and start from scratch or even buy an existing franchise because of that support.

13:02Probably from looking at my feed, fitness, health, wellness, longevity, right? Biohacking is now not, you're not crazy if you're biohacking, right? You're just caring about your health and wellness and longevity. So anything in that space, the spend on longevity is off the charts. So I would say that's another trend that people are gravitating towards big time. Anything with kids, right? I mean, we're all looking for different things and activities to get our kids into. And it's not always sports, right? There are franchises where your kid can go and learn how to code after school. Your kid can go and learn how to use a 3D printer.

13:37So there's really neat things I would say around childhood enrichment, development, things like that. And then the final thing I'll say, because I preach this all the time, if you are interested in franchising and buying in, find a consultant. They've probably hit you up on LinkedIn through InMail, but they can help you navigate that process and they will be like your real estate agent and franchising. And I can't shout them out enough to say they will be invaluable because they vet franchises, right? I already said there's 3 ,000 out there. Even if you ask ChatGPT to tell you which the best ones are, it's going to have some biases.

14:09And these people can walk the walk and talk the talk with you. Most of them have owned franchises. So definitely either reach out to me and I can point you in the right direction or find someone that you've researched that can help you navigate that buying process. Yeah. So for females in franchise, I know you have a wait list for that. But how do folks engage with you and connect with you? It seems like you have a very active Instagram following. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm building the wait list because I do really want to have a bit of a community when we launch and plan to do some monthly calls, bring in some experts both within franchising and outside of franchising.

14:49I really want it to be both about personal and professional development because I think, right, both they bleed into each other, right? I don't believe there's balance. I don't believe in work-life balance. I think there's times where career takes priority and times when family takes priority and we do our best. But I've never with two kids been able to live my life where it's perfectly balanced. So I'm building. Yeah, I'm building the wait list right now. But if you go to the website, you can sign up or you can email me at Brittany at females and franchising dot com. And I've been interacting with some people that just have general franchising questions.

15:22I love to geek out about franchising. So or hit me up on LinkedIn. Send me a message. I'm available on all of the channels. Brittany Lincoln, VP of Franchise Development at Limitless Franchise Growth and the founder of Females in Franchising, found on the web at femalesinfranchising.com. Brittany, it's been a great conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much, Josh.

15:51Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

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