Today on the most popular franchise podcast, we’re wrapping up 2025 with the Franchise Rock Stars.
What did we learn this year?
What worked?
What did NOT work?
Today’s Franchise Rock Star Panel: Derrick Ableman, Scott Greenberg, Kristen Pechacek, and Danielle Wright. We’re missing Ali Kraus today — see you in January!
Thanks to all of our sponsors for 2025: Citrin Cooperman, Northeast Color, WSI, Hughes, Vendasta, Franzy, Promotex, and Thunderly.
Transcript
AI was not used in the creation of this podcast.
This is the Social Geek Radio Network.
Hello, geeks, and welcome to the Social Geek Podcast. I’m Jack Monson, your host and marketing Consigliere.
We’re wrapping up 2025 today with the Franchise Rock Stars. What did we learn in 2025? What worked out? What didn’t work out? Joining me today, the Franchise Rock Stars, Derrick Ableman, Scott Greenberg, Kristen Pechacek, and Danielle Wright. All right, before we get started, a quick note, we’re missing Ali Kraus today. Looking forward to having you back with us in January. Also for this last podcast of 2025, I wanna thank all of our sponsors from this year, including Citrin Cooperman, Northeast Color, WSI, Hughes, Vendasta, Franzy, Promotex and Thunderly. All right, here come the rock stars.
Well, welcome back to Social Geek, everybody. It’s great to see the Franchise Rock Stars here again. We’ve got Danielle Wright, Scott Greenberg, Derrick Ableman and Kristen Pechacek with us today. How are you guys doing? It’s been a long, long, long year. How are we feeling?
I’m ready for 2026, Jack.
Are you, Kristen, are you really ready for it? Because I don’t… Yes. 2025, I don’t know how you could be. What are you wearing? Like some kind of bulletproof thing?
I’m ready for 2027 myself. So if we could skip 2026, that’ll be fine. But before we get out of this year, I really wanted to find out from everybody. Was there anything that really kind of jumped out at you that you had this big aha happening in 2025? Kristen, we’re going to start with you. Anything you learned this year that you wanted to share?
Yes. 2025 was my year of authenticity and hard conversations. I don’t know why it was that year, but it just happened to hit me all at once, and we had to have some really hard conversations this year. Hard conversations around how to scale the organization for growth. We passed our 100th location, so that’s really exciting. Hard conversations with some franchisees who maybe aren’t the right fit for the brand anymore, and hard conversations with the staff, and just leveling up and growing. With change, which we had a lot of it this year, comes growth. If there’s one thing that I learned, it’s that sometimes when you pull the covers over your eyes and act like everything’s okay, and we’re just going to keep being positive, which I internally am the biggest optimist, you’re putting your business at risk. And sometimes you just have to scale back and address the hard stuff so that it doesn’t become bigger hard stuff down the line. So for me, hitting potential conflicts or things that need to be addressed in the upfront was my biggest learning for 2025. It’s a good one.
Was it easier to do some of those things after you hit certain goals or milestones? I know you opened your 100th location this year. Like you said, that’s amazing. Was it easier to have those hard conversations after you’ve gotten a little bit of success under your belt?
Yeah, it’s always easier to have hard conversations when the business is going well, right? I mean, there’s a, you know, I kind of call it like the naughty word sandwich, the S-H-I sandwich, where it’s like, I’m about to tell you something that I want to be much, much better. But here are all the things that you’re doing that are really good before I tell you that. And then I’m going to give you a nice cherry on top after. And so, you know, I think I’ve learned to kind of package some of the growth and some of the good with some of the things that we still need to work on. And I think that if you would have asked me five years ago if I would have been candid about this answer and or even addressed some of our opportunity areas with franchisees in the upfront, like, hey, we need to get better at this, may have shied away from that because I’m a salesperson. I’m an optimist. Yeah.
But that’s personal growth too, along with business growth, that you’re able to do that now, that maybe five years ago, you wouldn’t have been the greatest CEO in franchising. And now you are.
You’re so sweet. Thank you. Every day is a new journey in learning.
That’s right. Very good. All right. Who else has something that you learned in 2025 that you wanted to jump out with?
Well, I just want to say, Kristen, your comment about the S-sandwich has made me actually fearful of receiving compliments. Any sort of positive feedback I now get, I’m like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And let’s do it. Drop that shoe. And then sometimes it doesn’t come. And I feel like suspicious. But I have a similar lesson, really. It’s along the lines of that saying, um, trust in God but roll away from the rocks, right? Like have faith that things are going to work out, but also just really, really be ready for it to not. And so coming out of the pandemic, supply chain shock, our procurement team developed a network of domestic sources for many of the raw materials that we use in our signage. And when the tariff situation jackknifed this incredibly key material for our largest clients, we had to audition one of the new partners that they found, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park. And so we were able to provide our client with an identical product with a partner that’s able to scale and fine tune their operations to fit our business. So, yeah, I mean, but we wouldn’t have had that if we hadn’t been anticipating that another shoe was going to drop, that things could go real south real quick. And so, you know, you know, when things present themselves in that way, like they say that any idiot can navigate a crisis, but it’s the day to day that is, that wears on you. I think that’s, that might be a checkoff quote. So it’s, it’s really just like that day to day understanding and keeping your wits about you because, you know, our little boats are at the mercy of much larger and capricious forces.
Very nice. Danielle, how about you?
I don’t know that you follow that up with anything. I think for me in 2025, I think there was a lot more personal learning than maybe professional learning. I kind of forced myself to get really vulnerable with people in our industry, which is not normally the place that I go. And it’s opened up a lot of true friendships and mentorships and just this group of camaraderie that I’ve allowed myself to be just more an authentic me. And just that was an, it’s an interesting learning thing. I don’t think I’m done with that, but I, it’s nice to step into that space. And then the second piece that I am astounded by or surprised by that might lead into more of these conversations is how quickly we have all adapted or adopted AI. And that like, that is part of every conversation and used way more than I thought that this industry would pick up that ball and run with. So that was an interesting learning thing this year.
Very good. Scott, how about you?
You know, I have worked for myself for years, whether I was on a franchisee or with what I do now. And so I’ve just learned, you know, I’ve just learned that I have to kind of kill my next dinner. And so I’m used to like, you always have to be in motion. You don’t, you know, relentlessly, constant hard work. And at the beginning of the year, I wasn’t getting much results for that. And so I’m thinking, wow, this is going to be a rough year. And I was thinking about the book, The Carrot Seed. It’s a children’s book from the 1940s. This kid plants, you know, carrot seeds. And everyone keeps telling him that it’s not going to grow, it’s not going to come up. In the end, he pulls up this carrot, it’s so big, he has to carry it away in a wheelbarrow. And it’s like this story just about faith. And halfway through the year, I was sort of complaining a little bit to my manager, helps me market. And she says, Scott, just stop, trust the seeds that we planted. And the end of the year, it’s actually turned out to be great. The first quarter of the new year is looking good as well. And so for me, it’s been a lesson of just sort of trusting and stepping back that we plant our seeds, we do our marketing, we do these things, but being willing to kind of let go sometimes, so you don’t make yourself nuts is sort of a big personal growth thing that I’ve had to experience firsthand this year.
My learning is somewhat similar, especially when it comes to like timelines. I used to look at things like, what’s my three-year goal and my five-year goal? And you know what, I’ve given up on all of that stuff. I think if we’re looking at anything beyond six months right now, especially in the industry we’re in, and especially on the marketing end of it, and especially anything touching, as Danielle said, AI, if you’re planning a year in advance, you are kidding yourself, and you are trying to sell something to someone that they’re never going to need. So I’ve really scaled back on the strategic planning stuff, and I’m looking at everything at like three months at a time right now. My agency used to do like six-month plans and things like that. We’re not even looking at that right now. It’s like because think about it right now. It’s December of 2025. What are most brands going to be doing in May of 2026? We could know, but what if, right? Did we know AI was going to hit us like a wave? To Derrick’s point earlier, did we know tariffs were going to hit us like a wave? Like what is going to happen in the next six months? So I don’t want to spend a lot of time and resources and money on planning stuff for a future that may be fiction, right? I think it’s for me, the learning is let’s focus a little bit more on the present and a little less on the future. If you make the present turn out the right way, then you’re kind of writing the future as you go. But having too many strategy meetings about things too far in the distance right now, it’s just a waste of time.
Jack, if I can respond to that, this is the time of year where people reflect on the year and their goals and what they achieved and what they didn’t achieve. And I did that for many years. And some things I achieved, some things I didn’t. And then I had years where I just didn’t set goals. I’m just gonna be in motion and see what happens. And those years were no better, no worse. So I don’t know that we always need goals as much as we need direction. And then the ability to kind of adapt to what’s happening right before us.
I do that as well. I’m huge into reflecting on a year and thinking about what did I do and all that and making… And I find that that’s a very powerful form of storytelling, but it’s also a trap, kind of, right? And I found that there have been years where I like, I set a goal. This last year, I set this goal, I was gonna work on this project. I was gonna do a certain amount of work on it every day. And I did that. I did it. I really did. And at the end, I had this magnificent pile of this thing that I did. And then I moved on and that’s okay, right? Like I checked a box and it didn’t change my life yet. Maybe someday it will, like the carrot seed. But the thing is I did it. And as trite as this sounds, the journey being the destination, kind of what you’re talking about, Jack, like focus on the now, be here, be present, be here now. And I think that honestly, like the older I get, the more that I tend to just want to stay in that place because there are so many things that I can or could be, but this is who I am and there’s plenty that I can do with that.
Yeah, I think that’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom. You may have the same amount of knowledge, but you’re gaining wisdom every day, right? Let’s talk about some challenges. Derrick, you mentioned the tariffs earlier. That was a challenge for so many people in our industry. Any challenges or maybe some stories about how we overcame some of those challenges that anybody’s thinking about?
I think franchise sales was a challenge in general for everybody this year, right? You know, if it weren’t for my existing franchisees signing up, raising their hand and doing more locations, I wouldn’t have had the year that I had. And so, you know, tariffs definitely impacted that, but there was a lot of economic uncertainty in the beginning of the year. Then you had the tariffs. And then, of course, you had the government shutdown where no one could get an SBA loan. And so, it’s not been a friendly economic climate for franchise development. And so, I think it’s starting to pick back up. It feels a little bit better over the last, I would say, four or five weeks. But, you know, I think a lot of people are sitting there and wondering what that next step looks like versus signing up for that next step in franchise ownership.
I agree with you. The uncertainty that has been playing out, like, think about it in our personal world, what you guys were just all talking about is the same thing that other people are dealing with. Like, I don’t want to think three months from now. I don’t want to think six months from now. And I was on another call, a mastermind group with brand dev people, and they, last year, were so optimistic about 2025. Just, it was new administration, new things. Everybody was all excited, all these big goals. And the big question I had for them was, how did it shake out? Most of them met their goals, to your point, Kristen. And some of them are a little shy, but they’re not attributing it to anything more than just a ginormous shift in the way that we’re all thinking and operating. They didn’t want to actually kind of tie it to any specific reason because I don’t think there’s really quite understanding that there is one, that we’re just kind of just floating around, waiting for the next thing to happen. So it’s been a high and a low on the Frandev side, for sure.
I would add to some of that about the general climate in the business world and that uncertainty. I think it’s put people on edge. We had a great year and many of our clients had great years. When you look at the numbers, like, oh, okay, maybe that wasn’t so bad. But the temperature in the room was such that there were a number of times where in our company, outside of our company, where suddenly people who otherwise would have been congenial or let something lie like really came out and spoke some hard truths and said, gave some feedback that absolutely needed to be heard. I don’t think that that would have happened in less capricious times, in less uncertain times. That people were, I think, I encountered more people willing to just be really frank. You can say you welcome that. It feels it doesn’t feel great when you hear that or when you have to give feedback. But I think that there were some bandits that got ripped off this year that absolutely needed to get ripped off. And if everything had been hunky dory, I don’t think that those conversations would have happened.
I’m just so glad to hear everybody on this call talking about having a pretty good year because the feeling I get out there is I talk to so many people who say the same thing. We had a great year, but everybody else had a terrible year. Right? It’s kind of like what people say about Congress. Well, I hate Congress, but I like my congressman. Right? So I think there’s a lot of that. There’s sort of a, I don’t know if it’s a media narrative or it’s just something in the business world that, you know, franchise sales are down. We all see these reports and things, and we think it’s all terrible. And then you talk to individual brands who it’s like, oh no, I did pretty well this year. So maybe there is a little bit more of a personal story versus the narrative of the world.
Yeah, Jack, you know, I mentioned, you know, early in the year, I was looking at the year thinking, wow, this is going to be really tough. And, you know, some of that is a reflection of who my clients are. And it turned out to be a very good year, but a lot of that is because so many of my clients decided to go ahead and have a conference and bring an outside speaker pretty last minute. I can’t tell you how many times I was booked just a month or two in advance, you know, as a keynote speaker, whereas it used to be a much greater amount of time in advance. So it’s hard for me to kind of look at the whole year ahead and in any way anticipate how it’s going to be, because I think a lot of the franchise brands are also kind of just waiting to see. So for me, it’s difficult because how can I, you know, plan a life or, hey, should my wife and I remodel our bathroom this year, plan that vacation when, you know, I won’t know until a month or two in advance how much money I’ll be making that month. And so, you know, I think that’s a reflection of just what’s going on in the industry that, you know, even if people are going to do well, they’re just being a lot more careful and holding on to the money until, you know, last minute, at least in the case with, you know, what I do.
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of that in any kind of marketing, advertising, sponsorships, events, things like that. People used to plan this stuff a year in advance, right? We’re going to do the gold level sponsorship and we’re going to run a two page ad and whatever publication, everything. And it’s like, there’s no, there’s no bargain for spending money early, right? You really don’t get anything. You might get a little bit of a discount, but do you really need to buy your airline tickets to some event six months in advance? No, wait till three weeks in advance. They’re about the same price. So I think sales and revenue being generated are, it’s about the same for most people. It’s just happening later, or maybe it’s just not happening up front. The way all of our CFOs would like that to happen, right? We want to know exactly how much money is coming in the door six months from now. That’s not happening anymore. And I don’t think that’s going to happen again.
It’s a lot of people thinking like you, Jack, like I’m not thinking about six, nine months from now. It’s like what’s happening right now, including what are the projects or events that you’re going to make happen.
Right. Why am I going to pay for something that’s going to happen in six months and buy my tickets and reserve my hotel room? You know, something really awesome or something really horrible could happen in the meantime. So let’s just let’s wait five months and then I’ll then I’ll spend the money. Right. All right. Let’s talk about surprises. This is one of my favorite questions that someone suggested for today. Was there anything in 2025 that was just a real shock? Anything that surprised anybody?
I mean, we already talked about this, but holy cow, AI. Not just like chat, GPT, pretty email that you just wrote, but like AI in terms of being able to code an entire website or replace Tableau with a direct application that you’ve built that connects directly into your data center. Like, we’re not talking about just a pretty email. We’re talking about chatbots and smarter point of sale softwares and engines and systems that you can create internally without having a software developer on staff. And so that definitely surprised me.
I piggyback that. I think part of the surprise too, is the age gap of those using it actively and those that aren’t, like, funny enough, my kids won’t touch it and they’re 17 and 25 and they have no use for it, right? But I’ve got people on our team that are plus 65 and they, they’re, they’re messing around with AI and Sora and doing videos. And if I could name drop on here and tell you one person you should go on Sora and see, their videos are hilarious, but they are literally dropping five and six hours a day, these, these videos. And I’m like, who are you? What, what have you done with my friend? Like, get out of the Sora sphere. But they have gravitated towards it and just dive right in. And it’s just such a, it has been a big surprise just to see the adoption of such things for, for some of these generations.
That’s good to hear. I feel like a dinosaur when I’m like, well, maybe I should be doing this too, so.
Oh, you should get on Sora Jack. It’s very funny.
All right. There’s, there’s a goal. We’ll talk about goals in a little bit, but there’s a goal for 2026. I will jump on Sora. All right, Scott, how about you? Anything that was a big shocker for 2025?
This industry does not surprise me because anything could happen. Any company can buy any company or there can be a scandal. And there’s no reason to be surprised with anything with me. Part of that’s what makes it, you know, stressful. It’s also what makes it interesting and exciting. But I just turn on my phone every day and go on LinkedIn. And I read the different publications. And it’s like, of course, that crazy thing just happened. So nothing surprises me.
Yeah. Anytime you see a text or you see like three texts come in at the same time, it’s like, oh, God, what now? Right? Like if three people are trying to tell you something at the exact same time, some bomb just dropped and you’re kind of like, yeah, okay, what’s next? Yeah.
I mean, I think that’s that has as meta as it sounds, right? The surprises this is, is how much surprise there are, like everything is happening all the time. We’re in a permanent expose. Everything is constantly surprising. There’s so many shifts. There’s so many all of this that like we can absolutely become numb to it. And we’re not threatened anymore by all of by all of this news. And I think on the one hand, that’s probably just you have to develop an immunity at some level to constant new information being earth shattering. On another, I wonder, like I think it shakes some of our values. Because because if everything is is constantly on fire, then you don’t you can’t really identify what valuable thing is burning sometimes, right? Because of course, of course, of course, like like we just said, and I think that it’s necessary again, to develop that immunity to constant scandal or constant talk. But but I think somewhere in there, there is still a signal to noise ratio. And and I think that that’s that’s the work that I would like to get better at in the coming year is not chasing that, that that dopamine hit of like, ooh, tell me, ooh, what happened? But but really being able to pick and choose what to care about and then to actually care about and do something about that thing.
I want to kind of go back to what Danielle was saying as far as AI adoption and Kristen too. I think it, for me, it even goes beyond AI adoption. I’ve been surprised at how well people, especially in our industry, are adopting to just new ways of doing things. It feels like it took this entire industry, in marketing in general, it took us 50 years to get away from television and newspapers and finally say, okay, the future is online. And then the future was social media, right? And then the future was another type of social media, right? And it took years every time to get some brands to say, yeah, but we still want to advertise in the newspaper, right? Or we still want to do local radio or something like that. And it feels like over this past year, 2025 specifically, we have seen so many brands make that shift into doing something completely different. And I think it is because of the letters AI have just been on everyone’s lips constantly. And I think there is that fear of missing out on the next thing. And I have seen brands just make this pretty big leap from doing things the way they have been doing it for 20 years to doing it in a brand new way. And maybe some of that is some younger, newer leadership getting into bigger positions. But even some of the old guard, I am really impressed with the way people in this industry have said, you know, we don’t have to do, you know, insert old way of doing things, right? We don’t have to do trade shows. We don’t have to do portals, you know, the things that we have been doing for 25 years. We are actually going to try some new things when it comes to marketing. And maybe we will shift back, right? Maybe some of those things won’t work. But right now, I am just, I am really proud of this industry for wanting to move ahead and find a new way of doing things. And maybe, as we were talking about earlier, maybe it did take kind of hitting a wall with, you know, success not happening easily in the early part of 2025. So, that’s my shocker for the year. Derrick, I am going to run it back over to you to close out this session of Social Geek and all of 2025.
Oof, that’s a heavy load, man. I mean, well, a lot of it just comes from this conversation, I would say, particularly the things we were talking about, planning and strategy and different ways to look at the future and your actions in it, in the present, and how that will become the future. My daughter is 10, and from certain angles, I can catch glimpses of how she’s going to look as an adult, right? As parents, you get that view sometimes, and you can sort of watch that future coming into focus. It surfaces like an image on a print in a dark room. And I think one of the appeals of that, one of the things that is really bewitching about that is that children have the most future ahead of them. They have the widest possible scope of things that they can become and do. And as an adult, the future doesn’t always feel that limitless. Changes as we’ve discussed are uncomfortable. Reinvention is unlikely or entirely unwelcomed. Right? I recently pulled Ogman Dino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World off the shelf. And I went to Lesson 9, which is entitled, I Will Act Now. It’s short. It’s a really short and powerful page and a half where that phrase, I will act now, is repeated with percussive intensity. I will act now. This is the place. I am the person. And even just saying that now, those four words remind me that we are all of us radiating potential, that we can live in that same full and forever now, right now, not six months from now, not a year from now, right now. And in that, that we have an access to an infinite array of tomorrows. And so moving into next year, that is the spark that I want to follow. I will act now. I will act now. I will act now.
Thanks to the Franchise Rock Stars for a great 2025, Ali Kraus, Danielle Wright, Derrick Ableman, Scott Greenberg and Kristen Pechacek. Join us in a couple dozen more friends on New Year’s Day for our New Year’s special. And thanks to you for listening, telling a friend about us and staying connected on the Social Geek Radio Network.