Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~5 minutes

Seven years of new franchisee training and nobody has ever credited the landing page.

Below is what they credit instead, and why your enquiry form is the last thing a prospect touches rather than the first.

Plus the new FranFeast episode, and the button LinkedIn added last week for reporting AI slop.

Your prospect has 14 tabs open.

The enquiry form is the last one.

Seven years running marketing at Jim's.

Between 100 and 120 new franchisees through training every three weeks.

Not once has one of them told me the landing page did it.

Not the information pack. Not the enquiry form.

The answer is always something else. And it always happened weeks before they filled in the form.

So I went back through the conversations in my head and did a general count.

12 TO 20 TOUCH POINTS BEFORE THEY ENQUIRE

A franchise prospect hits 12 to 20 touch points before enquiring.

My number, from hundreds of conversations with franchisees over seven years at our new franchisee training.

Last August I wrote about the 7-11-4 rule.

Seven hours of content, 11 touch points, four locations.

Everyone credits it to Google's Zero Moment of Truth research.

Here is the part I skipped.

Nobody has ever produced the Google document it came from.

The actual 2011 ZMOT study found buyers went from 5.2 sources to 10.4. 

Instagram post

The rest is a marketing distillation people have been quoting at each other for a decade.

I took the 11 and multiplied it by four anyway, because franchising asks for more money than a fridge does.

I no longer need to borrow anyone's number.

The franchisees tell me directly.

More than 99% of our new franchisees say video was a major part of their decision.

Here is what 14 of those touch points look like.

The enquiry form is tab 14.

Everything you fund sits at tab 14.

Everything deciding the outcome sits in tabs 1 to 13.

THE COST OF GETTING THIS BACKWARDS

Doug Downer from Franchise Ready described a brand he looked at.

• $600,000 a year in franchise recruitment payroll

• $20,000 a month on Meta

• Five to 10 franchisees signed a year

Close to a million dollars a year, aimed almost entirely at tab 14.

Reddit, the podcast library, the YouTube channel and the founder's LinkedIn have all had airtime here. Two of these tabs have not.

TABS 11 AND 12: YOUR INFORMATION PACK IS READ BY A MACHINE FIRST

You send the information pack.

The prospect copies the contents into ChatGPT or Claude and asks whether they should buy.

People have told me in training they did exactly this.

Some of them fed our disclosure document in as well.

Read it again.

The document your lawyers wrote and your marketing team formatted is now content.

A model you do not control writes the summary.

In May I wrote about AEO and GEO agencies. Different problem.

This one runs the other way. Nothing outbound.

A document you already own, judged by software before a human forms an opinion.

Most information packs are built to survive a compliance review and impress someone flicking through them. Neither job is the one being done now.

TAB 13: THEY GOOGLE THE PERSON SELLING TO THEM

Before the first call, prospects search the name of your franchise development manager, franchisor or consultant (depending on your country)

The franchisors at Jim's who sell the most have the strongest digital footprint. 

Interviews, podcast appearances, a LinkedIn profile with posts on it going back years. It shows up when someone searches their name.

The ones with nothing show up as nothing.

This is also why I argue against outsourcing your whole sales process.

If a brand will not put its own person in front of me, I have learned something about the brand.

THE OTHER WAY TO LOSE TABS 1 TO 13

Barbeques Galore went into administration in February with around 500 jobs at risk.

Receivers sold the brand this week and every company owned store is now shut.

Retail analyst Trent Rigby said the failure was largely self inflicted.

The brand blamed the weaker economy, and in his view never did anything meaningful to win a younger customer.

A brand selling outdoor cooking.

One of the most watchable categories on the internet.

Jim's Group runs 112,000 followers and 2 million likes on TikTok. 

I do most of it myself.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

Seven years. Between 100 and 120 new franchisees every three weeks. Zero have credited the landing page, the video sales letter, or the information pack.

You are funding tab 14 and hoping tabs 1 to 13 sort themselves out.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO THIS WEEK

Monday: Copy your own information pack into ChatGPT and Claude. Ask both whether you should buy this franchise. Read the answer as a prospect would, then fix the parts of the pack producing the worst lines.

Wednesday: Google every person on your recruitment/franchisor/sales consultant team by name. Whoever returns nothing goes first. One podcast appearance and a LinkedIn profile with posts on it is enough to change the result.

Friday: Ring your last three franchisees. Ask one question. What was the first thing you saw about us, and how long before you enquired? Write the answers down. You now have a touch point list for your own brand instead of mine.

Your next franchisee has already made up their mind about you.

Which of the tabs open in front of them did you pay for?

New FranFeast episode

Episode two is out!

Glenn Walford and I run the headlines, then sit down with Patrick McMichael, Josh Cairns from Minke, Doug Downer, Darryn McAuliffe from FRANData, and Mark Crapper from Lounge Repair Guys.

We opened on 7-Eleven.

Five segments on A Current Affair. Millions of views before you count TikTok and Instagram. The response was a statement.

Here is what I would have done, because we have been through it twice.

When Jim's Dog Wash copped a run of news.com.au stories inside a week, I printed every article and recorded a podcast episode on each one.

Jim answered the claims line by line.

We published the full email exchange between Jim and the journalist on our own site.

Prospects who were walking away stayed.

The other time, A Current Affair came for Jim's Plumbing.

I sat Jim in a room, told the journalist to take as long as he wanted, and recorded all 45 minutes on my phone from the back of the room.

Then I told him the full version goes on our YouTube channel if the edit was not fair.

The edit was fair.

A statement is a tab 14 response to a tabs 1 to 13 problem.

The story lives on YouTube, Reddit and Facebook now. Someone searching the brand in seven years still finds it.

What else happened this week

LINKEDIN ADDED A BUTTON FOR AI SLOP

On 30 July LinkedIn rolled out a Seems like AI slop option on posts and comments.

A flagged post gets hidden from the person reporting it and shows up less outside the author's own network.

LinkedIn is pulling its own enhance your post tool and putting a proofreader in its place.

AI detection firm Pangram found close to a third of short form LinkedIn content and more than 40% of long form is AI generated.

Highest of any platform they measured.

My take: AI slop is a stupid word overall, AI clearly can write better than most humans and if used tastefully is fine in my opinion. I think it’s cheap way to get training from it’s users, however, it will be abused.

Read the detail here

THE IAB SET A STANDARD FOR AI VISIBILITY

On 3 August the IAB published Measuring Visibility in the AI Era.

More than 20 companies sell AI visibility measurement.

Each uses its own method. Two of them measure the same brand in the same week and return different answers.

Anything under 50 queries is classed exploratory.

My take: I called AEO and GEO agencies the new SEO scam in May. The trade body has now confirmed nobody agreed on what was being sold. Ask any agency pitching you AI visibility how many queries sit behind their number. It’s all guesswork for now…….

Read the framework here

Joel

PS. Franchisees are using AI to know write emails to franchisors who are now using it to respond, interesting times!

Before you go, I have some consulting/coaching spots open.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• The Franchise Trust Engine

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Book and pay for a spot below.

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~4 minutes

A franchisor put his hand up during my talk last week and told the room a podcast we recorded a fortnight earlier had already sold him a franchise.

The episode is below so you can watch it yourself.

Plus, Tim Collett from the Franchising Expo on why live events are pulling their biggest crowds in a decade, and what most brands get wrong on the floor.

A franchisor put his hand up and made my argument for me

I was on stage last week talking to our franchisors about long form content.

Nothing new to them. They have heard me say it plenty of times.

Then Chris Hansen put his hand up.

Chris has been one of our franchisors for a long time.

A fortnight earlier I had talked him into sitting down for a podcast.

Forty five minutes.

He told the room it had already sold him a franchise.

Someone watched the whole thing and got in touch. His words: I am in Prospect, you are the man I need to be speaking to.

Sale done. Thirty thousand dollars, around the average Jim's sale price.

Forty five minutes of Chris's time. All of it organic.

Watch it yourself. Nothing clever in there.

Chris talking about his division for 45 minutes.

I have said this for years and I will keep saying it.

Video does not close a franchise sale.

The franchisor closes it.

What long form decides is who walks in already convinced.

By the time the bloke in Prospect made contact, the persuading was over.

None of this is new to me. We hear it in training every intake.

People tell us they watched 100 or 200 episodes before enquiring.

What made last week different is where it came from.

Not me on a stage.

A franchisor in the room, telling other franchisors, unprompted.

Every franchisor should be doing long form. As much of it as they will stand.

THE SAME SHIFT IS SHOWING UP OFFLINE

I sat down with Tim Collett for the podcast the same week.

Tim is managing director of Specialised Events, which runs the Franchising Expo across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

He worked his first franchising show in Brisbane in 1993 and bought the event in 2013.

His last three shows pulled the biggest crowds in 10 years.

Nothing about the format changed. Something about the buyer did.

Tim put it plainly. We have all seen deep fakes.

We no longer believe what we see on a screen.

So we go looking for a person to stand in front of.

Same behaviour as the bloke in Prospect, pointed at a room instead of a podcast.

People are buying time with a human before they commit money.

THE NUMBERS ON ONE STAND

$6,000: a 3m x 3m stand at the Franchising Expo
$2,000: graphics and furniture on top
$30,000: all three capital city shows across a year
3 to 4 seconds: how long someone takes to walk past your stand

Put the $30,000 next to one extra fran dev hire. It stops looking expensive.

Now look at how most brands staff it.

Tim described the bad stand without hesitating. Three people in the corner. Phones out. Eating lunch. Talking to each other.

Australians are polite. If your team looks busy, nobody interrupts them.

Eight thousand dollars gone because someone answered emails on a Saturday.

Tim's fix costs nothing. Put your best franchisees on the stand. They love the brand, they talk about it without a script, and they answer the question every prospect holds back: what does my week look like inside this system.

No brochure answers it. A franchisee in an aisle answers it in 90 seconds.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

A visitor gives your stand 3 to 4 seconds before deciding to stop or keep walking.

Tim Collett has watched exhibitors buy attention since 1993.

The deciding factor is never the build. It is whether anyone on the stand looks up.

THE PART EVERY BRAND SKIPS

Follow up.

Tim's line: people are not going to call you, you have to call them.

Most exhibitors hold 200 conversations, hand out 200 brochures, then wait.

He flipped how I think about the brochure. Hand one over and the conversation ends.

Take the details instead, post the pack afterwards, and the delivery becomes your reason to ring.

The bigger thing brands leave on the floor is footage. Two days of prospects asking unscripted questions in a room no studio recreates.

We still publish vision captured at expos three and four years ago.

Chris sat down for 45 minutes and it returned $30,000.

A show floor is two days of the same raw material and almost nobody films it.

I will be at the expo with the FranFeast podcast

Glenn and I will have a booth at the Franchise Expo in Melbourne this weekend recording episodes live.

Please come up and say G’day, if you see me there on the day.

IF THIS WERE MY BUDGET

I would ring my best franchisees and ask for a favour.

No franchisee owes you two days on a stand.

The ones who champion the brand will say yes anyway, and they are the only people who answer the prospect's real question with any credibility.

I would book the videographer before I booked the furniture.

The furniture lasts the weekend.

I would block the two working days after the show for outbound calls and defend them, because unbooked time gets eaten.

The industry keeps arguing over whether expos work. Wrong argument. Everything works when you do it properly.

Almost nothing works when you do not.

If a prospect met your team on a show floor tomorrow, would they meet someone who loves the business or someone waiting for the day to end?

Joel

PS. Forty five minutes of Chris's time. Thirty thousand dollars. He did that sum in front of the room, not me.

The Franchise Marketer Podcast

This week’s guest, Tim Collett

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Before you go, I have some consulting/coaching spots open.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• The Franchise Trust Engine

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Book and pay for a spot below.

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~5 minutes

Heaps in this week’s edition as I have been away the last few weeks speaking at some conferences.

However, below you will find a 36-minute video outlining the full 10 parts of the Franchise Trust Engine that helps sell franchises and how you can use it.

Also, the new FranFeast podcast has launched, which I am very excited about.

Plus a recap of the great FCA and FANZ events.

The Franchise Trust Engine

The two parts of the Trust Engine nobody copies, and the numbers behind them.

I put the full Franchise Trust Engine in one video for the first time.

Six years of work at Jim's Group, growing from 3,600 to 5,800 franchisees, condensed into a 10-part framework. Now live on my YouTube channel.

A few weeks ago I shared the thinking behind the system. This week I am naming every part. Then I am going deep on the two parts almost nobody copies.

THE 10 PARTS

1. Founder personal brand

2. Daily organic video

3. Long form franchisee podcast

4. A YouTube channel with a weekly video minimum

5. Franchisee generated content

6. Transparent franchise content

7. Repurposing and distribution

8. Paid amplification

9. AI search visibility

10. Community discussion

Parts 1 to 4 get airtime at every franchise conference now. I have presented this at a couple of FCA events now.

It’s something that agencies and other people are starting to mention a bit more online, I see.

Parts 5 and 10 are the ones I never see other brands run or even know about.

The Franchise Trust Engine by Joel Kleber

PART 5: FRANCHISEE GENERATED CONTENT

Our franchisees in aggregate have generated MORE THAN A BILLION organic views.

Head office had nothing to do with most of them. We have one videographer. One studio. One posting schedule. A billion views was never coming from us.

One of our franchisees, Jabmo, posted a day in the life video.

More than 300,000 views.

He messaged me: I am getting flat out with questions about being a franchisee.

Recruitment was never his intention. The video did the work anyway.

We have a franchisee/Franchisor with 240,000 followers on TikTok.

Another with 100,000 plus on YouTube.

Some of their videos pull tens of millions of views.

Here is why most networks will never see numbers like these.

A junior marketing manager decides what is ON BRAND.

Every franchisee post needs approval. The franchisee gives up after the second knockback and posts nothing.

The network loses the views, the work leads and the recruitment proof.

Our brand guidelines for franchisees fit in three lines:

Stay compliant with OHS.
Keep the work quality high.
Wear the uniform.

No approvals. No sign off. Go for it.

Run a network of 20 franchisees and one of them takes this up.

One franchisee pulling 5 million views hands you 5 million views for free.

Their videos show up countrywide, not only in their territory.

PART 10: COMMUNITY DISCUSSION

Type your brand name plus the word franchise into Reddit.

What comes up decides whether prospects enquire. The ones who walk away never tell you why.

When I search Jim's franchise in Google, Reddit threads and Facebook groups sit third on the page.

And in May, Google announced its AI answers now quote forums, social posts and Reddit directly, with the poster's name attached.

The discussion about your brand is now inside the answer box.

I respond in those threads under Joel from Jim's account. I get smashed in there. The comment stays visible anyway, and prospects see a brand willing to front up.

One prospect told me in training: the Reddit reviews about Jim's were bad, so I went to the YouTube channel and spoke to franchisees directly.

The threads were wrong. He joined.

The trust assets drowned out the noise. Without them, Reddit gets the last word.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

Our franchisees have generated more than 1,000,000,000 organic views in aggregate.

Head office accounts were never going to produce a number like this.

Permission produced it.

THE OTHER EIGHT PARTS

Paid ads now cost us $7 to $8 per recruitment lead on Meta, down from $30 to $40, because the organic content feeds the ad creative.

Andromena is a beast! It’s hungry for creative, for most brands image posts are best still, however, if you have a heap of video, use that.

Prospects tell me in training that they listened to 200 and 300 podcast episodes before enquiring.

Our 3,200-video YouTube library still educates prospects with videos filmed six years ago.

The full breakdown of all 10 parts is in the video.

Watch here - https://youtu.be/ivBXuTvHCvI?si=hJqQyZHCQyoVDSSe

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO THIS WEEK

Monday: Type your brand name plus franchise into Reddit and Google. Read every thread on page one. Reply to the top three under your real name.

Wednesday: Ask ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity what buying a franchise in your system involves. Note which sources they cite. Those sources are your next content targets.

Friday: Pick one franchisee who already posts on social media. Tell them the approval process is gone, hand them the three-line guideline, and offer a cash prize for the best video this quarter. We ran "Show Your Best" at Jim's Mowing, and the winning content now runs in our paid ads.

If a stranger asked Reddit about your brand tonight, who would answer?

Introducing the FranFeast podcast

Co-hosted by Glenn Walford (Founder, franchise buyer) and me, FranFeast is Australia's most exciting new multi-guest franchise podcast — think Tonight Show meets news talk show, packed with insights, expert opinions and real conversations from across the franchise sector.

In Episode 1, we cover everything from franchise headlines and the future of franchising in Australia to payday super changes, AI tools, brand spotlights and what's coming up in the sector.

GUESTS IN THIS EPISODE:

Jay Westbury — CEO, Franchise Council of Australia (FCA)
Darren McAuliffe — CEO, FRANData
Tom Elliott — Group Strategy & Performance Mgr, RFG
Damien Gooden — CEO, HR Central
Karen Geloven — Group Executive Network Growth, Kip McGrath

Big thanks to Glenn and his team for putting it together.

Check it out, there is something for everyone.

FCA, Minke Forum and FANZ

My personal content output has been very slow and lacking over the last couple of months due to being away for a few events.

I enjoy public speaking; however, the actual slides take me a lot of time.

Even though I use Claude Design, it can still take me 6-8 hours per presentation.

The first event was the Minke Franchise Forum put on by the FCA, where I did a short TEDx-style talk on 'the ‘Franchise Trust Engine’ for 15 minutes and then was on the marketing panel hosted by Marcel Lal, who did a cracking job. Great guy as well.

Big thanks to Lisa Saville, Jay Westbury and Callum McKay for their support and for asking me to do these types of events.

The FIA awards were a cracker as well, and well done to all the winners.

Speaking at the Minke FCA Franchise Forum in Brisbane.

FANZ CONFERENCE, WELLINGTON

Katrina King, the CEO of FANZ, asked me to give a keynote in Wellington.

My first one.

I nearly said no. Speaking to 200 or 300 people who have no idea who you are is nothing like a podcast studio in your own building. I got up there, did it, and loved it. Thank you to everyone who came up for a chat during the event.

Here is the part that stuck with me. People kept telling me they follow my LinkedIn posts. No likes. No comments. No messages.

Silent followers for two years, then a handshake in Wellington.

Post daily and assume nobody watches. They watch.

Keynote at the FANZ conference in Wellington.

THE GUITAR

Greg Nathan forced me to bring my guitar across the Tasman. I fought him on it the whole way.

We played a couple of songs with the FANZ and Friends band. Sascha and Tony held it together, Katrina has a serious voice, and Greg was great up there too.

I play in my room every week. I had not played in front of anyone since I was 18.

I have been most nervous on the whole trip, and the highlight of it.

FANZ and Friends

JIM'S BUILDING INSPECTIONS CONFERENCE

I presented to our franchisees on the phone in their pocket, as their marketing department. Google Business Profile, social media, the lot.

The division sits at 200 franchisees now, the largest of its kind in Australia.

Paul Commerford and Sam Robertson built it into what it is. The culture in the room backs it up.

Speaking at our Jim’s Building Inspections Conference in Newcastle

THE Franchise Executives’ TOP 30 REPORT

I was named number one in the Franchise Executives Annual Top 30 Report, the second time holding the top spot.

I will not enter again. From here, the only direction is down. I didn’t learn my lesson after 2024. Standing at the event and seeing who else made the list was humbling.

You work inside Jim's every day and assume nobody outside notices what you do. People notice.

Getting the acknowledgement from the industry meant more than I expected.

Thank you to the judges and everyone who said hello on the night.

I still have another 4 conferences to do this year; however, you can expect these weekly moving forward.

HOW THIS STUFF HAPPENS

People ask how the speaking gigs and awards come about. No brilliance involved.

I am a battling employee like everyone else. Four habits did the work.

• I post on LinkedIn every day. Two years without missing one. Good or bad, up to others to judge.

• I share what I do with nothing hidden. Honesty stands out because almost nobody offers any.

• I never say no to the FCA. Every ask gets a yes. Each one pulled me out of my comfort zone and out of my bubble.

• I stayed consistent at Jim's since 2019. Seven years. Far from smooth sailing the whole way.

Recognition runs about five years behind the work. Results matter too; posting alone gets you nowhere without them.

You need none of this to validate your career or what you do. The point stands anyway: post online, give value, stay consistent, put yourself out there. Good things follow.

Wellington proved the point. People followed my LinkedIn for two years with zero likes, comments or messages. Then they introduced themselves at the event. They watch.

If you have any questions or topics you want me to cover in an edition, please reply to this email, and I will happily do so.

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Before you go, I have some consulting/coaching spots open.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• The Franchise Trust Engine

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Book and pay for a spot below.

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~4 minutes

For years, I have told franchise brands the same thing. YouTube is the best authority builder you can invest in.

Then I looked at my own channel.

Mostly repurposed podcast clips. Set up to feed AI search and nothing else.

Not one video was made on purpose to build my own authority. I have been preaching the thing I never did for myself.

So that changes now.

What I'm actually doing

I have started putting real time into my channel.

New format, focused videos, my best advice on franchise marketing.

The first one in the new style is up.

Here is the process I have landed on:

Come up with the ideas.

Get them down as dot points.

Riff to the camera on the dot points. No script.

Send it to my video editor in the Philippines, who is great, to cut.

Go back and forth until the style is right.

The thumbnail is done by a Claude Code skill I built myself.

I paste in the transcript and it gives me a finished, on-brand thumbnail.

No designer. No waiting on a round of revisions.

To work out the format, I use Apify and Claude Code to scrape the channels I rate, pull their transcripts, and break down what makes them work.

The catch is that there are barely any people in franchise marketing doing this.

There is almost nothing to model off. So I am working most of it out from first principles.

That is the kind of thing AI is good for right now. Taking a repeatable job and removing the lag.

We have settled on a style, so this is the first one in it.

The videos are 10 to 20 minutes, focused on one topic, the best of what I know.

Not repurposed podcast filler.

Why YouTube, and why now?

YouTube is the best authority builder there is. The videos get consumed at any hour, they answer objections while you sleep, and they get surfaced in AI search for years.

I have watched it work at Jim's. Videos we filmed six years ago still recruit franchisees today.

I always pointed at that for everyone else's channel. Now I am doing it for mine.

The part most people get wrong

This audience is niche. I am not expecting big view counts. That is the point.

The goal is authority, not reach. I want to be the person franchisors in Australia and overseas come to when they want to know how to do this properly.

For that, I do not need 50,000 random viewers.

I need the right few hundred watching focused videos that answer the questions they are actually asking.

And barely anyone is doing this properly in franchise marketing.

That is the opportunity.

Views are the vanity metric. Authority is the one who pays.

If you run a brand, the same applies. You do not need a big channel.

You need the right people watching the right videos, consistently, for long enough that you become the obvious choice. That is the whole game.

What you should do this week

Monday: Write down the ten questions your prospects ask you most. Each one is a video.

Wednesday: Record the first. Dot points, not a script. Talk to camera for ten minutes.

Friday: Publish it with a title that matches the exact question someone would type in. Then book the next one in your calendar so you do not stop at three.

I will keep sharing what works and what does not as I build this out.

The honest version, same as always.

Let me know what you think of video?

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Before you go: I have some consulting/coaching spots open.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• LinkedIn growth

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Book and pay for a spot below.

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~5 minutes

Last month, I gave a talk at the Digital Marketing Conference Australia in Melbourne.

Jimmy Mitchell put my name forward. I am not the standard speaker you get at one of these events, so I owe him for it.

Two things stood out from the day.

First, I walked in expecting to feel behind on AI. I walked out knowing we are a fair way ahead of most digital agencies! What we do at Jim's with content and AI is more unique than I had given it credit for.

Second, a professional media buyer on stage described the exact Facebook ad structure we already run. One campaign. One ad set. Three creatives. 

Let the creative do the work. Good to hear it confirmed by someone who does it for a living.

I also met some great people. That is the whole point of putting yourself out there and giving value. You never know what comes back.

Over the next couple of weeks, as well, I will be away, giving a keynote at the FANZ conference in Wellington, speaking at the FCA Franchise Forum and also speaking at the Jim’s Building Inspections conference.

If I don’t respond to your email quickly, you know why!

So this edition is a replay of the talk.

The full version is going on the podcast this week. Here are the key points.

The Jim’s Content Story

I am involved in our new franchisee training every three to four weeks. We get 80 to 120 new people through each round. I ask a lot of them how they found us and what they did before they inquired.

It looks like this:

They see a clip on Meta. They search the brand on YouTube. They listen to 50, 100, sometimes 200 podcast episodes. 

They read the Reddit threads about whether the brand is a scam. They ask a Facebook group what people think.

They find a franchisee on Instagram and send a DM. They ask ChatGPT if buying the franchise is a good idea.

They Google the franchisor by name to see who they will be dealing with. They scroll the TikTok comments.

They read the website. Then they fill in the form.

Half of our prospects listen to podcast episodes before they ever submit an inquiry or speak to a franchisor.

The form is the last step. Not the first.

The trap most franchisors fall into

The prospect does all of that research, then submits it through the website.

So the website gets the credit. The content that did the convincing gets none.

Then the brand cuts the content budget and wonders why the pipeline dries up.

The pyramid is upside down

Most brands start at the top with paid ads and have nothing underneath.

Content first. Paid ads last.

The base is where trust gets built:

Founder personal brand. The CEO active online, answering real questions.

A YouTube library. Long form franchisee interviews, day in the life, the honest version. Short form content. Repurposed from the long form, posted daily.

A franchisee podcast. Stories, not testimonials.

Then transparency over the top. We talk about fees openly.

We have used no NDAs since 1989. Inquire about a Jim's franchise and we hand you the full list of current and former franchisees and tell you to call them.

We film Jim answering 30 to 60 negative comments every fortnight.

We interview franchisees who failed the first time and leave it in the video.

Only then do you run ads. One campaign. One ad set. Three creatives. 

And the creative is whatever already worked organically. Not a guess.

The proof

We have had 8,400 new franchisees join since 2019. 99% said they watched our content before joining and it was influential.

We did not get there fast. The real growth did not show up until we had been consistent for a full 12 months. 

Brands who copy this quit at three months because they get impatient.

rust does not arrive on that timeline.

It works for small brands too. A bloke starting Footy Nippers in New Zealand downloaded my playbook a few months back.

He started a podcast and posted content before the brand even launched.

They have been documenting their journey and already have a franchisee!

Check it out and search for ‘Footy Nippers’

A fact you should know

Half of prospective franchisees listen to podcast episodes before they ever submit an inquiry or speak to a franchisor.

Most franchise brands do not have a podcast at all. They are absent from the exact place the decision gets made.

What you should do this week

Monday: Search your own brand on YouTube. Count the videos you have posted in the last 12 months. Under 20 means you do not have a library. You have a placeholder.

Wednesday: Pick two franchisees who will talk honestly on camera. Not your top billers. Your honest ones. Record a 45 minute conversation on Zoom about what the work involves.

Friday: Find the worst comment written about your brand online. Film your founder answering it in 60 seconds. Post it unedited.

The full talk is on the podcast this week if you want to watch the whole thing. [Add link]

When a prospect spends tonight researching you, before they ever touch your form, what do they find?

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Before you go: I have some consulting/coaching spots open.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• LinkedIn growth

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Book and pay for a spot below.

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~5 minutes

Sorry for the long time between issues. I have been busy speaking at a few conferences and just finished speaking at the Digital Marketers Conference yesterday about my ‘Franchise Trust Engine’ method.

More to come on that next newsletter.

I recently had Maddie Zook from Catalyst on the most recent The Franchise Marketer Podcast.

It’s a great listen for a free 60-minute consult with one of the world’s leading franchise marketers.

She runs a fractional CMO firm with her business partner, David Barr.

They work across 20-plus US franchise brands. Automotive. Health and wellness. Home services. Quick service. The whole spread.

Before Catalyst, Maddie spent 10 years inside MaidPro. She is also a franchisee in three different systems with her husband. She has worn every hat.

She knows what is happening across the US franchise market right now.

And most of what she said lines up with what I am seeing in Australia.

Here are the takeaways worth your time……….

ZERO-CLICK BEHAVIOUR IS KILLING FORM LEADS

Maddie has watched organic form leads drop 30 to 60 per cent year over year across her client base.

Same pattern in every vertical:

Organic traffic down

Form fills down

Phone calls up

Cost per lead on Google PPC is climbing

She calls it zero-click behaviour. Prospects no longer click through to research.

If they do convert, it is off the Google Business Profile. A phone call. Not a form.

Most franchisors have not updated their attribution model. They are reading their dashboards wrong.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

Organic search traffic is down 30 to 60 per cent year over year across most franchise industries.

This is consistent. Multiple years. Multiple verticals.

If your dashboards show declining form leads and you are blaming the website, you are blaming the wrong thing.

THE AEO AGENCY SCAM IS ALREADY HAPPENING

Maddie was direct on this one.

A few years ago she ruffled feathers calling out SEO packages sold to franchisees.

Her line: "There is nothing a franchisee can do to help their SEO but to get more reviews."

The same thing is starting again with AEO and GEO.

Her view: agencies are about to pitch AEO and GEO packages the same way they pitched SEO retainers. Same model. New acronym. Same outcome.

What she recommends instead:

Local listings are claimed and accurate

Google Business Profile is fully built out

Hyper-localised pages for every territory

Reviews are coming in consistently

Replies to every review

Short, sharp answers on your site

No agency shortcut. No $2K retainer fix.

In her words: "It is going to be so deeply rooted into every piece of your digital brand and your franchisees as well that it is something you build. It is long-term. You have to monitor."

THE 2,500 WORD BLOG IS DEAD

Three years ago, blog content meant 2,500 words. Keyword density. Internal links.

Maddie's read on where it is heading:

"AI is almost making it not an option. If you have these lengthy texts and all these forms that don't work, it doesn't want it. It is not efficient."

Short. Condensed. FAQ-heavy. Transparent pricing.

It is what both AI models and time-poor consumers want from a website now.

If your agency is still selling you long-form SEO blogs, they are running last decade's playbook.

SEGMENT BY BUYER INTENT, NOT DEMOGRAPHIC

This was the bit which stood out to me.

Maddie said franchisors are still treating their target market like one pond.

They are not. Inside any market, there are three stages of buyer intent:

Create: they do not know they need you yet

Convince: they know they need the service, but are unsure which brand

Close: they have decided to buy, choosing who

For a need-based service, only 5 to 15 per cent of the market is in the Create stage. 20 to 30 per cent are in Convince. 50 to 70 per cent are in Close.

For a want-based service, the split shifts. 25 to 45 per cent are in Create.

Your budget allocation should match where most of the market is sitting.

In her words: "Marketing is becoming more of a math formula. The people who exercise this formula and fine-tune it like a muscle are going to be the brands that win."

THE PAID ADS RULE MOST FRANCHISORS BREAK

Maddie's rule on channel selection:

Until you max out Google PPC, you have no business adding channels.

Her ceiling for home services: roughly $8,000 to $10,000 a month before demand caps out.

Google PPC is the bottom of the funnel. The Close stage. People searching there have already decided to buy and are choosing who.

You win those people first. Then you generate more demand at the top with Meta, billboards, direct mail.

Most franchisors run this backwards. They add channels before they have captured the available demand.

THE 12 TO 15 IMPRESSION RULE

This is the one to show your franchisees.

Maddie's framing: "For someone to give your business a yes, even just clicking on the link or giving you a call, they need between 12 and 15 impressions."

But not all impressions are equal.

T-shirt sighting: 1 to 2 impressions

A "really nice business card" moment, the kind where you wrote their dog's name on it (her example): 5 to 6 impressions

This reframes the conversation every local franchisee has with their franchisor. "Billboard, how many leads did I get from it?"

Wrong question. The billboard is not generating a lead. It is contributing to a threshold.

McDonald's franchisees spend 5 percent of weekly revenue on marketing. As Maddie put it: "What makes you think, as an ex-franchisee, you do not have to pay for leads?"

FIRE YOUR VENDORS ON A SCHEDULE

Maddie's rule: RFP every two years. No exceptions.

In the Australian language, review your marketing agencies constantly!

Her line: "If you are not outgrowing your suppliers or at least making them win back your business, then you are probably stalled. Everybody should be growing and evolving."

The bigger problem she sees: franchisors give vendors a target, not a range.

The call centre is told "60 per cent conversion is the standard."

So 60 per cent is the ceiling, not the floor.

Her fix: give vendors a range.

Conversion rate floor: 60 per cent

Cost per lead acceptable range: $50 to $110

Vendors who only see the target will game the metric. Vendors who see the range will work to the floor.

One more rule from Maddie: never bring in a non-franchise-experienced agency. Corporate multi-location is not the same as a franchise.

The model is too specific for generalists.

Her closing line on this: "These franchisees are your children. You owe it to them to provide the best. You do not owe the business to any of these suppliers."

WHAT AI IS GOING TO DO TO FRANCHISING

The hype answer is AI replaces departments.

Maddie's answer:

"It is going to make your B players potentially A players. It will get rid of your D and C players."

Not department elimination. Performance sorting.

A players stay A players. B players use the tools and close the gap. C and D players who refuse to learn lose their jobs.

5 to 10 years, not 5 to 10 months.

THE AMAZON BAR

The quote that stopped me. Maddie heard it from Abby Fogle at Unleash Brands and shared it on the pod:

"Consumers are not comparing you to your competitor all the time. They are often comparing you to the last thing they purchased. And that is often on Amazon."

Amazon set the bar.

Fast. Efficient. Clear pricing. Real reviews. One-click decisions.

If your franchise prospect researches your brand and runs into a dated website, a slow form, no recent video, and no reviews, you are losing them to the Amazon expectation. Not to a competitor.

Maddie's broader point: stop optimising for the lowest cost per acquisition. Optimise for the longest lifetime value.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO THIS WEEK

Monday: Open ChatGPT and Gemini. Type three questions a prospect would ask before inquiring about your franchise. "Is [your brand] worth buying." "How much do [your brand] franchisees earn." Screenshot what the AI says about you.

See if you are even in the answer.

Wednesday: Audit your Google Business Profile for one location. Description current. Photos recent. Reviews answered. Fix the gaps and document the steps as a template for the rest of the network.

Friday: Pull your vendor list. Mark down the last time each one had to win the business. If any one of them has been on retainer for more than two years without an RFP, schedule one.

THE TAKEAWAY

Maddie's view on where franchise marketing is heading lines up with everything we are seeing here.

Zero-click behaviour is shifting the buyer journey.

The agencies will repackage foundation work as premium AEO retainers. Vendor loyalty will cost franchisors money.

The franchisors who win will treat marketing like a math formula, not a vibe.

If a prospect asked an AI tonight whether your franchise was worth buying, what would the AI say back?

PS: Full conversation with Maddie Zook is up on The Franchise Marketer Podcast. Spotify and Apple.

She also puts her strategy decks out on LinkedIn for free.

Worth a follow if you want to see how a US fractional CMO thinks about this stuff.

CHECK IT OUT HERE:

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Before you go: I do offer consultations.

Before you go…

Yes, I work with brands outside of Jim’s.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• LinkedIn growth

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Reply to this email for more details or book a time below:

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~3 minutes

I was on Reddit last week.

Someone in an Australian forum with 750,000 weekly visitors had posted a question about owning a Jim’s franchise.

I searched our brand name. Found the thread. Read through the comments.

Some of it was wrong. Some of it was completely made up.

Some of it was highly damaging as well.

And 1,400 people had already seen it.

THE PROBLEM NOBODY TALKS ABOUT

Managing Your Franchise Reputation on Reddit 📈 — Tella

Learn why monitoring Reddit and online forums is critical for your franchise brand's reputation. Discover how to address misinformation and protect your brand from being negatively influenced by unverified online discussions.

Tella

Most franchisors spend money on Google ads, directory listings, and broker fees (in the US).

Nobody is watching what gets said about their brand on Reddit.

That is a mistake.

Search "Jim's franchise" on Google right now. Reddit comes up third.

Not the corporate website. Not a testimonial page.

A forum thread full of random opinions, bad experiences, and in some cases, outright lies.

People read it. They believe it. They never inquire.

You never know it happened.

HOW REDDIT WORKS AGAINST YOU

Reddit runs on upvotes and downvotes. The most upvoted comments sit at the top. The most downvoted disappear.

Here is the problem. A lot of people on Reddit have never bought a franchise in their life. They have never run a business.

They show up in franchise threads and say franchises are scams.

They pile on. Other people upvote them.

We have had franchisees respond to threads about Jim's, clearly identifying themselves as franchisees, sharing their actual experience.

They get downvoted.

The person with no skin in the game, no experience, and an opinion gets pushed to the top. The person who actually runs a Jim's franchise gets buried.

That is the environment you are operating in.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

Reddit threads about your brand are being read by franchise prospects before they ever contact you.

LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity crawl Reddit, too.

The opinions posted there end up inside AI-generated answers when someone asks about your franchise.

WE HAD A WAKE-UP CALL

A franchise prospect texted one of our franchisors recently.

"I've read some not great reviews on Reddit. Got me thinking."

That message is what pushed me to take this seriously.

One prospect who almost walked away because of a forum thread we had not noticed.

There are more like that person. You will never hear from them.

THE REALITY CHECK

Here is what happens when you ignore Reddit:

A prospect does their research. They Google your brand name.

Reddit appears third in the results.

They read a thread that describes your franchise network negatively.

They close the tab. They never fill out the inquiry form.

You run another ad. You blame the leads.

See the problem?

The issue is not lead quality. The issue is what prospects find when they look you up.

WHAT I DID

I created a corporate Jim's Group account and started responding to threads where the brand gets mentioned.

Transparent. Named. Clear name who I am as ‘JoelfromJims’

As you can imagine, my stuff gets downvoted.

We have also seen franchisees come in and respond themselves, which adds credibility that a corporate account alone does not have.

I do not ask them to do this; they just do it.

The comment I posted on that 750,000-member forum has had 1,400 views.

That is 1,400 people who saw a direct response from Jim's Group instead of only seeing complaints.

THE TACTICS MOST FRANCHISORS DON'T KNOW ABOUT

There are a few moves worth knowing here.

The first is the transparent corporate account.

Create one under your brand name, be clear who you are, and respond to factually incorrect claims.

People will still downvote you sometimes.

Do it anyway.

The second is getting franchisees involved. Brief two or three of them, get them onto Reddit, and have them share their genuine experience in threads about your brand.

A franchisee's voice carries more weight than a corporate response.

Both together is better.

The third is something most people in franchising have never considered. You can buy Reddit upvotes.

Post a comment, pay to have it upvoted, and it sits at the top of the thread until Reddit's detection systems flag it and suspend the account.

That is a real risk. But for a brand getting hammered in a high-traffic thread, it is a tactic that exists.

The fourth is building a network of aged Reddit accounts with strong karma that post about your brand, answer questions, and provide balance in threads where negative comments dominate.

This takes time to set up and carries its own risks if Reddit detects coordinated behaviour.

I am not telling you to do any of these. I am telling you they exist. Your competitors might already be using them.

WHY REDDIT MATTERS MORE THAN IT USED TO

Reddit threads now appear inside ChatGPT answers. Perplexity pulls from them. Google surfaces them early in brand searches.

The comments posted about your franchise today are becoming part of how AI answers questions about you tomorrow.

This is not optional anymore.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO THIS WEEK

Monday: Search your brand name on Reddit. Go to reddit.com and type "[your brand] franchise." Read every thread. Note which comments are sitting at the top and what they say. If you have nothing at all, great, search Facebook as well and other forums.

Wednesday: Create a corporate account under your brand name. Do not hide who you are. Start responding to factually incorrect claims. Be direct, be transparent, and do not get defensive.

Friday: Brief one or two franchisees about this. Ask them to create accounts and share their real experience in relevant threads.

Give them the specific threads to respond to.

Or you can create accounts and do the same.

THE LONGER GAME

At Jim's we have grown from 3,600 to 5,700 franchisees over six years.

Part of that is YouTube. Part of that is podcasting. Part of that is 3,100 videos that prospects find when they research the brand.

When someone reads a negative Reddit thread and then goes looking for more, they find 100,000 YouTube subscribers, 350 podcast episodes, and franchisee stories going back years.

The content library answers the doubt before the doubt kills the inquiry.

But you have to be in the search results first. Reddit is already there. The question is whether your voice is in those threads or not.

Most franchise brands in Australia are not even watching. Let alone responding.

That gap is an opportunity.

A QUESTION TO THINK ABOUT

If a prospect searched your brand name on Reddit tonight, what would they find?

Would you even know?

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Before you go: I do offer consultations.

Before you go…

Yes, I work with brands outside of Jim’s.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• LinkedIn growth

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Reply to this email for more details or book a time below:

Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~4 minutes

Two new podcast episodes on AI dropped this week.

Here's what's in them.

I SPENT MONTHS CHASING THE BEST AI TOOL.

Wrong move.

The tool doesn't matter if you're feeding it nothing.

Every time I switched platforms, I started from scratch.

Twenty minutes explaining who I am before getting anything useful.

The fix isn't finding the right tool.

It's building the source material that those tools run on.

I recorded two episodes this week covering exactly this.

The first is about what to build before you open any AI tool. The second is the tools I'm actually using right now.

New Episodes

EPISODE: BUILD YOUR AI BRAIN

Stop Starting From Scratch: Build an AI Brain That Works Across Every Platform

Franchise Marketer · Episode

Spotify

The system I use is a Google Drive folder structure. Every time I start a new project in Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini, I drop in the relevant files and skip the setup entirely.

What's in the folders:

Audience profiles: who they are, what they fear, what earns their attention

About me: I had AI interview me with 100 questions. That whole conversation lives in one document.

Brand voice and style guide: tone, language, how I write and speak

Frameworks: the Trust Engine, the Franchise Buyer Journey.

My core beliefs are what AI draws from.

Interview transcripts: every podcast episode cleaned up and stored

Stories: career moments and specific examples I return to often

Goals and strategy: values, purpose, working style

Testimonials: franchisee feedback and client results

FAQs: the questions I keep getting asked, so I stop re-explaining them every session

Build this once. When a new tool launches and everyone switches, you're not starting over. Drop in the files and go.

EPISODE: AI TOOLS I ACTUALLY USE IN 2026

The AI Stack I Actually Use in 2026 (No Fluff, No Affiliates)

Franchise Marketer · Episode

Spotify

No affiliate deals. No paid mentions. These are the tools I use weekly or daily.

Opus Clip (https://opus.pro): Takes long-form video and cuts it into short clips using AI.

The agent now builds clips with voiceovers and B-roll in around 20 minutes.

Google NotebookLM (https://notebooklm.google.com): I have a personal brand notebook with every interview I've done inside it.

I ask it for LinkedIn post ideas and get results fast.

ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com): I still use it.

The Codex product for coding is strong. Anyone who says they've fully moved on is probably exaggerating.

WhisprFlow (https://whisperflow.app): I dictate into it.

Four times faster than typing. I wrote the first draft of my book this way.

Claude (https://claude.ai): Better for writing in my opinion.

Cowork lets you run tasks without being involved.

Claude Code is worth learning if you want to build prototypes without a developer.

Descript (https://www.descript.com): I record my podcast into it.

The Overlord agent edits video from a text prompt. Still a bit buggy but it works.

Google Gemini (https://gemini.google.com): My go-to for images.

Give it three reference examples and a short prompt.

Don't write long detailed prompts. Examples do the work.

Genspark (https://www.genspark.ai): Good if you don't want multiple subscriptions.

One platform with access to multiple models.

SuperGrok (https://grok.com): Runs four research agents in parallel.

I use it when I want verified stats, not AI-generated guesses.

Repurpose.io (https://repurpose.io): Distributes video across platforms.

You control what goes where and when. Saves the team a lot of manual work.

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Before you go: I do offer consultations.

Before you go…

Yes, I work with brands outside of Jim’s.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• LinkedIn growth

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Reply to this email for more details or book a time below:

Franchise Marketer

TLDR: This edition covers the exact system I used to grow Jim's Group from 3,709 to 5,757+ franchisees over six years.

No agency. No complex tech stack. No broker referrals.

Six steps. Four people. One framework built around trust.

You will see the numbers behind 44,000 franchise enquiries, a 23:1 ROI on recruitment spend, and why 99% of new franchisees in the last three years cited video content as their reason for joining.

If you are spending money on ads before building a content library, this edition will change how you think about franchise recruitment.

Read time: 6 minutes.

The Trust Engine Framework for Franchise Growth

How I helped grow Jim's Group from 3,709 to 5,757+ franchisees after a decade of stagnation.

No agency.

No big budget.

No complex nurture sequences.

No new 'fancy' AI software to qualify prospects.

Here is my exact 'Trust Engine" framework behind it.

Before I Started: The 2019 Baseline

When I took over marketing at Jim's Group in 2019, this was what existed.

• A Facebook page with minimal content and no real strategy

• An Instagram account that was inactive

• A YouTube channel that was dormant

• No video content pipeline

• No podcast

• No decent paid social recruitment campaigns

• No founder or franchise-led marketing

• No franchisee-generated content strategy

Net franchisee growth over the prior five years averaged 117 per year.

The network had sat around 3,700 franchisees for almost a decade.

I had no formal marketing background. I built the strategy from scratch.

After: What Exists Now in 2026

• Active content across YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn

• 3,000+ videos on the Jim's Group YouTube channel

• 1,500+ videos on the Jim's Mowing YouTube channel

• 450+ podcast episodes across two active shows

• 100K+ YouTube subscribers

• 109K+ TikTok followers

• $1M+ in Meta ad spend managed in-house across 270 franchisors

• 1B+ network content views per year

• Net franchisee growth has averaged 320 per year since 2020

That is a 2.7x increase in net growth from the same brand, same product, same market.

The only thing that changed was the system.

More specifically, installing a 'Trust Engine' online.

The Numbers That Matter

• 5,757+ franchisees today, up from 3,709 in 2019.

• 8,863 new franchisees have started since I took over marketing, with an estimated $265.9M in franchise sales revenue, based on an average $30k sales estimate.

• 1,472 new franchisees started in 2025 alone, estimated $44.2M in franchise sales revenue.

• 44,000 franchise enquiries from January 2025 to March 2026.

• 99% of new franchisees in the last three years cite video content as a major factor in their decision to join.

Not ads. Not directories. Not broker referrals.

Content. Specifically Organic Video.

The Framework: The Trust Engine

Franchising has a trust problem.

Before a prospect contacts you, they Google your brand.

They search Reddit.

They ask ChatGPT.

They scroll YouTube at midnight, deciding if you're legit.

They may Google your founder, stalk them on LinkedIn, perhaps.

Most franchisors have almost nothing out there to answer those questions.

So every sales conversation starts from zero.

The Trust Engine fixes that.

It builds trust at scale before the first conversation happens.

Step 1: Set Up Your Platforms With Purpose

One decision determines whether everything else works.

Make a deliberate choice about where your franchise recruitment content lives.

Three options.

Option one: Build your main brand accounts around recruitment from day one.

This is what I did. Blank slate in 2019. Jim's Group accounts became franchise recruitment channels primarily.

Option two: Build separate, dedicated recruitment channels. A podcast, a YouTube channel, a TikTok account that exists solely for future franchisees.

Option three: Run recruitment content through personal brands. Your founder, your CEO, your marketing lead. Recruitment content lives on personal profiles, not the corporate page.

Pick one and commit.

Without this decision made, nothing else sticks.

Step 2: Build the Founder's Personal Brand

People follow people, not logos.

Jim Penman had zero social media presence in 2019. Zero.

I built it from scratch. LinkedIn. Ask Jim live streams. Podcast appearances.

TikTok clips answering viewer questions.

Jim is an introvert who hates being on camera. He has told me that multiple times.

But he knows what it produces. So he shows up.

Ask Jim now reaches 5,000,000+ people per year.

New franchisees regularly cite hearing Jim talk directly about his values as the reason they chose us.

Tim Cook has more followers than Apple. Elon Musk has more followers than Tesla.

Your founder's story is unique. Nobody else has it. Use it.

If your founder won't do it themselves, do it for them.

That is what I did with Jim. He never asked to be on LinkedIn. I just started building it.

I hear sometimes 'Our CEO or founder doesn't want to be on social media'.

And I say to that, SO WHAT!

It's a non-negotiable now in my eyes. Get over yourself.

The brands that have an active founder on social media are generally doing a lot better than those that don't.

The key is for your team to put you in a format that suits your personality.

That's the key.

I guarantee you will get opportunities via that channel that your company will never have had before, by doing this.

Or by allowing someone in your team to do this for you.

Step 3: Start a Franchisee Podcast

The single highest-converting part of the entire recruitment funnel.

The Jim's Mowing Podcast is ranked number 3 globally for franchising.

We have 450+ episodes across two active shows.

Every training cycle, I ask the new cohort what influenced their decision to join.

Every hand goes up for the podcast, or very commonly, I hear 'I have watched everything on YouTube.

Prospects arrive at training having consumed 20 to 40 hours of content before filling in a form.

Here is why it works. Franchisees are not recruiters. They have no reason to sell.

When a prospect hears a real person talk honestly about the hard parts, that is trust no brochure ever built.

The minimum viable version costs nothing.

A free Zoom account. Spotify for Podcasters. One franchisee. 45 minutes.

That is where we started.

Step 4: Build an Internal Content Creation Team

Two people beat every agency we ever considered.

The best hiring decision we made in 2019 was bringing on Jake, a Swinburne media graduate. Graduate wage. Almost no experience.

Didn't matter.

You cannot produce one new video per day with an agency.

Here is what the team looks like today.

One internal creator. Shoots and edits long-form.

Understands the brand from the inside, not from a brief.

One offshore editor in the Philippines via OnlineJobs.ph.

Handles all short-form repurposing. Cuts long-form into clips for TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts, and LinkedIn.

I also have someone who re-purposes the videos in AEO, GEO, SEO optimised articles for our website and also LinkedIn.

I also have a graphics person whose main job is to create scroll-stopping thumbnails daily and resize those into Facebook graphics to get external clicks by 'curiosity gap' news story style graphics, which drive traffic out to the video or external article.

They are equipped with tools that multiply their output.

• A custom GPT trained on our brand documents. Upload a transcript, get back a title, description, keyword list, and hook ideas in under a minute

• Repurpose.io handles automated multi-platform distribution. Upload once, and it pushes to TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook simultaneously

• Opus Clip extracts short-form clips from long-form video automatically

• VideoBlog AI and Claude turn podcast transcripts into blog posts, email content, and LinkedIn articles, etc.

The output: multiple pieces of video content live across all channels every single day.

That is how you build a library of 3,000+ YouTube videos, 450+ podcast episodes, and thousands of organic short-form videos.

Not with a big agency. With four people and the right tools.

Most importantly, freedom from the CEO and our great Franchisors to do so!

Step 5: Repurpose Everything

One interview. Forty pieces of content.

One 60-minute franchisee interview becomes:

• LinkedIn posts

• Short-form clips for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts

• Podcast audio

• A blog post

• Quote graphics

• Email content

Most brands create one video, post it once, and move on.

That is leaving 90% of the value behind.

Videos from 2020 still generate enquiries today. A prospect at midnight finds an old franchisee interview, watches for two hours, and fills out a form the next morning.

That is what a repurposing system produces. Not just reach today. An asset that compounds over the years.

Yes, AI can do a lot of this; it's how I manage to do so much now.

Personal preference is Claude.

Step 6: Use Paid Media to Get People Watching Content

The goal is not the enquiry form. The goal is the content view.

Most franchise brands run paid ads with one goal: to get the enquiry form filled.

That is not how I think about it.

Our paid goal is to get people watching content.

Get them onto the YouTube channel. Get them listening to the podcast.

Get them into the content ecosystem where trust builds on its own.

Plant the seed of a 'Jim's franchise' into their consideration set.

We do not build recruitment ads from scratch. We let organic content do the testing first.

High watch time. Strong share rate. Good completion.

Those are the signals. When you see them, boost it.

Some of our best-performing recruitment campaigns are all story-based, with scenes from training or franchisee/franchisor inspiring stories.

The organic strategy and the paid strategy are not separate. One feeds the other.

What You Won't See in Any of This.

No complex nurture sequences.

No sketchy sales process.

Just content. Volume. Consistency. Over six years.

And one result most people overlook.

Jim's Group is now a leading franchise brand cited in AI-generated search results in Australia across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity.

Not because we optimised for it.

Because we have more real, indexed content than anyone else in the category.

That is the compounding effect of six years of showing up.

The Result

Prospects arrive pre-sold.

They have watched 40 hours of content. They know more about the brand than some of our own staff. By the time they speak to a franchisor, there is almost no selling left to do.

• 23:1 ROI on total recruitment spend

• 1B+ network content views per year

• 44,000 franchise enquiries in 15 months

• Before I started: 117 net new franchisees per year. After: 320.

• 1,472 new franchisees started in 2025 alone, estimated $44.2M in franchise sales revenue.

• 8,863 new franchisees have started since I took over marketing, with an estimated $265.9M in franchise sales revenue, based on an average $30k sales estimate.

The brands that win the next decade in franchising will not win on ad spend.

They will win by having the most transparent content online, period.

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~2 minutes

AI in Franchise Recruitment: You're Solving the Wrong Problem

I use AI every day. I teach it to new franchisees every three weeks during induction. So this isn't a sceptic's take.

I use it daily for content creation, analysis, research, ideas plus a lot of other things. It’s been crucial to my success as well as being able to generate 44,000 franchise enquiries in the last 12 months.

But I keep hearing about AI in franchise recruitment, and I want to say something that might be unpopular.

What AI Can Actually Do

I've spoken to people on my podcast who use AI to qualify leads via SMS after hours, book calls automatically, and even run AI voice calls to screen prospects.

Some of it is genuinely impressive. Fast follow-up. No one slipping through the cracks at 11 pm.

I get the appeal. Speed matters in recruitment. A lead that doesn't hear back within an hour is already looking elsewhere.

The Part Nobody Wants to Say

AI can speed up what happens after someone enquires.

It can't fix the part that happens before.

When a prospect is considering your brand, they're not sitting around waiting for your bot to text them.

They're on YouTube. Reddit. Facebook groups. They're walking into your franchise locations and talking to the franchisee behind the counter.

They are sending DM’s to franchisees on their social media accounts asking questions (THIS HAPPENS).

From what I've seen, training over 1,000 new franchisees a year, prospects consume 20-plus hours of content before they ever fill in a form online.

That's the buyer journey now. And no AI qualification tool or software touches it.

Where You're Actually Losing

If your brand doesn't show up when prospects are doing that research, you lose.

Not because your follow-up was slow. Because they found another brand with a founder they could see, franchisees they could hear from, and content that answered their questions before they even knew what to ask.

You can have the best AI nurture sequence in the industry.

If the content foundation isn't there, you're automating your way to second place.

The Combination Worth Building

Here's what actually gets me thinking.

Imagine a brand that has both. A real content foundation, honest videos, franchisee stories, a transparent podcast, and genuine visibility across the places people actually look.

And then AI on top of that to handle fast follow-up, overnight enquiries, and qualification at scale.

Warm leads arriving already pre-sold. A system that responds before the competitor even picks up the phone.

That combination would be genuinely hard to beat.

The Order Matters

not

The content foundation has to come first.

Without it, the AI is chasing cold strangers who don't know you, don't trust you, and are probably comparing you to a brand that has done the work.

A brand with no content but great AI automation will still lose to a brand with great content and average follow-up speed.

The Real Qualification Test

Before spending another dollar on AI recruitment tools, ask yourself one question.

If a prospect searched your brand name on YouTube right now, what would they find?

That's the real qualification test. And you're the only one who can run it.

Lesson

Do not spend any money on software until you have the online trust engine in place.

If you want actual help with this, don’t go with the agencies that are ripping off my frameworks and selling them to their clients.

There have been multiple, and I have actually removed them from this list.

HIT ‘Reply’ lets tee up a time and get your trust engine going that AI will then be able to use to help accelerate your growth.

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~3 minutes

TLDR:

Darcy Ellis is 29, the son of world champion boxer Lester Ellis. Six HitFit Boxing locations. Two doing seven figures. Melton gym has 1,000+ members. His Bundaberg launch cost $400 in ads instead of the usual $8,000. His personal brand generates more franchise enquiries than his company accounts. Here's what to steal from his playbook.

PS: Apologies for the delay between editions, like you reading this, I have been swamped. So over the next couple of weeks expect a couple of more editions of interviews and some straight up advice from what I working on and seeing at the moment in franchising.

THE OWNER ON THE FLOOR

Most franchisors want to remove themselves from the day-to-day as fast as possible. Darcy went the opposite direction.

"At the heart of every successful gym, the owners were often on the gym floor helping drive the culture and the actual experience."

He does not want franchisees who open a gym, install a manager, and check in once a month. He wants owners in the ring.

That is a deliberate choice. And it is working.

THE FIRST FRANCHISEE DEAL MOST FRANCHISORS WOULD NEVER DO

When Darcy awarded his first franchise, he did not charge them upfront and hope for the best.

Here is what he did instead:

• Opened a company-owned location

• Had the prospective franchisees run it for six months

• Head office paid for the fit-out and took all the risk

• Once the location proved successful, they sold it at the agreed price

• No premium. Even though the location had done well

His reasoning: they were friends. He would not ask them to risk their savings on something unproven.

That first franchisee is now their best marketing material. Their success attracted the next round of franchisees.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

Your first franchisee is your most important marketing asset. Not your website. Not your brochure. If they succeed, they sell the next five franchises for you. If they fail, no amount of ad spend fixes the damage.

PERSONAL BRAND BEATS COMPANY ACCOUNTS

I asked Darcy where more franchise enquiries come from. Personal brand or company accounts.

Personal brand. No question.

He posted casually for years. Doubled down in the last 12 months. Since then, they have awarded more franchises than ever before.

This matches what I see across franchising. People trust people. Not logos.

$400 INSTEAD OF $8,000

When HitFit launches a new location, the typical ad budget is around $8,000. When they opened in Bundaberg, their franchisees spent $400.

The rest came from organic content. They wore HitFit shirts around town. They posted videos. People in a regional community started recognising them.

The numbers:

• Typical franchise location launch: $5,000 to $15,000 in ads

• HitFit Bundaberg: $400 and organic content

• Reason: Franchisees who go hard on content need less paid media

WHAT DARCY DOES DIFFERENTLY

A few things most franchisors resist that Darcy does as standard:

• Runs all paid ads from head office (does not outsource to an agency)

• Learned Meta ads himself before hiring a digital marketing manager

• Creates localised content for each area (suburb signs, local landmarks, not generic gym footage)

• Tells franchisees to "act like 9 News for your community" and capture every good story

• Uses 28-day fitness challenges as the core acquisition offer across all locations (same offer for six years)

• Sends franchise prospects content to consume before they even get on a call (franchisee interviews, model explainers)

STORIES OUTPERFORM EVERYTHING

Their most viral content was not a flashy brand video.

It was about a woman who could not walk across a shopping centre before she started at HitFit. Since joining, she walks without assistance.

That blew up more than anything else they posted.

Darcy's advice: start by sharing stories of others in your community.

A selfie with a member. A caption about their progress.

Someone who is nervous has now done 100 sessions. Someone who lost their first kilo.

Anything worth celebrating is content worth posting.

SOMETHING TO CONSIDER

Darcy spent $400 launching Bundaberg because his franchisees had already built trust through organic content before the doors opened.

Most franchisors do it backwards. They spend big on ads at launch and hope the content catches up later.

If you are opening a new location in the next 12 months, get your franchisee posting content in that community weeks before launch day.

Local stories. Local faces. Local landmarks.

Let the community know who is coming before you spend a dollar on ads.

The franchisees who build an audience before they open need less money to fill the gym, the van, the shopfront. Whatever your model is, the principle is the same.

Content first. Ads second.

A question to sit with this week:

If your first franchisee told their story publicly today, would it sell the next franchise for you? Or would you rather they stayed quiet?

Joel

PS: Full conversation with Darcy is live on the podcast now.

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~3 minutes

I used to think people had short attention spans.

Marketers love saying this. One to two seconds. Anything longer and you lose them.

I believed it for years.

Then I started talking to new franchisees in training.

We get 100 to 120 new franchisees through training every three weeks. And they keep telling me the same thing.

"I listened to 100 podcast episodes before I even inquired."

"I listened to 200 episodes before coming to training."

That changed everything I thought I knew about franchise recruitment content.

The myth versus the reality

The myth: People want quick, polished, three-minute testimonials.

The reality: People investing their life savings want to know everything.

They want transparency. They want to hear from franchisees, not recruiters.

They want the challenges, not just the wins.

Those slick testimonial videos with B-roll and the best franchisee in the system saying how fantastic everything is?

People do not believe them.

What they believe is a franchisee talking for 45 minutes about what the experience is actually like.

The good and the bad.

It is very hard to hide in long-form content. And that is exactly why it works.

What we did

When I started the Jim's podcast, I had no studio. No fancy equipment. No budget.

I used Zoom. I gave vouchers to franchisees who wanted to share their experience. And I recorded 10 podcasts a week.

That was it.

The production quality was average. The internet connection dropped out sometimes. None of that mattered.

No one has ever said to me, "It was the production value that got me across the line."

They say it was the transparency. The authenticity. The fact that we kept in the challenges, not just the highlights.

We now have more than 350 episodes across the Jim's Group podcast and the Jim's Mowing podcast.

This has been one of the biggest drivers of our franchise growth in recent years.

We have grown from 3,600 to over 5,700 franchisees.

Not the ads. The podcast.

Why this works

Your franchisees sell for you.

You do not have to push. You do not have to do the hard sell.

The prospect listens to a franchisee talk about their real experience, and they sell themselves.

Podcasts also fill the trust gap. A lot of people think franchising is a scam.

They want to know what the catch is.

Having a franchisee talk in an unfiltered way for an hour bridges that gap faster than any sales call.

And here is the bonus.

One podcast becomes 100 pieces of content.

You record a 45-minute interview.

From that, you get shorts for YouTube. Clips for paid ads. Blog posts for your website. Carousels for Instagram. Audio for Spotify. FAQ content that might surface in AI search results.

One recording. Months of content.

The one thing that will kill your podcast

Inconsistency.

Most brands post one video or run one campaign, then stop when it does not go viral.

That is not how content works.

It is a system.

You post weekly. You repurpose. You optimise.

And over time, you build a trust asset that works around the clock.

People listen for months. Sometimes years. Before they even inquire.

If your last episode was three years ago, that tells them something. If your competitor has fresh episodes every week, that tells them something else.

I know which brand they are going to trust.

The takeaway

If you want to grow your franchise brand, start a podcast.

Do not wait for the perfect studio. Do not wait for the perfect equipment. Do not wait until you feel ready.

Start with Zoom. Interview one franchisee this week. Keep it simple. Keep it consistent.

The production does not matter. The authenticity does.

What story could your franchisees tell if you gave them an hour to share it?

Joel

Podcast Example

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Franchise Marketer Newsletter

⏳ Read time: ~4 minutes

Octomedia and the Franchise Council of Australia (FCA) released the Franchise Outlook Survey 2026 last year. If you missed it, here is what you should know and how to apply it.

It surveyed both consumers and actual prospective buyers. The data confirms what I've been seeing in training for years.

And it explains exactly why most franchise recruitment marketing fails.

The gap nobody talks about

Nearly 40% of people have thought about owning a franchise.

Only 11.6% describe it as "very appealing."

See the problem?

Interest exists. Confidence doesn't.

When you look at where buyers actually are:

50.6% are just starting to explore.

19.4% are actively researching specific franchises.

Only 10.4% are ready to invest within six months.

That means half your audience isn't ready for "apply now" messaging.

They need reassurance. Explanation. Social proof.

What the research actually says

The survey asked prospects directly: what would make you feel more confident?

56.2% want mentoring from current franchisees.

53.4% want help understanding legal documents.

43.8% want financial planning or funding advice.

34.2% want case studies or success stories.

Notice what's missing?

Polished testimonials. Brand slogans. Stock photos of happy families.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

82% of consumers say the cost of entry is their biggest barrier.

Yet most franchise campaigns never address cost until the first call.

The real barriers (and what to do about them)

The survey laid out the top concerns. Here's what you can actually create to address each one:

Barrier: Startup costs (82%)

What to create:

• 10-minute video walking through real numbers. Show the franchise fee, equipment costs, working capital. No hiding.

• Podcast episode with a franchisee explaining exactly what they spent in month one.

• Email template your sales team can send titled "Here's what it actually costs."

Example: Record your CFO or a franchisee breaking down the P&L for their first 90 days. Send it after every enquiry.

Barrier: Risk of failure (56%)

What to create:

• Interview three franchisees who struggled in year one and how they turned it around.

• Video explaining your failure rate vs industry average (if you track it).

• Case study of a franchisee who left their corporate job, struggled for six months, then hit their stride.

Example: We have a podcast episode where a franchisee talks about making $400 in his first month and wanting to quit. Then explains what changed. Prospects watch it multiple times.

Barrier: Lack of independence (41%)

What to create:

• Founder video explaining exactly where franchisees have control and where they don't.

• Interview with a franchisee about what surprised them (good and bad) about the system.

• Document showing the decision-making framework. What's mandatory, what's optional, what's recommended.

Example: Jim did a video called "What you can and can't do as a Jim's franchisee." Seven minutes. No fluff. People reference it in training.

Barrier: Legal complexity (23.3%)

What to create:

• Plain English walkthrough of the disclosure document. Record yourself going through key sections.

• Checklist: "10 things to look for in any franchise agreement."

• Video with your lawyer (if they're good on camera) explaining what protections exist for franchisees.

Example:

Create a "Disclosure Document Explained" series.

Five-minute videos on key sections.

Send them between enquiry and discovery day.

Barrier: Difficulty securing finance (35%)

What to create:

• Interview with a broker who specialises in franchise lending.

• Video walkthrough of funding options: bank loans, SMSF, investor partnerships.

• Case study of someone who got funded with less-than-perfect credit.

Example: We recorded a franchisee explaining how he used his super to buy in. Got 200+ views from prospects researching that exact option.

The distribution part everyone skips

Creating this content is the easy part.

Getting it into prospect hands is where most franchisors fail.

Here's what works:

After someone enquires: Auto-responder with three videos: "Here's what it costs," "Here's how control works," "Here's what funding looks like."

Before the first call: Manual email from your sales rep with a specific video based on the prospect's situation. Subject line: "Thought this might help before we chat."

During the sales process: Reference specific content in conversations. "Did you see the video where Sarah talks about her first year?"

In your nurture sequence:

Week 1: Cost breakdown video

Week 2: Franchisee interview (risk and reality)

Week 3: How control works

Week 4: Funding options

The goal is saturation.

By the time they're ready to sign, they should have consumed 10+ hours of your content.

What I see every week in training

I train over 1,000 new franchisees a year.

I ask them: "How did you find us?"

The answers are consistent.

"I watched 30 YouTube videos before I enquired."

"I listened to every podcast on my commute."

"I stalked franchisees on LinkedIn and sent them messages."

"I asked ChatGPT if buying a Jim's franchise was a good idea."

People are doing 20+ hours of research before they make contact.

That's not an accident. That's the trust engine.

What to do this week

Monday: Pick one barrier from the list above. Record a 10-minute video addressing it. Just talk. Don't script it.

Wednesday: Send that video to your current pipeline. Subject line: "Thought you'd find this useful."

Friday: Add it to your post-enquiry auto-responder.

The truth about trust

27.8% of people surveyed said they're likely to purchase a franchise within 12 months.

That's not a cold audience. That's a warm middle.

Your job isn't to convince them that franchising is good.

Your job is to convince them your franchise is trustworthy.

And trust doesn't come from brochures.

It comes from hearing real people talk honestly about real experiences.

The data proves it.

Joel

Video Examples of Trust

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter Edition 22!

⏳ Read time: ~5 minutes

2025 was a big year for me personally.

Became a dad. That's been the biggest change. Also, the best one.

A lot has been shifting in marketin,g too. The tools. The platforms.

How people research before they buy.

Looking ahead to 2026, I think we're heading into interesting times.

The economy's wobbly. Job security isn't what it was. And when that happens, people start looking at self-employment.

Franchising could be in for a boom.

You want to make sure your brand is in pole position to take advantage of it.

I also started the Franchise Marketer Podcast on a new YouTube channel. I'm going to stick to a consistent schedule and just publish without overthinking it.

That's been my biggest problem. Trying to do too many things.

Overthinking everything. Convincing myself the knowledge I have isn't good enough to share.

But every time I put out a newsletter I don't think is any good, I get emails.

Nice words of encouragement. People finding it useful.

So I'm just going to be more authentic. Pump out valuable advice. Share what I've learned.

If you get something from it, fantastic. If you don't, no problem at all.

As always, if you want to chat about anything to do with your marketing, just reply to this email.

Hope you have a great 2026.

At a K Ball game

Now here are my 15 predictions……

AEO is here. Traditional SEO isn't going anywhere!

You're going to hear a lot about Answer Engine Optimisation this year.

Optimising for ChatGPT. Optimising for Perplexity.

Agencies are already warming up their pitches.

Don't get fooled.

Traditional SEO remains the bedrock. The brands showing up in AI-generated answers?

They're the ones with strong, data-rich content that's been properly optimised for years.

AEO isn't a replacement. It's an extension.

Don't panic when an agency tries to sell you "AEO packages" without explaining what's actually different from good SEO.

SEO blogging makes a comeback

Google's AI Search mode is coming as the default.

Not something you opt into.

The default. It will happen!

When you look at where those AI-generated answers pull from, it's long-form, data-rich blog articles. Same with Perplexity. Same with ChatGPT.

The brands with deep content libraries are winning the AI race without even trying.

Your digital footprint is your moat.

Claude and Gemini go mainstream

ChatGPT still leads the race. It's got the brand. It was first. Everyone knows the name.

But Claude and Gemini are ahead of ChatGPT right now. By a long way.

2026 is when more people catch on. Especially marketing teams.

If your team is still only using ChatGPT, you're missing out on better tools that are already available.

Podcasting finally gets taken seriously

I've been banging on about this for years.

2026 is when more franchise brands finally make the jump.

More founders are launching podcasts. More franchisee interview series. More long-form audio content.

The brands that started early are already seeing the compounding effects. The ones starting now will wish they'd done it sooner.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

You can't hide BS in a 45-minute podcast episode. Short testimonials get scripted. Long-form conversations reveal the truth. That's why they work.

AI is overhyped in franchise recruitment

This might ruffle some feathers.

I keep hearing about AI nurture sequences. AI-powered lead scoring. AI this, AI that.

Here's what I actually hear from new franchisees.

I speak to more than a thousand of them every year in training. I ask how they found us.

What made them enquire. What pushed them over the line.

Not once has someone said "your nurture sequence email triggered the right emotion."

Not once.

What I hear instead:

"I watched 50 of your podcasts."

"I've been following you on YouTube for two years."

"I saw Jim's TikTok and it felt real."

It's always the long-form stuff. Social sniffing. Checking out the content. Transparent videos that showed the real business.

Video content first. Everything else second.

Attribution just keeps getting harder

Executive teams need to hear this.

Stop expecting marketers to attribute everything to every action they do.

I know that's the goal. Every marketer wants to prove ROI on every dollar spent.

But it's becoming harder and harder.

Look into Rand Fishkin's work. Read the Sparktoro blog about zero-click marketing. Get your head around it.

People consume content across dozens of touchpoints before they ever fill out a form. Most of those touchpoints are invisible to your tracking.

Marketers need to educate leadership on this. The old attribution models are breaking down.

Tough economic times ahead. Good news for franchising.

Australia's heading into a rough patch economically.

Here's the thing: that's historically good for franchising.

When job security wobbles, people look for alternatives. They research. They explore options. They spend time consuming content about what else is out there.

You want to be top of mind when that happens.

The brands with a massive content library online will be the ones people find. The ones with nothing? They won't even be in the conversation.

Build the content now. The opportunity is coming.

Franchisee-generated content goes mainstream

A lot of brands have been dabbling with getting franchisees to create content.

Most have struggled.

2026 is the year more brands figure this out.

The secret isn't forcing everyone to post. It's finding the ones who want to, then making it easy for them.

Employee personal brands become a strategy

Franchise businesses haven't caught up to consumer brands on this.

2026 is when head office teams start building their own presence.

Not just the CEO. The marketing team. The franchise development manager.

People follow people. If your brand is just a logo, you're invisible.

More founders step up as content creators

Jim Penman's LinkedIn posts outperform the Jim's Group page every time.

The brands still hiding their founders are going to feel the gap widen.

Pick one platform. Commit to showing up. You don't need to be polished. You need to be present.

Social search gets serious

Hashtags are dead. But optimising for social search is just getting started.

When people search TikTok or YouTube, they're typing questions. What you say in your video matters. How you write your description matters.

This is SEO for social platforms. Most brands are ignoring it.

Retention-edited content burns out

Quick cuts every two seconds. Text overlays flying everywhere. Fake hooks.

People are sick of it.

What's working now? Someone giving genuine advice for 30 minutes with no fancy editing. No script. No retention tricks.

Less production. More substance.

Local influencers become a real channel

Not the ones with millions of followers. The local Facebook group admins. The community pages with 50k engaged followers.

I live in Newport. If someone with a big local following here posted about a new business starting up, people would pay attention.

That's real influence.

Vibe coding goes mainstream

Using tools like Lovable, Replit, or Google AI Studio to prompt your way to custom software.

Non-technical people building personalised apps. No developers needed.

2026 is when this hits the mainstream. Franchise operators creating their own tools. Marketers building dashboards.

You need a trust engine

This is the big one.

Trust is low in franchising. The concept of franchising in general has a trust problem. Too many stories of things going wrong. Too much scepticism.

Your information pack isn't going to fix that.

A slick brochure isn't going to fix that.

You need to build trust brick by brick. Social posts. Videos. Podcasts. Transparent content that shows the real business, not the polished version.

Every piece of content is a brick. Over time, those bricks become a wall. That wall becomes a moat.

This is what I'm working on right now. It's what I've been building at Jim's for six years.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

In a low-trust environment, the brands that win are the ones that build trust assets relentlessly. Not campaigns. Not one-off videos. A system that keeps adding bricks, week after week, year after year.

That's a trust engine.

If there's one thing franchise brands need to focus on in 2026, it's this: how do we keep building and building trust?

What You Should Do This Week

Monday: Search your brand plus "franchise opportunity" on YouTube and TikTok. See who owns that conversation.

Wednesday: Talk to your best content-creating franchisee about what support they need.

Friday: Pick one thing from this list and decide if you're actually going to do something about it.

The predictions don't matter if you don't act on them.

What's the one thing you're going to change?

Want some help in 2026?

Book a time here - https://www.franchisebuyermarketing.com.au/power-strategy-call 

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter Edition 21!

⏳ Read time: ~6 minutes

Welcome back to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter! 

This week, we share my interview with Andy Baker, founder of Sesimi, a creative automation platform built for multilocation brands.

I really enjoy sharing Aussie success stories, and this is one of them.

Not only that, it solves a massive problem for franchise brands, and Bakers’ Delight is already using them!

I was also seriously impressed by the speed of the platform, it’s lightning fast!

If you’ve ever struggled to keep franchisees on-brand while still giving them local flexibility, this edition is for you.

The Biggest Time and Money Saver Franchise Marketers Aren’t Using Yet

If you run marketing for a franchise system, you know the pain:

• Endless artwork requests

• “Can I change the price?”

• “Can you resize this for Facebook?”

• “Can I have this with my suburb instead?”

• Agency bills for micro-changes

• Franchisees going rogue in Canva

• Back-and-forth approvals are eating your week alive

This issue, we’re spotlighting a tool that eliminates almost all of that Sesimi, the creative automation platform built specifically for multilocation brands.

After interviewing founder Andy Baker, one thing became very clear:

👉 Franchise marketers who adopt tools like Sesimi recover massive amounts of time and budget.

Here are 7 points to take away and why Sesimi is a solution that will save you a lot of time and money.

1. Franchisees want to market locally, without becoming marketers

Andy’s original problem came from the Volkswagen dealer network, but it mirrors franchising everywhere:

Franchisees need flexibility:
their own offer, product mix, suburb name, opening hours, pricing, and local photos.

But every small change turns into a request that lands on your desk.

This realisation became the foundation for Sesimi:

• Give franchisees controlled freedom

• Automate what can be automated

• Remove anything that requires design or marketing skill

• Keep the brand protected underneath

It wasn’t about making franchisees designers.
It was about removing the need for design entirely.

2. The real drain on franchise marketers isn’t strategy, it’s execution

Andy described the “old way” perfectly:

Franchise marketers today deal with the exact same friction, just multiplied across:

• Social formats

• Video formats

• POS

• Print

• Local offers

• Compliance

• Approvals

• Constant resizing

Sesimi was built to collapse this production layer, not replace marketers.

The insight:

👉 Most franchise marketing teams spend 80% of their time on work that shouldn’t need a marketer at all.

Check out the podcast interview to see the demo in action.

3. The Bakers Delight lesson: flexibility works only if it's structured

One of Andy’s strongest examples was Bakers Delight, where every bakery:

• Sells different products

• Runs different local specials

• Has different price points

• Has different foot traffic patterns

Marketing HQ could never produce POS for each location manually.
Franchisees couldn’t be left to improvise in Canva.

So Sesimi was designed to do this:

• Product changes

• Price changes

• A4 → A5 → social transformations

• POS tickets

• Posters

• Localized backgrounds

• Auto-updated disclaimers

Andy’s insight:

It’s not about restricting them.
It’s about giving them a system where they can’t break anything, even if they try.

4. Video is now the biggest time sink and automation is the only way out

Franchise marketers told us the same thing:
Video is now expected, and it’s killing their workflow.

Localising video usually means:

• Replacing supers

• Updating offers

• Re-cutting for 9:16, 1:1, 16:9

• Changing price points

• Swapping B-roll

• Adjusting VO

• Exporting 15 versions per asset

Andy built Sesimi’s video engine out of necessity:

The platform automates:

• Resizing

• Supers

• Product swaps

• Offers

• End cards

• Suburb/location lines

• VO changes

• Music selection

The insight for franchise marketers:

👉 If the video isn’t automated, it will own your calendar.

5. Why generative AI isn’t ready to replace brand-led systems

Andy is bullish on AI, but realistic:

He found that:

• Each prompt yields a new visual style

• Tone shifts unpredictably

• Imagery varies

• Layout rules break

• Compliance becomes impossible

Which is why Sesimi uses AI inside guardrails, not instead of them:

• AI helpers for headlines

• AI for video resizing

• AI for VO

• AI for future hyper-local background generation

• But always from inside brand templates

The product exists because brand consistency matters more in franchising than anywhere else.

6. The simplest insight: franchise marketing is a scaling problem, not a creative one

Andy summed it up:

That’s what Sesimi was built to solve:

• One template → hundreds of local executions

• All on-brand

• All instant

• All without involving HQ

• All without involving an agency

The takeaway for franchise marketers:

👉 Your bottleneck isn’t ideas. It’s production volume.
👉 And volume requires automation, not more staff or more approvals.

Removing Friction Is the Future of Franchise Marketing

Andy’s journey with Sesimi isn’t about selling software.
It’s about fixing a structural issue that every franchise marketer faces:

Local relevance vs. brand consistency vs. limited resources.

The insight that stuck most:

For franchise marketers, that means less:

• policing

• resizing

• approvals

• rework

• late-night fixes

• agency spend

And more:

• strategy

• creative thinking

• media performance

• franchisee satisfaction

• brand consistency

Final Point

Do yourself a favour and check out the demo in the interview; it will be worth your time.

I guarantee employing something like this will save your marketing team a lot of time and money, plus your franchisees will be able to create better content at scale.

Reach out to Andy on LinkedIn.

Book a demo on the website; it’s worth checking out what I have seen in the demo.

I wouldn’t have released this episode as well unless I was 100% confident in this, and I have been looking into this for our Jim’s Mowing brand as well.

Being able to push as much local content, whilst being on brand as quickly as you can with this software, is seriously impressive.

Andy is a great guy as well, so if you’re interested, please reach out to him.

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Looking to create your own newsletter?

I have been using Beehiiv for a while now, and it’s probably one of the best newsletter platforms out there for anyone who wants to scale a newsletter.

The founder, Tyler Denk, is worth a good follow online as well.

Owning an email list that will buy and that you can build trust with is only going to keep becoming more important in 2025 and beyond.

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter Edition 20!

⏳ Read time: ~5 minutes

I’ve been looking at something that franchisors seriously underestimate. Not ads. Not funnels. Something far more important. The Key Person of Influence model. And honestly, most franchisors don’t realise how badly this gap is holding them back.

It’s a great book by Daniel Priestley, which I recommend you check out.

I see the difference every day at Jim’s. The more Jim shows up. The more I show up. The more we publish. The more trust compounds. Recruitment gets easier. Opportunities find you. It’s borderline unfair.

Here’s what you’ll get today:

✅ Why the franchisor must become the Key Person of Influence
✅ The exact steps to build authority and trust
✅ How I do this at Jim’s and in my own brand
✅ Why most franchisors won’t do it (and why that helps you)
✅ How to get started even if you hate being on camera

STEP 1. PITCH

Your 90-Second Personal Brand Video

If you can’t explain who you are and why someone should trust you in 90 seconds, the rest of the KPI model collapses.

This is why I created my own 90-second video for my personal brand. Not for Jim’s. For my personal brand, an example is below.

Why every franchisor needs their 90-second pitch video:

• It builds instant trust

• It explains your mission in plain English

• It warms up cold leads instantly

• It gives prospects something to binge before speaking to you

• It works beautifully on landing pages and nurture emails

Mine now lives:

• On my YouTube Channel

• LinkedIn

• On my social profiles

It’s simple, however, a big point of difference to everyone else.

Your pitch should be:

• Clear

• Human

• Repeatable

• Honest

Not corporate fluff. Not agency-speak.
If someone can’t tell their partner what your franchise is about in one sentence, your pitch is broken.

STEP 2. PUBLISH

You Need To Be Seen. A Lot.

Publishing is where 90 per cent of franchisors tap out or don’t know what to do.
It’s also where the growth begins.

Your Publishing Starter Kit:

1. Get on podcasts

Reach out to people, get on them!

You can use the content for you’re own brand.
Every episode speaks to potential franchisees.

2. Start your own podcast

This is a cheat code for franchise recruitment.

Interview your franchisees.
Tell founder stories.
Document the reality.

It’s one of the biggest reasons Jim’s gets hundreds of franchise enquiries every month. People can hear real humans talking about what the business is actually like.

3. Pick ONE social platform to post on daily

You don't need to be everywhere. Just somewhere consistently.

Good options:

• LinkedIn. Where franchisors and executives live.

• YouTube. Long-term trust builder.

• TikTok. Explosive reach. Great for brand personality.

I post daily on LinkedIn. And the funniest part?
The more I posted, the more opportunities came my way. Out of the blue.

Request to work, headhunting, etc… People who didn’t know I existed six months ago.

STEP 3. PROFILE

Become the Face of Your System

People join people. Not brochures. Not brands.

You need a public profile that shows who you are and what you believe.

Your Profile Stack:

1. A separate founder account

You need a place to speak freely without sounding like a press release.

2. Your own personal domain name

FirstnameLastname dot com.
If it’s gone, add “official” or “franchising.”

www.jimpenman.com.au

www.joelkleber.com 

3. Your personal brand website

This becomes your digital headquarters.
Mine houses:

• My 90-second pitch

• My story

• My podcast

• Articles

• Videos

• Contact info

It all pushes trust back into Jim’s, but the starting point is me. That’s the difference.

STEP 4. PRODUCTISE

Turn Your IP Into Assets That Work While You Sleep

Your knowledge shouldn’t stay trapped in your head.
Productising is how you scale your influence.

What to create:

1. Your “Franchisee Success Framework”

Spell out the behaviours that make franchisees succeed in your system.

2. A brutally honest recruitment guide

Tell people the good and the hard.
This removes tyre-kickers and increases retention.

3. A short video mini-course (idea to try)

Teach prospects your model in 5–7 clear videos.
This would drastically improve lead quality.

4. A founder-written manifesto

Why your brand exists.
What you stand for.
What you won’t compromise on.

This is a magnet for the right people and a filter for the wrong ones.

Our belief it or not, is Jim’s weekly TikTok Q & A’s and his short-form content on multiple channels.

STEP 5. PARTNERSHIPS

Your Influence Attracts Opportunities Automatically

Once you start publishing consistently, the craziest thing happens.
People start reaching out.

• Media

• Suppliers

• Potential franchisees

• Event organisers

• Other founders

• Partnership opportunities

• Investment conversations

This is how influence compounds.

I’m seeing it myself.
People I’ve never spoken to suddenly appear in my inbox wanting to collaborate or work together. And all of it ties back to daily publishing and showing the behind-the-scenes of what I do at Jim’s, plus sharing my knowledge openly online.

THE REALITY CHECK

Most franchisors won’t do any of this.

Not because they can’t.
But because it feels uncomfortable to be the person out front.

But here’s the truth no one wants to hear:

If you start this now. Even small. Even awkwardly. Even imperfectly.
You’ll separate yourself from 99 per cent of the industry within a year.

And if you want help building your influence, stack your pitch, your podcast, your content engine, your personal site, and reach out.
I can help you start.
Even one step in the right direction puts you miles ahead of most franchisors.

Want help?

Book a time here - https://www.franchisebuyermarketing.com.au/power-strategy-call 

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter Edition 19!

⏳ Read time: ~3 minutes + Video

If you haven’t seen it online yet, Glenn Walford from Franchise Buyer and I are teaming up!

We want franchise brands to stop wasting money on ads without a proper content library in place first.

In today’s edition, you will learn a bit about my beliefs when it comes to recruitment marketing in general and how I can help you.

PS: I am doing this because I keep getting asked, plus I need to keep up with inflation as well!

I have seen a lot of people taking what I am saying and implementing it into their franchise brands, if this is working for you, feel free to reply as well.

Book a chat here - https://www.franchisebuyermarketing.com.au/power-strategy-call

What can we do for you?

Check out the video below where we discuss the problems and solutions for franchise brands that want to grow.

Your leads aren’t the issue.

Your trust gap is.

I was talking with Glenn from Franchise Everything about the usual franchising frustrations.
“Leads are down.”
“Quality is bad.”
“Recruitment is slow.”

But when you look at the brands saying that… it’s rarely a lead issue.
It’s that buyers can’t find anything real to trust.

A dusty YouTube channel.
A website with one testimonial.
A founder who hasn’t been on camera since Kevin Rudd was PM.

Then we wonder why the sales pipeline feels flimsy.

The practical takeaway

If you don’t build the content trail, buyers will stitch together their own version of you from Google, Reddit and Facebook comments.

Spoiler.
It won’t be flattering.

Buyers do more research than you think

Before anyone enquires, they will:

• Google your brand

• Read Reddit threads

• Ask in FB groups

• Check YouTube

• Scroll TikTok

• Ask other franchisees

• And now… literally ask ChatGPT

One Jim’s Mowing recruit actually told me he asked ChatGPT whether joining Jim’s was a good idea.
I asked what it said.

His reply:

“Well… I’m here, aren’t I?”

This is the modern buyer.
They’re thorough.
And they’re sceptical.

If your “brand story” is three old videos and a brochure, you’re not even in the research phase.

Lead gen without trust is rented attention

Glenn put it well:

“You can throw money at Meta and Google… but the second you turn the tap off, the music stops.”

Exactly.

If your recruitment engine relies entirely on paid traffic, then you don’t have an engine.
You have a hose.

No compounding.
No build-up.
No momentum.

Three videos won’t cut it anymore

Some franchisors still think:

• One glossy video

• Two testimonials

• Job done

That worked 10 years ago.

Today’s buyers binge on content.
And the more your content library grows, the faster the trust builds.

Every intake at Jim’s, I ask new franchisees how long they’ve been watching.

Common answers:

“I’ve watched 50 of your podcasts.”
“I’ve watched all of them.”
“I’ve been following you for two years.”

One person enquired SIX YEARS after their first interaction.

This is why long-term content beats short-term campaigns.

Platforms now reward interest, not followers

The algorithm has shifted.
People who show interest in business or franchising now get fed more content in that category.

So if you’ve got:

• consistent founder content

• franchisee stories

• Q&As

• day-in-the-life videos

• real talk, not corporate polish

You’ll keep appearing in their feed for months.

If you’ve got… nothing?
Good luck.

Founder brand is becoming a recruitment weapon

This is the big unlock.

People follow people, not logos.

Jim’s founder brand drives more recruitment interest than anything we publish on corporate channels.
I’ve had people tell me they became interested in Jim’s after seeing a TikTok of Jim talking about his values.

The founder built the trust.
The franchise was sold afterwards.

This shift is only getting bigger.

Franchising has a trust problem

And you can’t fix it with one slick video.

You fix it with consistency:

• Founders on camera

• Franchisees telling honest stories

• Regular, recent videos

• Transparency about the good, the bad and the boring

• Showing the real business, not the brochure version

Honesty is your advantage now.

What Glenn and I are teaming up to do

We tried to create a one-size-fits-all product.
Impossible.
Every brand is in a different spot.

So we’re doing it the right way:

Step 1. A short discovery call

15–30 minutes.
We look at what you’ve got and what’s missing.

Step 2. A trust engine roadmap

Founder brand.
Recruitment content.
Franchisee stories.
Video assets that compound for years, not days.

Step 3. Build the system that matches your stage

New brands need different assets than mature ones.
Some need a strategy.
Some need volume.
Some need to fix the basics.

This is custom, not cookie-cutter.

If you want better leads, fix the trust first.

If you want us to audit your brand and map out what a trust engine would look like for you, reply to this email or message me on LinkedIn.

No pressure.
No hard sell.
Just an honest look at whether your current content actually builds trust or whether it’s stopping people before they even enquire.

Book a time with Glenn and me here - https://www.franchisebuyermarketing.com.au/power-strategy-call

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter Edition 18!

⏳ Read time: ~4 minutes

Welcome back to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter! 

I have been away for a while, so I wanted to focus on family and pretty much shut everything out.

Good thing with that is that I have a lot of good content I have been meaning to push out, starting with todays edition.

On one of the recent episodes of the Franchise Marketer Podcast, I sat down with Michael Black from Success Tutoring.

He started the whole thing at 17 in a spare room.
He’s now 26 with 45 locations across Australia and New Zealand.
And he’s not slowing down.

The interesting part isn’t the speed. It’s the approach.

A quick snapshot

• Started in his parents’ house in Western Sydney
• Studied management and law while running it
• Built three company-owned centres before franchising
• Now at 45, aiming for 60 this year
• Long-term goal. Compete with Kumon’s 36,000 global locations

His line that stuck with me.
“We’re not trying to scale for the sake of scaling. We want a brand that lasts for generations.”

Clear vision. Clear intent.

30 marketing tactics. One that worked.

Michael listed 30 marketing ideas when he started.

He tried every single one.
None worked.

What didn't work wasn’t even on the list.

Parents talking to other parents.
A family friend recommended the service.
Getting the first two students a result.

“It took six to eight months to get the first customer. Once we did and they got results, word of mouth grew it.”

A nice reminder that before AI, funnels and dashboards, trust still wins.

Shopping centre stands. Low-tech. High impact.

Before they ran a single Facebook ad, they grew through shopping centre stands.

Small table.
A stack of flyers.
Michael is talking to parents and booking assessments on the spot.

Two things happened:

1. They filled centres

2. They collected endless questions and objections from real parents

That language became the backbone of their copy and content.
It’s not glamorous. It works.

Content as a public FAQ

Success Tutoring treats content like a living FAQ.

Someone asks a question. They make a video.
“What makes you different?”
“How does the model work?”
“How do you pick locations?”

No NDAs.
No mystery.
No hoops.

From a franchise recruitment point of view, this is gold.
By the time someone enquires, half the work is already done.

Transparency. The thing most franchisors still avoid.

Some brands still make prospects sign NDAs for basic info.
Some charge money for territory lists.
Some hide everything and then complain about “low-quality leads”.

Michael’s view is the opposite.

No NDAs.
Show the playbook.
Let people qualify themselves out early.

It’s the same model we use at Jim’s.
Hours of YouTube content. Interviews. Franchisees sharing their own numbers.
The secretive operators hate it.
The right people respect it.

Pre-selling 50–150 members before opening

They market before they open.
And new locations often launch with 50, 80, or even 150 members already signed.

That means lower risk.
More confidence.
And a stronger start.

This is where most franchisors fall behind.
You can’t compete with that using a dusty brochure and five posts a year.

Lead generation. Local engine. Content-driven.

How they generate members:

• Paid social
• Google
• Local partnerships
• Shopping centre stands

How they generate franchise leads:

• Facebook and Google ads
• Dedicated franchise site
• Email nurture
• YouTube interviews
• Short-form video
• Digital PR

And here’s the pattern:
People reference content in their enquiry.

“I saw the YouTube videos.”
“I read the book.”

Content is doing the qualification for them.

A franchisee at 23

One of their franchisees is 23.
Started as a student, became a tutor, then bought a franchise.

Young people do want franchising.
They just want brands that feel real.

The founder’s personal brand is part of the engine

Michael has a clear story, and he tells it.

• Spare room origin story
• TV appearances
• A book
• Consistent content

“People aren’t just buying the logo. They’re buying the mission and the team behind it.”

Founders who still refuse to get on camera are slowing their own brand down.
Attention has shifted. The founder needs to show up.

Writing the book

Planned. Six months.
Actual. Twelve.

Worth it.

The book helps prospects understand the model, the story and the values.
People throw out flyers.
They keep books.

AI in the business

Success Tutoring uses AI every day for:

• Drafting comms
• Curriculum updates
• Learning materials
• A free AI tutor on their website
• Scanning curriculum changes

But it doesn’t replace tutors.
AI assists. Humans explain.

Scaling with three stakeholders in mind

Three groups you can’t ignore:

The customer.
The franchise partner.
Head office.

If one cracks, the whole thing does.

So he focuses on franchisee profitability, team support and consistent field visits.

“The best ideas come from franchise partners. McCafé and the Big Mac came from franchisees.”

The content unlock. Give franchisees a mic.

Every new franchisee gets a microphone in their starter kit.
And they’re hiring an internal videographer.

We did the same at Jim’s. It changed everything.

In-house content is faster.
More real.
Less approval loops.
Film. Approve. Publish.

You don’t just need UGC.
You need franchisee-generated content.

One or two will run with it.
The rest follow.

To learn more about Michael, check out https://successtutoring.com.au/

Why Gone So Long?

One of my best mates got married and decided to get married in Tieling, China, which is a small town, according to them, with over 2 million people.

On the way back, we decided to stop by Seoul, Fukuoka, and Nagasaki before heading home.

Then, after that, a cousin decided to have his wedding in Noosa, so I was away for that as well.

This means a lot of content is to come!

Seoul, Korea.

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Before you go: I do offer consultations.

Before you go…

Yes, I work with brands outside of Jim’s.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• LinkedIn growth

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Reply to this email for more details or book a time below:

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter Edition 17!

⏳ Read time: ~4 minutes

Welcome back to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter!

I've just finished analysing some recent YouTube data, and the numbers are absolutely staggering. Most executives are criminally underestimating this platform while their competitors build unassailable trust moats (like I do at Jim’s).

Stop spending any more money on franchise recruitment before considering what I share in this edition.

Here's what you'll learn today:

✅ Why YouTube is your most significant missed opportunity

✅ The trust crisis is crushing traditional marketing

✅ The demographic shift that changes everything

✅ The new AI image trend

✅ Google’s new image release!

YouTube: The Lead Generation Service Killer

Brands aren't taking YouTube seriously enough, and I want to give you a whole bunch of stats in today's edition.

It's important to make YouTube a part of not only your recruitment strategy but also your business strategy, as well as regularly uploading videos to a YouTube channel.

It doesn't matter if you're recruiting franchisees or customers - it can help your business.

If your executives are putting money into other channels like directory ads, brokers, or lead generation services, you really do need to consider content on YouTube regularly.

This will underpin your recruitment and growth strategy for years to come.

The numbers that should scare you:

• 20.9 million Australians use YouTube (78% penetration)

• 17.1 hours monthly viewing time per user

• 19 minutes 33 seconds average session length

• #2 most visited website in Australia (beating every platform except Google)

Compare this to your current lead gen strategy:

• Directory ads: Maybe 500 monthly impressions, zero engagement

• Brokers: $15K+ fees per successful placement, no brand building

• Lead gen services: Cold prospects who've never heard of you

Meanwhile, YouTube gives you 79% of users staying longer than intended, averaging an extra 69 minutes weekly beyond planned viewing time.

That's not lead generation, that's relationship building at scale.

The Trust Crisis You're Ignoring

Here's the uncomfortable truth: The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer just dropped, and it's devastating for traditional marketing.

Trust in Australian institutions fell from 51% to 49% in early 2025.

Trust in advertising? Even worse.

But here's the paradox: While trust in everything else craters, trust in authentic content and peer recommendations is skyrocketing.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW:

YouTube has become the trust-building engine of the internet.

When someone watches your 15-minute explanation of franchise support systems, they've invested more mental energy than most people give their financial advisor.

Why this matters for franchise recruitment:

• Traditional lead gen relies on interrupting strangers

• YouTube lets you demonstrate competence before asking for commitment

• Authentic content beats broker pitches every time

If there's one other thing I can suggest: if you're a founder, you should have your own YouTube channel if you've got the means to do it.

It's a whole other marketing channel you can utilise.

There's a reason why Sabri Suby, Dave Fogarty, and other big names are creating YouTube content: because it really works. It's the biggest thing to build trust in today's market, which is becoming a lot less trustworthy.

The Demographic Bomb That Just Exploded

Here's the shift nobody saw coming:

Baby Boomers and Gen X creators grew from 27% to 35% of YouTube's creator base between 2022 and 2023.

Think about this: Your ideal franchisee prospect - someone with capital, business experience, and time to invest - is already creating content on YouTube.

Meanwhile, 15% of all YouTube users are Baby Boomers.

That's roughly 375 million people globally with:

• Disposable income

• Business experience

• Time to research major decisions

• Lower tolerance for bullshit marketing

What this means: While you're paying brokers $15K per sale and buying directory listings that get ignored, your competitors are building relationships with thousands of prospects during their 17+ hours monthly on YouTube.

The Algorithm Advantage Nobody Talks About

Here's why YouTube works when lead gen services fail: 70% of YouTube views come from algorithmic recommendations, not paid placement.

This means quality content gets distributed regardless of your marketing budget. The platform rewards depth over interruption:

Videos over 15 minutes show 50% higher engagement rates. 

Channels posting substantial content see 70% faster subscriber growth.

Educational content consistently outperforms promotional content.

My observation: The most successful franchise brands create content like "5 Reasons Our Franchise Might Not Be Right for You" and outperform generic broker-generated leads by massive margins.

Why?

Because transparency beats interruption in a low-trust world.

Check out what we do on the Jim’s Group channel, whilst not getting 100k views on videos, the retention rate is super high from people interested in the franchise system.

Every view is a potential franchise buyer.

The Australian Opportunity Right Now

Let's get specific about what you're missing:

Peak engagement times: Friday 3-4 PM and weekday evenings 6-9 PM

User behaviour: 62% visit YouTube weekly with predictable habits.

Device usage: 63% mobile viewing, but longer desktop sessions for research

For franchise recruitment, this means you can reach virtually every potential franchisee in Australia through predictable time windows, building trust across multiple touchpoints.

All my videos go live between 7 PM and 9 PM to catch people logging into YouTube.

The reality check: While you're paying lead gen services for cold prospects who've never heard of you, your competitor is getting 17+ hours of attention monthly from warm prospects who already trust them.

What You Should Do This Week

Monday: Search "[Your Industry] franchise opportunity" on YouTube.

See who owns that conversation (hint: it's probably not you).

Wednesday: Interview your best franchisee about their decision-making process.

Film everything. Publish it with a brutally honest title.

Like “I failed my first time with Jim’s Mowing”

Friday: Start answering the top 5 questions prospects ask during discovery calls. One video per question.

The only metric that matters: How many qualified prospects discover you through YouTube versus how much you're spending on brokers and lead gen services.

Consider this….

YouTube isn't just another marketing channel - it's become the primary research tool for every significant business decision.

Your prospects are already there, spending 17+ hours monthly learning from someone.

The question isn't whether you should be on YouTube.

The question is whether you want to be the teacher or let your competitors educate your prospects while you pay brokers for cold leads.

Your choice: Build authentic relationships now while attention is still relatively affordable, or keep paying premium prices for prospects who don't know you exist.

The window won't stay open forever.

Trust me, all of our franchise prospects watch anywhere from 1 to sometimes 500 YouTube videos during the research process.

What's your move?

The next AI photo trend

I will do more of these in the coming weeks; however, Google Nano Banana is absolutely nuts in terms of what it can do with image generation.

To create the below, just do the following:

Access Google Gemini or Google AI Studio.

Upload any photo you like and use the prompt below:

𝘊𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘢 1/7 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦, 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘵𝘺𝘭𝘦, 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘦𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘢 𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘺𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘡𝘉𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘩 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦.

𝘕𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘉𝘈𝘕𝘋𝘈𝘐-𝘴𝘵𝘺𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘰𝘹 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘸𝘰-𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘧𝘭𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴.

𝘌𝘯𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘦.

Google Nano Banana

Google’s new image project dropped, and it’s awesome!

Trust me, it’s well worth watching the video below to see what it can do.

Franchise Marketer Podcast

Each week, I interview marketing experts or share insights from the strategies I have used to help grow Jim’s by 2,000+ franchisees.

Listen on Spotify and iTunes.

If you would like to be a guest or would like me to cover a specific subject in an episode, please reply to this email.

Before you go: I do offer consultations.

Before you go…

Yes, I work with brands outside of Jim’s.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• LinkedIn growth

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Reply to this email for more details or book a time below:

Welcome to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter Edition 16!

⏳ Read time: ~4 minutes

Welcome back to the Franchise Marketer Newsletter.

The July/August 2025 social media statistics for Australia are now available.

Here’s what they mean for people in franchising.

You’ll learn today:
✅ Where franchise leads still come from.
✅ How to make a web app in 2 mins.
✅ Jim’s new book!

1. YouTube and Facebook are still king

• Facebook: 19M users

• YouTube: 18.5M monthly visitors

Franchise recruitment is strongest here.
Facebook gives you local reach and volume of leads.
YouTube builds authority and trust over time.

At Jim’s, almost every prospect mentions our YouTube channel.

Vids like the below:

Many binge multiple podcast episodes before they enquire. That trust is built before we ever speak to them.

Next edition, I have a big deep dive on YouTube for franchising.

2. WhatsApp and Instagram = trust

• WhatsApp: 13M users

• Instagram: 12M users

WhatsApp is underutilised in franchising, except for support.
You can create broadcast lists or small groups for leads. It feels personal.

Our franchisors use it well for franchisee support; however, it’s hardly used for recruitment. Definately, something to think about, especially as you can use AI bots with it.

Instagram shows lifestyle. Behind-the-scenes posts and short videos make franchisees relatable. This is how you humanise your brand.

In Jim’s, we smash the short-form content on Instagram as people share the videos with mates, saying ‘What about this?’, which is what you want.

Check out @jimsgroupofficial to see how I do it.

3. LinkedIn is small but high intent

• 6.5M users in Australia

Not the biggest platform, but the right audience.
Career switchers. Professionals looking for change.

On LinkedIn, don’t sell. Tell stories about freedom, flexibility, and lifestyle.

Those are the triggers that make someone consider a franchise.

As mentioned last week, the most significant opportunity I see in franchising!

4. TikTok and Snapchat matter long term

• TikTok: 5.8M users

• Snapchat: 6.4M users

They won’t bring you franchise leads today.
But they shape brand perception.
The next generation is forming opinions now.

In saying that, we have generated multiple franchise sales from our TikTok Q&A videos. It’s a great platform to experiment, and Snapchat is something we repurpose and auto-share our content to.

Example below of our unserved leads video with Jim.

A low effort, high-impact video marketing activity.

@jimsgroup

How many unserviced leads in Jim’s Dog Wash? #jimsgroup #dogwash #franchise #doggrooming #doggroomer

5. Social is now bigger than the news

More Australians get their news from social media than from traditional outlets.

If your franchise story isn’t on social, you don’t exist in the places people now consume information.

6. Attention is shrinking

Australians spend 1 hour and 51 minutes a day on social media.

Less than the global average.

That means your content has seconds to land.
Use:

• 60-second reels of franchisee wins.

• Short posts showing lifestyle and income.

• Podcast clips are cut into bite-sized pieces.

Pro Tip: Concentrate on the first frame to grab attention; it’s all that matters!

Takeaway

For franchisors and people in franchising in 2025:

• Use Facebook and YouTube for scale.

• Use WhatsApp and LinkedIn for trust and support.

• Use TikTok and Instagram for brand building.

Massive opportunity on most platforms for recruitment as everyone just outsources to lead generation agencies and doesn’t take them seriously enough.

How to use AI to make a web app (2 min demo)

In the above tutorial, I show you how to create your own web app based on a single prompt using Genspark.

Their social team liked the video and actually shared it on their LinkedIn, which was pretty cool.

The official video above shows you some other things you can do with it, however, it only took me 3 prompts to get a functioning web app.

New Podcast Episode out Now

The Power of Franchisee-Generated Content - The Biggest Growth Hack for 2025

Franchise Marketer · Episode

open.spotify.com/episode/3V9THox1LxlcFfsIYlumMa?si=w24RgiVJRoKIrZpuaQLvmA

Jim’s New Book is Out Now!

It’s called No Other Success, and all copies come signed by Jim!

I am in this book myself a bit, and I actually had to organise the printing, the audible version, etc, so it’s been quite a task!

Grab a copy here. 

FEEDBACK on this Newsletter Format?

I am trying to work out what the best format is for my readers.

Do you want one in-depth tip a week? case study, AI prompts? What would you like?

Please reply to this email and let me know.

Before you go: I do offer consultations/workshops.

Before you go…

Yes, I work with brands outside of Jim’s.

If you want help with:

• Franchise recruitment

• Content systems

• LinkedIn growth

• Founder brand building

• Or other franchise growth challenges…

We can cover it in a 1:1 consultation. 

Reply to this email for more details or book a time below: