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September-October 2026 / Entrepreneur.com

CODIE SANCHEZ

Make Your Own Rules! Find your strengths. Then profit off them. Here’s Codie’s playbook. P. 34

America’s Favorite

MOM & POP SHOPS

The TOP 100 Local Businesses in the U.S. P. 44

Property name

Sept.-Oct. 2026

→ CODIE’S WAY

FEATURES P.34

There’s no one way to build a business, Codie Sanchez says. So find what works for you.

P.34

Success, Your Way Codie Sanchez helps people

buy local businesses. But to thrive, you need to first know your weaknesses (and fix them). by STEPHANIE SCHOMER

P.44

The Best Mom & Pop Shops! p It’s our annual America’s Favorite Mom & Pop Shops¨ list. See who made the cut, and what it takes to build a great local biz.

HIGHLIGHTS P.45 The List P.52 Get AI to Recommend You P.54 Best Marketing Ever P.56 Your Biggest AI Threat P.58 Win Government Contracts

ON THE COVER AND THIS PAGE Photographs by JAKE CHESSUM

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 1

September-October 2026

→ THE CONTENT CLUB

When Club Coastal was sued, it turned the drama into content—and thrived. P.22

BUSINESS UNUSUAL

08 What’s Your End Goal?

11 How She Sold Poppi for $1.95 Billion

We work hard. We work a lot. But we don’t often ask what the point of it all is. by JASON FEIFER

Allison Ellsworth built one of the fastest-growing beverage brands of all time. Here’s what she learned. by TYLER MATHISEN

16 AI Can Do That?! Six business leaders share the transformative ways they’ve used AI.

18 Watch, Follow, Profit Bloom Nutrition’s new product hit $100 million in sales in its first year. How? By using competition to its advantage. by JASON FEIFER

22 Bad Things, Great Content What do you do when your business is falling apart? Put it on social...so everyone can rally behind you. by AMANDA BREEN

2 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

28 How I Nearly 3x’d My Revenue I didn’t think I had time for strategy planning. But since I started doing it, we’ve grown faster than ever. by SHAE HONG

32 The Best New Tech Tools to help you work faster and live better. by MARIO ARMSTRONG

PHOTOGRAPH BY MIRANDA GAEHDE

EDITOR’S NOTE

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September-October 2026

FRANCHISE 65 The Top Franchise Suppliers of 2026 Need marketing help? Accounting? Banking? Here are the top service providers. by TRACY STAPP HEROLD

110 How to Succeed in Franchising Jon Taffer, host of TV’s Bar Rescue, gives you his playbook. by JASON FEIFER

118 Gold Medal Mindset How an Olympic champion thrives as a franchisee. by SHERIN SHIBU

120 Hot Competition Why did Playa Bowls become a franchise? Because it was the best way to compete. by SHERIN SHIBU

123 The Top Global Franchises These brands are booming internationally. Ready to make money overseas with them? by TRACY STAPP HEROLD

CLOSER 136 What Inspires Me I was a perfectionist. Then one happy customer changed everything.

→ FOLLOW THE LEADER

Bloom Nutrition CEO Greg LaVecchia treats his competition as market research. P.18

4 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BLOOM NUTRITION

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6 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

What Are You Working For? We work hard. We work a lot. But we don’t often ask what the point of it all is.

y friend has been working like a dog for decades. He’s made some money. He’s had some success. But lately, he told me, he’s been asking himself a big question: What am I actually working for? The obvious answers are there: He’s ambitious. He’s growing his company. He’s making more money. But again, to all of that—what for? The question nagged at him, because he wasn’t sure of the answer. When he told me this, I recognized it immediately. After a career in which I’ve pushed myself relentlessly, often thinking about nothing but work, I’ve been asking myself the same thing. Then I told him something I’d never quite put into words before: “Whatever I’m working for, I think it’s time to start enjoying that.” That stopped us both. I want to share why. About five summers ago, my family and I were visiting my parents in Colorado. I set myself up outside in a chair, anchored to my computer as usual, and worked all day, every day. One afternoon, a neighbor rode by on a bicycle and asked if I wanted to join him for a ride. I said, No thanks, I’m working. He took off.

The next day, the same thing happened. So I asked him: How does he have time for a bike ride in the middle of the day? He said he just makes the time. He works hard, has some free time, and uses it like this. Then he took off again. On the third day, he invited me again. And I realized something: For years, when people— including my wife—asked me what I wanted from work, I’d say, “I want full autonomy of my time.” I wanted to spend my time however I saw fit. And yet there I was, sitting in that chair, not doing anything meaningfully different with my time. What was the point of having full autonomy if I did nothing autonomous with it? So I went on the bike ride. Then more bike rides. I slowly started to build extra flexibility into my days. If you haven’t asked yourself some version of this question, I encourage you to. So I’ll write it again: What am I doing all this work for? And is it time to start enjoying whatever that is? Are you working for money? Great. How are you spending it? Are you working for flexibility and time? Great. How are you spending that time? Are you working for personal satisfaction? Great. Are you doing the things that actually satisfy you? So often, we put off the purpose of something until later.

8 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

We think of now as “grind time,” as if it’s all for some future version of ourselves. But if we never stop to actually appreciate it and to take advantage of it, we just keep working toward an unknown future. And then, truly, what is the point? I’ve met people at the tail end of their careers who worked tremendously hard and never stopped. I’ve met billionaires in their 90s still grinding. I’m sure they got things along the way— money, status. But was that what they actually wanted? Was there something else along the way they could have paused to enjoy more? I always wonder: Did they ever even ask the question? Lately, I’ve been trying to answer it myself. It’s time to use the time I’ve worked so hard to

reclaim. I’ve gone on lunches with friends. I’ve gone on long walks. I’ve said yes to more things, just because they sound enjoyable, even if they leave me with a little less time to work. I’d encourage you to do the same: Ask yourself what you’re actually working for. Not what you’re doing, not what your goals are—but the real outcomes all this effort is supposed to deliver. Then go take advantage of it. Because the work will always be there. But your time won’t.

Jason Feifer jfeifer@entrepreneur.com @heyfeifer m o r e : jasonfeifer.com/newsletter

Photograph / IEVA UK ANY TE

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‘Nobody Is Born Confident’ Allison Ellsworth built Poppi into one of the fastest-growing beverage brands of all time, then sold it to PepsiCo for $1.95 billion. Here’s what she learned. b y T Y L E R M AT H I S E N

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 11

Q&A

→ POPPI PARTNERS

Allison and Stephen Ellsworth, the cofounders of Poppi

oppi is one of the fastest-growing brands in the history of beverages. In its first year in business, it did about $3.5 million in sales. Then $22 million the next year, $52 million after that, then $200 million and $515 million before the company sold to PepsiCo in 2025 for $1.95 billion. How does a founder achieve that level of success? “I always say embarrassed is the most underexplored emotion when it comes to success,” says Poppi cofounder Allison Ellsworth, who served as chief brand officer and grew the business alongside her husband until its sale in 2025. “You have to be willing to put yourself out there and almost make a fool of yourself to be successful.” Ellsworth has put herself out there in many ways. She appeared on Shark Tank while nine months pregnant, where she got a deal from Rohan Oza. (This was when the brand was called Mother Beverage, before its Poppi rebrand.) She threw herself into the brand’s social media, becoming one of the most visible founders on TikTok. And she’s leaned heavily into her skills as a creative director, designing all the cans herself. Now she’s preparing to launch a new brand, which will be announced later this fall. Here, Ellsworth reflects on lessons learned from growing Poppi, and how founders can break out.

12 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

What do founders often miss when scaling a brand? We scaled fast: In four and a half years, we went from zero to $500 million in revenue. And we quickly learned that we had to professionalize the business. I think that’s hard for entrepreneurs to hear. They think they can do everything themselves. They don’t want to let go, because—let’s be frank— their ego gets in the way, and they don’t ask for help. I think you need to put processes into the business early on, and hire maybe 18 months ahead versus six months ahead. You mean that founders wait too long to professionalize functions in their business, whether it’s finance or HR? Yeah, and they hire their friends. That’s okay for a little bit, but let me tell you—as someone who personally had to fire one of her bridesmaids because she didn’t cut it—it sucks. So don’t do that either. Sometimes you have to hire for the stage that you’re at, knowing that someone is going to be really great at maybe $50 million, but they’re not going to be great at $500 million, and that’s OK as well. Firing doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. And at Poppi, we gave equity to nearly 100% of our employees. We made 44 people millionaires at exit. People bought cars. They paid off their mom’s house. So make your employees part of the business as well. Although you scaled fast, were there moments where you worried the company would fail? I remember one time we were doing $20 million in revenue and only had

$75,000 in the bank, and we were like, “We actually don’t know if we can make payroll.” So we had to go out and raise.

How did you evolve as a leader as the company grew? Well, I like to win. I’m a self-aware, confident woman, and I like to surround myself with winners. It goes back to the ego within entrepreneurs. There was a point when we were growing so fast, and I was running our marketing department and my husband was the CEO, and we had to look at each other and say, “Maybe we’re not the right people for these jobs anymore.” That’s hard to do as an entrepreneur, to not have the mindset of, This is mine, this is my equity, this is my company. One of the hardest decisions we made was to step aside [as leaders]. But I ended up running our brand, and I ran all our creative. I’ve designed every single one of these cans. And it freed me up to be the face of the brand. You know, fun fact: I have over 3 billion views on TikTok of my face. One-third of the platform has seen me over seven times. Did social media come naturally to you? A lot of people say, “Allison, you’re so confident online.” Let me just tell you: Nobody is born confident. You just have to start. Start messy, start awkward. Then you become confident over time, after failing a lot. As TikTok became popular, I said, “You know what?

I will take zero resources from the company. I will get on and I will learn this platform.” So for three to four months, I made taco recipe videos. I danced. I did transitions. I did all the stupid stuff that you can think of, until one day I sat down and just was myself. I told the story. I talked about how I was nine months pregnant on Shark Tank. That video went viral, and we did $100,000 on Amazon overnight.

You did $100,000 just on a video that you recorded? Just on a video. A lot of founders are like, “I don’t want to do social media. I don’t want to take the time. I’m embarrassed.” But you know what? Get over it, because it is kind of the modern way to market.

have to do both. You have to put money aside to put paid behind TikTok—and our budget for digital platforms was about 80% TikTok and about 20% on Meta. And then on top of it, we decided to be 100% Amazon from day one. We are not a direct-to-consumer company. We met the consumer where they were. Then when we reached scale, and Poppi was in every grocery store in the nation, that’s when we started thinking about linear TV and Super Bowls and more media. You shouldn’t do it before. And as you grow, continue the small stuff. We still have an unlimited sampling budget. We still work with over 5,000 to 10,000 creators a year. We’re still doing those partnerships. So you just build as you scale.

You also pursued traditional marketing, including a Super Bowl ad. What did you learn about marketing today?

What was it like to sell Poppi and say goodbye? You don’t sell your company for $2 billion and then get a

want, when you want, and with whoever you want—but it doesn’t give you purpose. And I’m here to tell you that purpose is so much more important than money. If you find your purpose, money will come.

How are you finding that purpose? You’re obviously too young to retire. I tried to play golf for, like, six months. I got really good. I beat my husband a few times. But honestly, I can’t retire at 39. I missed building. I miss the people, and the leadership, and being around a team. So we are launching a new company in the fall, which I’m really excited about. How has your life changed since the sale? I used to tell my husband, “We’re like the ‘richest poorest’ people I know,” because we suddenly had

A LOT OF FOUNDERS ARE LIKE, ‘I DON’T WANT TO DO SOCIAL MEDIA. I DON’T WANT TO TAKE THE TIME. I’M EMBARRASSED.’ BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? GET OVER IT, BECAUSE IT IS KIND OF THE MODERN WAY TO MARKET.” What we did at Poppi was very simple. Our first year, I think our marketing budget was $350,000, and 100% of it went to influencers and sampling. All the social media was organic. We didn’t even have money to do paid ads at the time, so it was just me creating content and going viral where I could. Back then, it was the Wild Wild West, and it was really easy to go viral. Now it’s extremely hard. It has to be a paid and organic play. So you

Pepsi badge. You’re instead like, Oh, wait, what? Literally, we [closed the deal] on Friday. On Monday, I cleared out my desk. It was very emotional. And it wasn’t because they wanted me gone. They kept me on for three years as an advisor, but I was no longer an employee of the company. I can’t be in the system; I can’t have logins. So then I had the post-exit blues, and I had to find my purpose again. Money gives you the freedom to do what you

all this money, but can’t just change our behavior overnight. We decided to just continue to live our lives how we did for a year, and slowly learn how to spend money—which sounds crazy. But I was raised by a single mother. Like, you just can’t change overnight.

Is there anything about the Pepsi deal that you wish you had done differently? I mean, no. $2 billion is amazing.

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 13

Building the American Dream: 4 Ways Small Businesses Can Unlock Opportunity The experts at Chase for Business share four steps entrepreneurs can take to build resilient businesses and grow for the long term. With roots dating back 250 years to the founding of this country, “The American Dream” is an idea and belief that anyone, regardless of background, can build a better future through hard work, opportunity and determination. However, rising costs, workforce shortages, housing affordability challenges and other barriers are making it harder for people and businesses to get ahead. That’s why JPMorganChase launched the American Dream Initiative, a multi-year program aimed at expanding economic opportunity for more people. The Initiative focuses on accelerating and strengthening local solutions across six key pillars: business growth and entrepreneurship, housing access and affordability, financial health and wealth creation, careers and skills, healthcare and local institutions. JPMorganChase kickstarted the Initiative with a focus on entrepreneurs, aiming to support 10 million small businesses and provide $80 billion in lending over the next several years. Because while today’s entrepreneurs face new challenges, small businesses remain one of the strongest engines of economic mobility and community growth. There are more than 36 million small businesses in the U.S., representing 99.9% of all businesses in the country.1 Their success has a ripple effect, creating nearly two-thirds of new private sector jobs, driving innovation and strengthening the communities they serve.

strengthens customer relationships and creates lasting connections that benefit both businesses and their communities. What does this look like in practice? For entrepreneurs, community engagement can include working with banks, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), local organizations, suppliers and government programs. These relationships can provide access to financing, technical assistance, mentorship and new business opportunities that help entrepreneurs grow with confidence. “Capital is the fuel, but it’s the guidance, advice, and partnership that truly move small businesses forward,” Baron says. “Through our American Dream initiative and the expansion of our Coaching for Impact program, we’re combining expanded funding with the tools and support they need to scale, adapt, and turn their ambitions into reality.” There are also community programs owners can take advantage of that may connect owners to the resources and institutions they need for the next phase of growth. One of those is Chase for Business’ Coaching for Impact program, which provides complimentary, one-on-one coaching to business owners in partnership with local organizations. As a part of the American Dream Initiative, JPMorganChase aims to graduate nearly 115,000 small-business owners through the program over the next decade.

Drawing on deep expertise and resources, the experts at Chase for Business share four ways entrepreneurs can unlock opportunity and strengthen the American Dream.

Through Chase’s Coaching for Impact program, Chaka Stewart, founder and president of Los Angelesbased FlipSide Event Services, LLC has pursued larger opportunities and expanded her company’s network, including major public contracts. But FlipSide’s lasting impact is local—strengthening neighborhoods across Los Angeles. “Community has always been at the center of everything we do,” says Stewart. “Partnering with local organizations allows us to invest in neighborhoods, create jobs and mentor young people.”

1. Opportunity starts locally Small-business owners often live, work and raise families in the same communities they serve, giving them a unique understanding of local needs. Engaging locally builds trust,

2. Adapt to shifting trends and promote business resiliency Entrepreneurs must constantly navigate shifting market conditions, evolving customer needs and rising operating

“Small businesses are not only the backbone of our economy, but are vital to America’s growth story,” says Stevie Baron, CEO of Chase for Business. “Their success creates jobs, encourages innovation and strengthens the communities they call home.”

costs. Staying focused on long-term goals helps businesses manage uncertainty, respond to new opportunities and continue moving forward even during difficult periods. That’s where resiliency comes in. To build it, business owners must maintain a clear picture of their financial position, monitoring cash flow and customer trends, keeping accurate records and seeking guidance before critcal decisions become urgent. One of the most significant trends impacting owners is the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in our everyday lives. As AI moves from experimentation to implementation, business owners are discovering new opportunities to interpret data, strengthen marketing, manage finances and simplify routine operations. The right approach will look different for every business, so owners should focus on tools that address their most pressing needs and invest in building the knowledge required to use them effectively.

This starts with identifying which roles are critical to your operation and then developing team members who can step up when growth accelerates or unexpected transitions occur. Cross-training key responsibilities and documenting core processes are essential components of this approach. “We’re proud to invest in America’s future by expanding opportunity and scaling what works,” Baron says.

Learn more about how JPMorganChase is strengthening the American economy at jpmorganchase.com/smallbusiness. 1 2025 Small Business Proﬁle, U.S. Small Business Administration’s Oﬃce of Advocacy

How JPMorganChase’s American Dream Initiative is Helping Small Businesses Do Big Things

3. Leverage the right tools and resources to start, grow, hire and expand Business owners are positioned to thrive when they have access to practical resources that are aligned with where they are in their growth journey. This includes digital tools that provide greater visibility into cash ﬂow, operations, and customer trends.

Business Growth & Entrepreneurship: Increase access to capital, advice, training or tools for 10 million small businesses.

For instance, capital enables founders to get their idea off the ground, invest in new equipment, hire employees, manage cash flow and expand into new markets. When unexpected challenges arise, access to capital provides essential flexibility.

Financial Health & Wealth Creation: Expand access to financial education, banking products, services and digital financial health tools—scaling financial education efforts to reach a total of approximately five million cumulative customers, students and small businesses, up from one million served over the past five years.

Without a clear understanding of their business’ credit health, owners may be denied access to the necessary capital to ride out a rough patch or catapult them in the next phase of growth. Leveraging digital tools like Chase for Business Credit Journey™ can help make business credit more accessible and actionable, so owners can stay informed, spot score-change alerts early, and strengthen their proﬁle over time.

Careers & Skills: Broaden access to skills-based training through policy and hiring opportunities, including for JPMorganChase employees.

In the case of business credit, many owners don’t monitor it regularly or fully understand what impacts it, yet it can meaningfully aﬀect ﬁnancing options. Having access to the right tools not only allows entrepreneurs to make informed decisions but it helps keep their options on the table. 4. Ensure your legacy lives on Preserving a business’ legacy begins long before an owner is ready to step away. However, according to JPMorganChase research, a critical gap exists: while 40% of small-business owners plan to retire within the next decade, only 8% report being prepared to act on succession. The message is clear – the time to start planning is now. Succession planning helps entrepreneurs ensure that their legacy lives on and ensures that the character of their communities remains intact.

Housing Access & Aﬀordability: Improve aﬀordability for hundreds of thousands of renters and buyers through increased housing supply and homeownership opportunities.

Healthcare: Support efforts that provide better access to healthcare as well as promote better health outcomes, affordability and transparency for all Americans. Local Institutions: More financing and support for thousands of schools, hospitals, nonprofits and local governments critcal to community success across the U.S.

The statements, views and opinions that will be expressed during the event are those of the presenters and are not necessarily endorsed by, or reflect the views or positions of, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. or any of its affiliates. The presentation is for informational purposes and is not a recommendation or solicitation of any particular actions. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. and its affiliates are not liable for decisions made or actions taken in reliance on any of the information covered during the event. You must be at least 18 years old, a U.S. resident and a Chase Small Business client with an open small business account to use Chase Business Credit Journey. All features may not be available to you if you have limited or no credit bureau data. We reserve the right to deny access at any time. Lenders use various types of business credit scores to make a lending decision. The credit scores you receive are based on Dun & Bradstreet® models and may not be the credit score model used by your lender or by Chase. You should carefully consider your needs and objectives before making any decisions, and consult the appropriate professional(s). JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. Member FDIC. ©2026 JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Six Ways

1/ Finding the best ingredients. “We make multivitamins, and used Claude Code to build seven native Shopify apps in two weeks. Our science and marketing teams use AI for raw ingredient evaluation and research into alternative suppliers to reduce cost or improve sourcing. It synthesizes competitors’ formulation details to strengthen our positioning. The real value is measured in the time it frees up for our team to innovate.” —KAT SCHNEIDER, CEO, Ritual

2/ Faster, cheaper financial operations. “We’re a brand incubator, and paid a significant fee for a financial operations platform that was siloed and slow. Earlier this year, we rebuilt it from scratch using simple software and AI tooling. It took three months. Our budget-to-actual reporting used to land 15 to 30 days after month-end. We now run it weekly, and the whole system costs roughly one-tenth of the old one.” —LINDSEY NEWTON, CFO, A-Frame Brands

3/ Smarter inventory management. “Our platform offers furnished, short-term apartment rentals, and AI has become a core part of how we manage that system. That includes matching guests to inventory more efficiently, optimizing rates in real time, and streamlining guest communications. I’ve learned that adoption usually follows utility. If it makes the system faster and more reliable, it just becomes how the business runs.” —BILL SMITH, CEO, Landing

4/ Accelerating outreach. “When you run a one-man shop, your biggest constraint isn’t capital or clients—it’s your time. AI allowed me to grow and finally build a team. We’re a political campaign technology platform, and integrated custom AI workflows and prompts built around our specific services, including peer-to-peer texting, voter outreach, and client onboarding. What took hours now takes minutes.”

5/ Dialing in the data. “AI data analysis made our teams faster and more responsive. The steeper curve is protecting our data, IP, and infrastructure. We started by asking what we could open up to AI, but recently shifted that mindset. Now we default to open, then identify what must be protected. We’re still getting comfortable, but we believe our unlock will be having a strong advocate in each team.” —NICOLE OTTO, CEO, Ruggable

How AI Changed My Business Need ideas on how to implement AI? Six entrepreneurs share the specific ways they use it, and why it’s been so transformative.

6/ Staying lean to keep fees low. “We’re a live-selling platform, and with the help of AI, we are able to keep the team very lean, which in turn keeps our selling fees low. As a result, sellers on Palmstreet can take more profit. From accelerating product iterations and analyzing user behavior to risk control and keeping the community safe, it allows us to move faster without sacrificing quality. We adopted a simple mindset: if something feels repetitive with low creativity over time, AI should be used to make it more efficient.” —CHEN LI, CEO, Palmstreet

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I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y S T O C K . A D O B E . C O M / M A S T E R 1 3 0 5

—TRAVIS TRAWICK, CEO, FullPAC

How Business Really Adapts to AI:

3 Mindset Shifts Leaders Can’t Ignore Re-examining your approach to artiﬁcial intelligence can completely shift outcomes from optimizing tasks to creating true business value. Even as more than three-quarters of small businesses say they’re using artificial intelligence (AI)1, many of them are in early experimental phases or automating basic tasks such as writing, searching, summarizing, analyzing, coding, and producing content more quickly. But this approach merely scratches the surface, says Paul R. Carlile, the Peter and Deborah Wexler Professor of Management and Information Systems at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. Leaders who assume automation is the extent of AI’s usefulness will eventually fall behind. The larger opportunity, Carlile says, is using AI to detect problems earlier, improve quality, strengthen judgment, accelerate learning, redesign workflows, and help businesses move more effectively between creating value and capturing value. Here, Carlile outlines three mindset shifts business leaders must consider if they hope to maximize the full capability AI has to offer.

1. Beginning with the business problem rather than the AI tool itself New AI tools arrive with impressive capabilities, naturally persuading business leaders to ask where a tool might be deployed. “This can lead them to automate work that should be redesigned, improve a task that is not the true source of the problem, or deploy a system that produces output without creating a meaningful outcome,” Carlile says. At Questrom, students are taught that leaders should begin by asking: • What consequential problem are we trying to solve? • What is happening now and how is the current system producing that outcome? • Why does it matter? • Who is affected, and where and when does the problem occur? “Only after the problem has been framed and diagnosed should leaders ask what type of insight, prediction, recommendation, creation, or action is needed—and then determine which AI capability and tool are appropriate,” Carlile says. Doing so shifts the focus from task efficiency to business value.

2. Moving beyond what work AI can replace Rather than focusing on which tasks or positions can be replaced by AI, Carlile argues that leaders should design ways humans and AI can make one another more capable. “Much of the current

conversation treats the relationship between people and AI as a contest,” he says. “A task is classified as either human or machine work. That framing is too narrow.” At Questrom, for instance, Carlile says the goal is not to train future business leaders to supervise AI superficially but to “use AI while also questioning its outputs, testing its assumptions, evaluating its consequences, and deciding where human judgment must remain central.”

3. Transitioning from isolated gains to an adaptive value cycle Carlile says most organizations are structured to do one of two things well: optimize and scale what already exists or explore and create something new. “The people, processes, measures, and cultures required for those activities are different,” he explains. “Improvement rewards discipline, repeatability, and reliability. Innovation requires experimentation, ambiguity, and a willingness to challenge existing assumptions.” He recommends that leaders apply AI in a cycle that creates and captures value. The organization cycle taught at Questrom looks like this: Improve → Escalate → Innovate → Operationalize → Improve again

“AI can accelerate learning at every stage by analyzing operational data, revealing anomalies and weak signals, generating possible explanations, simulating alternatives, and helping codify new ways of working,” Carlile says. “But leaders must determine when the organization should remain within the existing system and when it should move beyond it.” Business leaders can use AI to increase productivity, standardize work, and substitute technology for labor. Or, with a few shifts in mindset, they can use it to build a truly better business. “You can design better problem-solving systems, develop human and AI capability together, move more effectively between improvement and innovation, and create more adaptive growth strategies,” Carlile says. “Technology will not make that choice. Leaders will and they remain accountable for the consequences.”

To learn more about Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, visit bu.edu/questrom-means 1 Survey: Small Businesses Embrace AI — But Need Training and Support to Fully Harness It (Goldman Sachs, 2026)

Strategies

You Don’t Have to Be Original Bloom Nutrition’s new product hit $100 million in sales in its first year. How? By using competition to its advantage. b y J A S O N F E I F E R

Let someone else do the expensive work/ To appreciate the power of the second mover advantage, rewind to Bloom’s beginnings. The brand started when LaVecchia was watching a different marketplace: greens powders. Athletic Greens (now called AG1) was dominating the category. The company was marketing on major podcasts, landing celebrity endorsements, and spending heavily to explain to consumers why greens powders mattered. “But they were $100 and only directto-consumer,” LaVecchia says. That’s where he spotted his white space. AG1 had educated the market, but it had left a gap in accessible pricing and retail availability. Bloom launched its own greens powder at a lower price point and took it to mass retailers— Target, Walmart, Costco— where consumers were now looking for exactly what AG1 had taught them they needed. That’s because the second mover advantage isn’t just about copying what works and doing it cheaper. It’s about identifying the specific variables that first movers got wrong or ignored entirely.

Pivot to a new market/ Fast-forward a few years, and LaVecchia saw the powder market softening. That’s why his team looked at energy drinks. The shelves were

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already filled with Monster, Red Bull, and Celsius, but he asked that critical second-mover question: Who wasn’t being served by the current offerings? “We felt like the female consumer wasn’t being properly addressed with a slightly better-for-you formula in the can,” he says. So that’s what he took to market—targeting this new consumer with the familiar, thin aluminum cans that have become synonymous with energy drinks. That’s another bonus of being the second mover: You also have the advantage of adopting recognizable market signals like packaging. “I’m a big fan of not recreat-

ing the wheel,” he says. “Just taking the wheel and trying to make it a better version of that wheel.” The second mover advantage won’t work for every entrepreneur, LaVecchia says. It requires an honest assessment of where white space exists, the discipline to focus on a few variables rather than trying to reinvent everything, and the willingness to move on before the current opportunity peaks. But LaVecchia wants entrepreneurs who feel intimidated by crowded markets to see things differently: Competition isn’t something to fear. It’s actually the proof of concept that you need.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BLOOM NUTRITION

loom Nutrition began as a supplements brand. Then it got into beverages, and everything changed. In 2025, the company moved more than 155 million beverages. Its Sparkling Energy line went from zero to eight figures in six months, surpassed $100 million in sales in its first year, and now drives the majority of total company sales. None of that happened because cofounder and CEO Greg LaVecchia invented something new. In fact, LaVecchia will tell you plainly: “I don’t think there’s a ton of original ideas left.” That’s why he’s built a systematic approach to entering markets that already exist and are proven—then finding the white space that first movers missed, and outexecuting them. That approach embraces what’s known as the “second mover advantage.” It’s what drives his product strategy at Bloom, and it led directly to the energy drink line that redefined the company. And he says it should give you the courage to enter crowded markets—and even to see your competition as an advantage. “When you are launching a new idea to a total addressable market, so much of your marketing has to go toward educating the consumer,” he says. “So when I see a saturated space, I think that someone has already done so much education for me.”

CLOSING THE LOOP Atousa Raissyan is Turning Life’s Hardest Lessons Into Healing Story & Photography by Sydney Cisco Hair & Makeup by Nicole Smith Styling by Sarah Sommer

OR ATOUSA RAISSYAN, being named Entrepreneur of Impact is a meaningful reﬂection of a profession devoted to changing lives and creating a lasting diﬀerence.

Born in Tehran, Iran, and immigrating to the United States at age 12, Raissyan’s story stands as one of reinvention and ﬁnding purpose. Arriving as a child, she had to learn English and adapt quickly, becoming a U.S. citizen by 17 and graduating from George Mason University with a degree in Electrical Engineering at 19, as the youngest graduate in her class. She later earned a master’s degree and built a successful engineering career. Raissyan chose engineering for safety and security, but life had other plans for her. She came to a crossroads in her life where it felt like everything collapsed at once, from leaving her marriage to enduring health issues: her body and soul were demanding a change. She took a deep breath, pulled out some art supplies,

and returned to Rumi’s poetry, which she had once loved, letting the message really resonate. The art and healing began together, reconnecting her with the shamanic training, energy healing, and somatic work she had begun years earlier. “I knew what it felt like to survive,” she says. “The work became about learning how to truly live.” After years of training, Raissyan officially launched her healing practice and art business in 2012. Her clients are often high-functioning, successful people who have already spent years in therapy or inner work yet remain exhausted, afraid, or disconnected. Her six-month program, The Invitation, combines trauma release, emotional transformation, conscious growth, and nervous-system support for lasting change. Today, Raissyan is a trauma healer, spiritual mentor, visionary artist, author, speaker, and entrepreneur. Her work helps others break free from what she calls the “healing loop,” the cycle of endlessly seeking change while remaining trapped in the same patterns. “I built my practice to help people actually get out, not just cope better, but authentically come home to themselves.” Raissyan’s award-winning book, “Change Yourself, Change the World,” examines why illness, anxiety, and disconnection have become so widespread, and how coming back to yourself creates a positive ripple effect. It became both an Amazon and an international bestseller, receiving recognition from the Nautilus Book Awards, The BookFest, and the International Impact Book Awards. Scheduled for release at the end of the year, her next book, “The Stillness Beyond All Stories: The Recognition of What Has Always Been Here,” goes deeper, bringing science and quantum understanding into the conversation around healing and consciousness. “The greatest milestones are the lives that change,” she explains. Whether it’s a client sharing how their family dynamics have transformed or visitors finding comfort in her beautiful artworks displayed at Children’s National Hospital, these moments mean the most. That devotion to service was reflected in her recent victory as Entrepreneur of Impact, when friends, family, and clients rallied in her support. The overwhelming response reinforced something she had always known: healing creates a contagious, rippling effect that reaches far beyond any one individual. Going forward, Raissyan will continue recording her podcast, Goodbye Bull, Hello Happiness, and expand her retreats and speaking engagements. She’s also developing a nonprofit healing center to bring together art, mentorship, community, and holistic healing under one roof. At the heart of everything Raissyan does is a simple belief: when people heal themselves, they change the world around them. For 18 years, Raissyan raised her son and ran her business alone, wearing every hat from marketer to bookkeeper. At times, she had to sell her belongings to keep things moving.

She was repeatedly told to “pick a lane,” but art, healing, writing, and speaking were never separate paths to her. For Raissyan, this is not a conventional business. It’s a calling that happens to have a website. Now, atop all those hats sits the crown: Entrepreneur of Impact 2026, recognizing both the transformation Raissyan has lived through and the lives she has changed. www.atousaraissyan.com

Instagram: @atousar

$4.2 Million Raised to Support GENYOUth Entrepreneur of Impact brings together thousands of business professionals, visionaries, and entrepreneurs to compete for the ultimate prize and raise awareness for GENYOUth. The online campaign is operated by Colossal, the nation’s leading professional fundraiser for purposedriven competitions, on behalf of DTCare, a U.S. 501(c) (3) charitable organization. Since 2025, Colossal has proudly raised over $4.2 million in support of GENYOUth, a foundation that equips schools with critical tools and resources to provide students with greater access to nutrition and physical activity. colossal.org

genyouthnow.org

Chris Mathews is Finding More Ways to Win

time, they oﬀer small businesses a unique opportunity: a wide variety of venues can earn revenue from betting activity taking place within their locations at no cost to them.

ORN AND RAISED IN HOUSTON, TEXAS, Chris Mathews took an unconventional path into entrepreneurship. After deciding to leave college, he sought guidance from his mentor, Al Pickett, who introduced him to ﬁnancial markets and shaped his views on business, innovation, and emerging trends. Mathews credits much of his journey to what he learned from Pickett and from the teachings of Jesus.

These insights into the ﬁnancial market helped Mathews and co-founder Mali Franzese create Beat The Odds (BTO), a new sports betting platform. The idea emerged in 2019 with a simple question: What would make betting worthwhile for people who don’t want to gamble? Mathews drove for Uber for years, speaking with thousands of people about their experiences with betting apps, answering that question. He found a common theme: users wanted more value overall, not just big payouts. So they set out to ﬁnd more ways to win for everyone. Even if they don’t win, BTO users still earn rewards like food discounts, event tickets, merchandise, and more. At the same

“We want Beat The Odds to become the biggest betting venue network and the most rewarding betting platform in the United States,” says Mathews. They are well on their way. As the company is preparing for the official app launch during football season, users can now sign up for the soft launch. In the meantime, they are expanding their network, forming valuable partnerships, and raising capital in a pre-seed round to fund national expansion. Through the inevitable highs and lows of startup life, Mathews draws on his faith and family for motivation. He and his fiancée recently welcomed their first child, a son named Levi, whose arrival has given his path new meaning. Whether he’s playing the role of new father, co-founder, or business analyst, innovation and empowerment shape every aspect of Mathews’ life. This entrepreneur is growing his community and daring to do things differently. btofantasy.us

Instagram: @btofantasy

My First Moves

Bad Things Make Great Content → KELLY AND COLT BOZIGIAN

hen a business suffers, founders often suffer in silence along with it. But increasingly, they’re realizing: A secret crisis is a missed opportunity. Because on social media, a catastrophe can be a rallying cry for customers. Kelly and Colt Bozigian learned that lesson in February, when

the worst (and then best) thing happened to their business. The married South Carolina couple had started a jewelry business called Coastal Caviar. Its beachy charm necklaces and bracelets were a fast hit, driving $100,000 in sales in their first month. They decided to open a flagship store in Charleston to keep the momentum going. But the day they picked up the

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keys to the store, Kelly received a startling email: They were being sued. A jewelry company called Lagos had registered the word “caviar” for a jewelry line back in 1992, and wanted the Bozigians to stop using the word. The Bozigians had known about Lagos; the potential conflict came up when their trademark application was reviewed in 2025. But when they filed for their trademark the previous year, their legal counsel said there was no evidence of customer confusion, advising them to proceed. Now, as they learned of the lawsuit, they had just signed a three-year lease. “Panic” and “complete devastation” set in, Kelly says. “I thought this was going to be the end. Because of social media and the brand awareness we’d generated, I felt like a name change would completely derail the business.” Initially, the Bozigians fought the lawsuit. But about two months into their legal battle, they realized their business couldn’t take the financial hit. They were ready to give up when Kelly had a revelation. “The light went off in my head,” she says. “We have to use this [challenge] as a content engine—as a way to strengthen the community we’ve built.” They made videos talking about the lawsuit, their stress, and what they were going to do about it. “We just started pumping out so much content, and leaning into humor. Obviously, this is a very serious situation,”

she says. “But we felt like, How can we get our audience engaged?” The fan response was overwhelming. People shared their necklaces and their love for the brand. And that gave the couple another revelation: “We realized it’s this club we’ve created online that’s the real heart of the brand.” So they renamed the company Club Coastal. Then they embarked on a full, fast rebrand—changing everything from signage to bags and more. “Basically, everything needed an overhaul” before they opened their store, Kelly says. Anxiety-inducing as it was, the chaos made for great content. Over the next six weeks, Club Coastal’s TikTok following grew from 80,000 to nearly 125,000, and its sales jumped 114%. The Charleston grand opening took place on April 25 (caviar, which had already been ordered, was served as a lighthearted nod to the drama), and they set a new sales record that day: They sold $30,000 worth of product, with a charm necklace sold every 70 seconds. “Now I have a completely different outlook on content,” Kelly says. “Document everything. Storytelling is one of the strongest marketing tools. A lot of the time, it’s just propping up the phone and filming what’s going on. Honestly, sometimes bad things end up making the most interesting content. Use it to your advantage.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY MIRANDA GAEHDE

The founders of Club Coastal suffered a blow they believed would destroy their business. Then they turned it into their biggest brand-building opportunity. b y A M A N D A B R E E N

SPOTLIGHT BRANDED CONTENT

BPlas

MANUFACTURING E XCELLENCE WITH A LONG-TERM VISION

ürkiye’s economy continues to expand in 2026, supported by a large domestic market, a strong manufacturing base and access to Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. The International Monetary Fund’s July 2026 outlook projects real GDP growth of 2.9% for the year, confirming that the country remains on a growth path. For international businesses, Türkiye’s attraction lies in its ability to combine industrial capacity, skilled labor, developed infrastructure and export connectivity within one production platform. Few industries demonstrate that capability more clearly than automotive manufacturing. Türkiye’s automotive exports reached a record $41.5 billion in 2025, rising 11.6% and once again making the industry the country’s leading export sector. Around 75% of vehicles manufactured in Türkiye were shipped abroad, with more than one million vehicles exported during the year. The supplier industry is central to that performance, delivering approximately $15.8 billion in exports in 2025 and supporting global manufacturers with engineering, tooling, materials and advanced components. This is the competitive environment in which Bursa-based BPlas has developed. BPlas is the flagship of a family-owned industrial group whose roots stretch back to 1858. After approximately 150 years in textiles, the family began moving into plastics during the 1970s, when an investment in injection-molding equipment created an unexpected route into Türkiye’s emerging automotive industry. BPlas itself was established in 1987 to manufacture larger plastic components and became the first producer of thermoplastic bumpers in Bursa, initially supplying TOFAŞ and Renault. Today, under Chairman Mehmet Celal Gökçen and a new generation represented by Deputy Chairman Memduh Can Gökçen, the company combines industrial heritage with a forward-looking approach to technology, partnerships and value creation. The company’s development mirrors the rise of Türkiye as an automotive production center. BPlas expanded from five or six machines to approximately 120 production machines, while its customer portfolio grew to include Ford, Toyota, Honda and other manufacturers. In 1994, the family formed BPO, a joint venture with France’s Plastic Omnium, now known as OPmobility, to serve Renault. BPlas continued independently on other programs, gaining experience with an international partner while strengthening its own engineering and production capabilities. For Mehmet Celal Gökçen, the automotive sector requires more than a conventional supplier contract. “An automotive manufacturer is not simply a customer; it becomes a partner. That relationship draws you into continuous learning and innovation. You are expected not only to reduce costs, but also to develop new technologies, discover new production methods and improve

Memduh Can Gökçen Deputy Chairman

Mehmet Celal Gökçen Chairman

existing processes. That pressure continually presents new opportunities and encourages us to expand our capabilities.” BPlas consequently moved from molding bumpers into door panels, dashboards, complete dashboard systems, fuel tanks and other complex plastic components. BPlas now describes itself as a full-service supplier because it can manage much of the production chain. The company can work directly with plastic granules, design and manufacture molds, apply injection molding, blow molding and vertical pressing, paint components, assemble systems and integrate the parts required by the customer. It also manufactures molds for customers outside Türkiye. For automotive manufacturers seeking fewer interfaces, faster problem-solving and support from development to serial production, this breadth is a significant commercial advantage. The size of the components BPlas manufactures creates another advantage: proximity. Bumpers, dashboards and large molded systems are expensive to transport over long distances, making a capable supplier close to the customer valuable. Bursa provides that position within one of Türkiye’s most established automotive clusters. BPlas also benefits from five decades of plastics knowledge and a workforce in which many employees have served the company for more than 30 years. Their practical experience helps train younger colleagues and protects the production discipline required by global original equipment manufacturers.

SPOTLIGHT BRANDED CONTENT Quality is the principle connecting those generations. Memduh Can Gökçen recalls the standard his father established from the business: “He always told me that customers might pay us 10% or 15% more, but only if they receive the best product and will not experience problems with it. That requires more than modern, wellmaintained machinery. It requires carefully engineered materials, strong solutions and continuous innovation. Most importantly, the standard has to be sustained. Exceptional quality cannot be delivered for only one project; it must be maintained every day.” This approach helps explain why major manufacturers continue to view BPlas as a reliable partner. Maintaining that standard increasingly depends on digital transformation. The younger generation is introducing more automation, robotization and data-led management across the group. BPlas is also working to integrate artificial intelligence into its enterprise resource planning systems. The objective is not merely to use AI in office work, but to improve workflows, decision-making and manufacturing performance. The company is also preparing for a future shaped by dark factories and more automated production. In an industry where new models can now be developed at remarkable speed, shortening development cycles and improving visibility are becoming essential. Diversifying its activities, in 2015 the group invested in food production, building a business that manufactures private-label goods as well as products under the Berrak brand, including pickles, beverages and sauces. The company became a pilot for technological and organizational changes being introduced across the group. Although food and automotive plastics may appear unrelated, the common idea is an innovation-driven production

base capable of taking a customer from an initial concept to a finished product. The group is open to partnerships that combine its manufacturing, research, engineering and local-market knowledge with a partner’s products, technology or market access. Sustainability provides another connection between the group’s activities. BPlas aims to generate the equivalent of all the electricity it consumes through solar power. Together with a partner, the group has reached approximately 150 megawatts of solar capacity across Türkiye and Ukraine, including new projects in Ukraine. These investments support the company’s ambition to operate as a greener manufacturer while giving the group direct energy-development experience. For customers facing demanding environmental targets, a supplier that links production investment with renewable-energy capacity can offer value beyond price and delivery. The company’s international strategy is equally pragmatic. BPlas has considered opportunities in Brazil, India and Russia,

while the family has also explored possibilities in China, South Africa, Morocco and Algeria. Its conclusion is that international growth does not always require building wholly owned factories in every country. Local partnerships can provide market knowledge, help navigate regulation and reduce market-entry risks. “Instead of starting a completely independent business from scratch in another country, it often makes more sense to work with a partner who understands the local market, the bureaucracy and the way business is conducted,” Memduh Can Gökçen says. “Our objective is not to do everything alone. It is to build a strong team and work together.” That message is central to BPlas’s appeal to international readers. The company is open to new customers, co-development programs, joint ventures and partnerships that create measurable value for both sides. It can offer foreign manufacturers an established base in Türkiye, experience in demanding automotive programs, engineering and tooling capabilities, large-component production and an experienced industrial workforce. Across the broader group, it is also interested in partnerships in food, energy and other sectors suited to innovation-led manufacturing. The family evaluates opportunities according to whether they create durable value for the next generation. That transition is already under way. Mehmet Celal Gökçen represents the fifth generation of the family business, while Memduh Can Gökçen represents the sixth. The younger generation aims to attract internationally experienced employees, reduce rigid hierarchies and build collaborative, value-driven teams. BPlas also wants to offer ambitious young professionals the industrial experience needed to build successful careers. The combination of long-serving employees and younger specialists gives the company continuity without requiring it to stand still. Mehmet Celal Gökçen ultimately sees the company’s future as closely connected to its home market. “Türkiye has an excellent geopolitical position between East and West, with new markets developing around us in the Turkic states, the Arab world and Africa. The country has invested heavily, its younger generation is moving forward and the public and private sectors are gradually working more closely together. Every person or company considering entering Türkiye can find significant opportunities here. We are open-minded about what can be created through the capabilities available to us, and anyone looking towards the future is welcome to approach us. I genuinely believe that Türkiye has a very strong future.”

Scaling Leadership on a Startup Budget:

How One Virtual Coach Can Support Every Leader on Your Team Two business leaders explain how this AI-powered coach provides specific, tailored, and actionable real-world advice. Effective business leadership informs, inspires, and enables employees to do their best work. It also creates opportunities for leadership at all levels of the company—not just from the owner or C-suite. Managers across departments lead people, create new products and services, and help drive results. The necessary skills, vision, and ability to identify and rectify issues don’t come naturally to everyone. Even accomplished leaders rely on coaches to vet ideas, hone messaging, and much more. One-on-one in-person leadership coaching can be time consuming and difficult to schedule, however. It also doesn’t scale when you have numerous managers across a growing organization that can benefit from proven advice. That’s where a new tool called ALEX, an AI-powered coach created by the team at Admired Leadership, comes in. For nearly four decades, Admired Leadership has been researching what the world’s top business leaders do— specific, real-world behaviors and routines that drive growth and change. Using a leading AI engine as its foundation, ALEX pulls on that rich research to deliver exceptional advice fast, and to anyone who signs up. Here are two leaders at two different businesses who rely on ALEX every day—as do many of their managers.

Harry says he and his team immediately noticed that the years of research, coaching, mentoring experience, and communications expertise behind ALEX gave TEKsystems a vastly different experience than generic AI-powered leadership coaching tools. “Whether I was looking for advice on how to message something to my team, role playing with me about a oneon-one conversation with a team member, or helping me innovate, I knew I had a way to be more efficient, grow my capability and move to a quicker, higher-quality solution,” he says. “ALEX is always on, consistent in response, and as our employees get better at prompting this, will become even more tailored to their needs.” Filling gaps and opening eyes Like Harry, Tim Genck has leveraged the in-person expertise of Admired Leadership for several years. He also finds that ALEX helps fill the gaps between those coaching sessions. “As I tell people, to be effective as leaders we must get out from behind our screens and make an impact,” says Genck, who left a career in music to become a McDonald’s franchisee. Today, he owns 15 restaurants in Minnesota and oversees approximately 900 employees while looking to add as many as 200 more this year. For Genck, leadership is an important investment he makes in himself and his managers.

Nuance and context across job functions If you ask Chris Harry, Chief Talent and Learning Officer at TEKsystems and a long time Admired Leadership client, coaching can’t be one-size-fits-all solution. In his role, Harry is responsible for making sure the global business and technology services company has the right people, skills, and leadership pipeline to succeed— designing learning programs, managing succession planning, and building systems that help employees grow and advance. “There is nuance, context and the personal journey a leader is on that defines the leadership coaching environment,” Harry says. Understanding this is especially critical as he oversees a team of more than 80,000 internal employees and consultants. “The challenge for any company that sees coaching as a competitive advantage is scale,” Harry explains. “ALEX gives us scale and connects culturally for us. We have specific coaching cycles within our leadership academy and it’s just not possible to align hundreds of leaders with personal, internal coaches.”

“Having ALEX as an always-available back up for quick things and helping me clean up communication, creating a dialogue framework for me to have a listening session with my leadership team, or helping me create a blueprint for an upcoming meeting is an invaluable resource,” he says. More than just a stopgap, Genck says he uses ALEX consistently and is starting to have other leaders within the business leverage it, too. “I let some of my supervisors experiment with ALEX and it is fun to watch,” he says. “ALEX will point out ways that they may have misplayed a situation and tell them they need to acknowledge their role in the problem. That part really freaks them out because ALEX is right.”

To learn more about how ALEX can give you the leadership edge your business needs, visit alex.admiredleadership.com/learnmore To try ALEX, visit alex.admiredleadership.com/tryalex

40 Years of Leadership Insight. One AI Coach.

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Personal

How I Surpassed $500M in Sales: Strategy Planning → SHAE HONG

was well into my third company when I met a mentor who revolutionized the way I do business. His advice was three words: “Start strat planning.” That may sound obvious. But like many entrepreneurs, I was so busy chasing sales that I didn’t have time—or I didn’t think I did—to map out a strategy with my team. When I did, everything changed. To explain: My first company was an internet appliance startup right before the dot-com bubble burst. Next I launched a business making products under a license with Amana, known for its refrigerators. Then in 2003, I founded Made By Gather. We

develop high-design kitchenware brands including our bestsellers Bella (a market-share leader in small appliances) and Beautiful (created with Drew Barrymore); combined, they bring in well over $500 million in retail sales. Before those brands became successful, for years I operated with what I call “spray and pray”— we’d try everything, hope that 20% to 30% of the ideas would work, and then I’d just do more of that. In my mind it was simple: Sales growth and dollars drive the business; everything else will figure itself out. But in 2020, I met Laurence Franklin. He had led Tumi, Coach, and Frette. After investing in my company and becoming a mentor, he told me, “Strat plan-

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ning is one of the most important things you can do as a CEO.” Then he showed me how. To be clear, there are all kinds of strategy planning frameworks—Objectives and Key Results (OKRs); Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS); Objectives, Goals, Strategies, Measures (OGSM), and more. The point is to find a system that works for you and commit to it. Laurence’s method is called SOAR (he’s coauthor of SOAR to Business Success). It starts with asking yourself where you want to be in three years. What are the opportunities? At first, I wanted to do all kinds of things, and he said, “No, you’ve got to prioritize. If you could do three or four things and really stand for that, what would those be?” Once you’ve nailed them, you figure out your “necessities”—what the business needs to do today and each year in order to achieve your goals. This process takes time. It requires days of pure focus for both you and your team. And in the beginning, that was painful. When you’ve been in hustle mode for years, it seems impossible to hit pause just to plan. But we did it. Our second and third year in, we decided to sunset some of our underperforming brands and really focus on reimagining Bella, leaning into our special sauce: thoughtful aesthetics, practical performance, and attainable pricing. That was hard; those other

brands were making money, so we were turning off revenue lines. Giving up sales as an entrepreneur is not easy, but we decided that transforming Bella was more important. And we were right. Over the years, I’ve also simplified how I plan, especially when it comes to creativity. Earlier in my career, I’d fire off lots of new ideas to my team at once—and lose everybody in the first 10 minutes. Now I prepare my most important ideas and practice clearly communicating them before our meetings. These days, we do strategy planning three or four times a year. Our leadership team sets aside a day and a half for each session. There’s a lot of prep, and we always come away with a twopage plan. Laurence taught me that too: Your plan must be short enough to give every member of the team, and simple enough that they can refer back to it and find their priorities. Before we began strategy planning, we’d hit a ceiling of about $150 million in annual revenue. Today, with a team of about 220, we’re on track for about $400 million in revenue this year—and we have stayed focused despite tariffs and macroeconomic uncertainty. That took real discipline and prioritization. I’d say we’ve gotten where we wanted to go. But now we’re looking three years ahead.

P H O T O G R A P H C O U R T E S Y O F P E T E R H U R L E Y F O R M A D E B Y G AT H E R

When I founded Made By Gather, I didn’t think I had time to think far ahead. But once I started a formal planning process, our entire company transformed. b y S H A E H O N G

MOST

Fundable C O M P A N I E S¨

COMING SOON 2026 Pepperdine Most Fundable Companies List September 23

Presented by

SPOTLIGHT BRANDED CONTENT

Uniteks Istanbul THE FULL PACKAGE FOR GLOBAL FASHION

ürkiye has entered the second half of advanced knitting, dyeing, finishing and in-house 2026 with its economy still expanding colour and quality laboratory capabilities. Together, despite a dif ficult international the two locations allow design, material development environment and tight financial and manufacturing decisions to move through one conditions. Official data show that connected system rather than through a chain of gross domestic product grew by 3.6% unrelated suppliers. in 2025 and by 2.5% year on year in the This structure is especially valuable when a product first quarter of 2026, while the International Monetary is technically demanding. A request may involve Fund’s July outlook projects full-year growth of 2.9%. lace, an imported component, a difficult wash, an For international companies, Türkiye’s importance lies unfamiliar construction method or a fabric quality that in its position between Europe, Asia and the Middle few suppliers are comfortable attempting. Uniteks’ East, its deep manufacturing base and the ability of its approach is not to define the limits of what it produces, private sector to respond quickly when markets change. but to find the materials, processes and partners That combination has helped the country remain a required to deliver the result. major industrial and export platform, with Istanbul That is the practical meaning of “full package”: serving as a meeting point for global brands, suppliers one relationship coordinating design, fabric, dyeing, and investors. manufacturing, quality and delivery, while remaining İzzet Antebi Textiles and apparel remain central to that industrial accountable for the final product. Chairman & CEO story. The Istanbul Apparel Exporters’ Association The Fabric Decision estimates that Türkiye’s textile and apparel industry The company’s most consequential strategic generated $56.7 billion in production and $26.2 billion in exports in 2025, choice came when many manufacturers were investing primarily in sewing accounting for 10.5% of total exports and supporting around 860,000 industrial capacity. Uniteks took a different path. It directed capital toward knitting, jobs. The European Union receives close to 60% of Turkish apparel exports, dyeing and fabric development—the stages where much of a garment’s quality, making proximity to Europe a major advantage. Yet the industry is no longer performance and identity are created. competing only through capacity or cost. Its strongest manufacturers are Sewing could be coordinated through carefully selected production moving toward a model built around speed, design, specialized fabrics, partners. The material at the heart of the garment, however, would remain responsive production runs, traceability and lower environmental impact. under Uniteks’ technical direction. Brands can react to demand in weeks rather than planning every product That decision still defines the company. A conventional sewing operation months in advance. can be copied, expanded or undercut relatively quickly. Fabric knowledge A Company Built Through Decisions is harder to reproduce. It depends on accumulated experience, laboratory Among the Turkish companies helping shape that shift is Uniteks, a privately discipline, colour consistency, chemical expertise, finishing techniques and held, family-owned textile and garment manufacturer founded in 1977. Led by the ability to translate a designer’s idea into a commercially viable material. Chairman and CEO İzzet Antebi, the company has evolved into an integrated Today, Uniteks produces approximately 50 to 60 tons of fabric per day, fashion platform combining fabric development, knitting, dyeing, design, using about half for its own garment operations and supplying or processing sampling, cutting, garment production, sourcing, quality control and delivery the balance for other customers. Yet the figure matters less than the knowledge for international fashion groups. behind it. The company’s competitive advantage lies not simply in owning Its scale is important, but scale alone does not explain the company’s machinery, but in the teams that understand how to use it—people able to position. Uniteks has built its business around a more difficult proposition: anticipate problems, adjust processes and achieve consistent results across taking responsibility for the product from the earliest development stage to demanding products and tight timelines. final delivery. For customers, that means fewer disconnected suppliers, faster Sustainability as Operating Discipline decisions and greater control over quality, cost and timing. Control over fabric has become even more valuable as global brands tighten The foundations of that model were laid early in Antebi’s career. He environmental, traceability and quality standards. The question is no longer joined the family business at 17, when Uniteks produced menswear but had only whether a manufacturer can produce a garment, but how the material was no womenswear operation. Basic menswear could increasingly be ordered made, how much water and energy were used, which chemicals were involved from lower-cost markets months in advance, leaving Turkish manufacturers and whether the process can be documented. dependent on repeat orders and exposed when demand changed. Antebi saw Uniteks has invested in solar energy, machinery designed to reduce water greater opportunity in womenswear, where collections moved more quickly, consumption, heat recovery and systems that recycle steam back into water. orders were more responsive and proximity to the customer mattered. Its longer-term objective is to increase energy self-sufficiency while reducing He built the company’s first womenswear collection, and the first sample the environmental impact of dyeing and finishing. brought an order from C&A. The samples that followed gradually transformed At the company, sustainability is not managed as a separate campaign. It Uniteks into a predominantly womenswear producer. More importantly, the is embedded across raw-material selection, product development, chemical experience established a principle that still guides the business today: longmanagement, water efficiency, energy use, traceability and compliance. This term relevance would not come from competing in the most easily replicated allows customers’ lower-impact collection goals to move from the design stage categories, but from developing capabilities that customers would find difficult into production rather than remaining promises on a presentation slide. to replace. “Today, if you do not have these systems and standards in place, you cannot One Connected System work with the major brands,” Antebi says. “We fulfil all their requirements, and I Uniteks’ operations are structured across two complementary centres. believe we will be among the relatively small number of leading companies able At its Yenibosna headquarters in Istanbul, design, product development, to succeed under these conditions.” sampling, cutting, sourcing, commercial coordination and garment The company’s dyehouse expertise provides a more specific example of management are brought together close to customers and decision-makers. that capability. Uniteks is the only Inditex-approved dyehouse in Türkiye able to This is where ideas are discussed, collections are developed and the different produce cupro quality, a material requiring a high degree of technical precision. stages of production are coordinated. It has also developed advanced polyamide qualities for Zara. These are not The Çerkezköy production base provides the technical foundation, with simply product claims; they demonstrate the company’s ability to connect a

SPOTLIGHT BRANDED CONTENT brand’s design ambition with material engineering, quality and repeatability. Close to the Customer Technical strength alone is not enough in an industry where trends, buying decisions and collection priorities can change rapidly. Uniteks supports its production base with design and commercial teams in both Türkiye and Spain. The Barcelona office shortens the distance between European customers and the technical organisation in Türkiye. Rather than waiting for a fully completed order package, the team can participate earlier—following market changes, working with buyers and designers, helping refine product ideas and feeding information directly into fabric and sample development. This changes the role of the supplier. Uniteks is able to contribute before manufacturing begins, not simply execute an order after every decision has already been made. The company’s relationship with Inditex extends across several brands, including Zara, Bershka, Pull&Bear, Stradivarius and Lefties. Although they share a parent group, each brand has its own designers, buyers, product language and commercial priorities. Serving them requires the attention normally associated with several major customers rather than a single account. Inditex remains central to the business, but it does not define the whole portfolio. Uniteks also works with established fashion groups across Continental Europe, the United Kingdom and Türkiye, including customers such as C&A, Yours, MS Mode, Pimkie and LPP. The breadth matters because it shows that the company’s operating model can adapt to different markets, product categories and customer expectations without losing the standards required by its largest international partners. The Advantage of Speed Antebi believes Türkiye’s advantage lies not only in geography, but also in the practical and flexible culture of its manufacturers. “In my opinion, Turkish people are among the most practical and pragmatic in the world,” he says. “When it comes to production, we are the fastest. We are also highly flexible.” At Uniteks, that speed can be measured. Repeat orders can be produced in approximately two to three weeks, followed by around five days of transport to

Europe. This allows the company to compete for business that might otherwise require airfreight from a more distant market. The commercial argument is therefore wider than the unit price. A brand must also consider total landed cost, inventory exposure, the cost of delay and the value of reacting while a trend is still commercially relevant. Uniteks may not always offer the lowest quotation compared with Asian mass-production markets, but it can offer a faster and less risky route from decision to store. For Antebi, continuity also matters more than maximising the margin on every individual order. The company is looking for customers who think beyond a single purchase order—partners willing to build volume, solve problems and improve products together over time. Value Over Volume Uniteks’ next phase of investment will focus on value rather than tonnage. The company intends to develop more specialized and higher-performance fabrics that only a limited number of manufacturers can produce. Opportunities

include technical sportswear, premium womenswear, jacquard products, advanced washed and dyed finishes, and garments requiring complex material combinations or construction techniques. The strategy is deliberately selective. Instead of competing for every basic product at the lowest available price, Uniteks wants to concentrate on categories where design intelligence, fabric engineering, technical know-how and reliable execution matter more. That direction reflects a wider shift across Türkiye’s textile industry. The country’s strongest response to lower-cost mass production is not endless expansion, but products that require speed, specialization and close cooperation between design and manufacturing. Leadership Beyond Business The same long-term outlook extends beyond the company. As president of Reşitpaşaspor, a local Istanbul football club, Antebi has applied many of the values that shape Uniteks to a very different environment: teamwork, discipline, consistency and commitment to a shared objective. The club’s recent championship and promotion to the Regional Amateur League represented more than a sporting result. It reflected the impact of building an organisation patiently, creating a sense of belonging and bringing people together around a local institution. The connection is not a formal corporate slogan. It is a reflection of Antebi’s broader approach to leadership. Whether in business or amateur sport, sustainable results are rarely created through one decision or one successful season. They are built by supporting people, remaining present and earning trust over time. Preparing for the Future That long-term thinking also shapes the company’s approach to ownership and institutional development. Uniteks remains a family business, but Antebi believes its scale and operating structure could eventually support a public listing. With annual revenue of approximately $150 million, relationships with global fashion groups and growing investments in governance, sustainability and higher-value production, the company is preparing itself so that an initial public offering could become realistic in the future. No final decision has been made, and Antebi does not present an IPO as an immediate financial objective. The preparation itself is valuable: stronger reporting, clearer governance, greater transparency and a company capable of operating beyond the personal relationships on which many family businesses depend. Whether or not a listing ultimately takes place, the aim is to build an organisation ready for its next generation—one able to stand up to outside scrutiny, attract talent and capital, and preserve the entrepreneurial decisionmaking that allowed it to grow in the first place. For Antebi, the full package is ultimately less about owning every process than taking responsibility for the final result. “If you want to work with one of the best companies in the industry, you can find the complete package at Uniteks,” he says. “Sustainability, trust, competitive prices, high quality, quick production and fast-fashion expertise— all in one package.” Nearly fifty years after the company was founded, that remains the central proposition. Products can be copied, machinery can be purchased and capacity can be expanded. Trust takes longer to build. For Uniteks, it has become both the foundation of the business and the standard by which its next chapter will be measured.

Mario’s Picks

Better Work, Better Rest

Streamline your workday and unlock better downtime with these top picks from Emmy Award-winning tech expert Mario Armstrong.

For entrepreneurs on the go, the Clicks Power Keyboard [$119; clicks.tech] is a double gift. It attaches magnetically to iOS and Android phones, instantly charging the device—and provides a tactical keyboard, which slides out from underneath the phone, to make typing more comfortable and faster. The Clicks app lets you customize certain keys, while the keyboard works in portrait or landscape mode and can operate independently with tablets. When you don’t need the keyboard, the unit feels about as bulky as a standard MagSafe charger.

2/ A sign of productivity. Everyone hates being interrupted. So when you’re busy, just say so with the Busy Bar [$249; busy.app]. Its 6.5-inchwide LED display can be mounted on your wall, door, desktop, or monitor. It’ll say “BUSY” or “ON AIR” whenever you want, with a countdown to when you’re available again. You can activate it remotely and keep it going all day. Its internal battery lasts about eight hours for a productive, uninterrupted day.

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3/ A charge for two. You’ve heard it before from colleagues and friends: “Can I borrow your charger?” That meant you had to give up your own charge. But no longer. The Nimble SharePower [$80; gonimble.com] is a portable power bank made for two—with two magnetic 5,000mAh batteries that can work together to charge one device or split apart to charge two. Each module delivers up to 20 watts through USB-C, and both have built-in charging connectors, so there are no cables to hunt down. When it’s time to recharge the battery itself, plug it in with USB-C, just like any other portable power bank.

4/ Coffee without the hassle.

5/ A nightstand multitasker.

Eliminate morning coffee prep friction with the Lavazza Tablì Espresso Machine [$130; lavazzausa.com], a compact, 6.5-inch-wide single-serve espresso system designed for seamless desk setups. It heats up in just 35 seconds to deliver single, lungo, or double shots topped with a rich crema. Unlike traditional pod machines, Tablì coffee arrives without individual plastic or aluminum capsules, cutting down on waste. Each $1 drink drops automatically into an internal catch bin that stores up to eight brews, keeping your workspace cleaner and eliminating constant trips to the kitchen trash.

Designed like a retro cassette player, the cordless Divoom FlowToo Premium Bedside Speaker & Smart Sleep Clock [$100; divoom.com] packs three nightstand essentials into a roughly 6.5-by-2-inch footprint. It combines a bedside speaker with more than 90 white-noise and relaxation tracks to help you wind down, plus a 2.25-inch display that cycles through customizable clock faces, ambient lighting modes, and audio visualizers. After you’re up, move it to the desk during the day to stream music or podcasts, then use the built-in Pomodoro timer to stay focused.

P H O T O G R A P H S C O U R T E S Y O F C L I C K S ; B U S Y; L AVA Z Z A U S A ; D I V O O M ; N I M B L E

1/ A charging keyboard.

KIM PERELL 9X Founder, Bestselling Author and Angel Investor

Get My FREE Guide: The 5 Secrets to Unlocking the Millionaire Mindset

There’s No ‘Right’ Path CODIE SANCHEZ

gives business advice for a living. Her best words of wisdom? Stop taking everyone’s advice. by STEPHANIE SCHOMER

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Photograph / JAKE CHESSUM

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When Codie Sanchez looks back on her earliest social media content, she does what many of us do when examining our internet past: She cringes. “Some of the first videos we made, I’m like, My God. There’s money floating around in the air behind me, it makes me want to die,” Sanchez says. “But like any new business owner, you get talked into things that aren’t you.” Despite those questionable early choices, Sanchez has since become an internet force. She’s collected a combined 15 million social media followers and authored the best-selling book Main Street Millionaire, largely by promoting the same message: You, too, can become an entrepreneur—and the path to success goes through small business ownership. It’s an insight drawn from her own background, which her fans know well: Sanchez began her career in finance, then started buying what she calls “boring businesses” like laundromats, car washes, and roofing companies. She realized that these are overlooked assets, because they already have established consumer bases, are straightforward to operate, and are surprisingly easy to acquire, because their owners are often aging out and have nobody else to sell the business to. As she figured out how to scale these businesses, she developed systems to buy and operate them, and then built an online movement of people who follow her path. Today, more than 10 years since she purchased her first laundromat, Sanchez has refined both her voice and her purpose: She is direct, honest, and supportive, with a cut-through-the-bullshit energy. And she now fronts a much larger enterprise called

Photographs / J A K E C H E S S U M

Contrarian Thinking, which operates in investment, advisory, and media services. But it took time to find her niche. Even influencers can get distracted by internet noise, and Sanchez admits that she spent too much time trying to follow other people’s paths to success. This, she says, is now the mistake she wants to help others avoid. Throughout her career, Sanchez has watched many people fall into a particular trap: They treat business advice as if it’s a one-size-fits-all solution—as if anyone’s path to success, or anyone’s book, or anyone’s philosophy can be followed directly and fully and will lead to the same results. But that’s just not true, she says. Businesses may not be unique, but the people running them certainly are. And too much business advice treats everyone the same. “Most business-builders’ bookshelves are full of all the business-building books,” Sanchez says. “But if you can’t find your unfair advantages and you don’t know your weaknesses, you’re just going to spend a lifetime trying to apply other people’s formulas. If you try to mimic Alex Hormozi, who’s an incredible marketer and salesperson, but you are inherently more of a product person and a lifestyle builder, you’re going to build a disaster, not a business.” After years of scaling her voice to reach millions, Sanchez has developed a counterintuitive obsession: She wants business advice to get more personal. Entrepreneurs keep looking for the “right” path, but she wants them to start by looking deeper into

anchez grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, in a family of modest means. Her father owned a company selling granite and her mother was a special-education teacher. She saw them “lovingly work really hard” for the things they did have, including the ability to send Sanchez to Arizona State for her undergraduate degree. But at a young age, Sanchez realized something animating: Money isn’t just a way to afford things. Money is freedom. “I always thought money was super important,” she says. “If you don’t have it, the world really asserts its will on you.” That’s why, despite studying journalism in college, Sanchez ended up taking a job at the Arizona branch of Vanguard not long after graduation, working as an ETF consultant. She knew she could do the work, but felt like a perpetual outsider. Her cohort of peers had what she perceived to be more pedigreed backgrounds: closets of suits, degrees from fancy schools, a budget for lunches out and post-work happy hours. “People weren’t that kind to people who were broke and didn’t come from anything,” she says. “I got a lot of slack for not going out and partying with my [peers]. One time, I thought I was about to get a promotion, but I was instead sat down and told that I wasn’t a team player because I never joined the happy hours.” This was a tough pill for Sanchez to swallow. She realized that money wasn’t her only barrier. She also lacked the social

“If you’re so competent that you end up doing everything, you become your own master— who enslaves you.” themselves first—to recognize their own strengths and define their own goals, and then build a plan that’s best suited to their unique abilities and needs. “My belief is that you should have businesses that you own, that are profitable, and that you actually like to run,” she says. But please don’t do it Sanchez’s way. Do it your way. She’ll help.

awareness, the social language, and the familiarity with the political games necessary to get ahead in so many industries. “That was the point at which I said, I am never going to let somebody hold me back because of my bank account.” She started building friendships with colleagues who also seemed slow to participate in the preferred office culture. “I figured if I could

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bond with a bunch of other people in the same space, we can all get ahead.” That idea lingered as her career took off with roles at Goldman Sachs, State Street, First Trust, and Entourage Effect Capital, where she helped manage $160 million in assets. But as her financial success grew, she realized that she no longer wanted what she was working toward. “I looked down the hall and saw a guy with lots of fancy cars, second and third wives, kids that didn’t know him, and I just thought, My God. There are a lot of people who aren’t happy, and they’re very rich,” she says. “I couldn’t figure out how to not become that and stay in finance.” This was the second big shift in the way she viewed money. She originally thought that it equaled freedom. But now she realized that, if you became a slave to making that money, it would serve as its own kind of trap. Sanchez likes to talk about having “anti-goals”—the thing you identify as not wanting, as a means of triangulating exactly what you do want. For her, a miserable banking career became an antigoal: She did not want to make a lot of money if it came at the expense of her happiness. Instead, she wanted to build a different kind of life and career. She wanted money without the misery, and a pathway to owning something substantial but also meaningful. That’s why she began investing in small businesses. Those were simply the deals she could afford, and it began as a side hustle she could manage while still working in finance. Then those small businesses started to generate serious cash. She started to see a happy path forward, and finally got comfortable enough to close the door on the finance world. “My parents didn’t understand how I could leave a job like finance, a job they thought was so lucky, the best I could ever get,” Sanchez says. Many folks in her orbit thought the same. But she knew she had to step off course. As her own business success grew and her own unique future started to crystallize, she spotted an opportunity to think bigger. Instead of just investing in these businesses, she could also teach how to do that investing—becoming the face for a different kind of financial path. Rather than measure her success solely by the dollars in her wallet, she started to focus on a metric that felt more unique to her: how much she’s helped others earn.

n 2019, Sanchez launched Contrarian Thinking, a media and advisory firm that houses her many projects: content, investments, membership-based programs, and communities to support other Main Street Millionaires, all powered by the private-equity-based curriculum and operating processes she’s repackaged for small businesses. It’s been a winning formula, one that fueled the success of her first book, Main Street Millionaire. But it’s also what got her thinking about the limitations of business books, or the steady streams of business-building content on the internet. “Increasingly, as a business operator, I’ve found that I don’t want non-tailored advice,” she says. She reflected on where she gets the best business advice. The answer was: It comes by committee. “I need to have a sales guy, I need a marketing guy, I need a finance guy, I need an ops guy,” she says. And why is that

are hard questions to answer alone. Sanchez realized that, unlike most business owners, she actually could answer questions like that for her audience. That’s because her company serves many thousands of entrepreneurs. She had access to data and patterns that others didn’t. Problems are at the center of all businesses. Any entrepreneur knows: You succeed by identifying your customers’ problems, building a product or service to solve those problems, and then articulating those problems in the most compelling way possible. But Sanchez wants entrepreneurs to also study their own problems—the things that consistently hold their businesses back. What mistakes are they making? What are their shortcomings? To answer those questions, her team studied the successes of 15,000 operators within her Contrarian Thinking network, tracking how their performance varied despite following the same operating principles. This

“If you know who you are, your goals, and your why, it’s always easier to decide whether you want to do something or not.” so valuable? It’s because she’s surrounding herself with people who are compatible with her needs and goals. It’s like a customized board of experts. (And if you want to build your own advisory board, she has a few good rules to follow: “Have they actually done the thing that you want to do? Do they seem happy with the decisions they’ve made in life? Is it a good outcome? Is it an enjoyable outcome? Do they have real subject-matter expertise? Is their advice repeatable across multiple different sizes and sectors? If it’s not, I wouldn’t listen too closely.”) But most small business owners don’t have the time or network to build a trustworthy and experienced advisory board. And because these owners are often isolated, they don’t have the benefit of seeing how they operate differently from others. What are their relative strengths? What are their weaknesses? What do they uniquely need to move the business forward? Those

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helped them uncover 12 pressure points that can trip up any business owner—things like an inability to build strong internal processes, or being too afraid to raise prices. Then she built corresponding personality archetypes based on those struggles, to really get a sense of who makes these kinds of mistakes and why. This way, she could help owners understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and identify the changes they should prioritize to help grow their business. “There’s a good part to all archetypes, and a bad part,” Sanchez says. “Knowing these things helps business owners determine what advice to take, as opposed to taking all advice and being miserable and not successful.” For example, if you struggle to build processes in your business—where nothing is written down or documented except in your own brain, meaning the business can’t function without you—then Sanchez deems you a Workhorse. These people work relentlessly, putting everything on their backs.

Photograph / J A K E C H E S S U M

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But that’s a recipe for eventual burnout. If your systems aren’t in order, then your business cannot thrive without you, and that means you cannot live the life you envisioned when you became a business owner in the first place. “If you’re so competent that you end up doing everything, you become your own master—who enslaves you,” she says. What’s a Workhorse to do? Start with these three steps, she says.

1/ Document everything that you do for the business. Sanchez likes doing this with video; she’ll record herself doing a task, then share it with her team so that they can repeat her actions. She says it’s the fastest, quickest, most efficient way to standardize success. 2/ Delegate. Assign responsibilities to your team based on end goals, not a task list. Give your team the target you want to achieve, a deadline to accomplish it, and let them choose their path toward success. Just like you’re going to lead your business in your own unique way, trust your team to meet your objectives utilizing their own unique skill sets and instincts. 3/ Design. As in, design yourself out. Design systems and communicate them clearly. Print and place checklists around your workspace to support complicated processes; provide your team with one-sheeters, not binders of instructions. Enable the business to run without you at the helm every minute of every day. Sanchez calls these “standards with teeth.” If you need to explain anything twice, she says, you’re doing it wrong. “Unless you really like repeating yourself ad nauseam for the rest of your life, you had better figure out how to do systems and processes and put a communication plan and process in place for those,” Sanchez says. Of course, some business owners are excellent at processes. They just have other problems holding them back—like the person who’s always afraid to raise prices and would rather discount than disappoint their customers. Sanchez calls this person The Good Guy, and she has a warning for them: If they’re afraid to charge competitively, their business

Photograph / J A K E C H E S S U M

growth will stall, they’ll be overworked, and their customers will always expect more from them for less. Sanchez wants to offer these people a challenge: Double your prices on your next three quotes, and see what happens. Most likely, your customers want and value your product, and they’ll pay the new fee. Once you’ve experienced that, you’ll feel emboldened to charge more. And you won’t cave as easily when a customer pushes back on price. Once Sanchez developed these archetypes, she tested them on thousands of entrepreneurs inside her community— building customized plans, with strategic 90-day sprints, for paid members of a group called Contrarian Boardroom. Now she’s also built a new book around them, called Own or Be Owned, which she describes as a choose-your-own-adventure guide to business-building. She wants business owners to read it and say: I now know who I am, and I know my plan to get where I want to go. She points to her own existence as a reluctant influencer as an example of the value that can come from examining your strengths and your goals, and choosing the most effective path forward for the business you’re growing. “Do I really want to be on social media every day? No. But it serves my goal, and I’m a clear communicator that can break down ideas with consistency,” she says. “I can’t find another mechanism better than social media for what I want to do—materially affect the ownership trajectory of this country and abroad—so I’m willing to do it. Once you determine that, you have to decide if you can have fun doing it, because I don’t want to do something that makes me miserable.”

espite all this, are there still universal truths in business? Yes, Sanchez says—because although people are complicated and require customized business approaches, their businesses are not complicated at all. Businesses succeed for largely the same reasons, and they operate by largely the same market forces. For example, she says, here are four pieces of universal advice:

1/ If you’re a small business owner, she says, don’t overinvest in social media. Going viral won’t be your savior, and it won’t be the thing that drives repeat business. “Most small business owners would do better by obsessing over Google reviews, Trustpilot, and cleaning up their website,” she says.

2/ For that matter, don’t overinvest in AI, either. SEO and AEO are important, she says, because search (in both AI and Google) can drive significant business. But small business owners don’t need to become AI masters. Your job is to build lasting human connections with local communities and clients. 3/ Hiring people is universally hard, but it can also be a universal motivator—reminding you that your business is the center of many people’s lives. “There’s nothing better than the first time you cut an employee a really big check,” she says. “If you talk to any Main Street owner at a deeper level, you could ask: How many people do you think you’ve helped put their kids through college? How many people do you think you helped buy their first house? For a small business owner, if you’ve been operating a few years, it’s probably five, 10, 15, 20 people. That’s incredible.” 4/ Here’s the greatest key to business growth: “Pick up the phone when somebody emails or calls you. Respond right away,” she says. “That’s the number-one reason your business will be successful.” Customers won’t wait around for long, and they’ll happily settle for your competitor’s lower quality if they’re also faster to respond. But ultimately, Sanchez says, here is perhaps the most universal truth of all: Business may operate based on tactics and levers, but it is also a deeply human enterprise, and entrepreneurs should never forget that. A business serves human customers, but it also must be built to serve the human at its center. Sanchez has been thinking about that last part a lot lately. She and her husband, Chris, will welcome their first child this winter. She does not want to be working all the time. So she’s focusing more on the things that matter to her: She wants a business that can operate at times without her. She wants to make many other people wealthy through the lessons she teaches. And she does not want to give universal advice anymore. Because business, and life, is about doing what works for you. And everyone is different. “If you know who you are, your goals, and your why,” she says, “it’s always easier to decide whether you want to do something or not.” Stephanie Schomer is a contributing writer for Entrepreneur.

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 41

SPOTLIGHT BRANDED CONTENT

Ecuador

A PACIFIC GATEWAY FOR GLOBAL INVESTMENT

cuador has moved through the first half of 2026 with a stronger economic platform and a clearer message to international business. Following a solid recovery in 2025, the economy is expected to maintain positive momentum this year, supported by relatively low inflation, stronger international reserves and improving investor confidence. These conditions are reinforcing the appeal of Ecuador’s dollarized economy and strengthening its capacity to attract capital into productive sectors. President Daniel Noboa has placed private capital at the center of Ecuador’s development strategy. Addressing the Business Future of the Americas conference in June 2026, he said, in translation from the official Spanish transcript: “Ecuador has offered many opportunities, and there are many opportunities for the United States at this moment to invest, grow and have a strategic point, not only logistical but productive, for strategic metals and minerals, hydrocarbons and services.” The statement reflects an administration seeking to present Ecuador as a commercially useful base on South America’s Pacific coast. For investors, one of Ecuador’s most distinctive advantages is its use of the US dollar as legal tender. Dollarization removes the need to price local operations in a separate domestic currency and can make revenues, costs and financial planning more transparent for international companies. Ecuador also combines Pacific access with proximity to the Andean region and a growing network of commercial relationships. Its agreements with the European Union, China and the United Kingdom widen market access, while a newly signed trade agreement with Canada points to further integration. This position can appeal to companies seeking an export platform connecting North American, Asian, European and neighboring Latin American markets. Momentum is increasingly visible in investment flows. Ecuador’s Ministry

TRUST, QUALITY, AND GLOBAL REACH

cuador has entered 2026 with a stronger economic story and one of Latin America’s most important agricultural export platforms. The country’s official investor relations office cites IMF growth of 2.5% for 2026, after a recovery in 2025, while the Central Bank of Ecuador also expects continued expansion. For the banana sector, the outlook is especially relevant: Ecuador remains the world’s leading banana exporter, supported by fertile coastal land, reliable production, and access to markets across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Russia, and beyond. In a global food market shaped by price pressure, logistics disruption, and consumer demand for affordable nutrition, Ecuador’s banana industry continues to show why it is one of the country’s strongest ambassadors. Tuchok is part of that story. Led by President Ricardo Umpiérrez, the company is approaching its 20th anniversary with a reputation built on consistency, certifications, and the ability to solve problems quickly. The company exports an average of around 200 containers, positioning itself as a medium-sized but highly flexible player. Its strength is not simply volume, but reach. Tuchok supplies many of the world’s key banana markets and adapts to different customer needs, from traditional packaging to special formats such as cluster bags and bands. It also holds important certifications, including GlobalG.A.P., Rainforest Alliance, and Fairtrade, which help it serve demanding international buyers. For Umpiérrez, the advantage begins with Ecuador itself. “Ecuador is different because we can supply the entire world: the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Russia, New Zealand, and many other markets. Our land is excellent for agriculture, our climate is ideal, and our fruit can travel for 40, 50, or even 60 days and still arrive fresh. That is what separates Ecuador from other competitors.” Tuchok has also moved to strengthen its own production base. Over the past three years, the company expanded from around 500 hectares to almost 2,000 hectares, giving customers more security in a market where prices, weather,

of Economy and Finance repor ted that foreign direct investment reached $1.299 billion in 2025, an increase of 191% and its highest level in a decade. The IMF has also noted that Ecuador regained access to international capital markets and is advancing reforms intended to strengthen competitiveness, attract private investment and create employment. Greater financial confidence, together with efforts to s treamline inves tment procedures and expand public-private cooperation, c ould help translate macroeconomic stability into Daniel Noboa more productive projects. President The opportunity extends across a broad economic base. Ecuador is already a global supplier of shrimp, bananas, cacao, flowers and other high-value agricultural products. At the same time, mining, renewable power, hydrocarbons, logistics, tourism, real estate, food processing and digitally enabled services offer room for new capital and technology. Its biodiversity and natural resources support export industries, while its young workforce and expanding consumer activity add potential within the domestic market. Its established private sector also offers experienced local partners for expansion. Ecuador’s investment story is therefore becoming one of renewed confidence: a dollar-based economy, improving macroeconomic indicators, wider trade connections and a government openly courting international partners. As Noboa said in his May 2025 inauguration address, translated from the official Spanish transcript: “Ecuador is preparing more every day to welcome national and foreign investors, with open doors and clear conditions.” shipping, and global events can change quickly. Its organic banana area has also doubled from 300 to 600 hectares, supporting a push into Europe and the United States, where retailers increasingly want to deal directly with growers and certified producers. The company can offer FOB or CIF, arrange shipping and Ricardo Umpiérrez insurance, and work with President buyers on private-label or branded supply. That reliability is central to the company’s sales argument. Tuchok wants long-term customers, not one-off transactions. Its San Sebastiano brand is built around stable quality, consistent sizing, and trust across good and difficult years. Umpiérrez is also looking beyond bananas, with plans to develop baby bananas, plantains, and pitahaya under the company’s brand, while targeting annual export growth of 10% to 15%. Umpiérrez believes Ecuador deserves more attention from international investors. “People outside Ecuador should know that we have skilled workers, strict labor rules, strong social security, and safe legal property. I have invested millions of dollars here because I feel safe. Ecuador has everything; it is very important that people outside know it.”

SPOTLIGHT BRANDED CONTENT

Electrocables

CARRYING ECUADOR ’S ENERGY AMBITIONS

y mid-2026, Ecuador is presenting a more constructive economic story and a clearer path for private investment. The IMF projects Ecuador’s real GDP to grow by 2.5% in 2026, with inflation at 2.9%, while the World Bank says the economy rebounded by an estimated 3.7% in 2025, supported by exports, investment and private consumption. The same institution points to stabilization around 2.5% for 2026–2028 and notes Ecuador’s return to international capital markets in January 2026 as a sign of renewed investor confidence. For a dollarized economy with strong export sectors and rising infrastructure needs, the message is increasingly one of resilience and opportunity. The cable and electrical infrastructure sector sits directly inside that opportunity. Ecuador’s construction industry is forecast to expand at an average annual rate of 4.6% from 2026 to 2029, supported by investments Nassib Neme in energy, ports, transport, mining and CEO industry. The country’s electric power expansion plan for 2025–2030 targets $2.43 billion in investment and 1,471 MW of new renewable capacity, with solar accounting for the largest share. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, the International Energy Agency expects almost 160 GW of renewable capacity additions by 2030, while also pointing to grid expansion as a key regional challenge. For cable producers, this is the practical side of the energy transition: every solar project, transmission line, factory, port and residential development needs reliable wiring. Electrocables is one of the Ecuadorian companies positioned to serve that demand. Based in Ecuador and led by CEO Nassib Neme, the company manufactures electrical cables for both the domestic market and export customers, with the United States standing out as a priority market. It has also built commercial reach across Central America, Chile, Colombia and Panama. Its growth story is not only about volume, but about earning credibility in a sector where delivery, communication and consistency matter as much as price. For Neme, 2026 has been a step-change year. “This year we have broken sales records, both in local sales and exports. Our growth was strong in 2025 and has accelerated even more in 2026, which led us to expand our facilities and invest in machinery. We made a significant investment in equipment to expand production capacity for Ecuador and for export markets. Internal demand is very high, and exports continue to grow.” That balance is important. Electrocables was previously more export-heavy, but the strength of local demand has changed the mix, with Ecuador now representing around 60% of sales and exports around 40%. In the United States, the company says sales grew 27% in 2025 compared with 2024, and are projected to rise 73% in 2026 compared with 2024. Even in a more complicated tariff

environment, the company has continued to defend and grow its client portfolio through a consolidated U.S. operation and close distributor relationships. What differentiates Electrocables is the way it treats a commodity business as a relationship business. “We want to be seen as a trustworthy provider. We take care of the well-being of our clients before focusing on the financial matter. We communicate clearly, confirm what we can produce, and make sure the client receives the product exactly as expected, from manufacturing to shipping. When that relationship of trust is built, clients stay with us for 15, 20 years or more, even if someone else offers a lower price. We support them when they have problems, and that is what keeps them with us.” Asked why Ecuador should be considered as a business destination, Neme points to improving conditions and the need for private investment to take a larger role. “The security situation has improved, even if outside perception sometimes moves more Chemel Neme slowly than reality. The country continues to Exports Manager grow. The economy works like a plane with two engines: public investment and private investment. When private investment becomes more active, the economy can grow without creating unnecessary public spending or bureaucracy. That makes it easier and more sustainable to invest.” Looking ahead, Electrocables is especially interested in opportunities linked to photovoltaics, particularly in the United States, while remaining well positioned in aluminum cables for overhead conductors and transmission lines. Electrocables also sees potential in the large U.S. building wire segment, while remaining selective about opportunities that match its standards for value, service and long-term client relationships. For new clients, the sales argument is straightforward: Electrocables offers added capacity, Ecuadorian manufacturing, a growing U.S. presence, and a service culture built around reliability. In a sector where copper, aluminum and insulation prices can move quickly, trust becomes a form of competitive advantage. Electrocables has turned that trust into repeat business, long-term clients and a growing international platform. As Ecuador works to attract more private capital into energy, construction and infrastructure, the company stands as a local manufacturer with global ambition: close enough to serve a demanding domestic market, but experienced enough to compete abroad.

America’s Favorite

MOM POP SHOPS 2026 AND

HOW WE PICKED 100 BUSINESSES ACROSS THE COUNTRY.

4 4 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

s there a business in your community that you’re proud to be a patron of? If so, we’d bet it’s a mom-and-pop shop. There’s just something that feels good about giving your hard-earned money to a small, independent business run by people dedicated to the city or town you call home. (And there’s something even better about being the person who owns and runs one of those businesses!) The entrepreneurs behind these local establishments add color, history, and real human faces to Main Street. That’s why, every year, we publish our America’s Favorite Mom & Pop Shops® list. It’s our way of celebrating America’s most beloved local businesses and inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs. We start with strict criteria: We only consider independently owned, brick-and-mortar U.S. businesses with no more than four locations. From there, we consider a range of factors: How long the establishment has been in business, how unique its offerings are, how much its owners give back to their communities, how often customers leave reviews or engage with the brand’s social media accounts. We then make sure to highlight all types of local businesses across all 50 states. Of course, there are thousands more amazing businesses that deserve the spotlight too—which is what future lists are for. This year, though, we found that our honorees all have something in common: They go to great lengths to lend a personal touch to every transaction. And in a time when business can feel increasingly impersonal, → Scan for a filterable list. that’s worth emulating.

ARTISANAL OR HANDCRAFTED EXCELLENCE → BEDO’S LEATHERWORKS

Falls Church, Virginia

leatherrepair.com

→ COCOA CINNAMON

Durham, North Carolina

littlewaves.coffee

→ HELL OR HIGH WATER

Louisville, Kentucky

hellorhighwaterbar.com

→ LATINX WITH PLANTS

Los Angeles, California

latinxwithplants.com

→ MARS CHEESE CASTLE

Kenosha, Wisconsin

marscheese.com

→ MISSOURI STAR QUILT COMPANY

Hamilton, Missouri

missouriquiltco.com

→ PROUD MARY COFFEE

Portland, Oregon

proudmarycoffee.com

→ STUDIO RK

Maypearl, Texas

studiorktx.com

→ THE SON OF A BUTCHER

Birmingham, Alabama

thesonofabutcher.com

→ WINDRIFT HILL

Conrad, Montana

windrifthill.com

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 45

Celebrated local cuisine → FRONTIER RESTAURANT

Albuquerque, New Mexico

frontierabq.com

→ HAVANA’S CUISINE

St. Louis, Missouri

havanascuisine.com

→ KEN’S ARTISAN BAKERY

Portland, Oregon

kensartisanbakery.com

→ KYOTO SUSHI & JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE

Boise, Idaho

kyotoboise.com

→ LEWIS BARBECUE

Charleston, South Carolina

lewisbarbecue.com

→ NICK’S FISH HOUSE

Baltimore, Maryland

nicksfishhouse.com

→ REDAMAK’S

New Buffalo, Michigan

redamaks.com

→ TIN ROOF MAUI

Kahului, Hawaii

tinroofmaui.com

→ TOCABE

Denver, Colorado

tocabe.com

→ WACO DINER

Eastport, Maine

wacodiner.godaddysites.com

Enriching regional culture → DAHL’S CHAINSAW ART

Keystone, South Dakota

dahlschainsawart.com

→ ELECTRIC FETUS

Minneapolis, Minnesota

electricfetus.com

→ KAUA’I BACKCOUNTRY ADVENTURES

Lihue, Hawaii

kauaibackcountry.com

→ MADISON MUSIC FOUNDRY

Fitchburg, Wisconsin

madisonmusicfoundry.com

→ NOBLE ART ENTERTAINMENT

Geneva, Ohio

nobleartentertainment.com

→ OUTDOOR ESCAPES NEW HAMPSHIRE

Freedom, New Hampshire

outdoorescapesnewhampshire.com

→ PAINT THE TOWNE

Wichita, Kansas

paintthetowne.com

→ SPECTRA ART SPACE

Denver, Colorado

spectraartspace.com

→ COUNTRY BOOKSHELF

Bozeman, Montana

countrybookshelf.com

→ TUMBLEROOT BREWERY & DISTILLERY

Santa Fe, New Mexico

tumblerootbreweryanddistillery.com

Health and wellness hubs → 405 INK

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

405ink.com

→ 690 WOMEN’S FITNESS

Winston-Salem, North Carolina

690womensfitness.com

→ BALIAN SPRINGS

Alexandria, Virginia

baliansprings.com

→ INDEPENDENT WELLNESS CENTER

Apache Junction, Arizona

independentwellnesscenter.com

→ NAPPILY NATURALS & APOTHECARY

Los Angeles, California

nappilynaturals.com

→ NEBRASKA HEALTH AND WELLNESS CLINIC Norfolk, Nebraska

nebraskahw.com

→ PULSE DANCE FITNESS STUDIO

West Des Moines, Iowa

pulsedancefitnessstudio.com

→ TILL THE END TATTOOS

Tampa, Florida

@tilltheendtattoos_tampa

→ TRUTH ORGANIC SPA

North Grafton, Massachusetts

truthorganicspa.com

→ YOGA NIRVANA

Tempe, Arizona

yoganirvanastudio.com

46 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Making memorable experiences → ACE ADVENTURE RESORT

Oak Hill, West Virginia

aceraft.com

→ ARRINGTON VINEYARDS

Arrington, Tennessee

arringtonvineyards.com

→ HOT SAND

Asbury Park, New Jersey

hotsandap.com

→ PALMER MUSIC CO.

Conway, Arkansas

palmermusic.co

→ SALMON BERRY TRAVEL & TOURS

Anchorage, Alaska

salmonberrytours.com

→ SEAGRASS POTTERY

Indialantic, Florida

seagrasspottery.com

→ NOTCHLAND INN

Hart’s Location, New Hampshire

notchland.com

→ THE WICK LAB

Provo, Utah

thewicklab.com

→ UNGLUED

Fargo, North Dakota

ungluedmarket.com

→ WENDELLA TOURS & CRUISES

Chicago, Illinois

wendellaboats.com

Neighborhood gathering places → ESCAPE-A-TORIUM

Fayetteville, West Virginia

escape-a-torium.com

→ FOAM BREWERS

Burlington, Vermont

foambrewers.com

→ FRED’S IN TIGERLAND

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

fredsintigerland.com

→ GADZOOKS SALON

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

gadzookssalon.com

→ JEWEL OF THE SOUTH

New Orleans, Louisiana

jewelnola.com

→ P.O.P.S. PHILLY CHEESESTEAKS

Las Vegas, Nevada

popscheesesteaks.com

→ SHARROTT WINERY

Hammonton, New Jersey

sharrottwinery.com

→ SPANISH TRAIL LANES

Gautier, Mississippi

spanishtraillanes.com

→ THE GOURMET SHOP

Columbia, South Carolina

thegourmetshop.net

→ THIRD PLACE BOOKS

Lake Forest Park, Washington

thirdplacebooks.com

→ ATLANTIC BEACH PARK

Westerly, Rhode Island

atlanticbeachpark.com

→ BROMBERG’S

Birmingham, Alabama

brombergs.com

→ DIAMOND CROSS RANCH

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

diamondcrossranch.com

→ HUBLERSBURG INN

Hublersburg, Pennsylvania

hublersburginn.com

→ JONES BAR-B-Q DINER

Marianna, Arkansas

facebook.com/JonesBarBQDiner

→ NASIFF FRUIT COMPANY

Fall River, Massachusetts

nasiffproduce.com

→ SCHIMPFF’S CONFECTIONERY

Jeffersonville, Indiana

schimpffs.com

→ SEASIDE INN

Kennebunk, Maine

kennebunkbeachmaine.com

→ THE SAVANNAH THEATRE

Savannah, Georgia

savannahtheatre.com

→ VENIERO’S

New York, New York

venieros.com

OVER 100 YEARS OLD

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 47

Providing vital community services → GIRLS AUTO CLINIC

Upper Darby, Pennsylvania

girlsautoclinic.com

→ HEALTHY LIVING MARKET AND CAFÉ

South Burlington, Vermont

healthylivingmarket.com

→ K2 HOLISTIC HEALTH

Omaha, Nebraska

k2holistichealth.com

→ NINE LIVES CAFE & CAT LOUNGE

Indianapolis, Indiana

ninelivescatcafe.com

→ PEARSON FAMILY FARM

Wichita, Kansas

commongroundpg.org

→ POOCH STYLES

District Heights, Maryland

poochstylesgrooming.com

→ REDLINE HOME REPAIR

Iowa City, Iowa

redlinehomerepair.com

→ THE WASHINGTON LAW FIRM, PLLC

Southaven, Mississippi

elitelawyer.com

→ WATCH ME GROW DAYCARE

Stamford, Connecticut

watchmegrowct.com

→ WHISMAN GIORDANO & ASSOCIATES

Newark, Delaware

whismangiordano.com

→ 5TH & MAIN FURNITURE BY FREED’S

Rapid City, South Dakota

5thandmainfurniture.com

→ COLONEL LITTLETON

Lynnville, Tennessee

colonellittleton.com

→ DEAD PEOPLE’S STUFF

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

deadpeoplesstuffok.com

→ EUGENIE

Detroit, Michigan

eugeniedetroit.com

→ HARTFORD PRINTS!

Hartford, Connecticut

hartfordprints.com

→ KITTERY TRADING POST

Kittery, Maine

kitterytradingpost.com

→ LIL BEE’S BOHEMIAN

Sheridan, Wyoming

lilbeesbohemian.com

→ P.U.P.S. OF LEWES

Lewes, Delaware

No official website

→ WHALEBONE

Montauk, New York

whaleboneapparel.com

→ WILD RUMPUS BOOKS

Minneapolis, Minnesota

wildrumpusbooks.com

Retail Destination

SAVVY SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE → SALMON SISTERS

Homer, Alaska

aksalmonsisters.com

→ CYCLE ZOMBIES

Huntington Beach, California

cyclezombies.com

→ FLOWERS FOR DREAMS

Chicago, Illinois

flowersfordreams.com

→ KENTUCKY NATIVE CAFÉ

Lexington, Kentucky

michlers.com/pages/cafe

→ OMING’S KITCHEN

Las Vegas, Nevada

omingskitchen.com

→ ROBKES

Northport, New York

robkesofnorthport.com

→ ROYALTY AUTO SERVICE

St. Marys, Georgia

royaltyautoservice.com

→ STACI’S SANDWICH JOINT

Verona, New Jersey

stacisjoint.com

→ THE FOOD NANNY

Salt Lake City, Utah

thefoodnanny.com

→ THE RUSTY ROSE

Plainview, Texas

therustyrose.com

48 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

CONNOISSEURS DINERS REGULARS VISITORS MENTORS NEIGHBORS CPAs | CONSULTANTS | WEALTH ADVISORS | COLLABORATORS COACHES VOLUNTEERS TEACHERS ADVOCATES

At CLA, we’re in your corner — and on it. So we know your business inside and out. Working together is not just how we do business, it’s how we help you grow with lasting impact. We’re right there with you. Get started at CLAconnect.com/withyou. ©2026 CliftonLarsonAllen LLP. CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen LLP) is an independent network member of CLA Global. See CLAglobal.com/disclaimer. Investment advisory services are oﬀered through CliftonLarsonAllen Wealth Advisors, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor.

Sign Language

Your store sign is the first thing your customers see. So what makes a great one? We asked some of America’s Favorite Mom & Pop Shops® to explain theirs. by FRANCES DODDS 2

1/ Plants with soul.

2/ Stark sandwiches.

“In the spirit of rasquachismo [or, ‘making the most from the least’], nothing is wasted and everything has soul. Our original sign was hand-painted by a young, local female artist, so it’s a true L.A. artifact. We’ve evolved it over the years, sometimes letting the ghost of the old sign shine through. Because in L.A., signs aren’t just signs. They’re history, art, and resistance.”

“Our building is a small, white brick shop with black accents. We chose a simple sign with clean lines because we wanted the storefront to feel clean, welcoming, and approachable. We also made sure the sign glowed at night, because I loved the idea of someone driving by, seeing it lit up, and thinking, I have to check that place out.”

—Owner Andi Xoch, Latinx with Plants, Los Angeles, California

—Co-Owner Staci Puleo, Staci’s Sandwich Joint, Verona, New Jersey

50 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

3/ Mortality calls. “We’re an antiques store, so our sign is very descriptive of what we sell: dead people’s stuff, architectural antiques and design. The logo is inspired by the Mexican tradition, with the skull for Day of the Dead. And the butterfly represents rebirth and new life.” —Owners Curran and Marymar Fudge, Dead People’s Stuff, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

4/ Leather with history. “Our sign reflects exactly who we are: simple, timeless, and authentic. Our crossed-swords logo, which we’ve had for nearly 40 years, quietly welcomes people to a place where things are still made by hand. Our workshop and store sit in a small town, and our sign is meant to blend into that landscape rather than compete with it.” —Owner Garry A. Littleton, Colonel Littleton, Lynnville, Tennessee

P HOTO GR A P HS C OUR T ES Y OF L AT IN X W I T H P L A N T S; S TA CI ’ S S A ND W ICH JOIN T; DE A D P EOP L E ’ S S T UF F ; C OL ONE L L I T T L E TON

5/ Cuban culture. “The word ‘Havana’s’ is big, highlighting the city that inspires us, while the handwritten ‘Cuisine’ adds the character and warmth we strive to create. Beneath our name, we added ‘Cuban Restaurant’ so unfamiliar customers know.”

—Owner Tamara Landeiro, Havana’s Cuisine, St. Louis, Missouri

P HOTO GR A P HS C OUR T ES Y OF H AVA N A’ S CUISINE ; HUB L E R SB UR G INN ; E L EC T RIC F E T U S; UNGLUE D ; G A DZO OK S S A L ON

6/ Historic rebrand.

7/ Memorably weird.

8/ Magical sparkle.

9/ Old name, reimagined.

“When I took over, it was the Hublersburg Hotel and Family Tavern, and it had a reputation as a dive bar. So the change to Hublersburg Inn was an effort to rebrand as a respected dining destination. I updated our sign while keeping the federal style, and added ‘Spirited American Cuisine.’ It’s a play on words since we serve upscale American food and the Inn is definitely haunted!”

“The first thing people usually notice is the name. Long ago, National Lampoon magazine singled the store out for having the worst name for a business. Be that as it may, it’s a name people don’t forget. The vibe of our sign is vintage curiosity. We had a sign-maker do it by hand many years ago, and have had it refreshed, but kept it exactly the same. Fans of the store are often seen taking selfies in front of the sign!”

“We updated our craft shop’s logo three years ago, when we moved to a new location. We wanted it to feel whimsical, creative, and kick-ass, and we wanted a big side of magical. It’s why we added as much literal sparkle as possible.”

“We inherited the name Gadzooks, so the challenge was to honor the 34-year history of the business while refreshing it. We chose a font that denoted ‘open and friendly,’ with a high, thin sans-serif for sophistication. We kept the ‘g’ lower case for less formality and used American Typewriter for ‘salon’ because it’s old-school and trustworthy.”

—Owner Andi Heidt, Hublersburg Inn, Hublersburg, Pennsylvania

—Owners Stephanie and Aaron Meyerring, Electric Fetus, Minneapolis, Minnesota

—Owner Ashley Morken, Unglued, Fargo, North Dakota

—Owners Kim and Scott Myles, Gadzooks Salon, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 51

Is AI Talking About You?

Step 1/ Be the same business everywhere. The most basic signal is boring and completely free: Make sure your name, address, and phone number are identical everywhere they appear. That includes your website, Google, Yelp, Facebook, and that old directory you forgot about. AI treats these platforms as native inputs, and when it finds three different phone numbers for you, it doesn’t know which to trust and instead recommends a competitor whose details line up.

STEP 2/ Keep your website and reviews fresh.

If it’s not, you’re in trouble. Here’s how to make sure the bots are recommending your small business.

AI reads your Google reviews the way a potential customer does— just faster. Volume and recency both matter. Forty reviews from this year beat 200 from 2019. To boost your volume, just ask every happy customer to leave a review, and reply to the ones you have. A business that responds to reviews looks alive and accountable, and the bots notice.

by AUSTIN HOLMES

STEP 3/ Transparency is your friend. AI recommends businesses that answer questions clearly. If you run an HVAC company, your website should plainly say, “Here’s what an AC repair typically costs and why.” Include your pricing, your process, and honest answers to FAQs right on the page. Transparency isn’t just good ethics; it’s now algorithmically rewarded.

STEP 4/ Show your human side. Recommendation engines trust businesses that show real people. An “About” page with your actual team, your story, your values, and a real way to reach you signals a legitimate operation. This is the easiest place for a small business to beat a faceless national chain.

STEP 5/ Be present where people talk. AI doesn’t only read your website. It reads Reddit threads, local Facebook groups, and social posts where your name comes up. You can’t fake this, but you can participate. Answer questions in your local community online, be genuinely helpful, and let people mention you naturally. Those unpaid, third-party mentions are gold.

How? As the founder of a PR firm, I’ve spent a lot of time understanding this problem. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude pull from different datasets, so a business can show up in one but barely register in another. (For example, OpenAI has a licensing deal with Reddit, while Anthropic doesn’t.) It’s impossible to know exactly what data a chatbot pulls from, but there are certain steps you can take to improve your chances. Here are seven tips I always suggest to clients.

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Media coverage from reputable publications is heavily weighted by chatbots. We’ve seen the impact of our work increase greatly over the past few years, and companies’ PR budgets have grown to reflect that. When a credible outlet, podcast, or publication writes about you, it boosts your chatbot mentions by about 80%, based on data from our 500-plus clients.

STEP 7/ Measure results. You can’t improve what you can’t see, so you need some way to check whether AI is actually mentioning you and how you stack up against competitors. Many agencies can help with this, as well as subscription monitoring tools (like GetMentioned or Ahrefs Brand Radar). You can also simply ask the AI platform you’re using, but be warned that the results will be very biased if you’re using your own account. This space is changing every day, so don’t stress about being on the cutting edge. Just cover the fundamentals and put yourself out there a little more each month.

Austin Holmes is president of Publicity for Good and Signal Raptor.

P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y S T O C K . A D O B E . C O M / I M A G E F L O W

ot long ago, when customers went looking for “the best bakery near me” or a “trustworthy plumber,” they would turn to Google and get pages of links. Today, they’re more likely to ask an AI tool like ChatGPT or Gemini—and in turn, receive three or four names. If your business isn’t on that short list, the customer never sees you. That’s why optimizing for AI is now mission critical for small businesses. You must be recommended.

STEP 6/ Seek out earned media.

Your Biggest Marketıng Moment

How do you get attention on a budget? Here, six mom-and-pop shops share what gave their businesses a visibility boost.

Get behind the sugary scenes. SCHIMPFF’S CONFECTIONERY

Jeffersonville, Indiana “For years, our traditional approach to marketing was to tell people about our candy. But then we started posting short videos of our candy being made—pulling, cutting, shaping, and finishing hard candy. The thinking was that you can buy candy anywhere, but you can’t watch a fifth-generation candy business make it by hand on antique equipment. That changed the way we market Schimpff’s. People who have never heard of us become curious. They share the videos with friends, tell us about visiting Schimpff’s with their grandparents, or make plans to come to Jeffersonville and see it for themselves.”

Share the good you’re doing.

—Owners Steve and Beth Shepherd

—Owners Steven Dyme and Joseph Dickstein

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FLOWERS FOR DREAMS

Chicago, Illinois “Our best marketing has been mission-driven. A few in the past year included our annual City Hall bridal giveaway, when we gave bouquets to couples at City Hall in downtown Chicago. We also did a ‘Give Them Their Flowers’ series on Instagram, where we brought bouquets to nonprofit heroes in our community and highlighted the work that they do. And we always have a neighborhood drive happening at the front of our store, where we collect clothes, food, etc.”

P HOTO GR A P HS C OUR T ES Y OF S CHIMP F F ’ S C ONF EC T IONE R Y; F L O W E R S F OR DRE A MS

by FRANCES DODDS

Create intriguing looks. DEAD PEOPLE’S STUFF

Identify niche markets, and go to them.

P H O T O G R A P H S C O U R T E S Y O F G A D Z O O K S S A L O N ; S TA C I ’ S S A N D W I C H J O I N T; S A L M O N B E R R Y T O U R S ; D E A D P E O P L E ’ S S T U F F

GADZOOKS SALON

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania “Our marketing focuses on hyper-niche specification and real community outreach. We identify local markets and meet them where they’re at, whether that’s online, in newsletters, or in person. For National Nurses Week, we made posters featuring unexpected imagery (soap suds hairdos) and did giveaways like hair clips and hand cream that could directly help the nurses during their shifts. A huge benefit of these micromarketing techniques are the relationships we’ve been able to build. Our posters lived in break rooms across many hospitals in our area.”

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma “Early on, we teamed up with the Killers of the Flower Moon live production. There is a scene where Leonardo DiCaprio slams our custom stained-glass door. We posted it on Instagram, and it ended up getting 654,000 views. That seemed like a lot—but our most successful post was actually just a quick panoramic video of all our stained glass doors and lights, which got 6.2 million views. We also have three interstate billboards that are very minimalistic, with just our name and logo, which really drive a lot of customers passing through our state.” —Owners Curran and Marymar Fudge

—Owners Kim and Scott Myles

Share, connect, and amplify on social. STACI’S SANDWICH JOINT Verona, New Jersey

“When I opened Staci’s Sandwich Joint at 41, I jokingly called it my ‘midlife crisis baby.’ I started sharing my journey on social media. I didn’t have a strategy. I simply shared what made me happy. Along the way, I found myself highlighting restaurant owners who came into the shop. Heidi Blum was the first local influencer to visit. Then Mohamed Traore, better known as @mostasting, stopped in. At the time, I had no idea who he was, but after he featured our sandwiches in one of his videos, everything changed. His video put us on the map with 2 million views on all of his platforms.” —Owners Staci and Robert Puleo

Join your local industry association. SALMON BERRY TRAVEL & TOURS

Anchorage, Alaska “The most successful marketing we ever did was joining Visit Anchorage, our convention and visitors bureau in town that markets Anchorage to the world. They have volunteers that welcome visitors and provide suggestions for things to do, and there is a monthly meeting where we share our new or popular tours with these ambassadors. Becoming a member was a singularly smart investment. In addition, we are members of the Alaska Travel Industry Association, which provides a global reach with statewide attention.” —Owners Candice McDonald Kotyk and Mandy Garcia

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 55

Chatbots can save you time and money. But small business owners, beware: If customers suspect you’re letting AI speak for you, it could do much more harm than good. by SCOTT BARADELL

his is the paradox of AI: Sounding professional is easy now. Sounding like somebody is the hard part. As the founder of a public relations firm, this is a problem I see every day. Large companies can survive marketing that’s forgettable; people expect consistency from a national chain. But nobody chooses a neighborhood bakery or family-owned

copy machine shop because of their polished website copy. They choose those businesses because there are real people behind them, bringing a personal touch to their offerings and making their communities richer and more interesting. In other words, personality isn’t mere decoration for small businesses; it’s part of the value customers buy. Here’s a cautionary tale from one of our clients, a local IT services company. Before hir-

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asking for a draft immediately, tell it to ask you questions first: → What surprised a customer this week? → What mistake changed how you run the business? → What do customers consistently misunderstand about what you do? Your answers become the raw material—rooted in personal experience and judgment that AI can’t create. The same applies to style. Telling AI to “sound conversational” gives an algorithm almost nothing. Instead, use features like ChatGPT’s custom instructions or Claude’s project files to feed it real samples—client emails, marketing copy, or past posts. Then, set guardrails: ban buzzwords, drop the hype, and demand direct sentences. Grounding AI in your actual words creates a permanent filter for your voice. Once you have a draft using original information, don’t ask the AI if it’s good—it will always say yes. Ask yourself what sounds generic, which claims need evidence, where you’re overpromising, what a skeptical customer would question, or which sentences any competitor could have written. Finally, know when AI shouldn’t be involved at all. Never use it in an apology to a customer, a difficult conversation with an employee, or a note to someone grieving. The time you spend choosing words in those moments is part of the relationship you’re building. Don’t outsource it. Whatever AI helps create, one rule remains: Before anything important goes out, ensure that someone who truly knows your business gives it a final read. AI may be able to write, but it will never know your business as well as you do. Scott Baradell is the founder of Idea Grove.

PHOTOGRAPH BY STOCK.ADOBE.COM/ZARGHAM

Sidestepping the Slop

ing us, they had tried to boost their search and AI visibility by publishing 15 AI-generated articles a month on topics like cloud migration and IT budgeting. The posts were accurate, but completely generic. They recycled high-level concepts without any of the distinct personality or real-world experience that sets the company apart. Their search visibility never budged; we ended up overhauling everything. When a customer suspects that you used artificial intelligence to communicate with them, something breaks in their relationship with your business—even if the reaction is subconscious. They stop feeling like you tried. They stop feeling like you put in the fundamentally human work of communicating. And when you seem less human, the customer feels less loyalty to you or your business. I’m not saying to avoid AI. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that enables small business owners to whip up emails, social posts, blog posts, ad campaigns, sales decks, press releases, video scripts, and website copy in a fraction of the time and cost it once took. Every hour it saves is an hour that you can spend talking with customers, solving problems, and building relationships. But when clients ask, “What should I let AI write?” I suggest that they ask a different question: “How do I use AI without letting it become the voice of my business?” For me, the answer starts with treating AI less like an author and more like a ghostwriter. It’s excellent at organizing information, tightening prose, and clearing repetitive work off your desk. One simple way to build your AI ghostwriter is to have AI interview you before it writes. Instead of

SPOTLIGHT BRANDED CONTENT

The Beharry Group

BUILDING A CONGLOMERATE FOR GUYANA’S NE X T ERA

are already ahead of the competition. But this is uyana’s growth rate is not enough. We invest heavily in training because unprecedented, arguably our people are our greatest asset and the leading making it the world’s most indicators of future success. My vision is to build compelling economic growth a world-class organization and to transform the story. While the country’s daily lives of people in Guyana and the wider transformation is of ten region.” associated with the discovery The Group’s manufacturing operations of oil, the real significance lies in how rapidly operate to internationally recognised quality that growth is permeating the broader economy. standards, with ISO and FSSC -certified facilities Infrastructure is expanding, consumer demand is and FDA-compliant processes that supply accelerating, financial services are evolving, and products across the Caribbean, North America private enterprise is scaling at an unprecedented and the United Kingdom. Growth plans include pace. Within this dynamic context, Suresh expanding international distribution networks, Beharry is emerging as one of the country’s increasing contract manufacturing opportunities, foremost business leaders. and pursuing joint ventures across a range of According to IMF projections, Guyana’s emerging sectors. economy is expected to grow by 16.2% in 2026, Whilst the Group has assiduously broadened placing it among the fastest-growing economies and deepened its investments, it is itself an globally. For international investors, Guyana is no increasingly attractive place to invest. Most longer viewed merely as a frontier market; it is Suresh Beharry notably, it demonstrated its ability to access increasingly recognized as a strategic destination Executive Chairman international capital markets, successfully where long-term opportunities are being created raising US$80 million in 2024 to support its longacross multiple sectors simultaneously. term investment programme, with additional capital raises planned as Suresh Beharry has positioned The Beharry Group, an indigenous expansion opportunities accelerate. For international investors and conglomerate, to lead the charge of regional success. Founded in 1937 strategic partners, The Beharry Group represents more than a successful by his grandfather, Edward B. Beharry, the business has evolved from a local enterprise. It offers a platform for market entry, expansion, and successful family enterprise into Guyana’s largest and most diversified execution within one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. private-sector group. Now in its third generation and approaching its Beharry knows that realizing Guyana’s remarkable growth trajectory 90th anniversary, the Group is enjoying a renaissance characterised by will require close collaboration between government and the wider significant transformation and expansion. private sector. “In 2024 we began fundamentally redesigning the Group,” says “The Government has done a commendable job in improving Executive Chairman and Group CEO Suresh Beharry. “Working alongside Guyana’s global profile and has been deliberate in promoting economic PwC, we restructured the organisation from the holding company down, diversification through tourism, agriculture, manufacturing, and medical establishing a modern corporate governance framework, a strengthened tourism,” he says. “The private sector must also do its part; it must C-suite and six strategic business pillars. Today, we operate 18 companies, demonstrate the same commitment. We have a responsibility to invest, supported by a shared services model that create greater efficiency, innovate, and build alongside the Government. Sustainable development stronger governance and scalable growth.” is achieved when public and private sectors move forward together.” The breadth of the Group’s operations is, indeed, significant. Its portfolio As part of its broader commitment to national development, the spans commercial banking, merchant banking, insurance, stockbroking, Beharry Group continues to invest in education, entrepreneurship, youth finance, manufacturing, marketing and distribution, automotive, quickdevelopment, environmental sustainability and sport. Through initiatives service restaurants, energy, and emerging technology ventures. such as Junior Achievement Guyana, where Beharry serves as Chairman, With approximately 4,000 employees, the Group has built an integrated the organisation is helping equip the next generation with entrepreneurial ecosystem capable of serving consumers, businesses and institutional thinking, financial literacy and AI skills. It is a reflection of the philosophy clients throughout multiple stages of the value chain. Whether financing that has guided the business for nearly nine decades: creating enduring and insuring a vehicle purchase, manufacturing and distributing leading value not only through commercial success, but by helping build the consumer brands, or providing investment banking services, the Group institutions, talent and capabilities that will define Guyana’s future. is increasingly delivering connected solutions, creating a seamless The Beharry Group is no mere passenger or entitled beneficiary of customer experience and demonstrating the advantages of scale and Guyana’s economic explosion. Suresh Beharry is a true son of the soil and diversification. sees the creation of generational wealth for its people, particularly through The organisation’s next phase of growth is being driven by operational the non-oil economy, as his personal obligation. In his creed, Guyana is not excellence and digital transformation. Significant investments are being a meteoric breakout, but an exceptional prospect for deep foundational made in enterprise technology, artificial intelligence, data analytics, structured impact and profound human advancement. cybersecurity and customer experience to create a business that is both more agile and more scalable. Across its companies, the focus is on building consistent operating standards, strengthening governance and equipping employees with the capabilities required to compete in a rapidly evolving global economy. Beharry asserts that “In every business we operate, there are three non-negotiables: (1) a quality product, (2) exceptional service, and (3) a culture of excellence. If you consistently deliver on these three pillars, you

Uncle Sam Wants to PayYou

How to bump up your revenue by winning federal government contracts. by LIZ BRODY

STEP 1/ Get Certified. Before you can compete, you must register at sam.gov. Also check the Small Business Administration (sba.gov) to see if there are certifications for certain “set asides” that can improve your odds. For example, some small business contracts are set aside for underrepresented owners like women or those who are socially and economically disadvantaged. Federal contracts also often require business certifications for capabilities like quality management and cybersecurity. Adding such credentials, like McGraw did, can widen your opportunities: He recently got a security clearance, which enabled him to go after a whole new set of contracts with the intelligence branches.

STEP 2/ Find a Contract. The government tries to make sure 23% of federal contracting dollars go to small businesses. (In fiscal year 2025, nearly 28% did.) You can find solicitations for open contracts at sam.gov/opportunities. Individual government agencies often have their own lists as well, and the SBA posts those that meet the criteria for small businesses. Read through both past and present solicitations to get familiar with what different agencies are looking for. What are their pain points? Where do they align with what you do?

STEP 3/ Make a Bid. You’ll often be asked to submit a response to a request for proposal (RFP). Follow the instructions, or your entry will be rejected. Typically, the government expects you to demonstrate a clear understanding of its needs and explain how you will fulfill them. A key part of your bid is proposing the cost. Here, you’ve got to be competitive, McGraw says. One way to get a benchmark is to go to usaspending.gov to see how much was awarded to the previous winner. Sometimes it’s worth losing a little money in order to win your first contract, he says.

mall businesses often look locally for customers. But the federal government can be your client too. Darrell McGraw is a great example. Five years ago, he founded the technical consulting firm Q2 Consulting Solutions in the Washington, D.C., metro → DARRELL McGRAW area. Now he’s doing $3 million in revenue, and most of it is from the government. The clients he’s supported include the United States Air Force, Department of the Treasury, and Transportation Command. How’d he do it? The government requires more study than most clients. Thanks to a program called Ascend Atlanta at the Morehouse Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center, which coaches business owners of color on how to snag federal government contracts, he became an expert in navigating the process. Here are the most important insights he gained:

58 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

You’ll likely be up against a lot of bidders. To give your proposal more weight, offer proof points, says McGraw. For example, if the contract is for designing a government website, show sites you’ve already done or even make a mock-up of one you might create for this agency. “You can tell them, ‘This is the quality of something we can put together for you,’” he says.

STEP 5/ Win Your First Contract. These RFPs often ask for examples of past work you did for the government. So what if you’re totally new? Here’s one move, says Tiffany Rogers Bussey, executive director of the Morehouse Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center: Go after smaller federal agency jobs that are awarded directly to businesses without competitive bidding, and then build a record of performance from them. You can even directly approach one of the contracting officers with an unsolicited proposal, says McGraw. It should identify a clear need of the agency and lay out exactly what you would do to address it, backed by deliverables. You might get the job or it could be turned into an RFP for you to bid on, which now you have an advantage on. Another option: Start by becoming a subcontractor, partnering with another business that’s already worked with the government. “When you can leverage your partner, you both win,” McGraw says.

PHOTOGR A PHS COUR T ESY OF DA RREL L MCGR AW; S TOCK . A DOBE .COM/F REDE X

STEP 4/ Stand Out.

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What Gets Your Customers Talking?

To find out what makes a business special, just listen for what customers comment on. We asked our mom-and-pop businesses: What do your customers find comment-worthy?

CUSTOMERS NOTICE THE…

CUSTOMERS COMMENT ON…

Longtime employees and huge selection at

The sense of childlike wonder and discovery at

P.U.P.S. OF LEWES

WILD RUMPUS BOOKS

“Without question, the thing I hear most often is how friendly and knowledgeable our employees are. They take the time to remember the names of dogs and owners alike. We have one employee who has been with us 21 years, two for 11 years, and one for five years. The other thing we hear is how unique our shop is by the breadth of our offerings. We don’t carry a handful of collars—we carry a ‘wall full’ of beautiful U.S.-made collars, a ‘wall full’ of fun and durable toys, rows of healthy and yummy treats, and an array of gifts for pet lovers.”

“Customers often comment on the sense of discovery and childlike wonder that stepping into our store evokes. The original owners wanted there to be a menagerie of animals for kids to discover among the books, from birds to reptiles to cats to fish. It truly is a place to come and explore. Our staff loves interacting with kids and recommending books. We also host a weekly story time and author events throughout the year. Our store is very community-focused, so we love bringing in new customers and interacting with all of our regulars.”

—Owner Linda Madrid, Lewes, Delaware

—Owners Jess Fuentes, Anna Hersh, Timothy Otte, and Beth Wilson, Minneapolis, Minnesota

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P HOTO GR A P HS C OUR T ES Y OF P.U. P. S . OF L E W ES; W IL D RUMP U S B O OK S

by FRANCES DODDS

CUSTOMERS REMEMBER THE…

Vibrant decor at LATINX WITH PLANTS

“The first thing people almost always comment on is the decor— the vibrant colors. We hear it all the time, and some customers have even told us that walking in feels like a hug. That’s exactly what we wanted. In a city that can feel cold and rushed, we wanted to create a space that feels warm, joyful, and full of culture. It’s colorful, layered, full of little details, very rasquachismo—and people feel that the moment they walk in.”

P HOTO GR A P HS C OUR T ES Y OF L AT IN X W I T H P L A N T S; G A DZO OK S S A L ON ; H AVA N A’ S CUISINE

—Owner Andi Xoch, Los Angeles, California

CUSTOMERS LOVE THE…

CUSTOMERS PRAISE THE…

Warm, welcoming ambience at

Food that tastes like home at

GADZOOKS SALON

“We constantly hear, ‘Wow! It’s so welcoming in here!’ Visually, our palette is warm and deep—the opposite of the current beauty and wellness trend of ‘light and white.’ Materials like wood, leather, and velvet help our space impart a sense of comfort and history, while our many windows and plants keep it bright and airy. Every single person who walks in our door is greeted with a smile, a warm welcome, and an offer of refreshment—coffee, tea, sweets, brought to them on a tray— to enjoy. Letting people know that they’re seen, that they belong in our space, and that we’re delighted to see them is our secret sauce.”

HAVANA’S CUISINE “Customers often tell us things like, ‘This Cuban sandwich is better than the ones I’ve had in Miami.’ For us, this is incredibly high praise. Miami is considered a hub of Cuban culture with its proximity to Cuba, large Cuban community, and access to authentic ingredients. Here in the Midwest, it can be difficult to recreate that same sense of familiarity. It is especially meaningful when Cuban customers deliberately make Havana’s Cuisine a stop while traveling through St. Louis. Nearly every week, someone visits us during a road trip specifically because they want to try our Cuban food.”

—Owners Kim and Scott Myles, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

—Tamara Landeiro, St. Louis, Missouri

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 61

SPOTLIGHT BRANDED CONTENT

Uruguay

SOUTH AMERICA’S QUIE T INVESTMENT POWERHOUSE

ruguay has spent decades building something that is increasingly valuable in a volatile world: predictabilit y. The South American country combines political stability, disciplined institutions and an open investment regime with a diversified export base that reaches far beyond its population of roughly 3.5 million. The IMF currently projects real GDP growth of 1.8% in 2026 and consumer-price inflation of 4.0%, while official data show the economy expanded 0.9% year-onyear in the first quarter and 0.8% from the previous quarter on a seasonally adjusted basis. By July, annual inflation stood at Yamandú Orsi 4.27%, reinforcing a picture of moderate President growth supported by comparatively stable prices and policy credibility. That institutional continuity is one of Uruguay’s strongest commercial assets. President Yamandú Orsi has repeatedly presented the country’s democratic tradition and legal certainty as part of its economic proposition. In his March 2, 2026 address to Uruguay’s General Assembly, Orsi described the country as “a beacon of democratic republicanism, legal certainty and institutional quality.” For international companies, that reputation matters because longterm decisions depend not only on tax rates or market size, but on confidence that contracts, regulations and institutions will remain dependable across political cycles. Uruguay’s peaceful transfers of power and strong rule-of-law culture have helped turn stability itself into a competitive advantage. The investment framework is designed to make that stability usable. Uruguay XXI’s 2026 investor guidance notes that national and foreign investment are treated as matters of national interest, with foreign investors receiving the same incentives as local investors. There is no tax discrimination against foreign capital and no restriction on transferring profits abroad. Incentives are available through the Investment Law, free zones, free-port and free-airport systems, industrial parks and other promotional regimes. The scale of foreign capital already embedded in the economy is significant: Uruguay XXI reported an FDI stock of US$36.8 billion in 2024, equal to about 45% of GDP, with international investment spanning services, technology, logistics, industry, agribusiness and renewable energy. Credit markets tell a similar story. Uruguay remains investment grade across the major international rating agencies, with the Ministry of Economy and Finance listing S&P at BBB+, Moody’s at Baa1 and Fitch at BBB, all with stable outlooks. Uruguay XXI describes it as the only Mercosur country currently carrying an investment-grade sovereign rating. That distinction gives the country an important advantage when global companies compare locations in the region: investors are not being asked to trade institutional security for access to Latin American growth. Instead, Uruguay offers a relatively low-risk base from which companies can manage regional operations, finance

projects and build long-term strategies. Its geographic position adds another layer to that proposition. Located between Brazil and Argentina and facing the Atlantic, Uruguay has developed itself as a regional platform for trade, logistics and services. The country’s export economy remains central to its performance; Orsi told Parliament that goods exports exceeded US$13.4 billion in 2025, the highest level of the previous decade. Uruguay also benefits from membership in Mercosur, while deeper links with Europe are opening additional possibilities. The Mercosur-European Union association agreement entered partial application on May 1, 2026, giving Uruguay a stronger platform for companies looking to connect South American production with European markets. The investment story is also moving into higher-value sectors. Uruguay XXI’s 2026 positioning highlights an electricity mix that has averaged more than 99% renewable generation in recent years, an increasingly important advantage for companies with decarbonization targets. Alongside established strengths in beef, dairy, grains, forestry and cellulose, the country has built capabilities in software, global business services, logistics, life sciences and technology. For investors, the combination is compelling: a sophisticated services economy can sit alongside export-oriented agriculture and industry, while clean electricity strengthens the case for data infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and new energy projects. Recent corporate decisions show that the argument is translating into capital. In April 2026, Millicom’s Tigo announced a US$600 million investment plan for Uruguay following its acquisition of Telefónica Móviles del Uruguay, while Brazilian group JHSF announced a US$400 million investment connected to its acquisition of the Enjoy Punta del Este complex. Speaking at Tigo’s launch in Montevideo that month, Orsi called the transaction “a strong signal of confidence in Uruguay.” Such projects reinforce the broader message that foreign companies see the country not simply as a small domestic market, but as a stable operating base with skilled people, modern infrastructure and access to larger regional opportunities. Uruguay’s attraction, then, lies in the way its advantages reinforce one another. Macroeconomic stability supports long-term planning; investment-grade credit ratings strengthen financial credibility; clear rules reduce entry risk; renewable energy improves the sustainability proposition; and trade links give a small country a much larger commercial reach. For foreign investors seeking a foothold in South America without taking on unnecessary institutional uncertainty, Uruguay offers a rare combination of openness and reliability. Orsi summarized that positioning directly when addressing more than 170 business leaders at a trade and investment seminar in Shanghai in February 2026 : “I invite you to see Uruguay not only as a market, but as a strategic partner, a reliable platform and a gateway to South America.”

SPOTLIGHT BRANDED CONTENT

IBF Negocios

A G ATEWAY TO URUGUAY ’S NE X T INVESTMENT CHAP TER

ruguay has built one of Latin America’s most attractive business stories around a s imp l e p ro mi s e: stability in a region where stability is often scarce. The IMF projects Uruguay’s economy at about US$96 billion in 2026, with real GDP growth of 1.8% and consumer price inflation of 4.0%, while the World Bank expects growth to average close to 1.9% between 2026 and 2028 and describes the country’s macroeconomic framework as broadly stable. It is not the fastest-growing market in South America, but it is one of the most predictable. For investors looking beyond short cycles, Uruguay offers solid institutions, clear rules and a quality of life that strengthens its reputation as a safe base for regional Hugo Benedetti business. CEO & Co-Founder That context is important for Uruguay’s private capital and investment sector. The market is still small compared with Brazil, Chile or Mexico, but it is becoming more visible. Uruguay XXI describes the country as a reliable and competitive destination for foreign investment, combining macroeconomic stability, clear rules, incentives and access to regional and international markets. Events such as Uruguay’s first Private Capital Forum show a growing effort to connect local companies with family offices, private equity investors and international partners. In a country where many successful businesses are still privately owned, there is room for patient capital, professional management and consolidation. IBF Negocios operates directly in that space. Led by CEO & Co-Founder Hugo Benedetti, the company has developed a model that sits between private equity, business development and familyoffice investing. Its focus is not to buy distressed assets or chase speculative returns. IBF looks for companies that are already working well, usually in strong sectors, and then uses its experience to improve management, create synergies, strengthen the financial model and help those companies move to the next level. The result is a conservative but active investment approach, built around cash generation, dividends and long-term value creation. For Benedetti, 2026 is a demanding but promising year. “I would define 2026 as a growth year for IBF,” he says. “We are looking at three or four very interesting companies to acquire, and at the same time we are attracting investors from Uruguay and from the region. We are offering a relatively new investment option for the country: investing in successful companies. Our strategy is conservative, but this year requires very intensive management, because Uruguay is growing slowly and each company needs close attention.” That focus on management is one of IBF’s main selling points. The company does not ask investors to wait for a distant exit before seeing results. Its preferred companies are expected to generate cash from

the start, with dividends forming the first layer of return. Value growth comes after that, through stronger operations, better financial discipline and consolidation. IBF’s typical strategy is to acquire a strong company in a strong sector, then bring together similar businesses to create synergies, improve EBITDA and build a larger platform. The model depends on disciplined selection and daily operational work. “This is not a business of speculation for us,” Benedetti says. “We do not buy an average company simply to gain value in six or eight years. We acquire a successful company, review the business model, the economic model and the financial strategy, and then develop a plan to add value. The first rule is that cash is key. Dividends are key. Our businesses are cash machines working for the investors.” The broader oppor tunit y, in Benedetti’s view, is also tied to Uruguay itself. He believes the country has the right reputation internationally, but now needs a more ambitious growth agenda and stronger private-sector participation in attracting capital. “Uruguay’s classic advantages are political stability, social stability and an economy that is quite in order,” he says. “It is a good country to live in, especially if you have a good income. Uruguay is quieter and more stable than larger countries in the region. It is well seen from abroad, and we need to take advantage of that.” IBF also understands that reputation is part of the product. The company wants to be known internationally not only as a buyer of companies, but as a trusted local partner for investors seeking exposure to Uruguay and the wider region. Its corporate identity rests on reliability, trust and transparency, supported by a long track record and a clear way of doing business. It wants to be seen as an authority in Uruguay, with a model that is easy to understand, easy to communicate and backed by shared principles. The next step is scale. IBF is already in contact with family offices from Latin America and Europe, including Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Portugal, and it wants to expand its fundraising capacity so it can pursue larger companies and more ambitious consolidation opportunities. For international investors, the sales argument is clear: IBF offers access to a stable country, an experienced local team, existing deal flow and businesses expected to pay dividends from the beginning. In a market where trust matters as much as opportunity, IBF Negocios is positioning itself as a practical bridge between Uruguay’s successful private companies and global capital.

Top Suppliers

TOP FRANCHISE

SUPPLIERS Need a great marketer? Accountant? Or other services to help run and grow your franchise? Here are the top vendors to choose from.

by T R A C Y S TA P P H E R O L D

he best franchises don’t succeed alone. They rely upon a network of suppliers that provide services like accounting, financial services, consulting and development, lead generation, education, marketing, and more. And because the franchise industry is so unique, these suppliers aren’t just any ol’ vendors. They tend to specialize in exactly what a franchise needs. But with hundreds of these companies to choose from, picking the best one can be a challenge. So who do you hire? That’s why we produce this, our annual ranking of the top franchise suppliers. We survey more than 1,000 franchisors, asking which suppliers they (and their franchisees) use, and having them rate each one on the quality, cost, and value of their products and services. Based on the survey results, each supplier received a score, and the top-scoring companies made it onto our list. On the following pages, you’ll find 187 top suppliers across 13 categories. Franchisors and franchisees can use this ranking as a reliable starting point in their search for trusted suppliers in any area, but keep in mind that the list is not intended as an endorsement of any particular company. It’s important to do your homework to identify whether a supplier will fit your business’s unique needs. To learn more about these and other suppliers, check out our online directory at entrepreneur.com/suppliers.

CAT EG O R I ES Accounting/ P. 66 Banking/ P. 70 Financing/ P. 72 Franchise Broker/ Referral Networks/ P. 74 Franchise Consulting/ Development/ P. 78 Franchise Events/ P. 82 Legal Services/ P. 86 Marketing Agencies/ P. 90 Marketing Products/ Services/ P. 94 Merchant Services/ P. 96 Public Relations/ P. 98 Real Estate/ P. 102 Technology/ P. 106

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 65

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

ACCOUNTING

FROM PERFORMING the annual financial audit that franchisors are required to include in their Franchise Disclosure Documents to offering tax and strategic advisory services, an accounting firm that understands the franchise industry is an invaluable partner for every franchisor.

Citrin Cooperman

Professional services firm providing accounting, tax, and advisory services

Metwally CPA PLLC

Audit, review, and compilation services for small businesses

Kezos & Dunlavy

Full-service CPA firm specializing in real estate tax and accounting, franchise audits, and related issues

A&G

Audit, tax, and accounting services for the franchise industry

BDO USA

Professional services corporation serving franchises worldwide

Deloitte

Citrin Cooperman

Audit and assurance, tax, legal, risk and financial advisory, and consulting services

PwC

“When we were franchising our business, we engaged Citrin Cooperman to help us finalize and validate our model. From that first meeting till today, they have been one of our most trusted partners. They proactively reach out with thoughts and guidance, and have always been there when we had questions. I fully respect, trust, and value their knowledge and expertise.” —JENNY YOUNG, CEO, Brooklyn Robot Foundry

Audit, assurance, consulting, and tax services

66 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Continued on next page

Assurance, consulting, tax, strategy, and transactions

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF CITRIN COOPERMAN

This achievement reflects more than a ranking. It represents the trust, collaboration, and shared success of franchisors, franchisees, and the entire franchise community who inspire us every day. From innovative solutions and exceptional service to an unwavering commitment to helping brands grow, every accomplishment is built on the strength of our relationships. We celebrate this recognition and, most importantly, we thank our clients, franchise family and friends, and our dedicated franchise team.

MICHAEL IANNUZZI Partner and Franchise Practice Leader AARON CHAITOVSKY Partner and Franchise Practice Founder “Citrin Cooperman” is the brand name under which Citrin Cooperman & Company, LLP and Citrin Cooperman Advisors LLC and its subsidiaries provide professional services. Citrin Cooperman & Company, LLP and Citrin Cooperman Advisors LLC (and its subsidiaries) practice as an alternative practice structure in accordance with the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct and applicable law, regulations, and professional standards. Citrin Cooperman & Company, LLP is a licensed independent CPA firm that provides audit and attest services to its clients. Citrin Cooperman Advisors LLC and its subsidiary entities provide tax, advisory, and consulting services to their clients. Citrin Cooperman Advisors LLC and its subsidiary entities are not licensed CPA firms and, therefore, cannot provide attest services. Published 2026.

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

ACCOUNTING

Audit, tax, wealth management, and business consulting services

Audit, tax, and business consulting

Plante Moran

CLA

(CliftonLarsonAllen LLP) CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors

RSM US LLP

KPMG LLP

Professional services firm

DA Advisory Group

Accounting solutions and consulting

Grant Thornton Professional services firm offering audit, tax, and advisory services

68 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

The Franchise CPA

Financial statement audits, royalty audits, and part-time CFO services

Forvis Mazars LLP

Assurance, tax, advisory, and wealth management services

Tax, audit, and advisory solutions

Audit, tax, accounting, and business and transaction advisory services

Cherry Bekaert

Grassi Franchise Services

(formerly OnePoint Franchise Accounting) Franchise accounting

Baker Tilly

Indevia Accounting Accounting for QSR franchisors and franchisees

P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y S T O C K . A D O B E . C O M / T H A P A N A _ S T U D I O

Continued from previous page

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

BANKING

BOTH FRANCHISORS AND FRANCHISEES need a reliable source for banking services, including loans, deposits, checking, payment processing, and more. These are the banks that franchisors told us they and their franchisees trust most.

Deposit accounts, loans, credit cards, cash management, and payment processing

Online banking solutions, mortgage, investing, loans, credit cards, and financial services

Chase for Business

Live Oak Bank Small-business banking

Huntington National Bank

BMO Financial Group

Banking solutions for franchisees, including financing for acquisitions, development, and remodeling

Wells Fargo

Banking, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance

Small-business banking, credit, and digital investing tools

SBA and conventional financing, merchant and treasury solutions, deposits

Bank of America

TD Bank

Loans, mortgages, merchant services, checking, credit cards, money market accounts

KeyBank

PNC Bank, N.A. Cash-flow solutions

Truist Financial Corporation Financial services

“As an operator-built brand growing into a national franchise, we needed a bank that understood both the shops we run and the system we’re building— and Chase for Business delivered. They understand growth and treat you like a long-term partner, not an account number—which gives our team and our franchise candidates real confidence on the financial side.”

—SEAN KIFFOR, cofounder and CFO, Polar Tint

70 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

P H O T O G R A P H B Y S T O C K /A D O B E . C O M / R A F A E L H E N R I Q U E

Chase for Business

Streamline your candidate diligence process Our bVerify tool makes franchise ﬁnancing easier Vet

Qualify

Fund

We review and qualify candidates through our efﬁcient, secure process.

We ensure all ﬁnancial requirements are met for their desired franchise brand.

We help them ﬁnd the best ﬁnancing option for their new business.

CONSECUTIVE YEARS

“ BoeFly continues to be an invaluable asset to our growth strategy. Their bVerify tool helps us conﬁdently vet and fast-track top-tier candidates.” Jason Losco Chief Development Ofﬁcer | Burn Boot Camp

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

FINANCING

BANKS AREN’T THE ONLY SOURCE for business funding. Many franchisees rely on these other trusted financing

solution providers to help them with choosing and obtaining the right type of financing for their business, with options including 401(k) rollover funding, SBA loans, unsecured loans, and more.

Benetrends Financial

401(k) rollover funding, SBA loans, and equipment leasing

FranFund

Business funding services including SBA loan packaging and consulting, 401(k) business financing (ROBS), unsecured loans, and equipment leasing

BoeFly

Franchise financing

Guidant Financial

401(k) business financing, SBA loans, unsecured business loans, business valuations and appraisals, payroll, bookkeeping, and taxes

First Financial

ApplePie Capital Franchise financing

Benetrends Financial “Benetrends Financial has been an outstanding financing partner for both our franchise development team and our prospective franchisees. Their team is knowledgeable, responsive, and does an excellent job of educating candidates on available funding options while guiding them through what can often be a complex process.” —MITCHELL LEE, head of franchise development, Buddy’s Home Furnishings 72 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Tenet Financial Group

Small-business and franchise funding via 401(k) ROBS, SBA loans, and unsecured loans

Linsky Capital LLC Franchise finance loan advisor

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BENETRENDS FINANCIAL

SBA financing for franchise startups, working capital, construction, and acquisitions; equipment leasing

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

FRANCHISE BROKER/ REFERRAL NETWORKS

IFPG “IFPG and its consultants have helped put us on the map. Their management, support staff, and consultants embraced our brand concept on day one. Thanks to their support and guidance, our brand has experienced responsible growth over the past two years—and we’re looking forward to the next 10 with them!” —EDWARD M. TERRY, founder and CEO, The Shutter House 74 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Continued on next page

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF IFPG

FRANCHISE BROKERS WORK under many different names, including franchise consultants, coaches, and advisors. But they all perform the same service—helping prospective franchisees find a brand that fits their skills and goals. Typically, their services are free to franchisees, while franchisors pay for successful referrals.

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

FRANCHISE BROKER/REFERRAL NETWORKS Continued from previous page

→ FRANNET

Membership-based franchise consulting network

FranServe

Consulting service to prospective franchise buyers

Franchise Brokers Association & Franchise Training Institute Franchise broker training and membership organization

FranChoice

Franchise Sidekick

BAI Business Alliance Inc.

Brokerage services for franchise companies and prospective franchise buyers

Consulting firm helping clients find the right franchise opportunity

Network of franchise consultants who guide aspiring entrepreneurs through the process of business ownership

Free consulting service to individuals considering franchise ownership

The Perfect Franchise

76 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Advisory services for prospective franchisees

FranNet

(acquired by IFPG in April 2026)

TCX: The Consultant Exchange

Digital networking platform connecting franchisors with franchise consultants

The You Network Franchise consulting and education for senior-level executives seeking franchise opportunities

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF FRANNET

IFPG

ATTEND A FRANCHISE EXPO

WHEN WORK CHANGES.

Ask a diﬀerent question.

“What if I owned the business instead?” The conversation that changes your future could begin here. Meet franchise brands across dozens of industries.

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

FRANCHISE CONSULTING/ DEVELOPMENT

WHETHER YOU’RE A BUSINESS OWNER thinking about starting the formidable process of franchising your brand or an established franchisor hoping to ramp up growth, improve operations, or better understand your system, this category offers a number of trusted options for franchise consulting and development.

iFranchise Group

Franchise consulting and development services for emerging and established franchisors

SMB Franchise Advisors Franchise consulting services for emerging brands

Franchise Business Review

Market research firm specializing in measuring franchisee, employee, and customer satisfaction

BrandONE Franchise Development

iFranchise Group “IFranchise Group’s team combines deep franchise expertise with practical, thoughtful guidance, and they have always been responsive, professional, and committed to helping us achieve our objectives. They’ve helped us navigate highly complex projects with exceptional attention to detail, a collaborative approach, and a deep understanding of franchise operations and best practices.”

AC Inc.

Field coaching education and training

Big Sky Franchise Team Franchise consulting, development, and marketing

—JENNIFER YRUEGAS, franchise and IP operations/general counsel, EOS Worldwide 78 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Continued on next page

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF IFRANCHISE GROUP

Franchise development, franchise system preparation, capital strategy, and franchisor growth support

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

FRANCHISE CONSULTING/DEVELOPMENT Continued from previous page

Gerson Advisory Services

Franchise consulting and development

CGI Franchise

Technology, training, and coaching for franchise development

REP’M Group Full-service franchise development firm

M Squared Franchise Consulting

Franchise development services

MSA Worldwide Design and development of emerging franchise systems and strategic advice and tactical services for established franchisors

Strategic planning, franchise development, and franchise sales organization

19 7

Franchise sales organization

Marketing and strategy advisors for emerging and midsize franchise and multi-location brands

Operations and compliance consulting

FranDevCo

Catalyst

FranWise

Cadence Franchising

Franchise recruitment

FranLift

Outsourced franchise development and sales

80 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Franchise FastLane Franchise sales organization

Franchise Performance Group

Franchise consulting firm specializing in franchise development

Accurate Franchising

Franchise development consulting

P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y S T O C K . A D O B E . C O M / D I L O K

Franchise Growth Solutions

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

FRANCHISE EVENTS

FROM LARGE CONVENTIONS to more intimate experiences, franchise events across the country (and in our neighbor

to the north, Canada) provide opportunities for franchisors, franchisees, potential franchisees, and suppliers to network and learn from industry experts.

IFA Convention

by International Franchise Association Annual franchise event with networking, learning, and keynote addresses

Franchise Leadership & Development Conference

by Franchise Update Media and International Franchise Association (IFA) Event for franchise sales and development and C-suite executives

Springboard Event for Emerging and [Re]Emerging Franchisors

Multi-Unit Franchising Conference

by Franchise Update Media Event for multi-unit franchisees

IFA Convention “I started attending the IFA Convention over 25 years ago, and I still consider it an absolute must. It provides invaluable opportunities to connect and build relationships with the most experienced and successful leaders in franchising. Through rough economic times, changes in technology, and exciting new market trends, the convention has been a touchstone that keeps attendees supported, updated, and moving forward.” —ROSEMARIE HARTNETT, president, Abrakadoodle 82 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Let’s Grow!

by Franchise Assembly Franchise development and sales continuing education event

Emerging Franchisor Conference

by International Franchise Association (IFA) Three-day education conference for emerging franchisors

Continued on next page

P H O T O G R A P H C O U R T E S Y O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L F R A N C H I S E A S S O C I AT I O N

by FisherZucker & Fishman PR Event for emerging and reemerging franchisors

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

FRANCHISE EVENTS Continued from previous page

by National Event Management 26-city North American franchise trade-show circuit

Trade show platform producing franchise expos

The National Franchise Show

→ YOUNGCONFERENCE

Franchise Brokers Conference & Expo by Franchise Brokers Association Networking and educational event for brokers and franchisors

Franchise UnConference

by FisherZucker, Fishman PR, and Hot Dish Advertising Franchise networking retreat

SKIP Events

The Great American Franchise Expo

CFA National Convention

by Canadian Franchise Association Educational and networking event for the Canadian franchise community

FranCamp

Franchise mastermind summit

YoungConference by FisherZucker & Fishman PR Event focusing on digital marketing, technology, and innovations in development and operations

by Franchise Sidekick Franchise leadership, education, and destination-based networking events for franchisors, advisors, and industry partners

by Franchise Assembly Professional development peer advisory groups for franchise professionals and executives

FBR Summit

by Franchise Business Review Event for franchise operations leaders and teams that directly support franchisees

IFPG Retreat

by IFPG Franchise consultant networking event

Franchise Growth & Marketing Conference (FGMC)

by Franchise Update Media and International Franchise Association (IFA) Event for franchise executives responsible for customer experience management

84 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Restaurant Finance & Development Conference

by Restaurant Finance Monitor Financial event for restaurant owners, operators, and financial executives

Franchise Expos by MFV Expositions Networking and education events for prospective business owners

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF YOUNGCONFERENCE

Hello Mastermind Retreats

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

LEGAL SERVICES

AN ATTORNEY WHO UNDERSTANDS the unique legal requirements and challenges of the franchise industry is essential for both franchisors and franchisees. Fortunately, there are plenty of good options to choose from, making this one of the most competitive categories on our list.

Internicola Law Firm

National franchise law firm

FisherZucker LLC

Full-service law firm focusing on franchising and licensing matters

Spadea Lignana Franchise Attorneys Full-service franchise law firm

Faegre Drinker

International law firm with a full-service franchise practice

Mullin P.C.

Franchise compliance, IP protection, general business, and dispute resolution services

DLA Piper

Legal services including franchise law compliance, mergers and acquisitions, and dispute resolution

Internicola Law Firm “Internicola has been far more than our law firm. From day one, they have served as trusted thought partners, strategic advisors, and an essential extension of our franchise development team. They understand that strong legal guidance is not just about protecting the brand—it is about helping build a franchise system that can grow responsibly and succeed over the long term.”

Cheng Cohen LLC

Full-service law firm exclusively representing franchisors

Franchise.Law Legal services for franchisors

—CODY PEPPER, CEO, Fast Fresh Brands 86 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

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PHOTOGR A PH COUR T ESY OF T HE IN T ERNICOL A L AW F IRM

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

LEGAL SERVICES

Full-service law firm with franchise and distribution practice team

Franchise legal services, including dispute resolution, transactions, and trademarks

Full-service franchise law firm offering transactional, licensing, trademark, and real estate services

Lathrop GPM

The Franchise Firm LLP

Full-service law firm representing franchisors and franchisees

Plave Koch PLC

Cassels

Business law firm

Drumm Law LLC

Manning Fulton Franchise transactional and litigation representation

88 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Canada Lewis & Associates PLLC

Full-service law firm offering franchise, dispute resolution, real estate, and trademark services

Quarles & Brady

Full-service law firm offering transactional, regulatory, and dispute resolution services

Saxton & Stump

Full-service law firm with franchising, licensing, and distribution group

Shipe Dosik Law LLC

Franchise legal services, including transactions, trademarks, and dispute resolution

Akerman LLP

Full-service law firm with experience in franchising

Greenberg Traurig LLP Legal services

PHOTOGRAPH BY STOCK.ADOBE.COM/SIRICHAI

Continued from previous page

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

MARKETING AGENCIES

FRANCHISORS NEED TO MARKET not only their products and services, but also their franchise opportunities. These are the marketing agencies that our survey says best understand and serve both of those needs.

Hot Dish Advertising

Full-service strategic marketing for franchise development and consumer growth

Reshift Media Social media, search, software, and website development for franchises

Thunderly

Franchise marketing firm

Ignite Visibility Digital marketing agency serving franchises and multi-location businesses

Scorpion

Digital marketing and technology solutions

Tidehouse

Elysium Marketing Group

Hot Dish Advertising

Full-service marketing agency specializing in franchise development and local store marketing

“Hot Dish Advertising really took the time to understand our brand—our past, our present, and our future (where we want to go)—and customized our current strategy to reflect that. This created a trusted relationship right from the start.” —MEREDETH S. JONES, vice president, franchise development and design, A&W Restaurants 90 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Continued on next page

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF HOT DISH ADVERTISING

Full-service digital marketing and PR agency serving franchisors, franchisees, and multi-location businesses

#1 4X

Hot Dish has been Entrepreneur’s #1 Franchise Marketing Supplier for four years because we’re built for franchising. We pair deep franchise expertise with connected strategy to solve complex challenges and drive system-wide growth in these ways and more:

SEO/GEO

MULTILOCATION WEBSITES

PAID MEDIA

See why franchise brands partner with Hot Dish Advertising. 612.341.3100 | info@hotdishad.com | HotDishAd.com

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

MARKETING AGENCIES

Franchise marketing agency

Websites and digital marketing for franchisors and franchisees

Location3

Lead Navigators

Full-service franchise development digital marketing agency

ClickTecs

C Squared Social

Full-service digital marketing agency

Bright Pink Agency

WordPress website design, development, and optimization for franchise brands

92 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

Curious Jane

Consumer marketing, franchise development, and local store marketing for franchise and multi-location brands

Full-service marketing and public relations agency serving franchisors

Full-service digital media national marketing agency specializing in franchise development lead generation and public relations

See.Spark.Go

TopFire Media

P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y S T O C K . A D O B E . C O M / S M I L E S T U D I O A P

Continued from previous page

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

MARKETING PRODUCTS/SERVICES THE FRANCHISORS WHO TOOK OUR SURVEY also identified a variety of products and services that they use to augment

their marketing efforts—and those of their franchisees—including technology platforms, lead-generation tools, video production, and of course, AI tools.

Agentic workforce for multi-location marketing

SaaS platform combining social media technology, artificial intelligence, and employee advocacy

SOCi

Consumer Fusion Inc.

AI-powered reputation management, listings, and social media platform

Rallio

Netsertive

Digital marketing technology for multi-location businesses

FranchiseFilming Promotional video production services, training videos, marketing

Eulerity

Centralized paid and organic agentic marketing for multi-location brands

Customer and employee experience platform

Franchise sales organization specializing in pay-per-click lead generation and pipeline management

WebPunch

Suttle-Straus Brand portals to enable local print, mail, and promotional marketing

Lead FSO

Trifactor

Video marketing, branding, and digital marketing solutions for franchise brands

PromoRepublic AI-powered multi-location marketing platform

Voxie

AI-powered texting platform for franchise brands

“SOCi has been a tremendous partner, helping our franchise owners strengthen their local presence while maintaining brand consistency across our system. Their platform, reporting, and strategic support empower our owners to connect more effectively with homeowners, while giving our support center the visibility and tools needed to coach, support, and drive stronger local marketing performance across the network.” —JESSICA WEEKS, senior director of marketing, Ace Handyman Services

94 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SOCi

SOCi

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

MERCHANT SERVICES

THESE COMPANIES OFFER PAYMENT PROCESSING and related services—vital to every modern business, but perhaps especially to franchise systems. In fact, many franchisors have trusted vendors in this category that they recommend or even require their franchisees to use to maintain consistency systemwide.

Toast

Cloud-based restaurant point-of-sale and management system

Intuit QuickBooks

Cloud-based software for accounting, payments, and payroll

Square

Payment processing, reporting and analytics, POS software, and business services

Franchise Payments Network

Payment processing for franchise chains

Global Payments Inc.

Payment technology and software solutions

Stripe

Payments infrastructure and business applications

Elavon

Payment processing solutions

Authorize.net, a Visa Solution Payment processing and management system for businesses

Fiserv

Omnichannel commerce solutions, merchant services, and financial services technology solutions

Swipesum

Merchant services and consulting

“Toast has been much more than a point-ofsale provider. They’ve been a true strategic partner, helping us grow and evolve our brands. Their platform is intuitive, reliable, and continuously innovating. What truly sets Toast apart, however, is the partnership. It’s rare to find a technology partner that combines industry-leading solutions with exceptional people, and that’s exactly what Toast delivers.” —ABBY BROWN, director of marketing operations, Craveworthy Brands

96 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF TOAST

Toast

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

PUBLIC RELATIONS

Fishman PR “We’ve worked with Fishman PR for more than 10 years, and we would never consider using another PR firm. Their communication, follow-through, talent, and results are truly remarkable. They provide top-tier expertise in positioning our brand, driving franchise sales, and supporting our new store openings. Plus, their deep connections in the franchising space make them a fantastic resource.” —SHELLEY PARNELL, chief experience officer, Dogtopia 98 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

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P H O T O G R A P H C O U R T E S Y O F F I S H M A N P U B L I C R E L AT I O N S

MUCH LIKE MARKETING AGENCIES, public relations firms working in the franchise space need to help drive both brand awareness and lead generation. These are the agencies our survey-takers identified as the most trusted to tackle that challenge via social media, content marketing, media relations, influencer and local store marketing, and other PR services.

THE VOTE IS IN! FISHMAN PR RANKED #1 PR AGENCY

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Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

PUBLIC RELATIONS Continued from previous page

Mainland

Full-service communications firm specializing in franchise brands

Ripley PR

Strategic communication services, including media relations, digital content, social media, and crisis management

Sanderson & Associates

Media placement, media coaching, social media, communications, crisis management, and consulting for franchisors and franchisees

Powerhouse+Co. National PR, social media, and influencer firm specializing in franchise brands

Powers, a 360PR+ Agency PR and integrated marketing for franchise brands

PR and communications agency

Fishman PR

PR and content marketing for franchise lead generation and brand awareness

Konnect Agency

Full-service PR, marketing, and digital agency

All Points Public Relations

PR, social media, content marketing, digital, lead generation strategy, and franchise sales

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Franchise Elevator PR

PR services for emerging franchise brands

Champion

PR, lead generation, influencer and local store marketing, digital advertising, social media, ideation, and crisis communications for franchise and multi-unit brands

Tilson PR

PR, marketing, and social media services

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Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

REAL ESTATE

LOCATION CAN MAKE OR BREAK A FRANCHISE BUSINESS, especially in the retail and food industries, so franchisors

Morrow Hill “The team at Morrow Hill is wonderful to work with. They understand our brand and our real estate requirements, and work expeditiously to source sites that meet our criteria. They are responsive to our team and our franchisees and very effective through the negotiation process. Their involvement has elevated our site selection and supported our efforts to win the trust of our franchisees.” —VANESSA YAKOBSON, CEO, Blo Blow Dry Bar

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Continued on next page

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MORROW HILL

look for commercial real-estate firms and site selection advisory services that understand their franchisees’ needs and find them the best deal possible.

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

REAL ESTATE Continued from previous page

REMAX LLC Global real estate company

Build’M

Real estate and construction project management

Reimagine CRE

Real estate advisory firm focused on franchise retail nationwide

Coldwell Banker

Full-service commercial and residential real estate brokerage services

redC Business Advocacy Franchise real estate, design, and construction management services

Newmark

FranSite LLC

Technology-enabled real estate consulting and project management for the franchise industry

Commercial real estate services

Commercial real estate and property investment services

Morrow Hill

CBRE

JLL

Colliers International

Global real estate services and investment management company

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FranReal

Commercial real estate

LocateAI

Artificial intelligence and advisory services for retail site selection

RESOLUT RE

Analytics and brokerage services for tenants

Real estate services for franchisees and franchisors

ForeFront Commercial

Full-service commercial real estate firm

P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y S T O C K . A D O B E . C O M / I N F I N I T E F L O W

Commercial real estate advisory firm

Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

TECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGY HAS BECOME an indispensable part of doing business in the modern world, especially for franchise systems that need to keep hundreds or even thousands of locations connected and consistent. Solutions in this category include CRM platforms, hiring software, AI assistants, training systems, and more.

HubSpot

CRM, marketing, sales, and customer-service platform

CareerPlug

Hiring and retention software for franchises

ClientTether

Franchise CRM and software platform for franchise development, franchisee sales, and marketing automation

ServiceMinder Operations platform for home and commercial service franchises

FranConnect

Franchise management software

monday.com Cloud-based work management platform

CRM, cloud computing, sales, service, marketing, commerce, and analytics apps

“HubSpot has been a trusted partner for many years, and I’ve used it at all prior franchisor employers. The intuitive user experience, paired with HubSpot Academy and the ability to easily and quickly find solutions, is top tier. I also appreciate the flexibility in customizing our contract, which keeps my budget in line. Incredible customization at an affordable price.”

Zoho

Cloud software suite and SaaS applications for business

—LYNN STEWART, vice president, franchise development, ATC Healthcare Services

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Continued on next page

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF HUBSPOT

Salesforce

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Top Suppliers

Service descriptions come from respective suppliers.

TECHNOLOGY Continued from previous page

AI assistant and ticketing system for franchise businesses

Conversational AI platform for real-time prospect engagement

Automated messaging software connecting franchisors with customers and leads

EZee Assist

Lumin.ai

FranFunnel

Internet Strategy Labs Franchise technology solutions

FranchiseSoft SaaS-based franchise management software

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Real estate lease administration and location management platform for the franchise industry

Franchise training system

Leasecake

LearningZen

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF LUMIN.AI

→ LUMIN.AI

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HOW TO SUCCEED IN FRANCHISING On TV, Jon Taffer rescues bars. But in real life, he also builds franchises. And he’s seen what works better than anyone. by J A S O N F E I F E R

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September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 111

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location, as well as a Chinese restaurant franchise called Mark Pi’s. As a franchisor, he’s now growing his restaurant concept Taffer’s Tavern, which has three traditional establishments and one quick-service restaurant already open. And as a consultant, he’s helped Buffalo Wild Wings, TGI Fridays, Wolfgang Puck Express, and more. “I find that entrepreneurs’ biggest flaws are typically bookkeeping, accounting systems, and controls,” Taffer says. “A great franchise fills those holes for an entrepreneur. It allows you to have systems that are tight, that’ll control your costs, control your structure, control your consistency, and still give you the freedom to be that con-

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nective person [with customers] that you love being as an entrepreneur.” But before you take the leap, Taffer says there are a few things you need to consider. Not every brand will be right for you, and not every brand is primed for success. In this conversation, Taffer shares a game plan for picking the right franchise, marketing it strongly, and avoiding the kind of pitfalls that could land you on Bar Rescue.

Why are you such a fan of franchising? Franchising is risk mitigation. When I’m creating a new restaurant concept, for example, I need to close my eyes

and picture it. But the most beautiful part of a franchise is: You can actually go sit in the business before you buy!

There’s no imagination necessary, because you can see how someone else is running that same business before you buy one yourself. Yeah. You can see the finishes, you can taste the food, you can try the technology, whatever the franchise is. That allows you to really understand how it feels, how it adapts to your market, how it adapts to your personality. In fact, I’m doing this right now, because I’m looking for a doggy daycare and boarding franchise. So I’m determining which franchise brand I want.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY VIVIEN KILLILEA BEST

on Taffer knows what works in franchising. And he won’t yell at you about it. Taffer is known for yelling. On his hit TV show, Bar Rescue, he’s spent 15 years screaming at failing bar and restaurant owners until they fix their businesses. But when he’s off camera, Taffer has a very different kind of solution for aspiring entrepreneurs: He says to open a franchise, where franchisees are handed the kind of playbook that independent business owners never get. That can make running a business much smoother. Taffer has seen franchising work from every angle. As a franchisee, he once owned a Hooters

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That’s an unexpected business for you to own! There are thousands of franchises out there in every conceivable category. How did you decide on doggy daycare? It was personal. There was not a great place to board my dogs where I live. And this is a great way to start finding opportunities. When you travel in your community day to day, keep your eyes and ears open, and notice the interesting holes. You can say, “Boy, you know, my market really needs a blank.” So what kind of blank franchise opportunities are out there? And what are the benefits of each? When you’re personally evaluating which franchise to buy, what things are you looking for? A lot of people say, “Are the operations tight enough? Do they train the people well enough? Are the training systems good enough?” But I’ll give you a nontraditional answer: A great franchisor should have a great marketing and promotion department. If they don’t, I wouldn’t touch them with a 10-foot pole. Of course, some brands have more resources than others. But that marketing muscle and sales orientation of a company is very, very critical. If the company is too operations-oriented and not marketing- and revenue-oriented, that would concern me. Is that because, when you’re buying a franchise, you should also be able to benefit from that franchise’s existing reputation? Like, if the franchise isn’t getting its own name out there, then the thing you’re buying is less valuable? Yes. And I’m of the belief that almost any franchise should be

a slave to sales. Operations is a slave to sales: Everything about it should perpetuate sales, create frequency, create connectivity. The product should be built with a sales orientation. And the marketing, obviously, should be built with a sales orientation. If the company lacks that sales orientation, then revenue growth is going to be on your shoulders.

If someone’s thinking about buying a franchise, how do you suggest they inquire about this kind of thing? The first thing is: Ask what their same-store sales comparables are. I don’t mean individual stores. I mean companywide. What are the sales compared to the same month last year? That’s an indicator right there.

some of them.” They should have answers, and they should talk sales, not just operations.

What should a franchisee expect from the franchisor, and what shouldn’t they expect? Because of course, the franchisor isn’t actually making the franchisee money. The franchisee must run the business themselves. What you said is very astute. It’s their business. They must get up in the morning and make sure it’s clean, that everything’s working. The franchise is just going to tell you what to do. But the franchisee is the one who’s got to do it. So the issue then becomes: Are you the right person to do it? When we sell Taffer’s Tavern fran-

tight. I don’t have to have an experienced restaurant operator, but I do like experienced customer service people. To me, the résumé isn’t as important as the personality. I want to see that they really care, and that they say to themselves, “I’m going there every day to make people smile. That’s important to me. I wanna make people smile.” Then that’s my person.

What do you think smart franchises should be doing now in marketing? It is noisy out there. So I think affiliating with other brands is very, very smart today. The most perfect franchise marketing that I’ve seen in the past few years—and you’ll smile when I say it—was the Doritos

YOUR MESSAGING SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE THESE ELEMENTS: THIS IS WHY YOU WANT TO COME, AND THIS IS WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT. IF YOU POUND THAT MESSAGING, IT STARTS TO BREAK THROUGH THE NOISE.”

Then say, “Tell me about your marketing department. How many people do you have? How active are they? What do the franchisees receive? Do we get quarterly promotions? I’d love to see the promotions. I’d love to see the last package that you sent to franchisees. Show me everything that you’re going to do for me to build my revenue.”

Show me how you’re going to build my revenue? You can just say that to a franchisor? Absolutely. And they’ll say, “Look, I can’t guarantee anything, of course, but I have seven people in my marketing department. You’re going to get promotions to choose from every quarter. Here’s an example of

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chises, I like to go dark. I’ll tell the potential franchisee, “There are days you’re going to be there till 2 a.m. doing inventory. You’ll have some 12-hour days, man. Your dishwasher is gonna quit. And you’re gonna be running the dishwashing machine.”

Because you want to see how committed this person is? There’s a brand risk any time a store closes, right? So you want to choose those people very carefully. When you’re choosing franchisees for Taffer’s Tavern, what are you looking for? Committed integrity. You know, Taffer’s Tavern is a tight restaurant operation. Our kitchen is

Locos Taco from Taco Bell. Taking a beloved product like Doritos, and bringing it into that taco? It was brilliant. Sales exploded for them. As a restaurateur, I used to run spots with car dealerships. We’d say: “Come test-drive a Ford and you get a free lunch at Taffer’s Tavern.” That lunch would cost me $4, but they would run 60 spots a day saying, “Lunch at Taffer’s Tavern, lunch at Taffer’s Tavern.” But the most important thing you can do is, in my view, have a five- to seven-word mission statement—and then pound it, pound it, pound it. Your messaging should always have these elements: This is why you want to come, and this

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is what you can expect. If you pound that messaging, it starts to break through the noise. But if every day your content is different, then your message is different, and that’s a big mistake. It never pounds through.

What’s that mission statement at Taffer’s Tavern? “A bar is a bar, but a tavern has soul.” It creates a perception. Now you’re saying to yourself, “Boy, I’m curious, what does he mean by that?” And there’s only one way you satisfy that curiosity, right? The franchisor would do all this marketing, correct? Does the franchisee have a role in marketing too? Typically, the store is responsible for what we call local store marketing, or LSM. And you, as the franchisee, are responsible for your local store marketing. So as an experienced consultant, I’m going to tell you, “Jason, I want you to put all that money within about four or five blocks of your store. Own that neighborhood, ’cause the fact of the matter is, 80% of your business is going to come from four or five blocks away. It’s not going to come from the other side of town.” I, as the franchisor, am not going to put flyers in the mailboxes of your neighborhood. But I’ll give you a lot of suggested local marketing programs and teach you how to do local store marketing. We do things like taking a couple of servers, and for 10 hours a week, they’ll be out in the marketplace. They might be just stopping into stores, developing promotional relationships. Sometimes we do food drops. You know, Hooters was famous for that. They’d send five Hooters girls over and do a wing drop with 300 wings in an office building.

That must have worked well. It’s amazing what happens when you ask people to come to your business. Walking in and asking them to come to your business creates surprising results. I like to give my employees business cards. And I like them to be proud of where they work. Because if they’re proud to work for Jon Taffer’s bar and they love our food, and they would invite their mother to Taffer’s Tavern for their birthday, then they are now ambassadors for my business, aren’t they? What new things are you seeing in franchising today? The restaurant space has smaller models. Taffer’s Tavern started as a 5,000- to 6,000-squarefoot franchise, and is now 2,500

many companies send me boxes with no promotional materials. In my restaurants, even when we mail checks out, there’s a promotional piece in that envelope, like a coupon.

That’s also a great opportunity for personalization. It matters. When I was running my Hooters, I would have my servers write their name on a beverage napkin and put it in the middle of the table. “Hi, my name’s Kathy.” Their tips went up 8%. Because it created connectivity. Just like it personalizes the experience. I’m not a server, I’m Kathy. And now you’ll remember her name, which means a customer feels more invested in her. Yeah. The team loved tracking

you. And don’t feel guilty about it; they talk to many prospects that don’t buy. Just see how it feels to go through that process and to understand what they do. I’m going to guess that a good franchisor will make you feel comfortable with what they provide, what their support is, and help you mitigate that risk in your own mind.

Bring that process to life a little more. Let’s say someone calls Taffer’s Tavern to explore franchising. What happens? We send you our FDD [Franchise Disclosure Document]. And then we talk to you two to three weeks later. We like to send our prospective franchisees to one of the stores in Georgia. We have you go spend the day in the store, spend

A GREAT FRANCHISOR SHOULD HAVE A GREAT MARKETING AND PROMOTION DEPARTMENT. IF THEY DON’T, I WOULDN’T TOUCH THEM WITH A 10-FOOT POLE. THAT MARKETING MUSCLE AND SALES ORIENTATION OF A COMPANY IS VERY, VERY CRITICAL.”

square feet. So the sales per square foot is, like, 40% higher, and the return is much greater. It’s easier to operate. Our Orlando restaurant doesn’t open for weekday lunch now; we open at 4 pm, which creates no second shift during the day. I believe that any business that’s open seven days a week can probably do the same revenue six days a week. Just look at the business model and see for yourself. Where are those stress points? Where are those opportunities?

So it’s a question of: “How is consumer behavior shifting, and how can we take the most advantage of that?” Yeah. And in today’s world of delivery, it’s amazing how

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the tips. It was a great experiment together, and I bet a lot of them still do it to this day. Personalizing something and creating that connectivity—that’s how you create customers forever.

If someone’s been reading this, and is now inspired to go buy a franchise, what should their first step be? Well, it costs nothing to do research. I would reach out to one of these franchise companies and ask them the questions that we talked about. Either you’ll start to feel warm and fuzzy about it, or maybe fears will grow. But you’ve got to stick your toe in the water. It’s completely free to talk. They’re happy to spend time with

time with the franchisee, ask him how he feels about it. I’m not in the room. We’re not monitoring anything. Go talk to the employees, see the customers, spend a whole day with the franchisee. That’s a great thing for you to do as well, if you’re thinking about doing a franchise. Go to the restaurant first, even before you contact the franchise company. Talk to the owners. They’d love to see you be a franchisee too. Remember, every additional franchise puts more money in the marketing fund, so every franchisee wants to see more franchisees.

Hear the full conversation on Jason Feifer’s Entrepreneur podcast, Problem Solvers.

Franchisee

The Gold Medal Mindset

He triumphed in the Olympics. Here’s how his winning approach works in franchising too. b y S H E R I N S H I B U

How did your career as an athlete translate into running a business? In track, you might try something different in a race to get better results; in business, you might put out something that doesn’t work one week and then try something new the next week that becomes a hit. The key is to try new things, remain disciplined, and never panic.

Once you bought the studio, what were the first things you

wanted to do differently there? One big issue was that the previous owner was rarely in the studio. The business lacked unique events; it was just standard paint nights. Now we’ve added more specialty events like chunky blanket workshops, candle-making, murder mystery nights, mystery paintings, trivia, and more. The idea is to offer experiences rather than just painting sessions, because people will get bored if they’re just painting the same way over and over.

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→ MICHAEL CHERRY

How have you gotten attention for the business? Social media and local presence. I went to school for marketing, and when I became the owner, our social media presence was almost nonexistent. I make sure we post consistently and keep our branding sharp, so more people in the community recognize us. I also physically go out into the community to introduce myself to other business owners, letting them know we’re here and what we offer. If I’m in Sam’s Club or Michaels, I’m handing out cards. Have you had anything go wrong? I haven’t had a major catastrophe, but I’ve had smaller customer issues, like guests not being happy with certain sketches, brushes, or the amount of artwork on the walls. My approach is to jump in quickly

and fix things to keep customers happy. I’m a “customer guy” first, and I believe the customer is always right. For example, one customer mentioned that the previous owner had more paintings on the walls and didn’t like the reduced number. I immediately responded by painting and hanging 60 more canvases to address that concern.

What are your goals five to 10 years from now? My first goal is to turn this studio into the best-performing Painting with a Twist location in the franchise. Once this studio is at that level, I’d like to acquire other locations—starting with the ones in Virginia, and then potentially studios in other states if owners decide to sell. For now, though, I’m focused on improving this studio.

PHOTOGR A PH COURT ESY OF PA IN T ING W I T H A T W IST

unning a franchise is a lot like running a 400-meter race in the Olympics. Michael Cherry should know. He’s done both. Cherry, 31, won a gold medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (which were postponed until 2021). Four years later, as he was looking for his next career move, he saw that the Painting with a Twist studio in his hometown of Chesapeake, Virginia, was up for sale. He was delighted, because he’s a longtime fan of the franchise. “I’m an experiences guy,” he says. “I went there for a date one time, and after that I kind of fell in love with it. I started going in every single city that I stayed or lived in.” The Chesapeake location was struggling, but Cherry saw opportunity. “It had potential,” he says. “And I just thought it would be super special to own something like this.” Since taking ownership of the studio, Cherry has generated 15% more income than the same time last year, and he’s on pace to exceed $300,000 in revenue in 2026. Cherry credits the skills he learned from that 400-meter race—the longest sprint in the Olympics—for his business success. “That race teaches patience, pain, tolerance, and execution under pressure,” he says. “You can’t panic in a 400, and you can’t panic in business. There will be slow days, but you have to trust that things will turn around if you keep working.” Here, Cherry shares his endurance strategies for franchise success.

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Franchisor

The Competition Was Hot

f your business is innovative and successful, you’re likely to face a problem: Others will notice your success and start competing against you. What’s the solution? For Abby Taylor, the answer was franchising. It’s the reason she turned Playa Bowls into a franchise that now has over 400 locations and drives more than $300 million in revenue—not because she initially wanted to franchise, but because she saw it as the best way to protect her brand. Taylor is a lifelong beach kid and surfer who discovered acai while traveling in California, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Nicaragua. “I loved the way it tasted. I loved the way it made me feel. I loved the health benefits of the acai,” she says. So in 2014, while working as a bartender, she decided to try a side hustle: She set up a borrowed patio table on the side of a road on the Jersey Shore, and began selling acai bowls herself. It was slow going at first. Almost no one in the area knew what acai was, let alone why they should trade their usual post-beach pizza for a purple smoothie bowl piled with fruit. Taylor barely made any money, and was stretching herself thin. “I was bartending till four in the morning, and then I was getting up at 8 a.m. and making bowls at the cart, and then I was going back and bartending,” she says. Eventually, she started marketing by handing out flyers on

the beach. “I knew if I could get people to try it, they would be back,” she says. She was right. By the next summer, there was so much demand that she moved into a brick-and-mortar space on Belmar’s Ocean Avenue. As the business grew, customers started to show up even in the winter. Then the competition arrived. Taylor’s company had proven the market—and others wanted in. They opened larger places with longer menus and bright aesthetics, and Taylor was freaking out. “I had put everything into this, and this brand is such a big part of me,” Taylor says. “I just felt like people were stealing it, and I couldn’t believe it.” To survive, she realized, she’d need to become synonymous with the category—owning it before her competitors could. That meant she’d need to expand fast, and would need partners who aligned with her vision. But how? In 2016, she found her answer: franchising. The following year, she signed her first franchise deal with the landlord who owned the building of Playa Bowls’ original store. When choosing early franchisees, Taylor recalls, “It was a lot of, like, I know this person, I know this person.” But as Playa Bowls grew beyond her personal network, Taylor gained a clearer sense of the kind of people she wanted to partner with and what separates the top performers. Today, she looks for “the fran-

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chisees that are out in the community every single day…they never take their foot off the gas,” she says. “They’re at the events. They’re constantly being a pillar in the community.” She also looks for owner-operators who genuinely love Playa Bowls and live a lifestyle that fits the brand. Before signing on, she makes sure they seriously ask themselves: Am I ready to do this? Franchising achieved her goals: It allowed the brand to expand rapidly, defining Playa Bowls as the acai brand in many markets. And now that the company has surpassed 400 locations, Taylor envisions moving further across the U.S.—and the globe. Its first

international location opened in Toronto, Canada, this June. But along the way, she’s discovered another love—not just for the brand, but for the franchisees who join her. She loves hearing their personal stories and what draws them to the brand. Many discovered Playa Bowls at a soccer tournament or as a weekend ritual with their kids. “I love that I’m creating an experience for families or friends,” she says. For aspiring founders, her advice is simple: “If it were easy, everybody would do it,” she says. “If you want to be successful, you have to act on it. You can’t be half in; it has to be a full commitment.”

P H O T O G R A P H S C O U R T E S Y O F P L AYA B O W L S

Abby Taylor built Playa Bowls on the sunny beach. But when competitors showed up, she realized only one thing could save her company: franchising. b y S H E R I N S H I B U

BUILDING ACROSS BORDERS Canadian Franchise Owner Expands His PuroClean Empire into the U.S. fter spending 16 years building one of PuroClean Canada’s most successful operations, Joe Pietras is taking that experience into a U.S. market.

Franchise Owners opportunities they didn’t know existed.”

Pietras spent 17 years managing drilling rigs across Alberta, Texas, China, and Mexico before deciding he wanted to build something of his own. In 2010, he left the oilfield industry and opened a PuroClean Canada franchise in Lethbridge, Alberta, drawn to the opportunity to own a business that helped people recover after property damage. That single location grew into a multiunit operation. Alongside his business partner, Pietras expanded into Calgary with three additional territories and became a 13-time PuroClean President’s Circle recipient, establishing himself as one of PuroClean’s topperforming Franchise Owners. Today, he’s growing again. This time, across an international border. His newest location in Kalispell, Montana, introduces PuroClean’s presence in the state while extending his business into the U.S. “I have been investigating the opportunity in the U.S. market for a few years now,” Pietras says. “Since Mark Davis and Frank Torre purchased PuroClean, I’ve seen the company build a corporate foundation that gives

For experienced operators like Pietras, the value of the PuroClean franchise opportunity is tied to the infrastructure behind the brand. Through PuroClean’s relationship with Signal Restoration Services, Franchise Owners have the ability to participate in commercial large loss projects that many independent restoration companies simply aren’t positioned to pursue. Through this unique partnership, a two-way referral system has been established, allowing PuroClean Franchise Owners to earn an incentive by referring large-scale projects to Signal, while Signal can route local opportunities back to PuroClean Franchise Owners.

‘‘

These opportunities were a large part of my choice to open my location in Kalispell.”

Joe Pietras, Multi-Unit PuroClean Franchise Owner

PuroClean’s national account relationships add another layer of revenue-generating support. The brand partners with three of the top five national insurance carriers, along with dozens of third-party administrators and commercial clients.

These relationships create opportunities that can be difficult to access without the right capacity, systems, and brand trust. “These opportunities were a large part of my choice to open my location in Kalispell,” Pietras says. “It definitely gives new franchise locations a lot more chance for rapid growth compared to my first location I opened in 2010.” Having gone through PuroClean’s New Franchise Training over a decade ago, Pietras’ recent return to the classroom revealed an evolving franchise support system. “The new ownership teams coming into the family are a lot stronger candidates than in the past,” he says. “They’re given sharper tools and stronger support than the old days. I was grateful to be a part of the New Franchise Training class, and it reminded me how exciting being a part of this business can be.” Pietras had plenty of options for his next investment. He chose to expand within a business he already knew. His move into the U.S. speaks to the strength of the PuroClean system, creating new opportunities through national insurance relationships, commercial large loss capabilities, and a franchise network that continues to attract entrepreneurs looking to build and grow high-margin businesses.

Scan the QR code to learn more about building a scalable, high-margin franchise

PuroCleanFranchise.com

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Listings

The Top Global Franchises of 2026 These brands are booming internationally. Ready to join them, and make money overseas?

P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y S T O C K . A D O B E . C O M / L E M O N S O U P 1 4

by T R A C Y S TA P P H E R O L D

ou can buy and grow a franchise anywhere, but the fastest growth is happening outside the United States. There’s a global hunger for beloved American franchises and, of course, a lot more territory across the planet for brands to expand into. We see it in the numbers: Among all the companies that applied for Entrepreneur’s 2026 Franchise 500 ranking, there was more growth internationally than there was domestically! So, want to get in on the global action, and open a franchise somewhere in the world? You need to buy a brand with international appeal. There are a multitude of options—and we identify the best ones here, in our annual ranking of the top franchises that are offering opportunities outside the U.S. To determine this list, we started with

that pool of more than 1,300 companies that applied for the 2026 Franchise 500. Then we ran them through our Franchise 500 formula—which evaluates companies on more than 150 data points in the areas of costs and fees, system size and growth, franchisee support, brand strength, and financial strength and stability—but with one adjustment: For this ranking, we give extra weight to international system size and growth. In the end, the 200 top-scoring companies are crowned our top global franchises. But as you browse these great options, remember: This list is not intended as a recommendation of any particular brand. Always do your own careful research to discover whether a franchise opportunity is really right for you. That means reading the company’s legal documents, consulting with an attorney and an accountant, and talking to as many current and former franchisees as you can.

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 123

The Top Global Franchises of 2026

→ KFC

Chicken STARTUP COST

$1.9M-$3.8M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

31,920/482

2 Taco Bell

Mexican-inspired food STARTUP COST

$934.8K-$4.3M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

8,370/676

3 Dunkin’

Coffee, doughnuts, baked goods STARTUP COST

4 McDonald’s

Burgers, chicken, salads, beverages STARTUP COST

$1.5M-$2.8M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

45,431/2,120

5 Pizza Hut

STARTUP COST

$261.2K-$853.4K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

5,623/554

8 Baskin-Robbins Ice cream, frozen beverages

STARTUP COST

$462K-$2.1M

$307.4K-$622.6K

TOTAL UNITS

18,583/59

7,882/0

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

6 Hampton by Hilton Upper midscale hotels STARTUP COST

$17M-$29.1M

TOTAL UNITS

14,205/36

Pizza

Pizza, pasta, wings

$443K-$1.8M

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

7 Papa Johns

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

3,230/0

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

9 Cinnabon

Cinnamon rolls, baked goods, coffee STARTUP COST

$256.95K-$703.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

2,556/27

124 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

10 Wendy’s

Burgers, chicken sandwiches, breakfast sandwiches, sides STARTUP COST

$393.2K-$2.99M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

6,945/402

13 Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen

Fried chicken, seafood, biscuits STARTUP COST

$504.5K-$3.9M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

4,959/94

11 Arby’s

14 Kumon

STARTUP COST

Sandwiches, fries, shakes $651.6K-$2.5M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

2,592/921

12 Dairy Queen

Soft serve, burgers, chicken strips STARTUP COST

$1.5M-$2.6M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

8,011/2

Supplemental education $101.6K-$233.8K

Holiday Inn Express Hotels

STARTUP COST

$12.8M-$19.5M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

3,264/0

17 Anytime Fitness Fitness centers STARTUP COST

$458.8K-$907.6K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

TOTAL UNITS

5,612/11

23,557/14

18 Planet Fitness

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

15 Burger King

Burgers, fries, breakfast STARTUP COST

$2.1M-$4.7M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

18,555/1,177

Fitness clubs

STARTUP COST

$1.5M-$5.2M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

2,487/275

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF KFC

1KFC

Local Impact. Global Reach.

mathnasiumfranchise.com

The Top Global Franchises of 2026

Chicken wings, tenders, and sandwiches, fries, sides STARTUP COST

Paris Baguette STARTUP COST

$727.4K-$1.8M

$310.4K-$1M

TOTAL UNITS

3,884/139

3,197/57

27 Servpro

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

20 DoubleTree by

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Upscale hotels and resorts

Fire, water, and other damage cleanup, restoration, and reconstruction

STARTUP COST

$31.5M-$126M

$263.3K-$385.6K

TOTAL UNITS

Hilton

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

541/0

2,426/0

21 Snap-on Tools

28 IHOP

Professional tools and equipment STARTUP COST

$223.4K-$509.3K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

4,336/261

22 The UPS Store

Shipping, packing, package management, mailboxes, printing, faxing, shredding, notary services STARTUP COST

Family restaurants STARTUP COST

$1.9M-$4.8M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,804/10

29 Hilton Hotels and Resorts

Upper upscale hotels and resorts STARTUP COST

$50.8M-$213.3M

$114K-$606.1K

TOTAL UNITS

514/43

5,951/17

30 Midas

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

23 Auntie Anne’s Soft pretzels

STARTUP COST

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Auto repair and tires STARTUP COST

$385.5K-$940.1K

$157.8K-$835.5K

TOTAL UNITS

1,960/132

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

2,146/10

24 Hilton Garden Inn Upscale hotels STARTUP COST

$25.5M-$37.4M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,165/0

25 Ace Hardware

Hardware and home improvement stores STARTUP COST

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

31 Stratus Building

Management International

Leadership and organizational training and development STARTUP COST

$20K-$27.5K TOTAL UNITS

Commercial cleaning

497/0

STARTUP COST

34 Home2 Suites by

$4.7K-$79.8K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

5,176/0

32 Great Clips Hair salons

STARTUP COST

$187.8K-$419.9K TOTAL UNITS

TOTAL UNITS

4,441/0

5,588/268

33 Leadership

Solutions

$611.9K-$2M

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

→ IHOP

Bakery cafes

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Hilton

Upper midscale extendedstay hotels STARTUP COST

$18.1M-$26.6M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

913/0

35 Aqua-Tots Swim Schools

Swimming lessons STARTUP COST

$1.6M-$2.9M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

179/1

126 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

36 Crunch

39 Circle K

Gold’s Gym

STARTUP COST

TOTAL UNITS

553/30

3,298/14,385

520/60

Fitness centers $2.1M-$5.4M

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Convenience stores $953.5K-$9.5M (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Health and fitness centers $1.8M-$4.5M

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

37 Paul Davis

40 Homewood Suites

43 ERA Group

Insurance restoration

Upscale extended-stay hotels

STARTUP COST

Restoration STARTUP COST

$298.8K-$804.9K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

335/0

38 Randy’s Donuts

Doughnuts, breakfast sandwiches, croissants, coffee, tea, lemonades STARTUP COST

$425K-$720.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

43/13

by Hilton

STARTUP COST

$23.8M-$34.7M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

562/0

41 Gong cha

Cost intelligence and optimization consulting $76K-$105.9K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

806/2

44 Petland

Bubble tea

Pets, pet supplies, boarding, daycare, grooming

STARTUP COST

$207.5K-$648.5K

$315.5K-$1.1M

TOTAL UNITS

2,069/93

267/16

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF IHOP

19 Wingstop

45 Embassy Suites by Hilton

Upper upscale extendedstay hotels STARTUP COST

$59.1M-$90.9M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

248/0

46 PostNet

Packing, shipping, printing, signs, marketing solutions STARTUP COST

$240.2K-$306.8K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

742/0

47 Slim Chickens

Chicken tenders, wings, salads, sandwiches, wraps STARTUP COST

$1.2M-$494.4K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

291/11

48 Right at Home

In-home senior care and personal care STARTUP COST

Budget Blinds STARTUP COST

$100.5K-$211.3K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,476/0

53 Matco Tools

Mobile sales of mechanics’ tools and equipment STARTUP COST

$104.4K-$376.2K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,794/0

54 Pearle Vision

Eye care and eyewear STARTUP COST

$71K-$1.3M

TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

460/106

55 Tapestry Collection by Hilton

Upscale hotels STARTUP COST

$2.9M-$70.3M TOTAL UNITS

TOTAL UNITS

206/0

777/6

56 KidStrong

49 Cold Stone Creamery

Ice cream, sorbet, ice cream cakes, shakes STARTUP COST

$390.7K-$680.8K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,512/2

50 Jiffy Lube

Oil changes and preventive auto maintenance STARTUP COST

$236K-$452.7K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,925/318

51 Denny’s

Full-service restaurants STARTUP COST

$953.4K-$3.1M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,412/62

→ SCHOOL OF ROCK

Window coverings, window film, rugs, accessories

$94.3K-$176.2K (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

PHOTOGRAPH BY DT KINDLER

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Physical fitness, leadership, and confidence-building training for children STARTUP COST

$319.3K-$671.2K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

184/11

57 Wyndham Hotels

STARTUP COST

$1.88M-$96.5M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

234/0

58 Subway

Subs, salads STARTUP COST

$263K-$630K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

35,268/0

59 Kitchen Tune-Up

Kitchen remodeling and cabinetry updates

60 Minuteman Press Printing, graphics, and marketing services STARTUP COST

$138.4K-$315.1K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,050/0

61 Carvel

Ice cream, ice cream cakes STARTUP COST

$428.4K-$1.1M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

405/1

62 Transworld

Business Advisors Business brokerages; franchise consulting STARTUP COST

$114.1K-$143.6K

A&W Restaurants Root beer, burgers, hot dogs, chicken, sides, ice cream STARTUP COST

Wings, bar food, alcohol STARTUP COST

$2.5M-$4.9M

$301.1K-$1.6M

TOTAL UNITS

613/629

819/2

67 School of Rock

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

64 REMAX

Music education STARTUP COST

Real estate

$425.3K-$704.8K

STARTUP COST

69 Jersey Mike’s Subs Cold subs, Philly cheesesteaks, and bowls STARTUP COST

$436.2K-$1.2M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

3,107/24

70 Anago Cleaning Systems

Commercial cleaning STARTUP COST

$37.1K-$336.5K

TOTAL UNITS

401/48

TOTAL UNITS

8,471/0

68 Club Pilates

1,823/0

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

65 Jan-Pro Cleaning & Disinfecting

Commercial cleaning STARTUP COST

$4.8K-$58.1K

TOTAL UNITS

527/0

12,756/0

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

66 Buffalo Wild Wings

Group Reformer Pilates classes

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

71 Magnolia Bakery

STARTUP COST

Bakeries

TOTAL UNITS

$696K-$1.2M

$403.3K-$1M

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,505/0

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

$12.2K-$68.3K

STARTUP COST TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

44/10

STARTUP COST

$129.9K-$188.9K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

260/0

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 127

The Top Global Franchises of 2026

In-home senior care STARTUP COST

$176.5K-$231.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Marco’s Pizza

STARTUP COST

$286.5K-$811.2K

455/6

TOTAL UNITS

73 Fairfield by Marriott

1,196/44

Hotels

STARTUP COST

$12M-$33.8M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

81 Curio Collection by Hilton

Upper upscale hotels

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

STARTUP COST

74 Coverall

TOTAL UNITS

1,285/59

Commercial cleaning STARTUP COST

$17.98K-$64.3K TOTAL UNITS

$3.9M-$119.6M (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

208/8

82 Firehouse Subs Subs

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

STARTUP COST

75 ServiceMaster

TOTAL UNITS

7,707/0

$405.4K-$1.6M (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,372/42

STARTUP COST

83 Precision Tune

TOTAL UNITS

Auto repair and maintenance

864/4

STARTUP COST

Clean

Commercial cleaning $111.8K-$187.5K (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

76 Merry Maids

Residential cleaning STARTUP COST

$126.9K-$169.3K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,504/0

77 Mr. Rooter Plumbing

Plumbing, drain, and sewer cleaning STARTUP COST

$152.9K-$298.7K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

259/3

78 Sylvan Learning

Supplemental education, STEM camps, college prep STARTUP COST

$117.6K-$288.4K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Auto Care

$181.6K-$478.1K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

281/19

84 The Maids

Residential cleaning STARTUP COST

$117.7K-$141.2K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,496/142

85 CertaPro Painters Painting, home services, and decorating services STARTUP COST

$171K-$320.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

318/4

86 Metal

Supermarkets Metal stores

STARTUP COST

517/0

$397.5K-$670.5K

79 Once Upon A Child

TOTAL UNITS

New and used children’s clothing, equipment, and accessories

→ SENIOR HELPERS

Pizza, pizza bowls, subs, wings, salads, cheese bread

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

145/0

87 Mathnasium

Learning Centers Math tutoring

STARTUP COST

$127.3K-$165.8K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,286/4

88 Realty One Group Real estate

STARTUP COST

$47.3K-$227.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

476/13

89 Pop-A-Lock

Mobile locksmith and security services STARTUP COST

$117.6K-$190.6K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

423/7

STARTUP COST

$355.7K-$485.9K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

445/0

128 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

90 Applebee's

Neighborhood Grill & Bar Family restaurants STARTUP COST

$1.8M-$5.8M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,568/47

91 Jimmy John’s Sandwiches

STARTUP COST

$366.2K-$733.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

2,774/40

92 Express

Employment Professionals

Staffing, HR solutions STARTUP COST

$131K-$598.7K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

730/5

93 Kona Ice

Shaved-ice trucks STARTUP COST

$114.7K-$228.6K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,979/4

94 Signarama

Sign products and services STARTUP COST

$245.4K-$638.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

686/0

95 FastSigns

Signs, graphics, and visual communications STARTUP COST

$231.2K-$386.3K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

802/0

InterContinental Hotels & Resorts Hotels

STARTUP COST

$106.8M-$153.1M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

227/4

97 Two Men and a Truck

Moving, storage, and packing services STARTUP COST

$92.1K-$512.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

376/1

98 The Little Gym

Child-development/fitness programs STARTUP COST

$420.3K-$722.8K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

396/1

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SENIOR HELPERS

72 Senior Helpers

99 Escapology Escape rooms

STARTUP COST

$631.5K-$2.5M TOTAL UNITS

Auto repair, maintenance, and service STARTUP COST

96/21

$276.6K-$407.2K

100 Signal

TOTAL UNITS

STARTUP COST

$160.2K-$10.2M

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

525/2

108 YESCO Sign &

Lighting Service

TOTAL UNITS

Sign and lighting service and maintenance

1,908/0

STARTUP COST

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

101 Rainbow

Restoration Restoration and remediation STARTUP COST

$185.3K-$351.9K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

363/0

102 Keller Williams

$65K-$432.2K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

56/40

109 GameDay Men’s Health

Men’s hormone replacement therapy and wellness services STARTUP COST

$224.6K-$410.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Realty

368/6

STARTUP COST

110 Pepper Lunch

Real estate $183.6K-$336.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

995/16

103 Carl’s Jr. Burgers

STARTUP COST

$1.5M-$3.2M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,669/50

104 Nothing Bundt Cakes

Bundt cakes and gifts STARTUP COST

$667.1K-$1M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

714/8

105 Weed Man Lawn care

STARTUP COST

$81.2K-$109.4K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

338/36

106 Shah’s Halal Halal food

STARTUP COST

$192K-$410K

→ WETZEL'S PRETZELS

Transmissions and Total Car Care

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Private security guard and patrol services

P H O T O G R A P H C O U R T E S Y O F W E T Z E L' S P R E T Z E L S

107 AAMCO

DIY teppanyaki STARTUP COST

$690.8K-$1.7M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

410/133

111 Tru by Hilton Midscale hotels STARTUP COST

114 Barrio Burrito Bar Mexican food

STARTUP COST

$423.3K-$773.9K

$14.3M-$20.7M

TOTAL UNITS

377/1

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

354/0

112 Chester’s Fried chicken

STARTUP COST

$14K-$306.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,062/0

113 Wetzel’s Pretzels Soft pretzels, lemonade, hot dogs STARTUP COST

$183K-$712.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

426/35

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

115 Jamba

Smoothies, juices, bowls STARTUP COST

$480.9K-$960.7K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

750/1

116 Glass Doctor

Auto/residential/ commercial glass installation, repair, and replacement STARTUP COST

$154.7K-$326.9K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

187/0

117

120

Automotive tools and equipment

Hotels

Mac Tools

STARTUP COST

Wyndham Garden STARTUP COST

$480.6K-$20.3M

$137.9K-$418.4K

TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,191/0

118 Spark by Hilton

218/0

121 The Alternative

123

Sport Clips Haircuts

Haircuts for men and boys STARTUP COST

$236.8K-$580.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,720/89

Board (TAB)

STARTUP COST

Business owner advisory boards, coaching, strategic planning

124 Image360

TOTAL UNITS

STARTUP COST

275/0

TOTAL UNITS

337/8

266/1

Premium economy hotels $3.3M-$5.9M

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

119 Plato’s Closet

$77.1K-$95.4K

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Signs, graphics, displays, digital imaging, visual communications $146.9K-$691.8K (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

122 Temporary Wall

125 Eye Level Learning Supplemental education

TOTAL UNITS

Rental, installation, and service of modular containment systems

530/0

STARTUP COST

Teen- and young-adultclothing resale stores STARTUP COST

$355.7K-$467.9K (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Systems

Centers

STARTUP COST

$55.3K-$129.2K

$155.4K-$366.4K

TOTAL UNITS

525/753

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

330/0

TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

106/19

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 129

The Top Global Franchises of 2026

126 TownePlace Suites

133

Hotels

Reformer Pilates studios

by Marriott

Studio Pilates International

STARTUP COST

TOTAL UNITS

530/6

119/1

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

$486.95K-$818.2K (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

127 Great American

134 Jinya Ramen Bar

Cookies, cookie cakes, brownies

STARTUP COST

$340.5K-$462.7K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

414/0

128 Allegra Marketing Print Mail

Printing, marketing, direct mail, signs, promotional products STARTUP COST

$140.5K-$698K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

210/1

129 Sandbox VR

Virtual reality games STARTUP COST

Ramen, tapas, craft beer $1.6M-$3.5M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

73/5

135 Fully Promoted

Branded products and marketing services STARTUP COST

$134.6K-$354.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

314/0

136 Dogtopia

Dog daycare, boarding, and spa services STARTUP COST

$664.4K-$1.5M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

$250.7K-$2.9M

271/4

TOTAL UNITS

137 Kinderdance

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

26/37

130 Five Star Bath Solutions

Children’s dance, gymnastics, movement, fitness, and yoga programs STARTUP COST

Bathroom remodeling

$25.2K-$59.9K

STARTUP COST

TOTAL UNITS

$162K-$293.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

322/3

131 Baymont by Wyndham Hotels

STARTUP COST

$232.1K-$10.8M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

558/0

132 ServiceMaster Restore

Commercial/residential disaster restoration STARTUP COST

$287.8K-$474.3K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

2,042/2

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

216/4

138 Chem-Dry

Carpet, upholstery, wood floor, and area rug cleaning, tile and stone care, granite countertop renewal STARTUP COST

$92.2K-$249.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,559/0

139 Canopy by Hilton Upper upscale hotels STARTUP COST

$57.4M-$128.3M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

49/0

140 Juan Valdez

143 Wild Birds

146 Comfort Keepers

Coffee

Backyard bird feeding supplies and nature gift items

STARTUP COST

Heart-rate-based group interval workout classes

TOTAL UNITS

STARTUP COST

728/0

TOTAL UNITS

Colombian Coffee STARTUP COST

$414.5K-$1.98M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Unlimited

STARTUP COST

$231.6K-$376.4K

320/292

TOTAL UNITS

141 Nurse Next Door

366/1

Home Care Services

Medical/nonmedical home care

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

144 Church’s Texas Chicken

In-home senior care $119.9K-$190.7K (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

147 Hardee’s Burgers

STARTUP COST

$1.4M-$2.6M

149

Orangetheory Fitness

$821.6K-$1.4M (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,436/15

150 BNI

Referral-based business networking

Chicken

TOTAL UNITS

STARTUP COST

1,835/202

$53.4K-$270.1K

$119.3K-$217.2K

$609.7K-$1.9M TOTAL UNITS

219/4

1,341/168

148 PuroClean

TOTAL UNITS

142 Carstar

145 Dale Carnegie

STARTUP COST

Oil changes

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Auto collision repair STARTUP COST

$298.2K-$804.3K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

785/1

130 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Workplace training and development STARTUP COST

$77K-$252K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

211/1

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Property damage restoration and remediation $241.5K-$277.1K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

510/0

STARTUP COST

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,075/289

151 Take 5 Oil Change STARTUP COST

$912.2K-$2.1M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

496/767

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF PUROCLEAN

$12.8M-$37.9M

→ PUROCLEAN

152

Floor Coverings International Flooring

Group strength and conditioning training

STARTUP COST

$200.6K-$281.3K

$681.4K-$1.2M

TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

317/0

329/0

153 Swensen’s

160 Rita’s Italian Ice &

Ice cream parlors and restaurants STARTUP COST

$222.99K-$993.1K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

409/0

154 Bin There Dump That

Residential-friendly dumpster rentals STARTUP COST

$133.8K-$313K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

284/3

155 Super 8 by Wyndham Hotels

STARTUP COST

$285.2K-$7.1M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,471/0

156 Holiday Inn Hotels

STARTUP COST

$17.5M-$31.4M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,237/2

157 American

Poolplayers Association

Recreational billiard leagues STARTUP COST

$22.2K-$30.8K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

344/2 PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SOL A SALONS

159 Body Fit Training

158 Jazzercise

Dance fitness classes STARTUP COST

$2.2K-$64.1K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

6,966/3

→ SOLA SALONS

Frozen Custard Italian ice and frozen custard STARTUP COST

$315.2K-$915.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

598/10

161 ComForCare

Nonmedical home care STARTUP COST

$102.5K-$163.9K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

289/0

162 Liberty Tax Service Income tax preparation STARTUP COST

$49.97K-$71.4K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

1,732/154

163 Sola Salons Salon studios

STARTUP COST

$950.2K-$1.7M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

689/66

164 Chicha San Chen

166 Yogen Fruz

Frozen yogurt, soft-serve ice cream STARTUP COST

$295.1K-$909.7K

Auto painting and collision repair STARTUP COST TOTAL UNITS

Teas, milk teas, juices

511/0

379/0

STARTUP COST

167 National Property

$155.5K-$249.5K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

116/2

165 ShelfGenie

Inspections

Home and commercial property inspections STARTUP COST

$41K-$54.95K

Custom pull-out shelving for cabinets, pantries, and closets

TOTAL UNITS

STARTUP COST

168 Trademark

$55.6K-$148.4K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

286/15

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

218/0

Collection by Wyndham Hotels

Aloft Hotels

STARTUP COST

TOTAL UNITS

1,209/9

195/43

Nonmedical senior care

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

173 Steak ’n Shake

170 Fibrenew

Leather, plastic, and vinyl restoration and repair STARTUP COST

Steakburgers, fries, milkshakes STARTUP COST

$184.1K-$2.7M

$102.1K-$122.3K

TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

314/0

171 EverLine Coatings and Services

Parking lot striping and pavement maintenance STARTUP COST

270/135

174 Ramada by Wyndham Hotels

STARTUP COST

$237.6K-$24.6M

$183.5K-$319.3K

TOTAL UNITS

$230.2K-$19.2M

TOTAL UNITS

856/0

TOTAL UNITS

120/1

STARTUP COST

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

175

Home Instead $91K-$269.8K

$196K-$3.99M

TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

172

169 Maaco

Hotels

$13.3M-$36.2M (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

176 Candlewood Suites Hotels

STARTUP COST

$14.2M-$21.4M TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

410/0

177 Marble Slab Creamery Ice cream

STARTUP COST

$354.5K-$476.7K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

399/0

342/0

September-October 2026 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / 131

The Top Global Franchises of 2026

178 Ziebart

181 HouseMaster

Vehicle appearance and protection services

Home Inspections

STARTUP COST

Home inspections and related services

$450.1K-$924K

STARTUP COST

TOTAL UNITS

$58.8K-$92.7K

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

347/15

→ TINT WORLD

TOTAL UNITS (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

175/0

179 Papa Murphy’s Take ‘N’ Bake Pizza Take-and-bake pizza STARTUP COST

$450.3K-$693.5K TOTAL UNITS

182 Five Star Painting Residential and commercial painting STARTUP COST

$81.5K-$185.9K

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

TOTAL UNITS

975/37

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

180 Aire Serv HVAC services, installation, and replacement

183 Venture X

$113.8K-$271.7K

Coworking spaces, private offices, dedicated desks, meeting rooms, podcast rooms

TOTAL UNITS

STARTUP COST

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

258/0

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF TINT WORLD

255/0

$337.4K-$4.3M TOTAL UNITS (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

77/0

Metwally CPA PLLC is a modern CPA ﬁrm serving franchisors and businesses in USA. The ﬁrm specializes in small to mid-size franchisors’ attestation services (audit, review, and compilation).

busy franchisors. We rely heavily on technology to perform

We believe in adding value and helping our fellow

improve services provided to our franchisors. The ﬁrm

franchisors with their audit needs while maintaining our

has been serving franchisors since 2020. We have been

independence and professional standards. We understand

ranked on the top 10 Franchise Supplier in Accounting

our day-to-day operations and to ﬁnd ways to cut cost and

that as a franchisor, your time is valuable, and managing

by Entrepreneur magazine for the past years. Our focus

ﬁnancial operations can be complex and time-consuming.

on customer service and the client experience makes us

Our experienced team is here to alleviate this burden,

unique in our industry We are Certiﬁed Public Accountants

providing you with seamless, eﬃcient solutions.

for the modern world – more than just number-crunchers,

We implemented a seamless cloud-based workﬂow to

we are advisers and year-round consultants. We believe in

improve eﬃciency and ease of doing business for today’s

continues improvement, responsiveness, and quality.

184 The Good Feet

187 StretchLab

190 Shakey’s Pizza

193 Cupbop

196 Challenge Island

199 SnapHouss

Store

Assisted stretching

Restaurant

Korean barbecue

Arch supports, related products

STARTUP COST

Pizza restaurants

STARTUP COST

STEAM enrichment programs

$271K-$814.2K

STARTUP COST

$296.4K-$664.4K

STARTUP COST

TOTAL UNITS

$1.3M-$3.5M

Real estate photography, videography, 3D virtual tours, aerial/drone photos/ videos

TOTAL UNITS

$256.3K-$617.9K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

525/0

185 Bonchon Korean

188 Rumble Boxing

Fried Chicken

Boxing and strength training group fitness studios

Korean fried chicken

STARTUP COST

$509.6K-$1.1M

$775K-$1.3M

TOTAL UNITS (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

495/3

186 Bath Tune-Up Bathroom remodeling STARTUP COST

$109.9K-$173.9K TOTAL UNITS

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

244/32

261/27

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

297/0

TOTAL UNITS

99/1

189 Boston’s Pizza

191 Freedom Boat Club

STARTUP COST

$105.2K-$140.1K

$223.5K-$502.5K

TOTAL UNITS

TOTAL UNITS (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

192 Poolwerx

Casual-dining restaurants/ sports bars

STARTUP COST

TOTAL UNITS

57/0

TOTAL UNITS (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

416/1

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

685/11

284/147

Pool and spa maintenance, service, remodeling, and supplies

$1.1M-$3.3M

Children’s art classes

Membership boat clubs

Restaurant & Sports Bar

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

194 Global Art

$105.4K-$437.8K (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

433/0

195 FS8 Pilates, tone, and yoga classes

STARTUP COST

$58.5K-$74.1K TOTAL UNITS

$31.3K-$139.2K

243/7

TOTAL UNITS (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

197 Tint World Auto, home, and business window tinting; vehicle wraps, mobile electronics, auto accessories, detailing services STARTUP COST

Hair care and blowouts STARTUP COST

$409.98K-$1M TOTAL UNITS

188/0

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

159/0

TOTAL UNITS

Doughnuts and coffee

50/1

200 Drybar

TOTAL UNITS

198 Duck Donuts

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

81/0

$249.95K-$479.95K

$343.7K-$781.6K

STARTUP COST

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

STARTUP COST

$514.7K-$737K TOTAL UNITS (Franchised / Co.-Owned)

160/1

(Franchised / Co.-Owned)

Stop Chasing Algorithms.

Start Building Fans. In his Wall Street Journal bestseller Fanocracy, David Meerman Scott revealed why die-hard fans are the most powerful marketing force on earth. Now, with the world hungrier than ever for real human connection, he’s back with details on how to implement fandom around any idea, business, art, or product.

True fans stick with you when cheaper competitors show up.

The Fandom Playbook is for entrepreneurs, marketers,

They tell their friends.

into concrete plays that any organization can

They show up for you.

and business leaders who want to build the real loyalty that grows business—not just clicks. David interviewed hundreds of founders, executives, and community builders across industries, including the arts and the nonprofit world, to distill fandom adopt, regardless of size, budget, or industry. Pick a few plays that fit your mission and your people. Commit to them for ninety days and watch what happens when customers stop browsing and start belonging. The Fandom Playbook shows you exactly how.

A D V E R T IS E M E N T

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Ent/Daily

The Imperfect Package → RIP IT UP

A tear in the corner of my product taught me to let go of perfectionism.

f you’ve been to an alcohol festival lately, you’ve probably seen me and my wife, Kimberly. We make a recovery product for people who like to drink but hate how they feel the next day, so festivals are a great sales channel for us. And back in 2025, as we worked one of them, I had an experience that changed how I do business—and propelled our company’s growth perhaps better than anything else. Here’s what happened: I learned to stop being a perfectionist. This was at the Atlanta Fall Wine Festival. Our booth was

popular, and product sold fast. At some point, I handed some to a customer—and then noticed a small tear on the upper-left corner of the packaging. “Hold on,” I said. “That one’s not perfect. Let me grab you another.” “It’s fine,” the guy said. “I’ll take it as is.” That made sense. The package is meant to be ripped open, and the tear was just at the start of that perforated top. If this guy bought it, he’d just tear the whole top off anyway. But something about it felt wrong to me. I couldn’t sell him something imperfect! So I gave him a fresh package anyway, plus a free one as a bonus. Then I stuck the damaged product into my pocket. Something about it felt worth holding onto. Here’s what it made me realize: I was applying a standard nobody else was asking for. I have no formal business training. I’m just a U.S. Army veteran who doesn’t want to lose the day after a night out, and I built this brand by watching YouTube videos and asking AI. I often felt like an outsider in entrepreneurship, and believed that everything I do must be careful, considered, and perfect. But that standard wasn’t helping me. I’d essentially wasted product at the festival. And I realized there were many other costs to my perfectionism: I’d barely tried email marketing, because I kept trying to craft the perfect campaign. I’d also delayed launching a subscription offer, because I didn’t have the bandwidth to build the perfect website and offer. No more, I thought. I took that partially torn product, and I pinned it to the wall next to my computer. I wanted it to serve as a reminder: Just start shipping things imperfectly. I began with a rule for myself on email marketing: Send a campaign every week, no exceptions. Now I move too fast to overthink it—and email climbed from 5% of our revenue to 20%. Next I slammed together a subscription system and set it live. Subscriptions now drive more than half our revenue. None of this means I stopped caring. I’d still rather ship something excellent. What changed is what I do when I hit the wall—when I’ve been staring at an ad, an email, or a project for two hours and getting nowhere. Now I look up at that torn pouch on my wall, and I remember a customer saying he’d buy it as is. People don’t need perfect. So why let it hold us back?

WHAT INSPIRES YOU? Tell us about a story, person, object, or something else that pushes you forward, and we may include it in a future issue. And we may make you photograph it, too. Email INSPIRE@ENTREPRENEUR.COM with the subject line “WHAT INSPIRES ME.”

136 / E N T R E P R E N E U R . C O M / September-October 2026

PHOTOGR A PH COURT ESY OF SHEPPA RD BOW EN

by Sheppard Bowen, cofounder, Ever.Party

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