As a franchisor, you wear many hats. You are the brand governor, operations expert, marketing leader, cash flow manager and, perhaps most importantly, the leader of your franchisees and head office support team.
Prioritizing your work, and how you deliver results, can be the difference between a struggling brand and one that prospers. Successful franchise locations build successful franchise brands. You cannot have one without the other, so the focus always must be on unit economics and growth. I wrote about this very topic in the February 2026 issue of Elite Franchise Canada Magazine.
To create successful franchisees, you must get them doing the right things, improving their skillset and creating atomic habits. This is where the first 30 days become so important. If you do not establish those habits then, you may struggle to change them for weeks, months or even years to come.
The following is an excerpt from our playbook at 7th Inning Franchising on how to ensure franchisees build great habits and skills in their new role.
Set clear expectations
This seems almost too basic to mention. However, it is often not done or not done to the degree required. Be very clear about what is expected of the franchisee as they launch their business and how they are expected to accomplish their daily and weekly goals.
Most new franchisees have never been business owners before. You cannot underestimate the amount of learning required to do what many experienced entrepreneurs take for granted. When you set clear expectations, it becomes their new normal.
In addition, setting clear expectations allows you to measure what you expect and provide coaching that is relevant and timely. You set your franchisee up for success.
Use KPIs
Your Key Performance Indicators should be different during the first 30 days than they are for a franchisee who has been operating for six months or more. Set tight indicators, ideally six to eight in total, and use them to guide your discussions and coaching.
The KPIs should be presented by the franchisee to the franchisor, not the other way around. Have them explain what is going well, where they are falling short and what they are going to do about it. Get them accustomed to that process early.
You are not simply measuring performance. You are teaching them how to run their business.
Meet with them twice daily
This approach is critical, and it is the best investment of your time as a franchisor.
Have your operations or training manager meet with the franchisee each morning for each of their first 30 working days. Schedule 30 minutes, review the day’s agenda and discuss the wins and challenges from the previous day. Provide coaching and verify that what they are doing is what they should be doing.
At the end of each day, the founder or senior operating leader should personally meet with the franchisee for a pre-scheduled 20-minute session. Discuss where they are at, their wins and challenges, their development and what else the company needs to do to support their growth.
The franchisee now has two people speaking with them, supporting them and developing them every day. Those two leaders can compare notes and strategize about how to make the first 30 days more productive, and they can do it in real time.
Bad habits do not have time to become established. Problems are identified quickly. Coaching happens when it matters. And, importantly, the franchisee feels supported. The business prospers, the franchisee prospers and the relationship between the two parties becomes stronger.
You are effectively operationalizing culture, something I wrote about in Elite Franchise Magazine in April 2025.
Extend the first 30 to the first 60 if required
Do not arbitrarily end the daily contact after 30 days.
Have the franchise partner prove to themselves, and to you, that they no longer require this level of coaching. If they are not there yet, extend the program another seven, 14 or even 30 days. The objective is not to complete a 30-day program. The objective is to develop a capable franchisee.
When I speak with franchisors about this approach, they often raise the time commitment as their biggest concern. Spending this much time every day with every new franchisee can feel like something they cannot afford to do. The reality is that they cannot afford not to do it.
Think about the time required to correct six months of bad habits, repair a deteriorating franchisee relationship or help turn around an underperforming location. Investing heavily in the first 30 days suddenly looks inexpensive.
At 7th Inning Franchising, we build franchise brands to accelerate growth. Our work is not theoretical but based on decades of experience as franchisees and franchisors. We help brands avoid the pitfalls that so many of us have experienced along the way.
The First 30 Days program is an important part of that philosophy. It builds accountability, develops better operators and creates stronger relationships between franchisor and franchisee. It also sets the tone for what great franchise support should look like.
Franchisees should never wonder whether their franchisor is invested in their success. During those first 30 days, make it impossible for them to wonder.
Key takeaways
- Most new franchisees have never been business owners before, so setting explicit, measurable expectations from day one is essential to effective coaching and performance measurement.
- KPIs should be presented by the franchisee to the franchisor during the first 30 days, not the other way around, turning performance measurement into a teaching tool rather than a compliance exercise.
- Having an operations or training manager meet each new franchisee every morning, and the founder or senior operating leader meet them every evening, prevents bad habits from forming and allows problems to be caught immediately.
- The daily contact period should be extended by another seven, 14 or even 30 days if the franchise partner has not yet shown they no longer need that level of coaching – the objective is a capable franchisee, not a completed 30-day program.
- The time commitment required for intensive early coaching is far smaller than the cost of correcting six months of bad habits, repairing a deteriorating franchisee relationship or helping turn around an underperforming location.
