Female Founders
I enjoy leading and inspiring teams to
reach higher levels of performance and
helping individuals reach their potential.
I have strong financial acumen and am
able to manage the results and personnel
to a critical set of metrics. My background
with numbers, leadership, team development, and organizational planning were
a critical foundation to succeed as an
entrepreneur and to access capital along
the way to expand as opportunities arose.
What’s the best and worst advice
you got when starting out? Best: Establish an advisory board to assist me in
my entrepreneurial journey. I was encouraged to have other founders on the board
along with franchise experts. This advice
has proven invaluable. My advisory board
has evolved three times at different stages
of the business’s life cycle. On my current
board, I feel blessed to have tapped into
the talent of David Barr and Sid Feltenstein as we tackle uncharted territory with
international expansion, debt recapitalization, national TV advertising, and many
more exciting opportunities for growth.
Worst: That it would take only $100,000
to launch our franchise initiative. Since I
am a CPA by background and conservative,
I planned for a cushion and ensured we
had $250,000 to invest in launching our
franchise opportunity. We needed nearly
$500,000 to get our franchising organization to be self-sufficient where recurring
revenues were more than expenses.
Why did you choose franchising? In
our original business plan we would expand
to have hundreds of locations across the
country. In that original plan, we didn’t
know if we would raise money and have
all locations be company-owned, if we
would enter into joint venture partnerships to share the investment/risk with
local operators, or if we would franchise.
As franchisees ourselves (Choice Hotels
in 2004), seeing the hotel franchise model
up close made the path of franchising
crystal clear.
How did you get started in franchising? My mother-in-law invested in two
hotels in mid-2004 and invited us to invest as well. I attended the franchise’s new
owner and new manager training with her
22
“Although we
already had
three successful
companyowned locations,
we knew
that through
franchising
we would be
able to
expand much
faster than if we
were to do it on
our own.”
and came away from the training classes
with the idea that BrightStar Care could
work as a franchise, expanding much more
quickly than if we were to open locations
on our own. After successfully opening a
second and third location in McHenry
and Chicago, we knew we had a business
model that could be successfully replicated and that we had the systems to open
and grow a location to help others do the
same. We sold our first franchise location
in late 2005.
Did you have a partner/co-founder
when you started? How important
was that in building your company?
My husband J.D. and I co-founded BrightStar Care together (see above). J.D. was
strong at sales and handled that function.
I handled the recruiting, customer service,
operations, and finance functions and built
the organization to handle the scale as the
business grew. It was a great partnership.
Eventually we backfilled our old roles, and
I went on to start and run the franchise
company with J.D. handling franchise sales
at different points in our life cycle until
we hired an industry veteran to build out
an entire franchise development team.
How did you fund your company at
the beginning? As you grew? In the
beginning I used the majority of my severance package from United Airlines to
launch BrightStar Care and coupled that
with a bank line of credit to fund accounts
receivable. As the company grew, we were
fortunate to be approved for State of Illinois Department of Commerce loans set
aside for female-owned businesses.
What were the keys to funding your
brand? In the beginning with companyowned stores, the keys to funding were
sufficient working capital lines of credit
to cover the growth in accounts receivable as sales ramped up. As we expanded
into franchising, we used profits from
company-owned operations, but we also
needed loans and lines of credit to assist
with the costs incurred ahead of when
revenues were earned. We leveraged state
programs created to assist female-owned
businesses to access the capital we needed
to launch the franchise brand and again
to further its growth.
BUILDING THE BUSINESS
What has been the best and the
hardest thing about being an entrepreneur? Best: The opportunity to help
others become entrepreneurs through our
franchisees and other emerging franchisors I mentor. It is such an incredible
honor to work alongside passionate, driven
franchisees who serve customers and create jobs in their communities. I may be
a little biased, but I believe we have the
best franchisees of any system. It is always an amazing experience to open the
awards ceremony at our Annual Conference Gala and look at a roomful of more
than 250 people who have become dear
friends and achieved great success and
remember that just 10 years ago none of
it existed. Hardest: Never being able to
have a bad day. My temperament sets the
tone for the organization—for our team
members and for our franchisees—so I am
cogni