How to Get Dynamic, Active Franchise Professionals to Fully Engage for Two Days – ‘Cell Phone Daycare!’

We are always on the lookout for the most innovative and effective conference and meeting ideas to share with the franchise community and recently, we were WOWED by Karen Samples’ BRILLIANT idea of a “Cell Phone Daycare Center”.

The executive team at FOCUS Brands invested in bringing Greg Nathan and Karli Furmage of Franchise Relationships Institute in for a 2-day custom Franchise Relations Boot Camp for 5 of their brands.  From the newest Franchise Business Consultants to the Brand Presidents – every person responsible for directly supporting franchisees was in attendance.

To make sure that the team got everything they could get out of the experience, Karen, who manages FOCUS Brands meetings and conferences, came up with the ‘Cell Phone Daycare Center’.

Karen Samples, FOCUS Brands and her “Cell Phone Daycare Center”

“I know this will be hard for most of you,” she explained with a smile. “But just like sending our kids to daycare for the first time, we know they are safe and we’ll be able to pick them up at the end of the day and all will be well.”

Of course, leave it to the amazingly organized Karen to have each ‘Center’ color-coded by brand and each slot numbered for easy retrieval.

To make sure that business was still being taken care of, Karen scheduled more frequent breaks and made them a few minutes longer than normal to allow meeting attendees to check messages and return calls and emails.  But when it was time to be back in the room learning from Greg and Karli and interacting with each other, the digital ‘kids’ had to go back to daycare.

The bottom line?   When the Franchise Relationships Boot Camp was in session, everyone in the room was fully engaged and the room was buzzing.

I personally think this is the very best meeting practice we’ve seen in years.  GREAT JOB, Karen!  And thank you for allowing us to share this with the franchise community.

Here is another pic of the ‘

Cell Phone Daycare Center’.

Franchise Relations Boot Camp Attendees put their digital kids in daycare

More soon…

Katrina

PS: The custom Franchise Relations Boot Camp delivered by Greg was a resounding success for the FOCUS Brands team.  Greg, Karli and I all felt that this was one of the very best Boot Camp experiences we were fortunate to be a part of.  From our perspective having

everyone on the team all the way up to the Brand Presidents fully engaged and participating was remarkable. Here’s what Russ had to say about the experience from his perspective:

We had Greg Nathan recently deliver a custom, 2-day Franchise Relations Boot Camp to 5 of our brands and to our International team.  WOW! – what an amazing experience!  I continue to get comments from participants saying that they feel much better equipped to help support their Franchise Partners in the field as a result of Greg’s session.  His process of teaching the team a new tool or technique, allowing them to develop the concept in small groups and then helping them understand the psychology behind the process and the actual methodology itself was amazing.  From our newest Franchise Business Consultant to our Brand Presidents the take-away value was extremely high and the safety that was carefully and subtly created in the room had team members who never say anything actually grabbing for the mic to share their insights and ‘Ah Ha’s!  I’ve never experienced any other workshop or presenter who so effectively layers the building blocks of learning. This is an investment that I think every franchise system should make!”

— Russ Umphenour, CEO, FOCUS Brands

And for more direct feedback from recent Boot Campers, check out our Franchise Relations Fan Club posts.