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| On The Cover.. |
Where are they now?
Franchising has an abundance of movers and shakers, so it’s no wonder we’re curious about where these personalities have moved to and who or what they’re shaking up. Some of the ones we’ve chosen are blooming where planted; others are still cultivating the soil.
Bud Hadfield
An original copy
At first glance it may seem strange for Bud Hadfield, chairman of the International Center for Entrepreneurial Development in Cypress, Texas, and founder of Kwik Kopy, to be the headliner for our “Where are they now?” feature, since Hadfield has never vacated his desk at the company he founded. But, that’s exactly what we found so compelling. Not many 83-year-old entrepreneurs who opened their first franchise around 40 years ago can be found in the office attending to the day-to-day details of running a business.
“I’ve met quite a few founders, especially through the IFA (International Franchise Association) and most are in an advisory role,” said Steve Hammerstein, president and CEO of ICED, and a former chairman of the IFA. “Bud is in a direct supervisory role—as much supervision as he wants to give.”
The two have formed a “deep relationship.” “What I’ve learned from that man is astounding,” Hammerstein said, adding, “but I think I’ve given back, too.”
Hadfield refers to Hammerstein and his management team as “the pros.”
“They’re the pros, I’m the entrepreneur,” Hadfield said on more than one occasion. “I have 140-141 employees and there’s not one I don’t like.” It’s not an empty sentiment. While giving me a tour of Northwest Forest, the company’s impressive campus, from his personal golf cart, he routinely stopped to greet employees by names, never failing to ask, “You doing OK?” And, then actually listened to their answer.
“I love this place and darn near everyone who works here feels the same,” he enthused, as he pulled up in front of the replica of the Alamo that serves as one of their conference centers. His Alamo, however, is nine-inches taller than the original and isn’t hemmed in by other buildings, thus giving it an authentic look the real deal in San Antonio is missing.
Age and health problems have slowed Hadfield’s body, but not his mind or his charisma. “I like to talk,” Hadfield confessed when I first arrived. It was a slightly cool day, and Hadfield had asked Art Coley, executive vice president of franchise development, to set a fire in the fireplace in his office to welcome me. As I sat down, he asked, “First things first. What time do you eat lunch?” I had been forewarned that Hadfield liked to eat an early lunch, so the answer tripped off my tongue easily: “The same time you do.” He nodded his approval. “I’ll round up the troops.” Two of his buddies and long-time employees, escorted us to the dining hall in their golf cart, where we met Debbie Clifford, who started as Hammerstein’s assistant and is now executive assistant to both of the top executives, and Hadfield’s wife, Mary.
When Hadfield mentioned he and his wife of 46 years worked together, I asked, “How’s that going?” “Fine,” he answered, “she’s in another building.”
Hadfield, who likes to tell stories, shared this insight into his marriage: “I’m up first every morning so I start the coffee—which means I flip a switch—and then Mary comes down in her bathrobe and she looks like a queen. She brings me a cup of coffee and we’ll just talk.”
Instead of admitting he can sometimes be stubborn, he told a story about the time one of his vice presidents wrote a memo instructing people to limit their visits to the warehouse, especially if they were driving a golf cart. The ink was barely dry on the copies, when Hadfield made it a point to not only visit the warehouse, but to drive through the adjoining print shop in his golf cart. His eyes twinkle and he grins mischievously.
Hammerstein has been privy to that stubbornness on numerous occasions. “When he gets a mind-set, it’s hard to get him to turn, but he will turn and he will say, ‘yes, I was wrong,’” Hammerstein says. “But he’s got to be really wrong.”
Hadfield’s story on that subject was about the time he and Hammerstein disagreed on an action to be taken and he left town angry. He had a meeting with Bill Rosenberg, the founder of Dunkin’ Donuts, and he told him about the incident, “sliding it in my favor,” Hadfield said. “He said, ‘you’re wrong,’ so I called up Steve and said OK, do it your way and don’t ask me why.”
Perhaps the story most people will be surprised to hear is that Hadfield failed at nine businesses before succeeding with Kwik Kopy. (ICED’s portfolio of franchised businesses includes various print businesses, along with ComputerTots, Parcel Plus and Women’s Health Boutique. They’ve also leveraged their 100-acre property, which was originally designed to make franchisees feel at home during training, into a thriving hospitality business, which includes retreats, weddings and a Sunday brunch.)
Hadfield showed a penchant for entrepreneurship from an early age. When he was in grade school, his mother, a gardener, paid him 25 cents for all the horse manure he could scoop up after the iceman and his horse-drawn wagon visited the neighborhood. “It was hard work for a kid,” Hadfield said, so he hired a friend to help. “He wasn’t a long-term employee,” Hadfield deadpanned.
By junior high, he had a print shop in the basement of his home, where he produced a newspaper, The Family News, and printed stationery and business cards for neighbors. An event that sticks out in his mind, he wrote in his book, “Wealth Within Reach,” is the time one of his teachers asked him if his print shop might have a job for him during the summer.
“Here was a college graduate, a teacher, asking a teenager, one of his students, for employment. Did this somehow call into question the importance of more and higher education?” he wrote.
The answer to the question posed in the book is “yes.” Hadfield never graduated from high school. But he did read constantly, and most of his reading material was business books or self improvement.
He was a Dale Carnegie instructor, but gave it up when Kwik Kopy started demanding more of his attention. “It’s been over 30 years and I still miss it,” he said. “It was teaching people to have a better opinion of themselves.”
That’s one of Hadfield’s strong suits, says Hammerstein. He understands that the health of his business is dependant on who he hires, and he treats them like family—with both praise and discipline. “He always recognizes everyone’s contribution,” Hammerstein said, adding, “and he’ll point out if it isn’t a contribution.”
One last story, but this time the storyteller is Hammerstein, although he said it’s one of Hadfield’s favorite tales to tell.
Hammerstein was a municipal judge when he took the job as vice president at Kwik Kopy in 1984. Since most of his cases were heard at night, he decided to hold onto the job as he settled into his new role. Unfortunately, one day he received a call asking him to come down to the courthouse immediately. A prisoner who had been violent the night before needed to be moved to a more secure jail and it required a judge to read him his rights and hear his pleading. Being conscientious, Hammerstein told them he was sorry but he couldn’t leave in the middle of his work day to take care of business at his second job. They kept pressuring him until he agreed that they could drive the prisoner over to his office and he’d quickly dispense justice there. News got around that the sheriff’s department was bringing over a prisoner and employees gathered on the two spiral staircases that line the lobby to watch. Hammerstein rushed downstairs only to confront a sullen man bound in a straitjacket braced on either side by two burly officers. Hammerstein quickly performed his judicial duties and on the way back upstairs decided he better stop by the boss’s office and explain what had just taken place and let him know it wouldn’t happen again.
“I went into Bud’s office and said, ‘I hope you’re not upset.’ He looked at me with a straight face and said, ‘I’m very upset. You had that man’s full attention and not once did I hear you ask him if he wanted a Kwik Kopy franchise.’”
Hammerstein, who was still new to Hadfield’s sense of humor, stood there for a moment, before leaving the office shaking his head. Shortly thereafter, he retired from the bench.
Will Hadfield ever retire? “If you don’t have someplace to go on Monday, you’re in trouble,” Hadfield said. And, for him, work isn’t work. “Everyday is the best day of my life,” he said.
Donald DeBolt
Retirement is not an option
Don DeBolt likes to fix things. From 1995 to 2005, he was IFA’s “handyman,” installing new programs and budgets, mending fences, while supplying those around him with the tools they needed to get their jobs done.
The affable 69-year-old came to IFA with extensive trade association experience and a thrifty mind-set. Not unlike the entrepreneurs he represented, DeBolt had a project on the side—“CEO Update,” a newsletter for the heads of associations. He had expected the newsletter to be his “retirement” project, however, “after being out of it for 10 years and going back into it, the passion wasn’t there,” he said. He made four phone calls and within a week it was sold to someone who did feel passionate about the project—something that was important to him since the staff who had been running it for him went with the new owner.
“They’re doing things I thought about doing, but didn’t have the get up and go to do,” he says, adding, “or was too cheap to make the investment (to do).”
From December to May, DeBolt and his wife live in San Diego to be close to three of their grandchildren, who range in age from 5 to 13. They also have a home in Washington, D.C., and one in South Dakota, where more family resides. The weather in San Diego is consistently 75 degrees and sunny, unless they’re experiencing a cold snap and it turns 70, DeBolt quips. The same can’t be said for South Dakota, thus the DeBolts spend summers, not winters, there.
Since leaving IFA, DeBolt coauthored a book, “Street Smart Franchising,” with Joe Mathews. “Joe did all the heavy lifting,” DeBolt says. “I’m pleased with the book. What I liked is that it got into the emotional experiences of franchisees as they go through the process of should I or should I not buy a franchise.”
He also serves on two advisory boards: Service Brands (franchisor of five brands, including Molly Maid and Mr. Handyman) and Capistar Franchise Holdings.
But for someone who is used to “having a full-time activity to go to every day,” DeBolt’s days of playing bridge on his computer and swimming at the “Y” may be coming to an end. A friend is thinking about taking the helm of a nonprofit and has asked DeBolt to get involved if indeed he does make the leap. “It’s vague and starry-eyed at this time,” DeBolt said, dismissively.
Does he miss IFA? “How can you not miss that group of people?” he says of the staff and board. It’s awe-inspiring, he adds, to “know you’re making lives better, not just here, but all over the world. Franchising is everything good. Sure it has a few warts, but what doesn’t?”
Jeff Rosenfeld
Manager of ‘the club no one wants to be a part of’
“I guess you could say I went from clinical training to a bank that blew up to a market that blew up to a product that blew up,” says Jeff Rosenfeld, formerly principal at Kessev Finance. And, then to a life that blew up.
Rosenfeld’s career has had some interesting twists and turns. A whiz at finance, Rosenfeld was hired by Medtronic, a medical device company in Minneapolis, to work on an exciting product that would help heart patients, if and when it passed the FDA’s roadblocks. When he was fed up with a process that took too long to reach fruition, he joined First Bank, which “went with the long odds when it should have gone short.” In the fallout, Rosenfeld’s division was sacrificed. From there he formed a partnership in a company to do securitized lending. “We formed the company on July 30, 1990; the next day Hussein invaded Kuwait,” he says. With the war and recession came new banking and insurance laws, and financing—especially securitized loans—took a breather. “We had a lot of time to watch the war on TV,” he quips. “It was a good thing we had a war, so we had something to do.”
The war ended, the recession receded and Rosenfeld founded Kessev Finance.
And then six years ago, his 13-year-old son died suddenly at camp from an asthma attack. “I didn’t realize how much that would affect me,” he says. “I thought, ‘I’m tough; I can handle it.’” Instead, he lost his short-term memory. “I made lists and then I couldn’t find where I put the lists,” he says. He couldn’t concentrate and he was angry all the time. “It’s like you’ve lost part of your body and the rest of the body is working to make up for it,” he says.
Deals were no longer fun. He found he didn’t care if a franchisee received the loan that would allow him to open his chicken business. “I got tired of fighting over fees. I lost interest. I didn’t care,” he says.
Now he realizes that what he went through is common for people who lose a child. The experience transformed him. After losing Daniel, he says he’s now a different person with different interests. He no longer cares about loans, but rather about permanent changes.
Who better to help other people through the bereavement process than someone who’s experienced it himself? “Guys like me never go to bereavement counselors,” he says, because they don’t want someone who has never been through the experience telling them how to feel. Only someone who is “part of the club” knows how to answer the painful etiquette questions that have no satisfying answers. Questions such as, what should I say when people ask how many children I have? Should I have a picture of him on my desk, and if so, which way should the picture face?
“I tell people here’s what you’re feeling now that you’re a part of the club,” he says, adding soberly, “a club that no one wants to be a part of.”
In order to become a grief counselor, Rosenfeld had to return to graduate school, even though no college teaches bereavement classes. “I need a degree to treat people, but I didn’t need a degree to lose a son,” he says.
Rosenfeld participates in group sessions while he attends classes and may be the one who eventually teaches that illusive bereavement college course. He also has plans to work with the peripheral people who also are affected deeply by the death, such as the remaining children, grandparents and friends.
Few of us know what to say when someone tells us their child just died. Don’t ask how they’re feeling, Rosenfeld counseled, don’t ask what you can do. Instead, he says, share a memory you have of the child that the parent may not be privy to. Help bring the child to life for just a few seconds.
Eric Stein
Finding work after your 12-cent an hour job ends
In April 2005, we ran an unusual story about Eric Stein, who taught franchising courses at the Fort Deven Federal Prison Camp in Massachusetts. Stein had been convicted of stealing about $34 million from 1,800 investors in a scheme to sell advertising for gadgets on late-night television. What interested us in particular was that Stein was using Franchise Times as a resource in his classes.
After serving six-and-a-half years in prison, Stein was released in August 2005, and moved into a halfway house in New York where he had to call in five times a day, sign in and out, and if he missed curfew the punishment was returning to “the joint.” In addition, he has to report his financials once a month to a court officer for three years.
The hardest part is getting back into the mainstream. “A lot of doors closed,” he says. “I can’t date (ex-felons aren’t sought-after date material, he contends)...buying an apartment is hard because I can’t get approval from the U.S. government (he commutes to New York City from Westchester where he has a house through family connections)...I have vendors who won’t work with me because of the felony.”
He did find a job at a telemarketing company—which even at $100 a day beat his 12-cents an hour job in prison, but not the millions he was earning as a con artist. And he just finished a semester of teaching marketing and advertising at a New York city college. What’s the difference between his students now and the prisoners he taught? “Felons don’t use the ‘f” word as much,” he says, adding they’re also more hungry for knowledge than students on the outside.
He used his teaching materials to start a new business aptly named startmybiznow.com, which sells interactive, how-to DVDs on a variety of subjects, such as how to open a restaurant. In addition to instructional information, the DVD gives a list of industry sources that pay for the advertising and the link to their site from the DVD. They’re sold on late-night television, and are free to the recipient.
Stein still believes franchising is the perfect vehicle for felons because, among other reasons, they’ve learned to get along with a variety of people (“In prison, you learn social skills or else,” he says), they’re used to hard work and following orders.
And, they’ve learned their lesson, he contends; they don’t want to go back to prison.
“All the remorse in the world won’t get you your integrity back,” he says.
Linda Shunk
Working into a full-court vacuum
After accomplishing what she set out to do at Cookies by Design, in 2004 Linda Shunk thought she’d be a young retiree. “Franchising can wear you down,” she says. But, it’s also an exciting vehicle for people who want to own their own business, so after a self-imposed sabbatical, Shunk decided to get back in the driver’s seat. Only this time she didn’t want to do it as the president of the company.
Before accepting a newly created position at Oreck Franchise Services last year, Shunk had volunteered her expertise to Cheryl Babcock’s franchise program at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. She chaired the advisory board and helped Babcock set up the program’s strategy. In addition she was on the board of a women’s franchise and distribution group.
When she was approached about a job with Oreck Corp., she was intrigued by the prospect of working for a company that was converting its licensees to franchise agreements. She came on board in May, just as the company finalized its UFOC, to help set up the elements of a good franchise program, she says. In August, the franchise program was announced at the annual convention. “Before that, I was the best-kept secret,” she says.
Shunk will have her hands full—99 percent of the licensees of the retail chain that sells vacuums and air purifiers and their supplies signed on.
Shunk, who is the director of retail operations and development, has her work cut out for her. In a survey they commissioned, the brand had 89 percent awareness, but the stores had just 39 percent, she says.
Sheri Miksa
Exploring the net worth of networking
When Sheri Miksa stepped down as CEO of Rubio’s Fresh Mex Grill, a publicly traded, 150-plus unit regional chain based in San Diego, she made sure to stay visible in her industry.
At the CEO/president/director level, jobs aren’t the fodder of newspaper want ads, so networking and, as Miksa sees it, volunteering to speak and serve on committees, are ways to not only give back to an industry that’s been good to her, but also a way of keeping in touch with the decision makers.
After just three quarters on her own, Miksa was able to make a smooth transition into her new position of CEO/president/director of Robeks Corp., a nationwide fruit smoothie company that’s privately held. Best of all, the job fits her criteria of making a career choice where “you have the biggest opportunity to make an impact” at a place “where you can be passionate.” Passion, after all, she says, is infectious. And, unlike Linda Shunk, who had to move from Dallas to New Orleans for her new position, Miksa’s new job in Manhattan Beach is just up the freeway from her home in San Diego. Plus, it didn’t require her changing her diet—”I’ve always eaten healthy food,” she says.
