Once again, I made the trip (with some of my team) to Las Vegas to attend the International Franchise Association Conference.
With over 4000 attendees, there is certainly a lot to learn, along with the opportunity to talk and discuss with other franchise professionals about how we can make our businesses better as well as improving the franchise industry.
I love the fact that when we attend the International Franchise Association, the Franchise Council of Australia organises special events for the Australian delegation. We always get together for a welcome dinner and usually end up ‘talking shop’ (along with some excellent wines this year!). The Australian delegation also comes together for a four hour session with leading experts in franchising to share with us. This year, I was honoured to be asked to share my experiences of taking our brand to the USA to my fellow Australians in attendance.
As a side note, it was great to see that both Bruce Billson (Executive Chairman of the FCA) and also Damian Paull (CEO of the FCA) made the long trek to join the Australian delegation at the IFA conference. Having such great leaders on board who are willing to learn from our international counterparts makes me extremely happy to have them leading the FCA and the franchise industry in Australia. Leaders are learners and they were leading the way.
We took away a lot of great information from the conference and once again, it made me extremely happy to not only learn new things, but to also get the validation on so many things that we are doing right or are even ahead of the curve on in terms of franchising and supporting our franchisees.
One of my favourite sessions at the conference was the Next Gen competition. I totally enjoyed hearing from the 18 Next Gen winners (three of which were from Australian), who out of the hundreds of entrants from around the world were hand selected to attend the conference and special Next Gen sessions to help these young franchisors to grow their brands. When I hear them speak, it amazes me the ideas and wisdom from people at such a young age. It also gives me great hope that the franchising sector will be left in good hands!
I was extremely proud of all three of the Australian Next Gen Winners. Not only for the businesses they are creating and building, but also how well they represented Australia and the Australian franchising industry on a world stage. They did themselves, and all of us, very proud.
So once again, I have left the IFA conference full of new ideas and a renewed energy to take Gutter-Vac to its next level of success and to continue to contribute to the franchising industry here in Australia.
If you are a franchisor and have been sitting on the fence, wondering if you should attend the IFA or not, then I’d highly recommend you get off the fence and join us next year in Phoenix for the 2018 IFA Conference.
