“Back to Basics” with Rachael Nemeth
Back to Basics podcast cuts through the noise to focus on what matters in hospitality. Join Rachael Nemeth, CEO of Opus Training, as she talks with service industry leaders who are shaping today's workforce.
“Back to Basics” with Rachael Nemeth
EP17: How to Build the Modern Franchisor Without “One Size Fits All”
“Modern franchising isn’t about more support—it’s about smarter, scalable support.”
Jenna Henderson has spent nearly two decades inside franchise systems, operating across field ops, brand services, development, growth, and tech. After almost 15 years at Saladworks, she stepped into SaaS as COO at WorkMerk (helping build the ServSafe Ops platform), then returned to franchising leadership as Group Chief Operating Officer for NewSpring Franchise. Today, she oversees operations, marketing, and supply chain across Great Harvest Bakery Cafe, Duck Donuts, and Federal Donuts & Chicken.
In this episode, Jenna joins Rachael Nemeth (Opus CEO) to break down what the modern franchisor must look like: agile, cross-functional, and intentional about franchisee support. She explains why “one size fits all” fails, how segmenting single-unit vs multi-unit operators changes outcomes, and why operations must help approve franchisees—because ops lives with what happens after the check clears.
Jenna also shares the structural fix that instantly improves alignment between development and ops: an onboarding specialist connecting signing through opening day. She unpacks where franchisors still operate too manually, how tech and AI only matter when insights become action, and what private equity brings when done right: discipline, a clear North Star, and shared infrastructure.
Key Takeaways
→ Smarter Support Scales: Modern franchising isn’t about more touchpoints—it’s about systems that scale support intelligently.
→ One Size Fits None: Franchisee support must be segmented by operator type and brand maturity.
→ Ops Belongs Upstream: Operations should help approve franchisees, not just manage post-sale fallout.
→ Onboarding Drives Alignment: A dedicated onboarding specialist linking signing → opening improves execution.
→ Tech Must Be Actionable: AI only matters when insights drive real behavior change at the unit level.
→ Discipline Beats Sprawl: Clear ROI, a North Star, and shared infrastructure outperform tool overload.
Perfect For
Franchisors building scalable support models, operators navigating growth, PE-backed leadership teams, and brand executives reducing tech sprawl.
About Jenna Henderson
Group Chief Operating Officer at NewSpring Franchise, overseeing operations, marketing, and supply chain across Great Harvest Bakery Cafe, Duck Donuts, and Federal Donuts & Chicken.
Time Stamp Chapters
00:00 Intro + Jenna’s role
02:06 The modern franchisor
06:16 Development vs operations
09:26 The onboarding specialist
11:10 Tech debt, AI, and action
16:32 PE-backed discipline
21:34 Lessons from Saladworks
33:13 Lightning round
About Us
Opus is the hospitality training platform purpose-built for the frontline. Train 100% of your team in 101 languages on the job to quickly get them up the productivity curve. With full visibility across your workforce, you get the frontline business intelligence needed to drive your business.
Have an idea or experience you'd like to share? Keep the conversation going with us on LinkedIn!
Hi everyone, I'm Rachel Nimith. Today on Back to Basics. I'm sitting down with someone who's operated nearly every side of the franchise or organization. Jenna Henderson has spent over two decades inside franchise systems. She rose up through SolidWorks, over 14 years in role spanning brand services, development, growth, stepping into tech as COO of WorkMark, where she helped build the SURBSafe Ops platform, then leading Taproom before taking on the COO role at Great Harvest Franchising, part of New Spring Capital's portfolio. What I really appreciate about Jenna is that she represents what the modern franchise or leader looks like. Cross-functional, operated-minded, brand forward, tech fluent. And her experience gives her a really rare perspective on how franchise or models actually need to evolve to support today's franchisees. So, Jenna, can you just introduce yourself and just share the scope of your role at Great Harvest today?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Thank you for the introduction. So my background, which we talked a little bit about, is in operations. And I will say, and you'll probably hear me talk a lot about it this morning, but I think operations is the heart and soul and lifeblood of restaurant, hospitality, candidly anybody. It's where my heart and soul lies. And so in my current role, I am group chief operating officer for New Spring franchise. There are seven brands under the umbrella. Three of those are food brands that I oversee operations, marketing, supply chain, and sit on the leadership team. And those are Great Harvest Bakery Cafe with about 156 units based out of Montana. Duck Donuts with about 150 units based out of Hershey, Pennsylvania. And Federal Donuts and Chicken with 11 units and growing strong based out of Philadelphia PA.
SPEAKER_02:You know, I really want to dig into this. So you there's three franchises that you're you're really partnering with right now. Um I want to start with this theme of what a franchise or needs to look like in the next decade around like org design, cross-functional alignment, tech, franchisee support. You have operated almost every seat inside the franchise or from licensing to ops to brand to tech. So when you look at the industry today, what does quote the modern franchise or actually need to look like?
SPEAKER_01:It you know, it's such a good question. I think obviously there are different answers depending on both the size of the brand and the life cycle of the brand. Um, startups, while often smaller, need sometimes twice the amount of work and effort and process that some of the larger brands do. Um, but here's what I will say is a general, it's all about kind of efficiency in support, is how we've looked at the business. And so at the end of the day, the landscape for every industry, specifically restaurants and hospitality, it changes constantly. Um, whether it's supply chain availability, cost of goods, the way we market. Um, goodness, I mean, how we communicate with the consumer changes so fast that it's almost impossible to consistently react. And so finding ways within a franchise organization to help our franchisees navigate those changes in an efficient way, right? You can't touch every franchisee every day. Um, we can't be in a million places at once, or we'd have 80 people teams for 11 units. Uh, and so what it's really about, at least for us, is finding efficiencies. So, how can we scale the subject matter expertise that we have at the brand level by using things like technology, um, by using things like a different way that we approach multi-unit operators versus single unit operators? So I would say peeling back the layers of the onion from a business perspective and recognizing that one size fits all, does not fit all. Um, and that we you really have to figure out how to scale in a way that affects the franchisee positively every single day.
SPEAKER_02:So, is that what you think has maybe changed over the last several years? It's is that it's it's almost like it does feel like the world's moving faster, things are changing faster. It's it's very unpredictable to know what's going to happen with food costs over the next six months versus any changes in the administration versus um any changes in in um just kind of your local or regional needs. Um, and so it almost feels like the sort of modern franchise or just needs to be more agile and willing to adjust and willing to change.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I will say that is where I think my cross-functional experience has come in the most handy. Um, you know, when things like, I don't want to bring up the tariff conversation, right? But when things like that start to affect change, though, right? Yeah. In real time, right? Um today it's one thing, tomorrow it's something else. But change in any system doesn't really happen that fast. And so for me, understanding how if we do something on the marketing side, this is how it affects operations, if we make a product change in on the supply chain side, here's what we need to do to effectively roll that out. I think really, as leaders in this business, kind of pulling ourselves out and looking down at the business as a whole instead of kind of getting siloed in departments and making those changes. That's what will help the modern-day franchise or and will, in effect, help the franchisee, which is what we all get up in the morning for.
SPEAKER_02:You in particular have lived this tension between franchise sales and franchise ops, arguably more than most. Um, most kind of stay in their lane, right? So um when does that relationship between franchise sales and franchise operations, when does it work really beautifully? And when does it go sideways? And maybe to put it another way, for you know, what's really a moment for you in your career that kind of shaped how you think about that partnership now?
SPEAKER_01:Um, yeah, first I'll say I'm never good at staying in my lane. Um for better or for worse, yeah. Yeah, maybe for good and bad things, depending on how you ask. But um, you know, I think there's the the development side of the business and the operations side of the business. And they, I don't want to say buttheads because it makes it seem adversarial.
SPEAKER_02:But sometimes our use tension, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:There's something franchise sales is they're looking to hit budget numbers, they're looking to grow unit count, we've got to get Moodle signed, we've got to look at territory. And on the operations side and the procurement side, we're saying, hey, hold on. Um, how much experience does this potential franchisee have? Or, hey, this is an area where you may want to sell something, but I don't have any other locations there. And so it makes distribution and brand awareness and marketing difficult. Um, I will say my counterpart um on the New Springs side, Eric, has an operations background. We've worked together at two companies. It's been really lovely to kind of see us both play both sides and say, yes, develop. Yes, run as fast as we can on kind of growth and unit count and bringing franchisees in. But it has to go through the filter of is this the right cultural fit for our system? Can we support this franchisee, both operations, marketing, and supply chain? And then what you get out of that is a stronger system. Um and so I've always felt strongly that operations needs to have a seat at the franchise approval table before that franchisee joins the system because I think we really understand what happens after the check clears.
SPEAKER_02:Well, what's also unique about um your umbrella is you have more mature franchisees, but you also have brands that are really emerging. You know, federal donuts is is less than 20 units right now and growing. So maybe just staying on the emerging franchisee franchise or side. Um, what's one structural change, just one, that you think really kind of instantly makes that relationship between development and operations just healthier, knowing that it sounds like you have a healthy relationship now. Like, what's the thing that made it healthy besides the fact that you work together?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, fair. Um, you know, we and this is actually back to kind of when I was with Saladworks, it was a change we made then to really have someone that is the link between onboarding and opening. So we have a position at all brands, um, federal, duck donuts, and great harvest, that is an onboarding specialist. So someone that takes the franchisee from the moment they sign that agreement through the 8,672 things they've got to do until they turn the key on opening day and get their location open. Um, and so what that both allows and forces us to do is recognize that every step in that process, they're all linked. So making decisions on the development side inevitably affect the operations, marketing, supply chain side. And that person really acts as kind of the fiber that connects those departments and they see it from both sides. And so Eric and I, as an example, are able to kind of pass down that cross-functional vision to other team members who help franchisees.
SPEAKER_02:I actually want to shift gears a little bit because I think you also have this really unique perspective. You're very tech forward. You've led ops at a tech company before returning to franchising, who have this unique perspective of running a SaaS organization. And I would imagine that it's informed your expectations for what franchisor systems and processes actually should look like. So I'm curious to hear where do franchisors today still operate to manually?
SPEAKER_01:You know, I think it's I've seen both. I've seen franchisors that have so much tech debt because they get so excited about new systems. And then they end up with all these systems and processes that are oftentimes costly that either cost the franchisor or the franchisee some sort of software as a service, monthly recurring charge. Yeah, like real ROI, probably. Correct. And so much of that ROI is hard to track until you're really in it, um, which is why due diligence, contract negotiation, right, terms, all of those things are important. Um, but then I will say on the other side of it, I feel like, and and look, AI is such a huge part of how businesses look at what they do every single day. Um, but in my personal opinion, it can't just be AI. It can't just be tech. Um, and maybe this is kind of my operations bias coming through, but I'll give you an example. We partnered with a company called Quantive. And what they're doing is really they are not only our data warehouse, but they're using all the data from POS, from loyalty, from weather, everything. And there is an AI engine that sits on top of that data warehouse. It has a name. His name is Roger, and I can ask Roger insights about a location. What are optimal hours of operation? Are there any parts of the day that we feel like are labor-light or labor-heavy? The insights are unreal and they happen so much faster. You know, a year ago, even that kind of information would have taken me a week. I would have poured over POS data and tried to layer in loyalty information. And in five minutes, with an email to my buddy Roger, I have all these insights. I think where people run into a problem is it stops there. How do I make those insights actionable? And I think that's where, like an in-person operations team really, that's where they shine. And so taking this heavy tech, heavy AI information and saying, now, how do I utilize this to help my franchisee, who's either running multiple units or is an owner operator standing on the line every day? And so, how do I pull these insights out and really shape what the business does every single day? Um, that's how I think tech really has the ability to change the way we do things. Not that, you know, it's faster or that we can replace things with it, but really that it gives our in-person teams the insight they need to make our franchisees more successful.
SPEAKER_02:I love that mentality. It's a lot of how we see the world at Opus too. It's it's like you have to take insight out of the, you know, proverbially speaking, but like the the outside of the four walls of the software, and it has to lead to behavior change. And that is human. Period. And so you have to actually um to use your words to make it actionable. There has to be, you know, a kind of cultural element in place that is getting people excited and interested to apply whatever knowledge they have and sort of activate it. So I love that way of thinking. And frankly, like I think that reflects a sort of modern view of the franchise as well. It's almost like the last specifically five years, you know, with the tech boom in restaurants, there was like this excitement about tech, the tech fees emerged, all of that. Yeah, now everyone's saying, like, wait, what's going on? Like, we have all this stuff and it's not actually, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, and you know, look, you obviously we're Opus is one of the reasons that you and I know each other. And so I will say it was part of what excited me most about the platform, which was there were parts of the Opus platform that would allow me to be more efficient in creating things like training documents and process manuals. Um, and those are things that would take a human longer. But then it's like, how does that really work when we get down to the hourly employee, the part-time team member who's there maybe four hours a week because they're going to school? Those are the actionable sides of that. So I've worked really hard candidly with all three brands over the last few months to say, what tech do we have that we can use to make our people more efficient?
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Not to not to replace process, but how do we give them the time back to have, you know, across-the-counter conversations that could really help shape franchisees?
SPEAKER_02:That actually kind of rounds out something I really wanted to talk to you about, which is this relationship with PE too. So like you're obviously spending time with uh on the franchisee side, but Great Harvest is now a part of a private equity portfolio. PE has a reputation, sometimes fair, sometimes not fair for changing franchise or changing the brand. So from your vantage point, what do you think actually changes when a brand becomes PE backed? Like what becomes clearer, what becomes more disciplined, um, and and maybe what falls apart?
SPEAKER_01:Discipline is is a really good word. I think one of the things that New Spring has done and really I've worked on really diligently is what is the brand's North Star and not just who they are as a brand, but you know, what is the investment thesis under which that private equity firm invested in or purchased a brand? What does the five-year roadmap look like? How do we get there? And then what are the strategic initiatives that get us to that North Star? Branding, consumer, um, you know, supply chain, new product development, technology, operational aptitude. And then what structure do I need to support those initiatives that then leads to my North Star? And then how much money do I need to get there from a budgeting perspective? And so we spent a lot of time at all of the brands kind of saying, okay, what does the roadmap look like? And then how do we get there? And I think then everybody's kind of in the canoe, rowing together at the same time in the same direction, which is really if private equity does it right, what they bring to the table. They have a level of expertise on direction and strategy and brand efficiency that can really take what is the foundation of a brand. What's working, yeah. And help it grow. And that's caused us to look at, you know, what technology systems are we using? How can we be more efficient? There's huge, I'll give you an example. If we sign a contract, right, we just partnered with Toast across all three brands from a POS perspective. We signed one agreement. The name at the top is different for each brand, but we had one attorney review one agreement. And so there's a real connectivity and an efficiency in using the other brands to say, how do we scale ourselves? And so I think that's been the most positive part about it, I would say.
SPEAKER_02:And I feel like you're mentioning this only because, and maybe like for people listening who maybe don't realize why that's such a big thing, the the one contract is that historically, you know, it in an in a less connected organization, operators are might be set signing their own contracts or signing a new agreement as they expand. Is that where you're getting at? It's like you actually, the benefit of PE backed is like it's a forcing function to say, not only where can we find efficiencies day to day, but just where can we find efficiencies in our infrastructure and our contracting?
SPEAKER_01:A hundred percent. I mean, you know, if if one brand has an amazing relationship with a vendor that they're already working with and have success and have proven an ROI and are getting franchisee buy in, you really cut out the entire kind of legacy RFP process. It doesn't mean do your due diligence. It just means leverage your other brand partners to do it instead of starting. From scratch.
SPEAKER_02:That's interesting. Do you feel like the RFP is going away?
SPEAKER_01:Um, you know, I think the length of time that some RFPs take and the really formalized part of the process, I think some of that is leaving. I think the world is just moving too fast to say, I'm gonna look at an LMS. And six months from now, after I've fit into my schedule, 17 meetings, narrowed down to three, send each of those three companies through an official RFP process, look at the contract. My whole business could change in that year. So I think there's something to be said for you know, speed to market and being agile and leveraging relationships that other brands have. And look, that doesn't have to be PE backed. You can go to any conference and find a brand partner and say, what have you done and why is it working? And so the idea that we can leverage one another in this industry, I think will start to really change that formalized process.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. One of the benefits of just like a more interconnected world, there's pros and cons, but in this case, you can get more information faster about vendors almost. Yeah. That makes sense. So let's talk about you, Jenna, um, as we we wrap up this conversation. So it's pretty incredible just how cross-functional your journey has been. And I would imagine really just shaped your point of view on franchise leadership. I want to talk about Saladworps for a minute and you know the depth of time that you spent there. And I'd really like to know what it gave you. Um it's so rare to like be in a role for that long. It was 14 years?
SPEAKER_01:Almost 15 years.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, almost 15 years. What did the depth of your time at Saladworks give you about the business or about yourself that you may not have discovered through shorter periods in other roles?
SPEAKER_01:Um, I could talk about this all day. Um I loved my time at SaladWorks so much. I love still kind of following the brand. I'm an avid consumer. Um, there's still something orange in almost every room of my house. Um, and so um, but I will say a couple things. One, the the cross-functional experience was enormous for me. You know, recognizing things like the consumer should always have the head seat at the table as you go through your journey was something I don't know that I would have had the same perspective on had I been at a few different companies. I started at SaladWorks as a business coach. Um, I was running and supporting individual locations. And so as I changed roles there, it all came from this perspective of kind of standing on the other side of the salad case, talking to a consumer and finding out what they wanted from the brand. And so that consumer vision, I would say, changed everything I did along the way. It was just, I mean, it was I'm rolling out something from a marketing perspective. How does that fit in the location? Where are things when I when we were working on redesigning the location? We knew the flow of the consumer, right? I had stood on the other side. And so I could walk that journey myself, having seen it. And it changed the way we laid the store out, it changed the way that we communicated with the consumer, it changed the tech that we did, the loyalty focus. I mean, you name it, kind of that I would say like the consumer and I linked arms very early in my tenure there. And they were with me through that whole journey. And then I will say I value grit and I value kind of a lust for learning almost above all else as I'm building teams of the future. Yes, there's subject matter expertise. Yes, there is kind of educational pedigree and professionalism and all of those things. But my journey at SalidWorks was because I had leaders that said, Hey, try this. See if you can figure this out because you're an operator, because you've been in marketing, because you've sold franchises. And so that idea that I would kind of dig in and say, let me learn the business from the inside before as a leader I attempt to shape that business and how it moves forward. It's something I value so much in my professional career now.
SPEAKER_02:You're speaking my language. I'm such a nerd for range. And I feel like we have spent too much time in society. Like really like overvaluing the 10,000 hours, overvaluing, you know, you need to have you need to be great at something rather than in order to be great, you need to be good and interested in multiple things. You know, some of our most successful employees at Opus are the people who step up and say, I'd like to try this. Can I? You know, it's like that that uh to use your words, like the thirst for knowledge, the curiosity that actually builds a very different kind of muscle. And it's not range in and in and of itself and a willingness to have it is really a skill. And so I'm curious, like, has that always been who you are? Are you always in in your personal life? Are you always someone who's like, I just like to do and know a lot of different things?
SPEAKER_01:You know, I would say my my father is the exact same way, and that's probably where a lot of that comes from. He's in the food business as well. But um, yeah, I've always just I like I don't like things I don't understand, whatever it is. And so when I don't know something, my natural instinct is to like dig into it as much as I can. Um I say, you know, see fire, run towards fire. That is a little bit of my motto. Um, if there is something that I think needs fixing, I want to learn how we got there and how get out and how we don't maybe make those mistakes again. And it's really, it's served me so well. And I enjoy it. I'm like one of those people that I love what I do so much. Um, I love working with franchisees so much. I love operations. I love being in the store, right? I'm first to like jump in if I can. And so um, I'm one of the lucky ones.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and that actually makes me wonder how you make decisions. Are you a quick decision maker or like what's your your pro if you're running into the fire all the time? Does that does that manifest in the same way when you make decisions or are you more methodical?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, a hundred percent I'm a quick decision maker. I really like data. And so I will find, I want to be fact-based, right? I have a really solid, in my opinion, gut instinct at this point, having spent decades in the business, but I like it to be fact-based because I think the days of we're doing it because we always did it that way, or we're doing it because someone in the C-suite felt like that was the right thing. I think those days are over. I think we just have to act more responsibly. And so, yes, I am I am a quick decision maker. I will say that I've learned over the years to balance that out with people in the organization that are not so quick, sometimes in a good way. So that they'll say, like, hey, hold on for a second. This one needs a little bit more of our attention. Let's take another day, a week, a month, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_02:Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_01:Make sure that we get to the right spot. I say a lot, like, I don't want to smoke my own exhaust and just kind of sit in a room and say, Oh, I'm gonna make all these decisions because I've been in the business so long. The team that has linked arms with me and other members of the executive team, my expectation is they are constantly interjecting their opinion, asking questions, pushing back so that we do get to all the right places.
SPEAKER_02:I I want to bring something up. I don't always bring this up to female executives because I my own personal feeling just about being a woman in a leadership role is like, yeah, of course I am. Like, why are we even questioning this? But but just talking about you a little bit, I actually think it it's appropriate to bring this up. You know, being a woman at an executive level in franchising still isn't the norm. Um, you obviously are in this like incredible, like far-reaching role. I really would like to know, you know, what, or maybe it hasn't. Um how has that, you know, being a woman in a C-suite role, how has that really shaped how either how you lead or how you design organizations?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, um, I love diversity in thought and thinking, and whether that is background, you know, male, female, I just I think that your executive team, your leadership team, and candidly the team as a whole should be reflective of your consumer base. And that consumer base is diverse. And so I've never really like you, I don't, I've never really looked at it like I am a woman in an executive role, right? Like I'm just an executive. Um, I'm a brand steward, is what I am. But I am very careful to make sure that the teams kind of in the next generation of brand leaders have a voice. And so whether it's a woman, whether it's someone who's younger, um, whether it's a person of color, right? I want to make sure that there's absolutely an a level playing field for any one of those people to get to where they have a seat at the table to make decisions. Um, and so, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about kind of my desire to learn things. I have a member of my team and she's younger. And we were working on something legal separate in the brand. So I shot her a copy of it and said, Hey, during our next one-on-one, I don't think this is something you've ever been exposed to in your career. Let's talk through this so that I can give you some of the insights so that you understand this whole business a little differently. And so I take that responsibility to kind of give future leaders that same opportunity of cross-functional leadership and knowledge of the business. I feel like that's a huge part of my job, of my commitment, both to brands and to the industry, is just kind of pay that forward.
SPEAKER_02:There's something you just said right now, and it's a nice way to close this before we go into the lightning round, which is my favorite part of this conversation, is there is like a subtlety in your language. You said, I want them to have a seat at the table, I want them to have a voice, instead of, which I think sometimes we hear, you know, and I agree, you know, that there's the the easiest way to think about this is well, I want my employee base to reflect my consumer base so that like we grow and we have more empathy for that experience. Yep. But you the word the language you didn't use is I want to give them a voice because it there's a difference, right? But of like, well, yeah, they they have a voice. I just and and to use your words again, like I need to give them a seat at the table and some runway to to use it, and but also give them some guidance guidance, thus the term runway to to like help them not go off the rails. And and I really appreciate that. I think like that's a a misunderstood or or way of seeing the world that like there is a difference between giving someone a voice and having a voice, but just giving them a seat at the table, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely right.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Um well, Jenna, this has been a well-rounded uh conversation. I I want to end it with our lightning round. Listeners love this. Uh it's basically um only a couple of minutes long, and I'm gonna ask you a handful of questions and just try to answer them as quickly as you can, just a couple of words um so people can get a glimpse of who you are. So uh we'll start with number one, which is what was your first job?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I worked um in the summer at a hot dog food truck. Nice. So you've always been in the industry. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know it then, but I feel like that was it. That was my intro.
SPEAKER_02:Uh what's your uh particularly interested in this? What's your go-to donut flavor? Ooh.
SPEAKER_01:Um, go-to donut flavor is probably cinnamon sugar. All right. What's a restaurant trend or food trend that you're completely over? Ooh. Huge portions. Um, I'm not a big like family style. Um, I don't I don't want all these things everywhere. I like little plates because I like variety. So I'd like to try all the things.
SPEAKER_02:What is an underrated, and you can't say one of your brands, what is an underrated franchisor brand and why?
SPEAKER_01:Oh um underrated franchisor brand. Um, you know, I'm gonna go to some of the older brands because I love a good legacy brand, right? So I'm gonna talk about like an Annie Anne's um a brand that look how long they've been around. Um and I really respect so much of that, right? Not everybody talks about them as much, I think, as they did before. And especially with things like, you know, enclosed shopping malls and the implosion of that entire segment of our real estate chain. The fact that brands like that have been able to like pivot and adapt, I it like speaks my language.
SPEAKER_02:What leadership skill are you personally going back to basics on right now?
SPEAKER_01:Research. I mean utilizing the information I have, right? Um, kind of with decision making. I like to look at tech. I like to look at, you know, I'm a big fan of like, let me go back to the FDD and the franchise agreement and like refresh the language in here so that I take a look at it. And so I want to make sure that we I kind of stay grounded in fact, in black and white information. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes we have to like curve around those really straight lines, but I at least like to know what they are.
unknown:Huh.
SPEAKER_02:Uh so to finish things off, Jenna, if you could give your 25-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, keep going. Um, keep going, right? I mean, there were moments in my career where I was like, am I doing the right thing? Um, is this the right role? I just took on something that I'm not sure I know how to do. Um, and I'd love to say, like, you got it. Like, don't, don't, don't worry. Just like learn more, study harder. Um, you know, look at people around you and ask a million questions, and the end result will be exactly what I wanted it to be.
SPEAKER_02:Wonderful way to end our conversation, Jenna. Thank you so much. Uh really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you so much for having me.
