You want every location to feel the same. Your lawyer wants you to stay out of your franchisee's HR file. Where's the line?

Franchise attorney Lee Plave of Plave Koch joins Katherine to break down the American Franchise Act (HR 5267) and the question underneath it: when does a franchisor cross from setting brand standards into being a joint employer of their franchisee's staff — and what happens when they do?

Lee came out of the Federal Trade Commission and has spent decades representing franchisors at every scale, from IHG, Hilton and 7-Eleven to brands that sold their first unit last month. In this conversation he lays out the rule that keeps franchisors on the right side of the line — standardize the output, not the input — and explains why the most cautious legal advice, "don't train them, don't talk to them," is both self-defeating and, in some businesses, genuinely unsafe.

In this episode:

• What vicarious liability and joint employer status actually mean for a growing brand
• What the American Franchise Act is trying to codify, and why it exists now
• The output-versus-input rule, and how to apply it to your own brand standards
• Why cheap franchise documents are the most expensive purchase you'll make
• How to spot an agreement that came off a document mill or out of an AI
• What to do instead of directing your franchisee's employees
• Why one rogue franchisee damages the other ninety-nine, not just the brand

Katherine LeBlanc and James Vitrano have spent a combined 40+ years in the trenches of franchising — across marketing, operations, legal, and franchise development — working with brands at every stage of growth. They've sat in the rooms where the hard calls get made, and they're not shy about sharing what they've seen work and what they've watched blow up.

Katherine works with franchisors through Apollo CMO, stepping in as the strategic marketing resource brands need when growth gets ahead of the marketing function. If this one hit close to home, reach out.

Want to go deeper?

🌐 apollocmo.com
▶️ @KatherineLeBlanc_Franchise on YouTube
🔗 linkedin.com/in/katherineleblanc
📩 katherine@apollocmo.com

You're staring at a full pipeline and want to be intentional about build-out — what should you actually be prepared for?

Katherine LeBlanc and James Vitrano sit down with Charlie Guzzetta, founding partner of Depot and former President & Chief Development Officer of BurgerFi (9 to 135 locations and public on the NASDAQ). Charlie now builds and designs kitchens for some of the hottest restaurant brands around, and he lays out how to scale without blowing your budget or your brand: why you should design a business instead of a restaurant, the three Ps of build-out (pre-planning, prototypes, post-mortem), how a "family of prototypes" keeps you flexible, and where restaurant tech is finally getting affordable for emerging brands.

A practical playbook for any franchisor heading into a growth phase.

About the hosts: Katherine LeBlanc and James Vitrano have a combined 40+ years in franchising — across marketing, operations, legal, and franchise development. Katherine is the founder of Apollo CMO, helping franchise brands grow.

Go deeper:
🌐 apollocmo.com | ▶️ @KatherineLeBlanc_Franchise on YouTube | 🔗 linkedin.com/in/katherineleblanc | 📩 katherine@apollocmo.com

You're ready to grow your franchise — so where do you actually start? In this episode of Dear Frannie, Katherine LeBlanc and James Vitrano tackle the question every emerging franchisor is asking: where do I start my franchise development process, especially when budgets are tight?

Their answer is the one most brands skip: start inside your own four walls. Before you spend a dollar on external lead generation, your fans, employees, and customers are your warmest and most likely franchisees. Katherine and James unpack why "marketing is momentum," why cheap external leads are often the most expensive path, why passive income is a dangerous sales pitch, and why growing slow is a feature, not a failure.

Whether you're an emerging brand launching franchising or a seasoned operator over-indexed on external spend, this episode will change where you put your next dollar.

Katherine LeBlanc is a franchise growth and marketing advisor and founder of Apollo CMO, helping brands build franchise sales programs that convert. Reach her at katherine@apollocmo.com.

About the hosts: Katherine LeBlanc and James Vitrano have spent a combined 40+ years in the trenches of franchising — across marketing, operations, legal, and franchise development. They've sat in the rooms where the hard calls get made, and they share what they've seen work and what they've watched blow up.

🌐 apollocmo.com
▶️ @KatherineLeBlanc_Franchise on YouTube
🔗 linkedin.com/in/katherineleblanc
📩 katherine@apollocmo.com