The guy sitting next to me on the flight from Toronto to SFO and I got into gabbing while gulping down our carry-on lunches. It turned out that he’s in the business of producing franchise expositions all over North America and Canada.
I have about as much interest in the corporate franchise recruiting industry as I do in memorizing a Cleveland bus schedule. I imagine my companion in Row 22 feels the same way about blogging. But it’s a long flight so we chat to pass the time and, as is often the case, we both find ourselves surprised that the conversation actually turned interesting.
I tell him I’m coming back from a wonderfully successful trip. He tells me he is heading to San Mateo for his first money-loosing exposition since 1999. I remember 1999 as financially my best ever. His best years were 2001-3. I refer to those as my “should-I-sell-shoes-at-Nordstrom” era. It turns out that over the past 20 years, each time his business was booming, mine sucked.
We both stop and puzzle this. It's an unlikely connection. Is it pure coincidence or is there some relevant connectivity between our respective trades? We return to our respective reading material, but it’s a long flight and I am fascinated by unlikely marketing connections. I buy fresh fish at a little market in Half Moon Bay after walking my dog on the beach in the early morning. The owner always asks me if the surf’s up. It turns out that more surfers means late afternoon business and he calls in extra help.
I ask my travel companion if things are bad for him all over. Nope, last month Detroit was just about the best ever. A whole bunch of midlevel people got laid off Ford workers with large severance checks were eager to find a franchise in something that would give them a second start.
And then it hits me. Every time a regional economy implodes, midlevel people with some money, but not enough money, people who often counted on an employer who let them down, say “screw this. I’m going to work for myself. I’m going to find something completely new.” Come to think of it a franchise might have been more for me the the Nordstrom shoe job.
We exchange cards and promise to ping each other every six months or so to discuss how business is doing. We may have found a pretty decent way to predict how our respective businesses are doing.
