Greg Muzzillo – Go Buy a Mirror!

Bloody here,

I invite those who stop by the blog to help Mr. Muzzillo with his most recent post here at Bloody (crying like a little piss ant that he’s been attacked personally) to help him out and explain to him why this blog is here and just what Mr. Muzzillo cannot see with how he runs his (excuse me, YOUR) businesses into the ground …… (note the guy is so effing stupid that he cannot use punctuation or spell his own company correctly – is this a franchise owner you’d want to be in control of your livelihood?)

greg muzzillo

hello, greg muzzillo here. i am not sure why you choose to attack me personally or the organization i have taken 30 years of my life to build.

your attack is anonymous. your words are filled with lies and misrepresentations.

the fact is that our suppliers are encouraged to pay some money into a preferred supplier fund. and that money is used to benefit the suppliers and the franchise owners.

we use that money to pay for credit insurance. all our franchise owners receive free credit insurance from the preferred supplier fund. the franchise owner benefits. and the supplier does, too. because in the proforma system, both the franchise owner and their supplier knows that they will get paid…even if the franchise owner’s customer doesn’t pay them.

this year that fund and the insurance program has paid millions of dollars to the franchise owners and their suppliers. in fact, i know of a few franchise owners that would not have survived without the credit insurance proceeds.

proforma has been recognized by inc. magazine, forbes magazine, the wall street journal, success magazine, blue mau mau and many others for its accomplishments.

i am proud our system and our people. i regret that you have taken to anonymous slander, name calling, lying and misrepresentation about proforma.

i am proud of proforma. i am proud of the result of my 30 years of hard work. that said, i admit that we are not perfect and invite you to directly address with me any legitimate issues you have with proforma.

we are committed to helping the dreams of our franchise owners come true. in the spirit of that commitment i invite you to an open and honest dialog.

dream big!

greg muzzillo
founder & co-ceo
proforam

Greggy, you might want to go back to school and learn how to spell and type or at least let one of your peons type for you because your default to defense and your imbacile Rah! Rah! statements further prove to all those watching that you haven’t a clue and you don’t own a single mirror!

Bloody

Labor Day in the life of a Zee

Ever ask a zee how they feel about holidays?  Just what goes through the mind of an average person versus the franchisee owner when “holiday” is discussed?  Ever wonder how a zor spends their holiday? In the Americas, the word is “vacation”.  Every paid worker spends their year planning and imagining the relief those two or three weeks truly bring to the family and one’s own inner balance of family vs work vs quality of life.  In Europe, it’s holiday and it’s twice as long as the Americas because most Euro holiday packages are four to six weeks.  The European has come to expect holiday and due to the lack of opportunity, in some respects holiday is one’s privilege.

In the thinking of the blue collar or the white collar or the Euro or anyone else who has never truly owned and run a business, let alone a franchised business, there is no reference or association as to what a holiday brings to a zee.  Their impression is that a small business owner who owns a high-profile franchise operation must already be rich.  They do not know that the life savings and the mountain of debt needed to serve them their 15 second servings of fast food heart attack will never allow me to enjoy another holiday.  The reference of outlay at the onset of such purchase of franchises is referred to “sunk costs”.  Oh how bloody true is that depiction!

Here are just a few interesting problems of the zee during holiday:

• Workers are off, zee gets to stay and keep the doors open (bills don’t do holidays)
• Workers are off, doors have to stay open, otherwise the revenue of the holiday revelers will be lost
• If it’s a day in which stores are closed due to law, I’ll stay and catch up on books and admin as the workers aren’t in
• If it’s a party day where retail is open, I get to stay and help the skeleton shift (who bitch and moan that they have to work)
• Leading up to the holiday, everyone leaves early, meaning I get to stick around to make sure everything is set because I own this mess
• And finally, the schedules are all mine to own and fix and work with due to the fact that no one owns anything but me (the R word means nothing to the hourly worker)

And last but not least, I can visualize and imagine the wonderful times the zor is having attending special events as grand marshall (the honor and respect he purchased with my life savings and ongoing royalty abuses).  After all, his ad fund, his marketing fund, his kickbacks from vendors and his admin, his legal support are all coming from the money I gave, will give him and am generating while working over this glorious holiday!

Bloody

Jim Press – Gee, Great Name for a Zor Capo

Enter the infamous Mr. Nardelli to Chrysler Corporation.  You see, Bobby has never gotten over getting passed over for the much smarter and younger Mr. Immelt (even though Jack never knew Jeffrey would be so liberal in his ways).  He left GE in a huff and took out all of his aggressions on Home Depot.  After the board at HD finally figured out Bobby hadn’t a clue and Jack was right, Bobby weaseled his way into Chrysler declaring GE and HD were all wrong about him.

Once aboard at Chrysler, he steals Toyota’s hatchet man, Mr. Jim Press.  Now how do you think Mr. Press has figured out how to make the Toyota engine run so well?  With threats and manipulations of course!  After all, dealerships are nothing but a bunch of wussy malcontents and once you threaten them within an inch of their lives, they back off and sink themselves even further in debt.

A group of Chrylser (Jeep and Dodge) dealerships experienced Mr. Press’ wrath on a conference call in the spring when he shared openly that he knew the 30% who were holding out and where their kids went to school and where the dealership owners lived.  Yes, that’s right.  Mr. Press said those very words when 30% of the dealerships refused to sign for millions of dollars worth of inventory because they had lost faith in Chrysler, Chrysler financing and the economy.  Yet, Mr. Press is making money hand over fist, selling 15 million dollar condos in NYC and living the life of Reilly.

Don’t be fooled folks.  The elite have their ways and many of them cannot be discussed in the open.  Mr. Press was picked up by Fiat in a heartbeat due to his ability to threaten, coerce and otherwise bring in sales of inventory, force dealerships out of business (losing their livelihood set up by generations of hard work and labor) and make others buy those franchises thus sinking them into debt they will never see relief from in their lifetimes.

Recently, Mr. Press actually sent out a letter asking for the dealerships who weren’t forcefully closed to team up against those who were to throw them under the bus!  Shame on you Mr. Press.  The law should do a full court press on you and put you on the street or better yet in prison for destroying so many lives under the guise of  “it’s just business”.

I have one question for you Mr. Press.  Have you ever in your life had to lie awake at night not knowing where your next dollar or sale will come from because you were a legitimate business man living with the ups and downs of having to bear the long term responsibility for your actions?  NO!  You haven’t the intestinal fortitude to bear the consequences of your actions.  You’d rather take a huge salary and live like a playboy at the expense of hard working small business owners who pay your salary while you threaten them and their children.  Where I come from, that’s referred to as La Cosa Nostra or mafioso.  It’s not legitimate business and you, Mr. Press are a disgrace to this land, this marketplace and this nation.

Bloody

SureSlim: “We are not a Cult?”

This a line from the owner of SureSlim.  See the full article here:  Big Losers in SureSlim row head to court

What’s wrong with this picture?

The franchise started in Australia (it is now in receivorship).

They moved to New Zealand and started selling franchises there, now 17 of 21 franchises they sold have failed.

How about a “royalty and marketing fee”  of 29%!!!!  Let’s do the math.  Assuming one’s business is at the top of the food chain and one of high profit, say 50% markup before payroll, overhead and taxes.  You make $50.00 USD.  It costs you $50 to deliver the goods and services (this is way over the top folks!). Now you pay your royalty fee of $29.00 to corporate?  You have yet to pay taxes!  Are the people that bought these pink elephants really that stupid! (I’m not letting the owners off the hook here, but for all the promises in the world, I’m not giving some gypsy who sells snake oil a 29% gross profit for the rest of my days!)  So, even if you’re a genius and you’re making 50 cents on the dollar, that only leaves you with a Net Profit before taxes of 21%!  No accountant in their right mind would ever approve a business model like that!  After suffering through a year of that, I’d make the franchisor put up my family, feed my kids until he let me out of the contract.  If that’s a cult, then so be it!

The governments of the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canda and others cannot and will not be bothered to keep this from happening!  They don’t want to hear about it, which is why the FTC took over the reins in the 80s during the Reagan administration.  Now it just goes to arbitration.  The rich and the scheming are all in bed together.  They will fleece you, piece you and hang you in the rafters if you are so naive to believe the gypsies and con men who call themselves “franchisors”.  And when their best friends are bankers, mortgage criminals from Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, would you expect anything less?  Who do you think funds these stupid ventures?  Securitizing  franchising loans is a hot investment area now that real estate is worthless.

A word to those who are entertaining any type of franchise:  Ask two lawyers, an accountant, your wife and anybody else who has a brain at least three times whether buying a franchise is a good thing.  And don’t do it unless you have a 100% majority “YES!”.  In essence, stay the hell away from franchising.  Stop the bleeding.

Bloody

What Can One Man Do?

Is anyone else tired of the spineless comments yet?  Comments won’t get it done. The brokers, franchisor-friendly lawyers and franchisors are quite happy with the status quo.  They have rarely come up against a threat they couldn’t stifle, muffle, silence or destroy.  Why is that?  Why haven’t we, the pitiful franchisee figured out how to get the franchisor the eff out of our lives? It’s not technology or the times, people.  The minutemen figured it out and they didn’t have cars, 401Ks or great academic degrees.  It’s not smarts people, it’s balls and a backbone!

Franchisees, we have no one to blame but ourselves.  We condemn the pigs of franchising and big box retailing, and we shop at Wal-Mart, Home Depot and McDonald’s.  We want the freedom without the cost!  We bitch and moan about the economy, yet we contribute to the tyranny.  Has anyone figured out that the freakin’ American Dream is a hoax?  The Declaration of Independence states:

“that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” 

And oh how pissed we are when the franchisor can weasel out of every claim he made when he puts a contract in front of you that takes everything right mentioned above in the Declaration away from us!  And then we go to a generalist lawyer who knows nothing about franchising?  And then we give up when he fails, takes more of our money?

These are not conventional times.  Conventional means don’t work.  They haven’t for decades.  What makes you think they will today? People, if your faith is in the American Dream, Bernie Madoff, Mr. Stanford or President Obama, move on and surf somewhere else?  You don’t have balls or a backbone!  But for those of you who do, let’s get on with it!  Start by refusing to give these bastards any more of our money.  Stop fueling the big box boys and giving money to the franchise system.  Renegotiate your contracts and refuse to pay until your rights are restored! Start putting your franchisor on the hot seat and holding him accountable!  Isn’t it time you got something for your money, your sunk costs, your sweat?

Here are some numbers from the top 100 franchises of Entrepreneur Magazine – 2008 – you might want to consider:

• 215,768 US Franchise owners
• 11,102 Canadian Franchise owners
• 120,108 Foreign Franchise owners
• 346,978 Franchise owners in total

Average Franchisor has less than 10 executives and less than 100 employees – are you getting it people?

Franchisee Owners (just owners) – 346,978  v  Franchisors 10,000 total employees

The numbers are 29:1 in favor of the FRANCHISEE – Stand up and be counted!!!!!!!!!  It’s our money they’re taking, it’s our money they’re using to live their playboy lives, take bonuses to buy their fancy cars and yachts and mansions.  It’s our money they use to promote the brand and then tell you to get lost when they decide they want to go a different direction!  Check out the latest Domino’s commercial if you doubt me….every time you buy a domino’s special, you take money out of your neighbor’s pocket, your kid’s school budget and eseentially you rob your neighbor of a fair wage!

Bloody

Franchising’s Dirty Little Secrets

Welcome to the first post of the bloody franchise blog.   The purpose of this blog is not to draw interest to the blog writer, “bloody”, but to draw attention to those who are fleecing honest and trusting individuals out of their life savings in the name of franchising.  There are lots of blogs out there whose purpose is to generate leads, make money in the franchise industry, fill the pockets of greedy lawyers or to otherwise make money off the naive.  They purport themselves in the name of equality or the telling both sides of the story.

This blog is nothing of the sort.  It is about exposing the schemes of those who are out to take others in the name of the American Dream.  So stay tuned and read on and if this affects you or one you love, by all means COMMENT!  We are about exposing real people who draft these plans, prey upon the unaware and then execute these empty promises of “owning your own business”, “being your own boss”, “having a place to invest your life savings” and any other intangible or otherwise empty promise that they then ask you to sign a waiver so as not to be held accountable for their destructive behavior.

Did you know that franchising accounts for thousands of lawsuits every year in nearly every state in the union here in the US and in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and all other democratic developed countries?

If you have a story to tell, please email bloodyfranchise@yahoo.com and we’ll check it out and showcase it so the whole world can see.