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

Greg Muzzillo is Pro-Bankruptcy (but only if you’re a vendor giving him kickbacks)

Words of wisdom from a franchisor:

Proforma’s co-CEO Greg Muzzillo said “the filing will improve Norwood’s balance sheet immediately”.  Well, no sh** sherlock! Bankruptcy is a great vehicle to screw your creditors!  (Greg gets a 2-3% kickback on every item a franchisee buys from Norwood.)  Why not screw them all the way just like you do your franchisees, Greg (and your wife too)!  After all, you learned from the best – Mr. DeLuca.  And your little whipping boy Brian Smith can help you snow the franchisees into believing that all is OK while you rape and pillage their future livelihoods too!

Except that if you are a franchisee and you chose bankruptcy for protection, you lose everything (Section 13, xii in the franchise agreement)!  So what’s good for the vendor who is feeding kickbacks to Mr. Muzzillo is death to the franchisee who is giving nearly 25% of its net worth to a fat lazy schmuck who sues his ex-wife to get out of child support when he’s making 38K a month and she is a homemaker!  Can you spell D-O-U-B-L-E S-T-A-N-D-A-R-D Greg?

Update: For all of those who don’t know it, Mr. Muzzillo gets it both ways.  He takes kickbacks from every vendor that sells to any franchisee in his system.  If you’re a franchisee, he’ll twist your arm and make you buy from a “Proforma PLP (preferred limited partner)” because there’s a 2% kickback from the heavy volume PLPs (BIC, Norwood, Vantage, SanMar) and more for low volume PLPs who spend their time schmoozing Greg and Vera and Brian.  You would think that franchisees would have more clout since they are losing over 10% in royalty fees as compared to the PLPs.  But oh contrare!  The franchisees are nothing but marks and only those in the “Million Dollar Club” are given any attention (and very little at that).  They are in fact the angriest!  You see, if they do 1 million in business at a net profit of 35% (highest average of all franchisees), they would receive $350,000.  Yet they end up paying Greg and Vera a whopping sum of $100,000 (28.5% of their net profit for absolutely nothing)! (If one only makes 25% net profit on 1 million, then Greg and Vera would receive 40% of the franchisee’s net profit!)

You see Greg and Vera don’t know an effing thing about selling print, promotions or apparel (that’s how Greg got in the business, but he hasn’t been in the trenches for over 25 years.  He was actually an accountant by trade and Vera is an investment banker.)  They are in the business to sell more franchises to more unsuspecting marks and they aren’t very good at that!  Franchise counts are not measurable as they are simply the word of Greg and Vera.  Franchise discontent continues to grow year after year (especially with those who are successful in spite of Greg and Vera).  As one makes more and more profits, Greg and Vera get more and more and more for less and less and less.  What do they do with all of the marketing monies, you ask?  They spend the royalty dollars marketing Proforma to prospective franchisees and mostly for their personal PR to prop up their personal image.  If you want marketing services for your specific franchise, that’s extra and you either have to do it yourself out of your own pocket or you can buy those services from Greg and Vera, (but that will be extra).

Bloody

A Fool’s Attempt at Due Diligence – Loss of life savings and more

For those of you who read this blog or have stumbled upon it by means of your layman “due diligence”, please read further.  Due Diligence is not for the inexperienced and cannot come from the credence good community (See credence goods).  Due Diligence must not be attempted, it must be undertaken.  And if this does not happen correctly, you might as well end up with the undertaker!  If you purchase due diligence from a credence good provider, you’re an idiot!  That’s what I said, an I-D-I-O-T!  If you buy it from a lawyer who is benefiting from the decision because he sells his services to people in the industry he’s investigating, then you’ve been had.  If you do it yourself with the lack of knowledge, you’ve been had.  If you hire a consultant that has something to gain or operates within the industry, you’re being hoodwinked.  Even if you hire someone or take advice from someone who is not gaining from the relationship and they have not been in the industry, you’re going to lose.

“So Bloody, if I cannot do it myself and I cannot hire one who is in the industry, to whom do I turn?”

Great question, I say.  Great question.  So to whom do you go?  Well, that in and of itself should make you so gunshy that you run in the other direction with great speed.  But if you’re like 99.9% of the majority of blokes who still believes that franchising can provide you with “the freedom of owning your own business without having to do the groundbreaking”, you deserve to lose your life savings and more.  Anyone who sets out to do due diligence and comes to the conclusion that franchising is any safer than opening up one’s own business, did a piss poor job of due diligence.  The statistics are there for everyone to see.  It’s called the Internet!

The golden rule to due diligence is:  When you find something that smells, don’t eat it! It’s not good for you no matter how much sugar you put on it!

Due diligence of a franchise is as important as proving a business plan to a potential investor.  When it comes to a franchise, you are the investor and if you eff up, you’re going to lose it all!  So don’t be so stupid and don’t give the franchisor the benefit of the doubt.  Be an effing Missouri mule and MAKE THEM PROVE EVERY BLOODY THING THEY SAY TO YOU!  IF THEY CANNOT, THEY ARE LYING!  IF THEY TELL YOU YOU WILL MAKE $50,000 A MONTH, MAKE THEM PUT IT IN WRITING!  IF THEY REFUSE, TELL THEM THEY ARE LIARS AND LEAVE!

It only takes one subtle thing to go wrong and you will be completely broke and most likely without for the rest of your life.  The banks don’t care, the lawyers don’t care, the government doesn’t care and damned if I know why I care.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been there and don’t want you to have to go through what I had to in order to find out the ugly side of franchising.

Oh, one more thing; if you find any franchisor that will stand behind the asinine claims they make and put it in writing, send it to me or comment on it.  I have yet to find a single one that will.  Ever hear of a carnival?  There’s a reason they come into town at night, set up their tents and leave in a week!  Franchisors are the direct descendants of gypsies and carnival operators.

Bloody

Getting the Zor’s attention

Visit BlueMauMau and you can read rants and arguments all day.  Sad to say, they are one of the few sites that encourage the criticism as opposed to so many others that spin franchising as an entrepreneurial venture (not!) and somehow are still able to sleep at night selling more and more displaced corporate or vets down the river with their silver tongues.  If you’re a franchisee who’s been destroyed, what else do you have to do?  You can bitch and moan and the lawyers will simply tell you you’re effed up because you signed the freakin’ document, idiot!  

Or maybe you’re a lawyer and you’ve finally come to the realization that you’re the one who is effed because by the time the franchisee figures out he needs help, he’s broke and you have no market!  And if you play both sides of the fence, then you have no say.  Pick a side or get the hell out of the way lawyers!  For you to continue taking even prospective franchisee money in exchange for due diligence on a single company is a travesty!  As I said in a post on BlueMauMau, what happens if the company is not worthy of investing in, do you then charge your prospective franchisee client another $5,000 to vet a second company to come to the same result?  

Maybe you’re a broker who is bottom surfing for that stupid bloke who is vulnerable and gullible and stupid enough to be so tight that he won’t pay a lawyer to do his due diligence for him and he believes you are dealing in “good faith”. Ha!  You’re all missing the boat and for those of you who are too stupid to figure out that there is no traditional recourse for the injustice, poor poor pitiful you!  If you’ve read this far and you’re not one of the three above, then there is still great hope.  The truth hurts like hell, but real people don’t let that stop them.  It doesn’t come without great sacrifice.  Put your passion to work in fighting the system the same way you fight to keep your business in spite of the wickidness of the franchisors we all have come to know so well.  See what Eric Schlosser says in the epilogue of Fast Food Nation:

page 268…When McDonald’s demanded ground beef free of lethal pathogens, the five companies that manufacture its hamburger patties increased their investment in new equipment and microbial testing.  If McDonald’s were to demand higher wages and safer working conditions for meatpacking workers, its suppliers would provide them.  

page 267…The right pressure applied to the fast food industry in the right way could produce change faster than any act of Congress. The United Students Against Sweatshops and other activist groups have brought widespread attenton to the child labor, low wages, and hazardous working conditions in Asian factories that make sneakers for Nike.

Are you getting it yet people?  No franchisor can abuse those who refuse to be abused when they show up in force and refuse in a position of unity and solidarity.  To continue trying to fight these things in the courts, class action lawsuits, contract negotiations or arbitration allows all the wrongdoers to hide in the shadows and continue their acts of evil against all franchisees.  If franchisees were to stop listening to those who point them at the court system or lawyers or other conventional stupidity, and start finding ways to expose the franchisors for what they are – con artists – and expose this to the press and the media with validity, there is traction!

Wake up America.  We didn’t earn our freedom trying to argue in the British courts, we took it by force and cunning.  Nothing short of this type of action will ever bring justice to a system that is corrupt, insolent, insulated and sheltered by politicians, lobbyists and government officials.   Reason doesn’t work for those who love their money.  The threat or the act of taking their money is the only option left in getting their attention!  

 

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