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

Freddy Crosses Over to the Dark Side…

It was all innocent at first.  Freddy borrowing money ($1,000) from Dr. Peter to start a sub shop.  Try as he did, Freddy couldn’t make it work.  Maybe two would work instead of one?  So Freddy labored all day and all night to become the quintessential entrepreneur.  But just as one didn’t work, two didn’t work.   Just like throwing your last wad of cash onto a single number at the roullette wheel, Freddy opened a third store.  Voila!  It worked.  Three was a charm!  After a number of years, Freddy knew there had to be a better way.  The hours were too long, payroll was tough and working to manage the whole mess was a juggling act at best.

So Freddy learned about the most lucrative business model ever conjured up by man – where you could use other people’s money to grow your business!  It’s called FRANCHISING!  So it was in 1974 that Freddy moved over to the dark side.  On the shirt tails of Ray K, Freddy started selling franchises to any and all who would show.  He especially loved immigrants who were entering the country with their life savings.  Freddy never told them his model wouldn’t work for just one store. But then, Freddy wasn’t running sandwich shops, he was selling franchises.  And should they figure it out, he could sell them more.  The ones that didn’t, could be sold to new marks.

Interestingly, the Reagan administration relieved the entrepreneurial establishment from common law and allowed arbitration to be the governing entity.  This gave Freddy and his band of merry con men the final authority on any and all contract negotiation and interpretation.  If things went wrong, the arbitration firm could be paid off.  And God forbid anyone sue Freddy.  Should that happen, Freddy simply uses their own royalty fees and vendor kickback monies to nail their puny little pitiful sorry asses to the unemployment line.  Don’t eff with Freddy or he’ll take you to the poor house in a body bag.  Who needs a mafia when one can use the government and one’s own money against him!

And so you have it.  The day the richest man in South Florida decided working to make a legitimate business was for the birds.  Taking advantage of the unkknowing and trusting immigrant and displaced corporate schmuck is a far easier way to become a billionaire and playboy.  And just remember Mr. Schaden, Freddy’s war chest makes yours look like a kindergartner’s piggy bank stash.

Bloody

Who Pays for TV and Radio Advertising?

Turn your television on and for a single hour, jot down the commercials you see on any of the major broadcast or cable channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, CNN, etc.).  On major channels, there are three main categories of advertisers.  (Check the bottom of this post to find out what those three are.)

Though it cannot be proven, franchising advocates continuously quote that 40 to 50% of all retail is franchised.  (The data is owned by too many people and influenced heavily by pro-franchisor predatory bigots.) When you analyze the data of your one hour’s worth of major network advertising, it will become apparent just what the three verticals are that spend the lion’s share of advertising dollars with Madison Avenue agencies.

But that’s not the question or the purpose of this post.  The question is: Where is the money coming from?  First of all, some history.  McDonald’s ignored all conventional wisdom over three decades ago when they surpassed the 100 million dollar mark in advertising spend in a single year.  Most could not fathom the thought of such.  How did they justify it?  Simple, it wasn’t their money!  It is the money of hard working franchisees who pay exorbitant royalties to franchisors who spend it freely and with reckless abandon.  McDonald’s practices are truthfully depicted in in Fast Food Nation, author Eric Schlosser.  They pioneered the principle of going after your children, the pester power method.  But that again, is not the issue.  The real issue is that many franchises are B2B and not B2C.  Nearly all of the franchises that are offered at low entry fee are B2B.  These predatory franchisors have no intention of doing anything with the hard-earned  money they collect for advertising from your profits.  When asked the question of where that money is spent, or better yet when reading an FDD or UFOC, it is up to the sole discretion of the franchisor whether or not those funds are even earmarked for advertising.  Read an FDD and if you can even find the subject covered, you will see that the money can be used for advertising or any other thing the franchisor chooses.  Many simply use if to fund their playboy lifestyles.

So the next time you see David Brandon bragging that he’s giving money back to Main Street, don’t believe it.  He’s spending the money of the franchisees as though it is his.  When you watch a Subway commercial, remember that Fred DeLuca is the slimiest franchisor in the world, fighting more lawsuits than McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts and Pizza Hut combined.  Fred gladly sells single franchises to unsuspecting immigrants (all they need is a pocket full of cash) when he couldn’t make it until he owned three!!!  When you see a Quiznos (seedy and poorly thought-out million sub giveaway campaign), know that Rick Schaden and his staff of flunkies approved the campaign and then fired the VP of Marketing (who came from telecommunications – how ignorant and cheap is Schaden for even hiring her) as a scapegoat.  (It’s only a matter of time until Quiznos loses the pricing game, thus driving all of their franchisees out of business.  Freddy D. has 6 or 7 times the number of franchisees, thus a war chest of over 400 million dollars a year at his disposal (pun intended).  Ricky hasn’t a chance of winning a price war.

So the next time you watch a Nascar race (if you can stand the fact they never learned to turn right;), count the number of advertisers who sponsor a car and then see how many are franchises.  Then realize that Ricky and Freddy and Davey are all spending 4 to 5 MILLION per car to put their brand on the hood of a race car!  That’s right, the hard-earned money of your relatives or friends or immigrants (who are unaware because they’re probably working 7 days a week just to make ends meet) is being spent so Ricky and Freddy and Davey can sit in the infield or in VIP boxes,  get special privileges at the expense of those who labor just to scrape by.

The three vertical leaders in advertising are auto, beverage and food.  (Yes, they are all franchised; GM not for long – they are soon to be owned by you and your Commander-in-Chief, who by the way, operates just like a franchisor.  He spends your money and you have absolutely not one damn iota of say in any of those decisions!)

Bloody

MBA Students – You Should Have Been a Crook! (Oh, Some of you are!)

Even when people bilk others out of millions of dollars, our government forgives them.  Fancy that!

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/06/norvergence.shtm

If I were a college professor in a respected MBA school, I’d have a hard time convincing students not to undertake predatory-type schemes like these when the results are millions in offshore bank accounts, 5 years to scrub it and a simple slap on the wrist.  Why not go the route of lying and cheating when the government will forgive you? They do it for the biggest cheats and crucify Main Street!  No different than the subprime mortgage play.  It works something like this:

See how these guys operate (described in a previous post here on Bloody).

Bloody

Blood is in the Water – Here Come the Franchisors!

CHUM [chuhm] – noun

1. Decent upright and trusting citizens having been layed-off or downsized by corporate America   (in their effort to appease Wall Street, the rich, the elite, Political pundits & Capitol Hill) finding themselves in the overpopulated labor pool.  In possession of 401k savings, retirement and severance packages.
2. Veterans who have served our country who have returned and now find themselves in the job market but without the skill sets on their resume that corporate America chooses to accept.
   Synonym = franchisee

“CHUM-MING” [chuhmng] – verb

1. The art of writing a UFOC (Uniform Franchise Offering Circular) – pre 7/2008 now referred to as an FDD (Franchise Disclosure Document) in an effort to make an otherwise worthless business saleable to chum.
2. The art of luring chum into an indentured & subservient relationship with promises of ownership, independence and autonomy using terms such as [own your own business without the risk], [take less risk], [be your own boss], [work within a proven framework]. Commonly practiced by opportunists to create inflated revenues, building itself a low cost labor network to generate marketing dollars resulting in greater revenues. Only works within the framework of a franchise brand which was at one time overseen by the FTC (never a factor for franchisees) and has absolutely no regulation or oversight today.
3. Benefits include:
   1. Limited administration at headquarters – franchisees are treated like second-class citizens by corporate people who have never been in the business – mostly low level b-rated admin people or relatives of the chummers
      
   2. Huge cash flow as franchisees must give chummers royalty, advertising monies, vendor kickbacks (and anything else the chummer dreams up),  whether the chum prospers or not
   3. Living the life by simply buying more air time on national and local networks and sending the bill to the chum.
   4. corporate boxes at sporting events, playing golf on the PGA with pros, sponsoring NASCAR teams (all at the expense of those stupid franchisees we call ‘chum’).  Synonym – “franchising”
      

Origin: Singer Sewing Machine Company – 1800’s

Firms who paved the way to this model of abuse:  McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway, Pepsico, Coca-Cola, Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Cendant – now Realogy (Century21, Coldwell Banker, Sotheby’s Real Estate, ERA, Better Homes & Gardens Realty), Wyndham, AAMCO, Blockbuster, Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silvers, A&W) – and the list goes on and on and on.

And you thought those guys were just marketing genius’?  I think they attended Bernie Madoff’s alma mater.  Or perhaps Mr. Stanford’s school of investment?

Multiple AGs speak out against Leasing Company Fraud!

Note this Memorandum of Law placed out in the public domain listing our wonderful leasing friends and how they scam small Mom & Pops.

A Judge in Nebraska, the Federal Trade Commission, Vermont’s AG and Pennsylvania’s AG all speak up against this practice of fraudulent business practices.

Scamming Leasing Companies:  Patriot Leasing – Pennsylvania, Preferred Capital – Ohio, Landmarks Financial – Colorado, IFC Credit – Illinois, Frontier Leasing- Iowas, Dollar Leasing – Ohio, CFC Investment – Ohio, C & J Leasing – Iowa, Pawnee Leasing – Colorado, Susquehana Patriot Commercial Leasing – Pennsylvania, Preferred Leasing

Process: Sell them a deal that doesn’t actually exist, go bankrupt, put a hell/highwater clause in the lease, make them sign over rights to venue to the state of the leasing company, file in a state the small business cannot afford to commute to (most leases were not sold in the state of the leasing company) & finally use the court to extract every dime from the victims even though there are multiple states with summary judgments and/or remands in favor of the victims.   But how would the other small businesses know?

Wake up people!  These companies are not strong unless you make them strong by continuing to buckle under their idle threats!!!!!!!  This is not an isolated incident. This is rampant and if you’re reading this, you’re most likely a victim.  What if everyone just stood up and refused to pay?  Again, you are continuing to empower them when you pay money against an illegally constructed contract!!!!