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

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

“Franchisees – Shut Your Mouth or Lose Your Livelihood”…Rick Schaden

The president of a group of disgruntled Quiznos franchisees says the fast-food chain has been granted a court injunction, forcing him to close his three Oakville-area restaurants. Doug Johnson said the injunction, effective yesterday, was ordered within days of another court ruling allowing the franchisees’ lawsuit against Quiznos to proceed as a class action.

The Toronto Star
May 1, 2009

Quiznos closes plaintiff’s stores
After being certified to pursue class-action suit, owner of three outlets in Oakville shut down
Dana Flavelle

Quiznos closes plaintiff’s stores
After being certified to pursue class-action suit, owner of three outlets in Oakville shut down
Dana Flavelle

The president of a group of disgruntled Quiznos franchisees says the fast-food chain has been granted a court injunction, forcing him to close his three Oakville-area restaurants.

Doug Johnson said the injunction, effective yesterday, was ordered within days of another court ruling allowing the franchisees’ lawsuit against Quiznos to proceed as a class action.

The class-action certification represents a major step forward for the franchisees, Johnson said.

“Without the ability to bring this case forward as a group, franchisees face insurmountable obstacles in enforcing their legal rights. We now have a real chance to fix the problems of the past and help franchisees in the future,” Johnson said.

Once again to quote the now deceased Harold Brown’s book (published in 1980 and updated until Release 32, 2001), Franchising: Realities & Remedies, 1.01 [1]

Background of Franchising

[1] –New Concepts

…..As franchising has grown, however, the growth has been acompanied by a number of disputes between franchisors and their franchisees.  While legal disputes are to be expected in any long term relationship, franchisor/franchisee litigation has resulted in franchisors drafting progressively worse franchise agreements for new franchisees to sign.  Ironically, even a franchisee who prevails in litigation or arbitration ultimately harms prospective franchiseees in his system.  The losing franchisor is faced with two options: (1) alter its wrongful conduct, or (2) draft a more one-sided franchise agreement that states that the franchisor is permitted to act in any manner it sees fit.  Remarkably, franchisors almost always choose option number two, and  written franchise agreements reflect an even greater imbalance in power between franchisees and franchisors from year to year.  Franchisee advocates are forced to argue tougher and tougher cases each year as many courts refuse to recognize the imbalance in the relationship and, instead, enforce the language thrust upon the franchisee.

What a phenomenal business model!  Write a one-sided contract, if they sue you, shut them down!  If you lose, change the agreement to make sure they can never sue you in that manner again and cripple the incoming franchisees even more!  Hello franchisees – are you there!  Do you not understand yet?  You cannot fight a crook using a system run by the crook’s buddies (the courts)!  Call it naivete or ignorance or whatever, but the very reason most end up in arbitration is so that the courts could let the franchisors do “what they please”.  If your case makes it to court, then you’ll only end up with a class action or civil case in which you’ll only receive a small portion of your investment (the lawyers take the lion’s share) and then you get to start over!  Cool!  Awesome!  Wage your entire life savings and lose it.  Borrow more (now you’re waging your children’s and fellow taxpayer’s future lives) and fight the good fight against the enemy on their turf!  While you’re fighting, you cannot make a wage because the franchisor can shut you down!  If you win, you might get a tiny fraction back, if you lose, you lose two lives worth of investment.  Either way, you get to start over and fighting on prinicple, doesn’t pay the bills.  Doesn’t sound like a battle much worth fighting.  (I much prefer finding legal ways to make the franchisor’s lifeso bloody miserable, he has to change or suffer the wrath!)

Bloody

Harold Brown on Franchising…nothing has changed in nearly 30 years!

“Does any principle in our law have more universal application than the doctrine that courts will not enforce transactions in which the relative positions of the parties are such that one has unconscionably taken advantage of the necessities of the other?…The law is not so primitive that it sanctions every injustice except brute force and downright fraud.  More specifically, the courts generally refuse to lend themselves to the enforcement of a ‘bargain’ in which one party has unjustly taken advantage of the economic necessities of the other.” – Justice Felix Frankfurter  (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965)

It would be difficult to find a business relationship to which such standards are more applicable than franchising.  Although hundreds of different industries use franchising, certain common denominators exist.  Variations are minor and do not affect the overall picture.  The basic problem is a marked, intentional, and constantly emphasized disparity in the parties’ positions.  The franchisor combines the roles of father, teacher, and drill sergeant, while the franchisee becomes son, pupil, and buck private.  At the core of the relationship is the franchisor’s contractual control over every aspect of the franchisee’s business.  Franchisors claim that so long as a franchisee has had an opportunity to study the agreement, perhaps with the advice of counsel, he should be bound by its terms.  – Harold Brown

Taken from Franchising by Harold Brown First Edition 1981

Franchising is HOT!

Thanks to Sean Kelly (naivete does have its upsides) for letting us know about people like Ms Church:

“Attorney Linda Church, formerly of The Scott Kern Law Office in Connecticut, has joined fledgling franchisor The Spy Place Franchising, LLC, as General Counsel.

Sean questions whether a franchisor who has only one location actually needs an attorney? 

Bloody’s response:  Come on Sean. You’re not fooling anyone here. Everyone knows that an attorney with her knowledge of one-sided franchisor-friendly UFOCs/FDDs and contracts is essential for a successful franchise today! It just proves that Ray Huck (aka Hukster) of the Spy Place is yet another predatory opportunist who knows he must build everything and anything into those contracts to screw the franchisees. The fact that Church was in dispute resolution gives Huck all the insider experience needed to eff over the franchisees.

The only people a franchisor needs today on staff is a dishonest, slick and smooth sales force, an in-house lawyer with all of the franchisor tricks in her bag (working with DeLuca gives here more litigation experience than the top 5 franchisors combined) and a gullible broker (a guy like Sean) to promote their snake oil.  Add a PR person to tell the world how successful franchising and especially the franchisor has been and is (they could also hire you for this Sean) and voila – you’re a franchisor.  Sit back and collect the royalties, the franchise fees, spend the franchisees money on advertising (and get to go to Nascar and PGA events) and when the franchisee gets pissed off, they have to go to detention (otherwise known as arbitration).  This too is controlled by vendors who cater to the franchisor.  And when you learn that the franchisor is the master and you are the slave, you can come out, broke!  

In these times in this economy, there’s so much blood in the water you could walk on water just by stepping on the heads of the blokes who are out of work and just waiting to give you franchise hawkers their life savings so you can party on “their” retirement. After all, America is the land of fropportunity!

Be careful prospective franchisees!  Franchising ain’t never been good and it’s more perilous today than ever before!  Don’t believe those lawyers who tell you to do your due diligence before buying a franchise.  They are after your money too!  Ever hear that seeking advice should be from those who are not in line to benefit?  A recent paper published by a German PhD by the name of Georg Spranger used a great animal analogy to desribe franchise organizations.  I’ll go one step further and declare that the Tuna are the franchisors and the dolphin are the brokers:  

Out in the world’s oceans, tunas and dolphins initially compete for food. As they hunt for smaller fish, tunas encircle their targets and then attack right towards the center. Breaks in the circle though regularly allow many prey to escape. Because of their ability to communicate, dolphins on the other hand are more efficient hunters, though smaller group sizes permit to attack only smaller swarms of fish. Stunningly now, tunas and dolphins frequently join each other for hunting, thereby combining their individual strengths and alleviating initially existent weaknesses. While the mass of tunas does the ground work, the fewer dolphins coordinate the armada and close the breaks in the circle.

Anyone giving advice on the products/services they sell cannot be trusted.  Why is it that prospective franchisees trust some of the most disreputable people in the world with their livelihoods (Lawyers, franchisors, franchise brokers)?  Probably why  Harold Brown entitled his book “Franchising; Trap for the Trusting”  back in 1970.   “Wake up people!  The world doesn’t work on statistics and due diligence when it’s among thieves!  If you are one franchisee and you don’t make it, you will become a statistic under the column “Poor House”.  YOU’RE RUINED – DID THE STATISTICS DO YOU ANY GOOD?  Go find a franchisee that’s lost their life savings, their home, their health and perhaps their spouse and family, and discover that due diligence has to start with the failures, not the gypsy selling the service! And take the advice of failed franchisees who have lost everything:  RUN FOR THE EXITS!  FRANCHISING IS ON FIRE AND YOU’RE THE FUEL!

Sincerely,

Bloody