Franchise Spotlight with Katherine LeBlanc

Katherine LeBlanc
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Entrepreneurship

Conversations with the leaders who are actually building franchising - from the executive suite to the field. Each season explores what success looks like right now, what franchise leaders should be paying attention to, and how the best brands are delivering real returns for their franchisees. Because at the end of the day, franchisee profitability isn't just a metric; it's the whole point. Your host, Katherine LeBlanc, brings 13 years inside franchise systems, having led marketing across six brands spanning food, wellness, beauty, and experience. She's been in the room where these decisions get made. These conversations reflect that: direct, practitioner-level, and built for franchise leaders who don't have time for surface-level takes.

  1. 6d ago

    The Digital Media Reframe for Franchising in 2027

    Digital media costs are up, attribution is murkier, and the default answer — more search, more paid social — isn't working the way it used to. Alex Preddie from Rocket Barn and Christy Johnson (CMO) and Madison Belfour (Director of Marketing) from Tint World sit down to get specific about what franchise marketers should actually be doing differently heading into 2027 budget planning. The one thing every listener will walk away with: a cleaner framework for how to allocate budget to customer moments instead of channel percentages. In this episode: The right question to ask when performance looks like it's declining (it might not be)Why first-party data is now a survival strategy, not a nice-to-haveAI-generated creative and what franchisee engagement data actually says about itHow to activate franchisees as local content creators without losing brand governanceWhere franchise systems are over-investing their digital dollars right nowGuest: Alex Preddie, VP of Sales and Marketing, Rocket BarnSeven years at a franchise-focused growth agency specializing in home services and automotive brands. Alex works directly with franchisees and franchisors on local marketing strategy, and has a front-row seat to what's working and what's bleeding budget across multiple franchise systems simultaneously. Guest: Christy Johnson and Madison Belfour, CMO and Director of Marketing, Tint WorldChristy brings decades of franchise marketing experience across major brands including Papa John's and Yum Brands, now six weeks into the CMO seat at Tint World. Madison has spent five and a half years running franchisee marketing operations at Tint World from the inside. Together they offer both the strategic view and the operational reality of what it actually takes to manage digital media across a franchise network. Host: Katherine LeBlanc, Fractional CMO | Apollo CMO Want to go deeper? 🌐 apollocmo.com ▶️ @MyPodcastHost on YouTube 🔗 linkedin.com/in/katherineleblanc 📩 katherine@apollocmo.com

    The Digital Media Reframe for Franchising in 2027

  2. Aug 17

    The Franchise Marketer's Guide to Signal Over Noise

    Aren Johnstone (Franchise Ramp) and Dan Wheeler (CMO, K9 Resorts) join Katherine for a direct conversation about what franchise marketers are actually measuring and whether it's doing anything useful. This episode centers on the gap between data collection and decision-making — and what it takes to close it inside a real franchise system. In this episode: Why "if it doesn't drive a decision, you don't need it" is the right test for your scorecardCash flowable CAC: a franchisee-friendly framework for understanding marketing payback that goes beyond ROASThe tornado vs. the funnel: how rethinking the customer journey changes what you measureBuilding one source of truth: what it really takes, and why consistent imperfection beats perfect paralysisWhy single-platform dependence is one of the biggest risks in franchise marketing right nowGuest: Aren Johnstone, CEO, Franchise RampAren leads a paid media and creative agency built specifically for franchise brands and franchisees — two of his partners are franchisees themselves. Franchise Ramp works with over 1,300 locations across 25+ brands, and Aren has spent seven years building the internal systems and tech stack to aggregate performance data across hundreds of disparate ad accounts. He knows the franchise data problem from the inside. Guest: Dan Wheeler, CMO, K9 Resorts Luxury Pet HotelDan came to pet care from a career in restaurant and hospitality franchising, and he's bringing the same rigor to K9 Resorts — a brand with 50 open locations and 150 in development. He's currently overseeing the build of a first-party data platform that ties reservation data, franchise-level P&L, and media performance into one place. His frameworks on franchisee communication and demand creation are the kind of thing you don't hear enough at franchise marketing conferences. Host: Katherine LeBlanc, Fractional CMO | Apollo CMO Are you a franchise brand leader working on a growth challenge?Katherine works with franchise brands as a Fractional CMO.  Want to go deeper? 🌐 apollocmo.com ▶️ @MyPodcastHost on YouTube 🔗 linkedin.com/in/katherineleblanc 📩 katherine@apollocmo.com

    The Franchise Marketer's Guide to Signal Over Noise

  3. Aug 10

    What to Rethink About PR, Email, and Social Before 2027

    PR, email, and social — and what's actually worth your budget going into 2027. Katherine LeBlanc sits down with Ashley Mitchell of East Coast Wings and Girl and Zack Fishman of Fishman PR for a peer conversation on where each channel stands, what's changing, and what a franchise marketing team should actually be doing with their owned and earned media right now. In this episode: Why GEO has rescued PR measurement — and how to make the case for it internallyLocal-first social strategy: why franchisee content outperforms corporate brand content and how to build the infrastructure to support itThe reality of brand-level social: entertainment vs. education, and what that means for your investmentEmail personalization in practice — rebuilding from scratch vs. patching an old programEmail as a paid media channel: an underexplored model for franchise brandsThe one thing both guests tell franchise marketing teams to stop doing right nowGuest: Ashley Mitchell, VP of Marketing, East Coast Wings and Grill Ashley has spent her career in franchise marketing communications — from a six-year stint at the Walt Disney Company into franchising across consumer marketing, franchise development, M&A, and fractional CMO roles. She brings a practitioner's lens to the owned media conversation: what's working at the unit level, where the social ROI math stops adding up, and why she's rebuilding her email program from the ground up. Guest: Zack Fishman, Partner, Fishman PR and Franchise Supplier Network Zack grew up in the franchise industry — his mother founded Fishman PR, the largest franchise-specific PR firm in the space — and he's built his own career at the intersection of earned media strategy and owned channel technology. He advises brands on consumer and franchise development PR, and his work at Franchise Supplier Network focuses on the tools and systems that make local social, texting, and review management scalable for franchise systems. Host: Katherine LeBlanc, Fractional CMO | Apollo CMO Want to go deeper? 🌐 apollocmo.com ▶️ @MyPodcastHost on YouTube 🔗 linkedin.com/in/katherineleblanc 📩 katherine@apollocmo.com

    What to Rethink About PR, Email, and Social Before 2027

  4. Aug 3

    The Brand Fund Frameworks Worth Stealing

    Brand fund budgeting is where franchise marketing strategy gets real — fixed dollars, franchisee expectations, and a landscape that keeps changing underneath you. In this episode Katherine LeBlanc talks with Adam Terranova from Authority Brands and Brooke Janousek, Fractional CMO for IV Nutrition, about the frameworks they actually use to build budgets that hold up and that franchisees trust. If you're heading into fall budget season, this is the conversation to have first. In this episode: Why calling it a brand fund instead of an ad fund changes franchisee expectations from day oneThe PESO model as a framework for both allocating budget and explaining it to franchiseesThe 60/30/10 split — how to build flexibility and contingency into a fixed budget before the year startsWhat franchisees are really asking for when they push for more SEO spendHow to show up in LLMs across multiple owned platforms without adding significant budgetGuest: Adam Terranova, Senior Director of Marketing, Authority Brands Adam has been in franchising since 2013 and oversees marketing across five home service trades brands at Authority Brands — One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, Mr. Sparky, Dry Medic, and Stop Restoration. He has built and managed brand funds at startup brands and at scale, and has been presenting the PESO framework to franchise marketers since he first learned it over a decade ago. Guest: Brooke Janousek, Fractional CMO, IV Nutrition Brooke brings ten years of franchise marketing experience across home services and health and wellness, including time at Garage Experts and Hello Garage before her current role at IV Nutrition, a 47-location IV therapy brand. She has built brand funds from zero, managed them through rapid growth, and navigated some of the most disruptive years in digital marketing as a fractional CMO. Host: Katherine LeBlanc, Fractional CMO | Apollo CMO Want to go deeper? 🌐 apollocmo.com ▶️ @MyPodcastHost on YouTube 🔗 linkedin.com/in/katherineleblanc 📩 katherine@apollocmo.com

    The Brand Fund Frameworks Worth Stealing

  5. May 25

    How Kim Gubera Keeps Excellence in Focus | PIRTEK, President & CEO

    Kim Gubera, President & CEO of PIRTEK, stepped into her role in 2019 and did something almost no leader does — she visited every single franchisee before changing anything. In this conversation, she shares how that decision built the cultural foundation that drove a record-breaking 2025, and how PIRTEK maintains a standard of excellence — including through moments that were anything but easy. This is a straight-talking episode about what franchise leadership actually looks like when the values aren't just on the wall. In this episode: How PIRTEK recruits for franchisee-first thinking at every level of the home officeWhy radical transparency — including disclosing an internal integrity issue at their franchise conference — is the only way to build real trustWhat it takes to sustain franchisee support and culture through rapid unit growthGuest: Kim Gubera, President & CEO, PIRTEK Host: Katherine LeBlanc, Fractional CMO | Apollo CMO Are you a franchise brand leader working on a growth challenge? Katherine works with franchise brands as a Fractional CMO. Learn more at apollocmo.com

    How Kim Gubera Keeps Excellence in Focus | PIRTEK, President & CEO

  6. May 18

    How K9 Resorts Turned Discipline Into a 50-Location Pet Care Empire | Steve and Jason Parker, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs

    Steven and Jason Parker have been in the pet care industry since 1999 and franchising K9 Resorts since 2011. In this conversation, they walk Katherine through the disciplined, long-view philosophy that's gotten them to 50 open locations — and what it actually means to award franchises instead of selling them. In this episode: Why they turned down one of their earliest franchise candidates — and how it shaped their development processThe leadership model they use as co-CEO brothers, and how they built a C-suite that complements rather than replicatesThe pet care industry's next evolution: mental enrichment, smaller group sizes, and what "humanization" looks like in 2026Guest: Steven and Jason Parker, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs, K9 Resorts Host: Katherine LeBlanc, Fractional CMO | Apollo CMO Are you a franchise brand leader working on a growth challenge? Katherine works with franchise brands as a Fractional CMO. Learn more at apollocmo.com

    How K9 Resorts Turned Discipline Into a 50-Location Pet Care Empire | Steve and Jason Parker, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs

  7. May 11

    How Josh Lyon Is Scaling to 600 Units | ScentHound COO

    Josh Lyon has been building ScentHound as their COO from seven units to 157 - and he's not slowing down. In this conversation, he gets into what it actually takes to scale a franchise brand with operational discipline intact: the team transitions nobody talks about, the franchisee adoption gap that compounds every time you add complexity, and why simplicity isn't a nice-to-have - it's the differentiator that separates the brands that win from the ones that don't. In this episode: Building and rebuilding your team through three inflection pointsWhy franchisees need to be treated like owners, not employees — and what changes when you doHow ScentHound maps the five-stage journey of franchisees, team members, and customers to create simplicity at every levelGuest: Josh Lyon, Chief Operating Officer, ScentHound Host: Katherine LeBlanc, Fractional CMO | Apollo CMO Are you a franchise brand leader working on a growth challenge? Katherine works with franchise brands as a Fractional CMO. Learn more at apollocmo.com

    How Josh Lyon Is Scaling to 600 Units | ScentHound COO

  8. May 4

    How Doug Flaig Stops the Shiny Object Trap | Stratus Clean CEO

    Doug Flaig, CEO of Stratus Clean, is in the middle of one of the harder things a franchise leader can navigate - a full brand transformation - and he's doing it with a three-tier franchisee network watching every move. In this conversation, Doug gets into why answering the "why" before the "what" is the only change management that actually works, how he uses EOS and tier-based communication groups to keep a diverse franchisee base aligned, and what a career that ran through 7-Eleven, Burger King, and Dunkin Donuts before landing at a smaller company taught him about what it means to really lead. One takeaway that lands hard: nature abhors a vacuum - and if you're not filling it with communication, your franchisees are filling it with speculation. In this episode: Tier-based franchisee communication and why one message doesn't fit every operatorUnit economics as the north star — and what happens to brands that lose sight of itServant leadership, the hedgehog principle, and what it actually means to lead through changeGuest: Doug Flaig, CEO, Stratus Building Solutions Host: Katherine LeBlanc, Fractional CMO | Apollo CMO Are you a franchise brand leader working on a growth challenge? Katherine works with franchise brands as a Fractional CMO. Learn more at apollocmo.com

    How Doug Flaig Stops the Shiny Object Trap | Stratus Clean CEO
See All (18)

About

Conversations with the leaders who are actually building franchising - from the executive suite to the field. Each season explores what success looks like right now, what franchise leaders should be paying attention to, and how the best brands are delivering real returns for their franchisees. Because at the end of the day, franchisee profitability isn't just a metric; it's the whole point. Your host, Katherine LeBlanc, brings 13 years inside franchise systems, having led marketing across six brands spanning food, wellness, beauty, and experience. She's been in the room where these decisions get made. These conversations reflect that: direct, practitioner-level, and built for franchise leaders who don't have time for surface-level takes.

Information