Sean Flynn is a franchise professional with over 30 years in the business. He qualified as a Certified Franchise Executive (CFE) in 2013 and earned his Lean Six Sigma Black Belt more recently. His books, “Franchise Success: Unlocking the Path to Business Expansion” and "Franchising in Asia: Unlocking Growth in the World’s Most Dynamic Region" were published on Amazon in 2024.He began his career in franchising in Canada working at The Keg restaurant group while attending University. A job to earn some extra money to pay for tuition became a life-long pursuit of franchising excellence. Intrigued with the franchise model, he moved to Singapore and took on the role of head of marketing for the Master Franchisee for Pizza Hut in Singapore and Malaysia. It wasn’t long before his ambition and enthusiasm saw him promoted to the Country Manager role for Pizza Hut Singapore at 27 years of age. The objective there was pure growth. They grew from 4 to over 40 outlets in under five years.Following that success, he then joined a company that held the Master Franchise for A&W Restaurants in Singapore and Thailand. With only 27 units in total, the company was losing money and needed to be turned around. A focused effort on improving operations issues such as menu engineering, labour control, effective marketing, opening new high-impact locations and closing poor locations resulted in a multi-million-dollar turnaround in under 2 years. It was profitable again.But the overriding lesson was learning precisely what the franchisees needs from the franchisor, and just as importantly, what they do not! Their respective interests were simply not aligned, in fact, they were often in conflict.His experience leading on the franchisor side of the equation began with his Presidency of the 73-unit Shakey’s Pizza business based in Los Angeles. Here he found the love for brand leadership. Implementing the lessons learned previously, he engaged with the franchise community and reimagined the brand through new menu innovations and prototype development. Shakey’s even began growing the franchise network again for the first time in decades.Moving back to Canada, he then became President of Smitty’s Family Restaurants which had close to 100 units when he joined. Again, the focus on improving the performance and stability of this business centred around adding value to the franchise community through branding, systems, menu development, and supply chain initiatives. It wasn’t long before both the franchisees and the franchisors were seeing vastly improved performance on top and bottom lines. The business started growing again and topped 120 units in 3 years.Both Shakey’s and Smitty’s were mature brands, having been in business for about 40+ years. There were plenty of legacy issues and lessons to be learned about the pitfalls of older franchise models that failed to align the franchisee/ franchisor interests.Sean then moved back to Singapore for personal reasons. There he had an incredible opportunity to create a fresh and modern franchise business with the Brotzeit – German Bier Bar and Restaurant concept. As the CEO of the business, he led the creation of a thoroughly modern franchise model that incorporated everything he had learned about the business over the previous 25 years. Brotzeit became the gold standard in the franchise business. In under 3 years, he and his team built a comprehensive infrastructure and franchising program which saw the establishment of franchise operations in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Shanghai, Beijing, the Philippines, and Australia. Brotzeit remain the world’s largest German franchise concept. Brotzeit won the “Franchise of the Year” award in 2012 from the Franchise & Licencing Association of Singapore.Since that time, and now based in Vancouver Canada, Sean has been helping client companies in all aspects of franchise development and growth. He has helped to build franchise platforms for several F&B concepts, as well as Hotel and Serviced Residence concepts in Singapore, Bali, China, and Canada. This has allowed him to share his experience to help companies and brands truly understand winning strategies in franchising.Read more about this authorRead less about this author