Franchise Spotlight with Katherine LeBlanc

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.

Franchise Spotlight with Katherine LeBlanc is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 0 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts Franchise Spotlight with Katherine LeBlanc, a business show with 0 episodes published.

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  Episode #1

  The Brand Fund Frameworks Worth Stealing

  Aug 3, 202646 minS2

  <p>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.</p><p>In this episode:</p>Why calling it a brand fund instead of an ad fund changes franchisee expectations from day oneThe PESO model as a fr...

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  Episode #14

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

  May 25, 202616 minS1

  <p>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.</p><p>In this episode:</p>How PIRTEK recruits for franchisee-first thinking at every level of the home officeWhy radical transparency — includ...

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  Episode #13

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

  May 18, 202623 minS1

  <p>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.</p><p>In this episode:</p>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 "huma...

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  Episode #11

  How Josh Lyon Is Scaling to 600 Units | ScentHound COO

  May 11, 202631 minS1

  <p>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.</p><p>In this episode:</p>Building and rebuilding your team through three inflection pointsWhy franchisees need to be treated like owners, not...

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  Episode #11

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

  May 4, 202628 minS1

  <p>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...

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