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 office
• Why radical transparency — including disclosing an internal integrity issue at their franchise conference — is the only way to build real trust
• What it takes to sustain franchisee support and culture through rapid unit growth

Guest: 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

The Franchise Leader Spotlight Podcast is part of the MyPodcastHost Franchise Podcast Network — bringing franchise brand voices to the audiences that matter.

Brought to you by MyPodcastHost — private internal podcast channels and the Franchise Podcast Network for franchise brands that take franchisee communication seriously. mypodcasthost.com

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 process
• The leadership model they use as co-CEO brothers, and how they built a C-suite that complements rather than replicates
• The pet care industry's next evolution: mental enrichment, smaller group sizes, and what "humanization" looks like in 2026

Guest: 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

The Franchise Leader Spotlight Podcast is part of the MyPodcastHost Franchise Podcast Network — bringing franchise brand voices to the audiences that matter.

Brought to you by MyPodcastHost — private internal podcast channels and the Franchise Podcast Network for franchise brands that take franchisee communication seriously. mypodcasthost.com

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 points
• Why franchisees need to be treated like owners, not employees — and what changes when you do
• How ScentHound maps the five-stage journey of franchisees, team members, and customers to create simplicity at every level

Guest: 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

The Franchise Leader Spotlight Podcast is part of the My Podcast Host Franchise Podcast Network — bringing franchise brand voices to the audiences that matter.

Brought to you by Franchise Ramp — full-picture growth marketing built specifically for franchise brands. Over 1,300 locations, 25 brands, and a proprietary platform called RampIQ. They get it because they've lived it. FranchiseRamp.com

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 operator
• Unit economics as the north star — and what happens to brands that lose sight of it
• Servant leadership, the hedgehog principle, and what it actually means to lead through change

Guest: 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

The Franchise Leader Spotlight Podcast is part of the My Podcast Host Franchise Podcast Network — bringing franchise brand voices to the audiences that matter.

Brought to you by My Podcast Host — private internal podcast channels and the Franchise Podcast Network for franchise brands that take franchisee communication seriously. mypodcasthost.com

Alex and Myriam Guerrero didn't plan on becoming franchise owners — Alex stumbled into it at a USO transition event when a franchise broker showed up and offered a presentation. Four years later, they're running a Tint World location in El Paso, scaling to three stores, and building the kind of franchisee-franchisor trust that most brands spend years trying to manufacture. This conversation gets into what it really takes to build a business with your spouse, what the franchising industry is still getting wrong with veterans, and why legacy franchisees don't need another broadcast — they need a direct conversation.

In this episode:

• What Alex learned about veterans and the franchising knowledge gap — and what he's doing about it
• How he and Myriam built a grow-from-within culture they can protect as they scale
• Why their relationship with their franchisor works — and what it would take to replicate that across a network

Guest: Alex and Myriam Guerrero, Franchisees, Tint World 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

The Franchise Leader Spotlight Podcast is part of the My Podcast Host Franchise Podcast Network — bringing franchise brand voices to the audiences that matter.

Brought to you by My Podcast Host — private internal podcast channels and the Franchise Podcast Network for franchise brands that take franchisee communication seriously.

Alex Pericchi has spent 12 years as VP of Marketing at PuroClean watching what actually drives franchisee adoption — and what quietly kills it. His answer this year is radical simplification: fewer activities, clearer direction, and a message repeated from every corner of the organization until it lands. If you've ever wondered why franchisees aren't executing on your marketing programs, this conversation will reframe the question entirely.

In this episode:

• Why PuroClean is doing less marketing this year — on purpose
• The 80/20 framework Alex uses to cut noise and drive real adoption
• How asking franchisees about their exit plan on day one changes everything

Guest: Alex Pericchi, VP of Marketing, PuroClean 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

The Franchise Leader Spotlight Podcast is part of the MyPodcastHost Franchise Podcast Network — bringing franchise brand voices to the audiences that matter.

Brought to you by MyPodcastHost — private internal podcast channels and the Franchise Podcast Network for franchise brands that take franchisee communication seriously. mypodcasthost.com

Jon Sica, President of Batteries Plus, joins Katherine LeBlanc at IFA 2026 for one of the most practical episodes of Franchise Leader Spotlight yet. Jon breaks down why the brand standards conversation lands completely differently when you lead with exit strategy — and how Batteries Plus has been building that into their franchise development process for five years through their Full Circuit program. They also get into the AI infrastructure Batteries Plus is building right now, what raising net worth requirements actually did to their candidate pipeline, and why trust is the only thing that makes any of the tactics work.

If you run a franchise brand or support franchisee development, this one is worth the full listen.

Franchise Leader Spotlight is brought to you by MyPodcastHost — the podcast platform built for franchise brands. Internal podcast channels for franchisee communication and adoption, and the Franchise Podcast Network for public brand voices. mypodcasthost.com.

Kathy George, President of Spherion Staffing and Recruiting, joins Katherine LeBlanc at IFA to talk about the leadership framework that helped an 80-year-old staffing franchise outpace its competitors and its parent company in a year the industry was forecasted to contract.

Kathy walks through the 20 Mile March - the collective two-year goal structure she set the night before getting on stage at national convention - and the weekly, monthly, and quarterly communication stack that turned a shared goal into franchisee-to-franchisee accountability. She also gets candid about radical transparency as a real operating principle, the succession challenge building inside multi-generational franchise systems, and why she's had to say no to protect the brand she stewards.

If you lead a franchise brand and the gap between what HQ knows and what franchisees feel is wider than you'd like - this one is for you.

Brought to you by MyPodcastHost - private internal podcast channels and the Franchise Podcast Network for franchise brands that take franchisee communication seriously. mypodcasthost.com