Back to school didn't feel like a fresh beginning to me this year. It was more a noise than a feeling—the noise of a door loudly slamming shut.
You see, a few weeks ago husband Doug and I drove 18-year-old Ben to college. I worked all summer to put on a graduation party, then gather the essentials needed for college and dorm life. The week before we left, I frantically counted and recounted items I knew he would need, all the while Ben offered a suggestion or two, but only when asked his opinion. Again, I was really in charge of the adventure, with a teenager willing to let me make most of the decisions on sheets, desk lamps, pencils and toothpaste.
So in my haste and preoccupation with things like buying him a robe to wear to the showers, I paid little heed to the emotions that tried to hover at the surface, of which I consistently kept at bay. You would not believe my surprise then (and probably Doug's, too) when on the drive home from the college I broke down in tears. Not just small tears easily wiped away, but tears that just kept coming. And I'm an optimist. This wasn't like me. I felt terrible.
Don't even get me started on the thoughts going through my head (did I read to him enough when he was little?). Really, now: Why hadn't anyone told me how hard this was going to be? I heard stories of those long car rides home, but a week later, how could I still be on the verge of tears when someone innocently asked me about Ben?
I'm better now. Tears don't spring to my eyes at every mention of Ben. But the insightful Bob Dylan was right. The times they are a-changin'. Of course nothing stays the same in life. But when your child goes out on their own, as Dylan reminds us, “your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.”
So how wide is the chasm from my Ben story to franchising? Folks, I can name that tune in six notes. Try being Sandy Lovick, the subject of our cover story this month. For her, the times rapidly changed when, as a franchisee of Carlson Wagonlit Travel, she had to overcome the challenges of the Internet giving rise to do-it-yourself travel planners and a post-9/11 economy where travel slowed tremendously. As Dylan puts it so eloquently, “you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone…”
Swim she did. Years ago, Lovick changed her emphasis from a concentration on booking airline tickets (something most of us can do online ourselves) to offering more detailed services. When other travel agents and their agencies were closing their doors and selling off locations, Lovick picked up a couple more locations. For her, the changing times have been a boon to her business when they were the death knell to others.
This month, we also feature our annual, and eagerly awaited, Top 200 list, in which Carlson Wagonlit is ranked, by the way. The Top 200 ranks the nation's 200 largest franchisors based on worldwide sales. And while the big guys consistently make the list year after year, and generally keep the same spot give or take a rank or two, as you move down the list, the companies move around a bit more. In fact, as FT Research Director Paul Olson reports, the Top 200 companies' total domestic units actually declined in 2006, and company owned versus franchised development was more balanced than in previous years. And despite the industry's challenges over the last couple of years, restaurants still held the most spots on the ranking in 2006. Of course, I haven't done justice to Paul's report here: You will want to peruse the list and his analysis to get a better picture of who made the list and why. And for these companies, the times never stay the same. They are responding to changes in the economy and their respective industries in order to continue to occupy a spot on this list.
While in my mind I have sadly envisioned a grown up Ben who no longer needs me the way he used to, I was comforted to know that while yes, the times they are a-changin', the old cliche that the more they change the more they stay the same rings true, too: A few days ago, Ben sent me a text message on my cell accompanied by a photo: He was excited about the new Pink Floyd poster he had scored for his dorm room wall and wanted me to see it. It was, as he pointed out, “sweeeet.”
Mr. Dylan, things haven't changed that much.
