Multi-Unit Franchising Conference in Las Vegas Updates Owners, Franchises, and Suppliers

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of attending Franchise Update Media Group’s 2009 Multi-Unit Franchising Conference. The three day event brought multi-unit franchise owners, dozens of franchises, and suppliers together for a worthwhile sharing of information and ideas. Below I’ll mention a few things that stuck with me from the event.

The Multi-Unit Franchising Conference gave me my first chance to see Tom Feltenstein speak. I think he mentioned that this was one of the shorter speeches he had delivered. It was around 40 minutes max, but left me wanting more. Tom entertained with his stories and presence, and more importantly he challenged everyone in the audience to think bigger. I recommend Tom to anyone looking for inspiration and/or a few new marketing ideas you would probably never have thought of.

Also inspiring was a talk given by New York Times Best Selling Author James Bradley. He presented the genesis of how he came to write his book Flags of our Fathers. It was amazing to hear that he had to pitch the book idea to over twenty publishers before one said yes. I wonder how all of those publishers that said no feel now.

Above is a picture of my colleague Teal Murley and I at our booth in the exhibit hall at the event. We posted live tweets throughout the conference.

I had a chance to speak at the event. Martin Greenbaum of Greenbaum Marketing chaired the session on Local Guerilla Marketing, Boris Bugarski of mUrgent and I were panelists. It was a dense session full of take-aways. I covered Twitter 101 for Businesses.

I highly recommend this event to any multi-unit owner or franchise that targets multi-unit owners. There were many concepts to review and all the sessions were carefully chosen to expand the attendees’ knowledge on the state of the industry.

I also want to mention that Oneupweb has a unique relationship with Franchise Update Media Group and their helpful site Franchising.com. Hello Therese, Gary, Ben, Lyola and the rest of the team!

I hope to see everyone again next year or sooner.