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Experience gives an entrepreneur a foundation for judgment, but it can also make familiar answers difficult to question. I believe sustainable franchise growth requires leaders who can protect the standards that give a brand its value while remaining willing to reconsider how the business operates. Shunryu Suzuki’s observation about the beginner’s mind offers a useful starting point for examining that responsibility, provided we connect openness to evidence, operating discipline, and accountability.
The Entrepreneurial Mindset That Keeps Franchise Growth Open to Possibility
EXECUTIVE EDITION
By Gary Occhiogrosso, Founder and Managing Partner, Franchise Growth Solutions
The business value of remaining teachable
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. The San Francisco Zen Center reproduces this sentence as the book’s opening line. [1]
I read Suzuki’s observation as a challenge to examine how certainty develops. An entrepreneur starts with questions. What do customers need? What are they willing to pay? How should the business serve them? As the business develops, answers become routines, routines become standards, and standards can eventually become assumptions that nobody feels comfortable examining.
For a franchise business, that progression deserves particular attention. A system needs repeatable practices. It also needs a way to discover when those practices no longer solve the problem they were designed to address. My position is that a leader should be able to explain both why a standard exists and what evidence would justify reconsidering it.
Suzuki was writing about Zen practice, and I would not present his words as scientific evidence about business performance. My application is a management interpretation. The useful question is whether a leader can bring knowledge to a decision while remaining receptive to information that does not fit that knowledge. That question becomes more consequential when other entrepreneurs are investing their capital in the system the leader has built.
The image accompanying this article urges the reader to stay fresh, open, connected, and clear. I would give that message a practical business meaning: continue observing the customer, make disagreement possible, and examine the economics before expanding a practice. Curiosity becomes valuable when it changes how a decision is investigated.
Experience needs a defined area of authority
I would not advise an entrepreneur to abandon expertise. Experience can help a restaurant operator recognize a developing service problem, a manager detect a scheduling weakness, or a franchise team anticipate an opening requirement. Dismissing that knowledge would remove one of the resources a business has worked hardest to develop.
The more difficult issue is recognizing its boundaries. Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein argued in their 2009 examination of intuitive expertise that skilled intuition depends on a sufficiently predictable environment and adequate opportunities to learn its patterns through practice and feedback. They also cautioned that subjective confidence does not reliably establish the validity of a judgment. [2]
For me, that distinction separates knowing an operation from assuming that every strategic decision falls within the same competence. An owner may understand the daily rhythm of a successful location and still need additional evidence before selecting a distant market, adopting a new format, or committing to a development schedule. Those decisions expose the business to conditions the owner may not have encountered before.
I ask a founder considering expansion to identify exactly which part of the decision is supported by repeated experience. Has the business operated successfully with comparable occupancy costs? Has a manager other than the founder maintained the operating standard? Have customers in the proposed market demonstrated demand? What remains a forecast rather than an observed result?
These questions make experience more useful because they specify where it applies. I want confidence to become more precise as the investment grows. A leader who acknowledges uncertainty about a new market can investigate it. A leader who assumes that past success has already answered the question may never discover what needs investigation.
A founder must reconsider the role of the founder
I regard the transition from operating a business to supporting other business owners as one of the central leadership challenges in franchising. Before recommending expansion, I would examine what makes the original business work and how much of that performance depends on the founder’s personal involvement.
Consider a hypothetical restaurant whose owner personally resolves supplier problems, recognizes every regular customer, adjusts staffing throughout the day, and intervenes whenever the kitchen falls behind. The restaurant may produce attractive results. Those results alone do not establish that another owner can reproduce the performance using the documented system.
My first question would be what happens when the founder is absent. I would examine whether responsibilities are clear, training is usable, managers can diagnose problems, and routine decisions can be made without an informal call to the owner. If the business depends on judgment that has never been explained, I would treat that as development work that needs attention before broad expansion.
This is where openness requires more than listening to new marketing ideas. It requires accepting that something the founder does exceptionally well may need to be redesigned so another person can perform it reliably. A founder may need to simplify a menu, formalize a purchasing process, improve financial reporting, or revise a training program that felt sufficient when everyone worked in the same building.
I evaluate franchise readiness through evidence of transferability. Can another capable person understand the model, execute it, and explain the results? What support is required? What does that support cost? The founder’s willingness to investigate those questions is a practical expression of remaining teachable.
Franchise standards need a process for improvement
Franchising places real limits on individual discretion. The Federal Trade Commission explains that franchise arrangements can restrict products, suppliers, operating methods, and other business decisions. The specific documents and requirements of the opportunity matter. [3]
I define an open mind within a franchise system as a willingness to consider evidence through an established process. A franchisee who identifies an opportunity should know how to submit it, what information to provide, who will evaluate it, and whether a limited test is possible. A franchisor should be able to consider the proposal without implying that every location may implement it independently.
My recommended approach begins by identifying decisions that require consistent execution and decisions where local discretion is expressly permitted. Food safety procedures, product specifications, brand identity, and required operating practices deserve clear boundaries. Any discretion over local outreach, staffing practices, or customer communication must be assessed against the agreement, operating requirements, and applicable law.
Between those categories, I would establish a process for proposed changes. A new product, supplier, technology, or service method should have an accountable sponsor, written authorization where required, a limited scope, and a defined review. The process should identify who pays for the test and who bears any continuing obligation if it fails.
I also recommend giving an explanation when a proposal is declined. A supplier suggestion may fail because it creates inconsistent specifications. A new promotion may complicate execution. A technology may be incompatible with required systems. Those reasons help the franchisee understand the operating logic and improve future proposals.
The franchisor remains responsible for decisions within its authority. Consultation should improve the information available to that decision maker. It should also make clear that listening does not transfer approval authority or change contractual obligations.
Persistence should remain open to contrary evidence
Entrepreneurial language often treats persistence as an uncomplicated virtue. I regard it as valuable only when the leader continues to examine what the effort is producing. A business can remain committed to serving a customer need while concluding that a particular location, offer, or growth plan is unlikely to work.
A 2024 study by Arnaldo Camuffo and colleagues examined a scientific approach to entrepreneurial decisions across four randomized controlled trials involving 759 firms. The intervention increased the termination of business ideas and produced a more nuanced pattern of strategic changes, with a limited number of changes rather than complete rigidity or repeated switching. These findings concern the studied firms and intervention; they do not establish a franchise profitability guarantee. [4]
My management interpretation is that learning can lead to a decision to stop. That possibility should be built into a test before money and reputation make the decision emotionally difficult. If an expansion proposal can only produce a recommendation to proceed, it is functioning as a justification exercise.
Before testing an idea, I ask the team to identify what would count as a disappointing result. Would insufficient repeat demand challenge the proposition? Would the labor required make the offer uneconomic? Would the investment remain attractive if the founder needed to hire someone to perform work currently done without a market salary?
I distinguish evidence that an idea is weak from evidence that the test was poorly executed. A marketing campaign directed at an unsuitable audience may reveal little about the underlying business. A properly executed campaign that consistently attracts unsuitable prospects may reveal a targeting or positioning problem. The response should depend on what the evidence actually supports.
Stopping, revising, or continuing should each remain possible. That is how I would protect an entrepreneur’s persistence from becoming an obligation to defend an earlier decision.
Growth mindset needs an operating mechanism
I would use the phrase growth mindset carefully. It can describe a belief that abilities can improve, but it should not become a promise that optimism or effort will produce commercial success.
A study reported by North Carolina State University involved 238 undergraduate students in an entrepreneurship course. Students receiving a growth mindset intervention reported greater entrepreneurial confidence and persistence. The intervention did not improve performance on the classroom assignment. The university report includes the study’s abstract and publication details. [5]
That distinction matters to the way I would advise a business leader. Greater confidence may encourage someone to attempt a task, ask a question, or continue learning. The business still needs evidence that the resulting behavior improves the operation. Motivation does not establish product demand, adequate capital, suitable real estate, or an effective support program.
I connect any discussion of mindset to a specific learning mechanism. If a team believes its sales presentations can improve, it should review calls, identify recurring misunderstandings, practice a revised explanation, and examine the response. If a franchisee believes labor deployment can improve, the team should study demand patterns, schedules, service quality, and approved operating practices.
In both cases, the belief becomes useful through work that can be observed and evaluated. I ask what changed, what the team learned, and what decision follows. A business needs that connection between intention and execution before it can reasonably credit mindset with an operating improvement.
Leaders need access to unwelcome information
A founder can sincerely invite feedback while unintentionally making disagreement costly. I begin by examining what happens after someone raises an uncomfortable issue. Does the leader investigate it? Does the person receive a thoughtful response? Is the team expected to produce evidence, or to protect the leader’s preferred explanation?
Amy Edmondson’s 1999 study of 51 work teams in a manufacturing company found an association between team psychological safety and learning behavior. The study supports attention to whether people can take interpersonal risks within a team. It does not establish that eliminating disagreement or accountability improves performance. [6]
My application to franchising is to make concerns discussable while maintaining operating responsibilities. An employee should be able to report that training did not prepare them for a task. A franchisee should be able to describe a recurring supplier problem. The organization should then examine the facts, determine what action is warranted, and communicate the result.
I recommend giving field support personnel a structured way to record repeated concerns. If several operators describe the same difficulty, I would investigate whether they are encountering a system problem. I would also preserve the possibility that the issue reflects inconsistent execution, insufficient training, or conditions limited to particular locations.
The leader’s first response deserves attention because it shapes the next report. Immediate dismissal may leave the organization with less information. Immediate agreement may create an expectation the evidence cannot support. I would begin by asking what happened, how often it happened, what documentation exists, and who else has observed it.
The purpose is to make the information available early enough to evaluate. Accountability then includes both the obligation to raise a material concern and the obligation to investigate it fairly.
Unit economics should test the growth narrative
When I evaluate a growth proposal, I want to understand how the economics change as the business expands. Revenue, outlet count, and franchise sales can describe activity. They need additional context before I would treat them as evidence of sustainable progress.
For a prospective franchisee, I would recommend building a location specific model with an accountant. The model should distinguish sales from the cash remaining after the relevant expenses and obligations. It should address owner compensation, working capital, financing, and the timing of cash requirements. Each assumption should identify its source and the conditions under which it might change.
For a franchisor, I would ask what a new opening requires from training, field support, technology, and management. A development schedule should reflect the capacity to support the units being added. I would also examine whether the model remains workable when several openings require assistance at the same time.
My concern is the tendency to interpret a favorable result before understanding its composition. A location may be benefiting from a temporary rent concession. A founder may be working hours that have not been reflected in compensation. A promotion may increase sales while reducing the cash contribution from those sales. These are hypothetical possibilities to investigate, not claims about any particular brand.
I recommend using sensitivity analysis to show how the investment responds to slower sales, higher costs, or an opening delay. The purpose is to identify how much room the business has to absorb an unfavorable outcome. The assumptions should remain visible so that a revised forecast can be compared with the original reasoning.
Open mindedness becomes financially meaningful when the entrepreneur is prepared to revise the plan because those calculations reveal a weakness.
Franchise buyers need curiosity before commitment
I would encourage a prospective franchise owner to direct as much curiosity toward the franchise relationship as toward the product. Enjoying the brand provides a reason to investigate. It does not answer whether the investment, workload, operating restrictions, and obligations fit the buyer’s circumstances.
The FTC identifies FDD Item 19 as the location for financial performance representations a franchisor elects to make, subject to the applicable rules and limited exceptions. Item 20 provides outlet information and contacts for current and former franchisees. These disclosures create opportunities for investigation; they do not validate the investment on the buyer’s behalf. [7]
I would use the disclosures to develop questions rather than seek reassurance. Which locations are represented in the financial information? How comparable are they to the proposed business? What costs and owner responsibilities need separate analysis? What do current operators say about training, support, opening requirements, and the actual demands of ownership?
I recommend seeking a range of operator experiences and record the circumstances behind the answers. One enthusiastic owner and one dissatisfied former owner may each provide useful information. Neither should automatically become the whole explanation. The buyer needs to understand location differences, operating involvement, timing, and the reasons behind an owner’s assessment.
The FTC also emphasizes examining the franchise agreement and operating manual and consulting experienced legal and accounting professionals. [8] I would ask those advisers to help identify questions that could change the investment decision. The resulting work should leave the buyer with a clearer view of obligations, assumptions, and unresolved issues.
A teachable buyer is willing to discover that an attractive brand may not be the right business for them. I consider that a useful outcome of due diligence.
Franchise sales teams should investigate resistance
I apply the same discipline to franchise development. When a candidate asks why the investment is high, the team should understand which part of the estimate creates concern and what comparison the candidate is making. An independent business in existing restaurant space may have a different cost structure from a proposed location requiring substantial construction. The comparison needs facts before it can support a conclusion.
I also ask the sales team to examine its own explanation. Has the candidate received a clear account of the process and obligations? Are the team’s statements consistent with the current disclosure materials? Does the candidate understand the role expected of the owner? Is the timetable realistic for their financing and other commitments?
At the management level, I would review progression through the process alongside lead volume. Appointment attendance, qualification, unanswered questions, and reasons for withdrawal can help identify where further investigation is needed. A large inquiry count alone cannot explain whether the campaign is reaching appropriate candidates or whether the process is helping them make an informed decision.
This approach also requires openness about incentives. A team responsible for franchise sales should be able to identify circumstances in which the candidate or the system would benefit from pausing. I prefer to understand that concern before commitment than discover later that the process encouraged an unsuitable decision.
The cost of remaining open to everything
I challenge the argument for openness by asking what it costs. Every test consumes attention, operating capacity, or capital. A franchise system that repeatedly changes priorities may make execution harder for the owners it is supposed to support.
James G. March’s 1991 work examined the relationship between exploring new possibilities and exploiting established knowledge. I use that distinction as a strategic lens for deciding how much attention a business should devote to improvement and how much to executing practices it already understands. It does not supply a universal allocation formula. [9]
My recommendation is to limit the number of active experiments and require each one to address a defined business question. The leader should explain why the question matters now, what decision depends on the result, and what work will receive less attention while the test proceeds.
I also recommend setting decision deadlines appropriate to the stakes. A reversible change within an approved process can often be evaluated with a smaller commitment. A major location investment or development obligation warrants more investigation because the consequences are harder to reverse. The standard of evidence should reflect the exposure.
Once a decision has been made, the team needs enough stability to execute it. I recommend reopening the decision when material evidence changes, an agreed threshold is reached, or a scheduled review occurs. Constant reconsideration without a reason can prevent the business from learning what consistent execution would have produced.
Turning curiosity into a repeatable management practice
I recommend making the following review part of the operating rhythm. It is my proposed framework for applying the article’s argument, rather than a validated assessment tool or a contractual requirement.
- State the assumption. Write the belief behind the decision in a form that could prove mistaken. For example, an approved local marketing channel is expected to generate qualified inquiries at an acceptable cost.
- Identify the alternative explanation. Specify another reason the observed result might occur, such as seasonality, a change in audience, or inconsistent execution.
- Establish authority and exposure. Determine who may approve the test, what obligations apply, what resources it requires, and who bears the downside.
- Define the evidence. Select a primary outcome, record the baseline, identify relevant costs, and establish when results will be reviewed.
- Decide what follows. Specify the conditions for continuing, revising, expanding, or ending the test, then document the decision when the review occurs.
For a hypothetical restaurant pilot, I might examine whether an authorized change to order collection reduces congestion without increasing errors or labor requirements. I would first confirm permission and safety requirements. I would compare relevant operating periods, record unusual conditions, and avoid attributing every change to the pilot. A favorable result would justify further evaluation at a suitable scale, rather than an automatic claim that every location will benefit.
The record makes it possible to compare a later explanation with the original forecast. I recommend preserving what the team expected, what it observed, and why it reached its decision. That gives the next manager something more useful than an instruction to trust the previous manager’s instinct.
Conclusion
I believe an entrepreneur’s relationship with certainty deserves as much attention as the business plan. Experience should help a leader identify what matters, recognize operating patterns, and ask better questions. As the business enters unfamiliar conditions, that same leader must remain willing to investigate the limits of what experience has established.
In franchising, I would express that responsibility through clear standards, transparent economics, and a credible process for considering improvement. Franchisees need to know how to operate the business and how to raise a concern. Franchisors need the judgment to preserve useful consistency while examining evidence that a practice should change. Both need the willingness to end an idea when the results no longer justify the commitment.
Suzuki’s observation invites me to consider what I might be overlooking because an answer already feels familiar. For an entrepreneur building a franchise business, that is a question worth bringing into the next investment discussion, operating review, or conversation with a franchisee.
For help evaluating franchise readiness, strengthening your development process, or planning responsible expansion, contact Franchise Growth Solutions at https://franchisegrowthsolutions.com or info@FranGrow.com.
© 2026 Gary Occhiogrosso. All rights reserved. The Suzuki quotation is attributed to its author; third party material remains the property of its respective rights holders.
Sources and full URLs
Research reviewed October 16, 2026. Bracketed numbers in the manuscript refer to the sources below. Foundational research is identified by its original publication year rather than presented as a new finding.
- [1] San Francisco Zen Center. “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” Primary institutional confirmation of the quote, author, book, and Zen context.
https://www.sfzc.org/about/san-francisco-zen-center-lineage/zen-mind-beginners-mind
- [2] Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein. “Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree.” American Psychologist, 64(6), 515–526, 2009. DOI 10.1037/a0016755. Original paper available through the University of Florida.
https://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/brenner/mar7588/Papers/kahneman-klein-2009.pdf
- [3] Federal Trade Commission. “A Consumer’s Guide to Buying a Franchise.” Federal consumer guidance on franchise costs, controls, disclosures, and investigation.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumers-guide-buying-franchise
- [4] Arnaldo Camuffo, Alfonso Gambardella, Danilo Messinese, Elena Novelli, Emilio Paolucci, and Chiara Spina. “A Scientific Approach to Entrepreneurial Decision Making: Large Scale Replication and Extension.” Strategic Management Journal, 45(6), 1209–1237, 2024. DOI 10.1002/smj.3580. See the publisher page for the original title typography.
https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smj.3580
- [5] North Carolina State University, Poole College of Management. “Growth Mindset Intervention Boosts Confidence and Persistence in Entrepreneurship Students,” August 13, 2019. Institutional report reproducing the study abstract. Underlying study by Jeni L. Burnette and colleagues, “A Growth Mindset Intervention: Enhancing Students’ Entrepreneurial Self Efficacy and Career Development,” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, DOI 10.1177/1042258719864293. See the linked source for original title typography.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1042258719864293
- [6] Amy Edmondson. “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383, 1999. DOI 10.2307/2666999. Harvard institutional record and abstract.
https://dash.harvard.edu/entities/publication/13a7b031-0fdd-45ec-a7e0-2b80e2bc679f
- [7] Federal Trade Commission. “Franchise Fundamentals: Taking a Deep Dive into the Franchise Disclosure Document,” May 2023. Used for the roles of Items 19 and 20 and the value of franchisee interviews.
- [8] Federal Trade Commission. “Franchise Fundamentals: Considering, Calculating, and Consulting,” July 2023. Used for the agreement, operating manual, and independent professional review.
- [9] James G. March. “Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning.” Organization Science, 2(1), 71–87, 1991. DOI 10.1287/orsc.2.1.71. Publisher abstract used for the exploration and exploitation distinction; no numerical allocation rule is attributed to the paper.
https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2.1.71
- [10] Google Search Central. “Meta Tags and Attributes That Google Supports.” Used for publication guidance, including Google’s treatment of meta keywords.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/special-tags
- [11] Google Search Central. “Learn About Article Schema Markup.” Used for the proposed Article structured data template.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/article
- [12] Franchise Growth Solutions. “Build the Future, Not the Past: Why the Most Successful Franchisors Focus on Creating What Comes Next.” Used to corroborate the author’s public role and identify a relevant internal link, not as independent evidence for the manuscript’s thesis.
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About the Author
Gary Occhiogrosso is the Founder and Managing Partner of Franchise Growth Solutions, a full-service franchise advisory and development firm dedicated to helping emerging and established brands grow responsibly through strategic planning, franchise development, operational excellence, and professional franchise sales. During a career spanning nearly four decades, Gary has worked with hundreds of franchise organizations and has participated in the development and sale of more than 1,000 franchise locations across a broad range of industries.
Recognized as one of the franchise industry’s leading authorities, Gary has been named among the Top 100 Franchise Influencers and the Top 25 Fast Casual Executives. His work focuses on helping entrepreneurs, founders, and franchisors build scalable businesses through disciplined growth strategies, sound unit economics, operational consistency, and responsible franchising.
Gary is a frequent speaker, author, and publisher whose Executive Edition articles are designed to help entrepreneurs make informed business decisions based on experience, research, and practical application rather than industry hype or conventional wisdom.
Author’s Transparency Statement
This article was researched, developed, written, and professionally edited with the assistance of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Throughout the development of this manuscript, AI served as a research assistant, editorial collaborator, and, where appropriate, a ghostwriting partner to help organize ideas, review publicly available information, improve clarity, strengthen the narrative, and enhance the overall quality of the writing.
The ideas, opinions, analysis, conclusions, and professional insights expressed throughout this article are those of the author and reflect decades of real-world experience in franchising, business development, and entrepreneurship. Every section was reviewed, refined, edited, and approved by the author to ensure it accurately reflects his knowledge, experience, perspective, and voice.
Artificial intelligence was used to support the creative and editorial process, not to replace the author’s expertise, judgment, or accountability. The author accepts full responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, and final content of this publication.
The author believes that the transparent and ethical use of artificial intelligence as a research assistant, editor, and ghostwriting tool can improve the quality, efficiency, and accessibility of professional business writing while preserving the author’s original ideas, experience, and intellectual ownership.
Author’s Note
This article also reflects the author’s professional observations and practical experience accumulated over nearly four decades advising entrepreneurs, franchisors, franchisees, and investors throughout North America. Practical experience has been combined with publicly available research to provide balanced commentary intended for educational purposes.