How to build a million dollar franchise business through partnerships with Fran Boorman

In this episode, Zeinab and Trisha speak with Fran Boorman, CEO and Co-founder of Goal17, the UK’s number 1 sports-led mentor training program featured in Forbes. Fran’s passion for sports started at school, where she competed nationally in Skiing competitions. Through building multiple successful businesses, Fran realized the power of partnerships and has leveraged this to create sustainable social impact. Goal17, partners with premier league football clubs, multi-billion dollar corporations, charities and a leading UK university to deliver a mentoring program to benefit disadvantaged youth. Fran shares her approach to building a thriving social enterprise and the secrets to formulating a successful partnership. To learn more about Goal17 and the concepts discussed in the episode, check out the links below:

Goal17 website: https://www.goal17.global/ 

Fran’s website: https://www.fran.global/

Why by Simon Sinek https://amzn.to/3owjyhG 

 

Chapter markers:

2:23: Fran’s passion for skiing

5:27: How Goal17 was inspired

8:00: The power of partnerships

14:12: Finding your “why”

25:15: Partnering with premier league clubs and corporates

27:28: Building a professional brand

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Transcript

0:05

Thanks for joining us today on Lattes's Leaders. I'm Zeinab and I'm Trisha and we're excited for you to join us. As we catch up over coffee with CEOs and executives from diverse backgrounds and industries, we seek to discover what is unique about each leader and educate you guys on new and interesting topics. Our conversations seek to enlighten and inspire people from around the world to realize that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things. I think as women we are designed not to be the kind of necessarily always the person that pushes themselves forward and says, look at me how great I am. But actually to an extent I needed to lead people. So I had to learn how to become a leader because if I had a vision, I was going to not just need to get them on my own, I was going to have to take other people on that vision with me. In today's episode, we chat with Fran Boorman, founder of Goal 17, an awardwinning mentor training business. After a disappointing realization that her professional ski career needed to end sooner than expected, she pivoted her career to developing and selling multiple businesses, including the UK's number one sports led mentor training program, Goal 17, which was featured in Forbes eight months after launching. Fran has been voted the UK's number one female business influencer in 2019 by Global Woman and is also a Nonexecutive director at Moblox and the Foundation Group. What is key to success? We explore that and more in this episode. Stay tuned. I came across your profile actually a while ago and connected with you through LinkedIn. And by the way, anyone who ever wants to blanket reach out to someone on LinkedIn, it seems to work rather well for me, so definitely try it. So I reached out to you on LinkedIn because I saw your profile and you are an incredible person. You've done so much in this short amount of time you've been on this Earth. So I'd love to just talk to you a little bit about your background and where you've come from. I was born, grew up in London. My parents were very entrepreneurial. It was interesting because my dad was quite entrepreneurial and my mum was quite steady, Eddie. So I had the influences of both my mom saying, career is great because you have some security. I'm not sure how true that is these days, but back in those days, you used to. And then my dad was going, no, but actually you can have bigger growth and so on. I had these brilliant influences growing up. I was just, I guess just a kind of normal, slightly geeky kid at school until I found sport. And from a young age, I had learned how to ski. That was a kind of a family holiday. It was the one thing we kind of all do together would go away and ski. So when I was about 18 months I was plopped on skis, and it was only when I got to secondary school, I met a school friend who came from an Olympian family. All of her family had been athletes, and she had chosen that when she was older, she wanted to be an Olympic skier and she needed a team to get her there. So I somehow managed to get myself dragged into becoming a competitive skier whilst doing my secondary school education. So I did most of my education by Fax machine, which during lockdown, I was trying to remind my kids as they complained about online learning, that actually it wasn't so tough because at least they got to see something. I just had a Fax machine. I didn't even know what a Fax machine was, to be fair, and went through and really didn't have this amazing kind of youth of competing and training and learning, I guess, the disciplines and the teamwork and the focus that was needed to achieve a big goal. How did that experience really carve out your business acumen moving forward? Because it didn't quite work out with the skiing, did it? In the end, I ended up representing my country and doing very well in the scheme. But I had injuries that meant it was never going to be a career. But I took so much from that time. And I think, as you've just said, that sporting element. I always say that sport is kind of life compressed into a short period of time. You get all the kind of emotions and experiences. And I suppose probably what I learned the most was about having a goal and a target and really focus on it and doing what needed to be done, even if that was uncomfortable or in many cases, painful at times. But just having that focus and also things such as understanding that you don't get there on your own. You need a team, you need support team. You need other people around you. And that's incredible to have competed at that level at such a young age and to be able to have those experiences, to really reflect on what you wanted to do and also what your capabilities and your body was enabling you to be to do. So how did that then lead to Goal 17? What is Goal 17, and why is it so important to you? Yes, around about that time when I sort of just started doing this research into conscious capitalism and these kind of things, I discovered a framework called the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So back in 2015, the UN got together and said, look, there's a lot of problems in the world, and they're not all going to be solved by charities and governments. So actually, why don't we open this up to the business world and see if we can get some help, really from the business world to develop and make the world a better place? And of course, the business is perfect place to solve problems. Entrepreneurs are perfect to solve problems because they're designed to solve problems. Kind of being entrepreneurial is just about being a problem solver. So why not open people's eyes to tackling some of the biggest problems? And so what the UN did is they came up with a list of goals known as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. You often call them called SDGs. And what they are is they take the 17 biggest global problems and really present them to anyone, but specifically to the business world and say to the business one, pick one and go help us solve it. Right? So rather than saying we need to make the world a better place, where do we start? What they've done is they've broken it down into these nice simple chunks. So I looked through them and I looked at what was the one that meant the most for me and the 17th goal just jumped out. And it won't surprise you. It's partnerships and collaborations and I looked at my skill set and I looked at what I'd done in my life up to date. And I just feel that I love building networks and partnerships and collaborations. So it just really felt like that was a really good place for me to be in. And so I had this idea at the time and I thought, I don't know what I'm going to do, but one day I'm going to start a company called Goal 17 because it's so important to me that I take one of these United Nations goals and take it really seriously and actually work towards it. So I don't know what that company will do. But it was in the back of my head. And then once I come up with a concept for what is now Goal 17, I was thinking about naming it and of course at the time we just started working with football clubs. So I think most people thought it had something to do with football goals, but of course it didn't. It's all about the 17th goal and that is why we are cool. Goal 17. I can see why you picked Goal 17 though. You brand, because that is you. Well, actually maybe this is an interesting reflection because if you spoke to my father, his attitude towards business is very much you keep your head down, you do it yourself, you don't tell other people what you're doing because you don't want to share your IP, you want to kind of keep it very close. And probably in his generation, that was how you built businesses. And I think one of the changes that I started to see as I suppose I matured, maybe my experiences and this partly comes from initially I was in a sort of a franchising business model, so I did a little bit of an online startup when I was quite young and then I moved into a sort of franchising model. And through that, what I learned was that actually you can only do so much yourself. And if you really wanted to scale and grow, you have to bring other people on that journey with you, whether that be as helping them open their own businesses, whether that be actually working with you or for you, or whether that be just collaborating with your businesses together. And I think that experience of my early business days, I realized that there was only so much that I could ever do on my own and that I had to bring if I wanted success myself, I had to bring other people on that journey with me. And sometimes I think sometimes that's quite a hard. And I say especially as a woman, I'm sure men experience some men experience this as well. But I think as women, we are designed not to be the kind of necessarily always the person that pushes themselves forward and says, look at me how great I am. But actually to an extent, I needed to lead people. So I had to learn how to become a leader because if I had a vision, I was going to not just need to get them on my own. I was going to have to take other people on that vision with me. And therefore, I was going to have to step up and lead and say, this is where I'm going and who wants to follow me, and this is how you follow me. And I want to come back to something you said earlier, which is that in order to take someone through the journey and actually get them on boarded as a partner, you had to have that very clear vision and mission of what you wanted to achieve, both personally and through the business. I wanted to explore more about how you craft that vision and mission and what it took for you to realize what is it that you want it to actually achieve. It's a really great question because I think you're always crafting it. So I think sometimes we can get bogged down. We're trying to be too perfect. So sometimes you just need to know that from your gut instinct that you're on the right path. And for me, that's often been times of both personal and work exploration. So I often find that when I'm setting a vision, it will come at a time in my life where I feel a little bit lost, actually, which might sound counterproductive, but I find that when you feel a little bit lost, you're then motivated to go and find the direction. And in those moments, the way that I find out that the direction is by just going out and experiencing and exploring. And for me, experiencing a lot of the time, actually again, we'll go back to people. It'll go back to talking to people, to connecting with people, to learning about other people, other cultures. Whatever it might be once you get something that feels right, it's been a case of going, well, actually. Now how do I create formulate a plan and create an actual vision? And then I guess it's a case of testing that you start talking to people and gauging their reaction. And I'm a big believer if it doesn't scare you a little bit, it's probably not worth doing. So you want something that maybe seems a little bit outrageous and a little bit scary to push you out of your comfort zone, and you start to sort of share those ideas with people. And then you'll see that some people will tell you that you're energy and you're crazy. And that's really good because that means you're definitely thinking big enough. If everybody thinks it's a great idea, it's just not big enough. It needs to have naysayers. Otherwise it's probably not important enough. So there's a bit of testing to make sure there are enough naysayers out there, and then a bit of testing to make sure that there are people that go, oh, my God, that sounds amazing. I want to be part of it. And when you start to get to that point, then I think you're onto something. But it's still a constant kind of exploration and crafting of what you're trying to achieve and where you're trying to go. Yeah. And I love that perspective that you have on the naysayers. It takes a lot of resilience to actually say, oh, this idea doesn't work. But you know what? I'm just going to go for it. And you turn that into fuel to actually grow the idea, because if other people don't believe in it, maybe there's something you can do to fix their perspective or to even make the model work such that they do believe in it. Yeah. And I think you're right. And that is one of those things that I think so many people don't. Maybe they look at it as a negative. And I definitely did. I think anyone from growing businesses, I think you're always selling, you're always having to sell yourself and your business. And that is especially in the early days. It's a brutal process because often your nearest and dearest will reject your ideas on what you're doing. It can be really brutal. But actually when you build a resilience that you actually suddenly find that it shifts and it becomes super powerful because there has to be this acceptance that if you're going to do great things in your life, there's going to be NASA, you just have to kind of accept it and go, I know they're out there, and I know I'm going to meet them, and that's okay. And then what I did was I shifted my, I suppose, my psychology towards those people and went that they're the people that will help me actually refine what I'm doing. They're the ones that are going to find the holes before I fall in them. So when I speak to kind of the naysayers and I go, this is brilliant. And I take it all as feedback and go, fantastic what you've told me. I can now see that that's hole there. And I'm going to go fill it because I think if you're an entrepreneurial person, specifically, if your mind is set in that way, you always see the opportunities over the risks. So you actually need the people that see the risks over the opportunities. Just open your eyes them so that you can mitigate them and they don't become an issue. But it takes a level of resilience to do it. I was reading a book. I don't know if you've read it. I feel like you would have read this book. But have you read Why by Simon Seneck? Yes. A very favorite book of mine. Yes. Love it. Yes. Because I feel like that's a big part of what you're kind of explaining really, aren't you? Which is when you're going and doing anything really, you've got to know why you're doing it and also why someone else might be interested in what you're doing. And he talks a lot about the three circles. I don't know if you remember this, but three circles, yes, that's it. The how, the what and then the why and how people like Steve Jobs and all these famous entrepreneurs, they aren't just known for building Apple, and they're not passionate about necessarily that specific company, but they're passionate about an ethos. And I feel like that's a big part of you and what you do because Goal 17, for instance, is your why almost do you want to talk about that a little bit more? Because I feel like I've got a power of race and I don't want to do that. I was having this discussion with someone earlier this week about kind of why did you get out of it and do what you do every day? And for me personally, money is not a motivator. Money for me is an important measure of success. But if I was just getting out of bed to earn money, it just wouldn't motivate me enough. So of course, we are all motivated by money as a currency. But at the same time, I massively value money because if you have money, you can do more good in the world. And so I started to look at actually when I exited my last business, I was kind of in this sort of funny space of going, I don't really know what I want to do, where I want to go. And I didn't want to go and just earn money. That was just not going to be what was right for me. So I started to look at actually what did I want to do, what was going to motivate me? And I'm a very driven and motivated person. I love being a full time mum to my kids. I'm still at every pick up pretty much. I never miss a school event, so they are a huge driver in my life as well. But when I'm not with them because they're that bit older now, they're both at school, so I don't have them for seven or 8 hours a day. I'm not going to be the kind of person that will do nothing. So what do I want to do with my time? And if it wasn't about money, what was it about? And I found that actually I was fascinated and I'd always had a fascination growing up about giving and charity. So I had this one area of kind of real philanthropy feelings and then another area of real commercial feeling and loving business and growth. And I actually spend a bit of time thinking about what were my values. If I had to look at what was the intersection of my values in life, it came up with three things, which was give, connect and growth. It was all about connecting people, humans, giving back and growth and growth being, whether that be business, personal or whatever. And so when I looked at what I want to do with my time, I thought I really needed to find a way to live by those values. And one thing became clear was that actually, whilst I love charity and I love commercial, wouldn't it be so cool if you could bring those two things together? And that's when I started to really learn about conscious business, about triple bottom line, about actual social enterprises and those kinds of things and thinking, well, actually, how cool would it be to create a business? And at the time I came up with this phrase, which was Business for good is good for business. And I wanted to prove to businesses that actually when you did good in the world, you actually became a better and stronger commercial business, which now might sound pretty obvious, but four or five years ago, that concept was alien to so many people. It was like if you said stuff like that, you were a tree hugger, you weren't someone to be taken seriously. And I really wanted to prove that when you did good in your business commercially, it just made sense and you would be a better business. So then a lot of my motivation came around about actually, how do we bring, how do we move out of this place of it's either charity or commercial, and find this really nice middle ground where both coexist at the same time. Right. I think it's interesting that you've taken an approach that really combines the two in a very seamless way, because I think there's a tendency, particularly if you start with a business that's entirely commercial in nature, without the purpose and mission to make the world a better place, the impact can be an afterthought. Right. People will maybe put in some of the extra profits into a charity. If they have any extra profits, to spare, whereas you've almost fueled the social purpose through the revenues that you're generating through the mentoring program. Yeah, because I think I see it otherwise, it's a wasted commercial opportunity. So don't get me wrong, I think it's absolutely brilliant. If organizations are giving money funding things, even if it's an afterthought, at least they're doing it, which is brilliant. But actually, if you're just doing it as an afterthought, I just feel like you're missing a trick because we know now that every business, as far as I'm concerned, comes back to humans. It comes back to either your customers or your people and your staff. And if you're going to have a successful business, it's got to be around what humans want to see and want to happen. And I think if you're not finding ways to engage higher purpose, it's very hard to engage people, especially younger generations now. And I had a few commercial organizations that were interested in learning all about how to really create effective mentoring, specifically, again, at a time when diversity and equality wasn't as popular a subject as it is now a few years on. But even back then, it was sort of becoming a subject that people were interested in. So I started to look at ways we could teach this. And then a couple of chance meetings landed me at Manchester United football Club, which is kind of entertaining because I wasn't even then particularly a football fan. But I got chatting to the CEO of their foundation at the football club and he told me about the incredible work that they were doing. And at that point, I was meeting lots of other football organizations and all their charities and foundations that were reaching out into some of the most deprived communities in our country and using sport to break down barriers and help young people really transform their lives. And I just thought it was so cool and it was amazing they were doing this and then discovered that they were all charities. And even though they might be attached to big football clubs, they still needed to raise funding. That partnership of me part picked in and I thought, Hold on a second, I've got a really cool commercial product here that companies want. They've got young people from diverse talent that need support and they need funding. Why don't we put these two things together? And so what I did was I created a program where we offered corporate clients the opportunity to learn how to really effectively mentor, how to use our mentoring system. But rather than us just sitting in a classroom and teaching them, what we did is we paired them with some of the beneficiaries of these sports charities. So some of the young people that maybe were homeless or to come from really deprived backgrounds and they got to practice their newly learned mentoring skills by supporting one of these young people. And subsequently that ended up funding programs for these young people. So it had this element that we were using the profits from those programs to give to the young people. But it meant that not only did the young people get a better experience and actually massively accelerate their development by making a relationship with somebody that had a job. Because some of these young people had never met anybody, they might be 2nd, 3rd generation unemployed, they didn't know anyone with a job and suddenly they had a mentor who had a job and it sort of normalized the whole employment process for them. But then of course for our corporate clients, what happened was that they came in and they started to deal with all of their unconscious bias. Not only did they become amazing mentors and really learn really quickly how to mentor, they started to remove unconscious bias. They started to actually feel like they had the skills and capabilities to manage people that were different from them. It's almost like they removed the fear they had about people that were different and gave themselves permission to have people that were different working with them. And we saw this massive shift with our corporate clients that they started to be able to have diverse workforces in a way that they hadn't. And in a way I guess that I'd done in my previous organization. So that is kind of where Goal 17 was founded and how it was born and how it's created. We've moved on now to doing lots of internal mentoring programs. All we do is mentoring. We're just obsessed and love mentoring. And this comes from my passion of bringing people together, bringing two people, whether they're from a similar background or completely different backgrounds, together in these meaningful relationships, which I actually think in today's society actually quite rare to have these kind of proper meaningful relationships where people come together to support a two way to support each other in changing their perspectives and their outlooks so that they can actually go out into the world and make the difference that they want to make. And that's an incredible journey. I was just reflecting on my own perception of mentoring where I also didn't come from a background where there were a lot of people around me who had kind of corporate jobs or were making decent livings. And I remember my aunt was one of the few people who I knew who was quite successful. She came from a banking background and she really did mentor me quite heavily. And seeing is believing, which I think is a lot of what you're trying to do, seeing these surprise people, linking them up with people who are very successful at their jobs and through that mentoring approach they can actually understand what the benefits are of having these kinds of careers or opens opportunities for different jobs. Because if you don't know the job exists, you're never going to think, oh, I want to go and do that. Or, oh, I can go and do that. I think someone's not even just not knowing it exists. It's sometimes that it exists, but it's not for someone like me. Where I think these mentoring relationships are so powerful is that when you build a relationship with someone and that's what happens is people build, they build friendships, they build relationships is suddenly you realize that, yes, you may be, you may look different, you may sound different, you may come from different backgrounds, but actually, underneath it, you're not that different. Yes, you might have your own interesting and different perspectives on things which is brilliant and should be embraced. But actually, why shouldn't you be in that job? Why shouldn't you be in that role? You have multi billion dollar businesses participating in the mentoring program. How did you first go about pitching the idea to these businesses and getting their buy in for something that is very new in this space? Right. Like no one had ever done something like this before. When I went into forming any of these partnerships, the first thing you have to think about is not just what's in it for me, but what's in it for them. It's notoriously difficult. I was told again, those naysayers were telling me, you'll never form partnerships with Premier League football clubs. They're big beasts. They won't be interested in little you. But actually what I did is I went to them with a proposition which was all about what was in it for them. It was my vision, this is where we want to go. But this is what's in it for you. Of course, for the foundations of these football clubs, I was able to say, look, we can bring in funding and we can bring in people that will. So I went further than just bringing in mentors. I was going actually, we could start to look at how we could create an emotional connection between corporate sponsors and your organization and how through this mentoring, we can really help them engage in the work that you're doing in a way that you're not getting from people that are just sending checks. So really, when I went in and pitched that vision, I had this real vision that I was super passionate about. But then at the same time had really thought about, well, what was in it for them? Because it's not about what it is for me, it's about what it is for them. And of course, once you work out why I always put myself in their shoes and go, will I be biting this person's hand off or not? And if you get yourself to your where you're thinking, actually, yes, I would bite their hand off, then you're ready to go pitch to them. So really kind of designed it and developed it so that they would want to do it. And of course, then once I had the first few partnerships with those Premier League football clubs, on my side. It then made it much easier to then do the same thing. But going into big corporates again, very much going in, what's in this for you? Why would you want to do this? It's not about me selling a product. They don't care about my business, my bottom line. They care about their business, understanding them and what they needed and what they wanted. So it was again pitching at them in a language that they understood and in a way of what they needed within their organization. Something else that I noticed about you is that you have a very clear brand, both personally and your business as well. What is your advice to people who are looking to build a social enterprise or looking to build a mission driven organization and how they can go about building this business in a very visible way? Yes. So it's a really interesting question, Trisha, because actually if you had seen me five or so years ago, I remember one of my mentors saying, Fran, who are you? What do you stand for? And when I was going through that exploratory phrase, I really didn't. And I was very actually probably confusing people because I was confused as well. So if you're starting this journey and you're going, oh, my goodness, fans got a really clear brand. Like everything in life, it didn't happen overnight. It took a lot of hard work, and it still has more work to do on it, I'm sure. I think firstly is appreciating that it's a process and there's a lot of hard work and soul searching to go into it, and that's both soul searching for you as an individual. I'm a big believer that sometimes I'll think of a business idea and I'll think, God, that's an amazing idea. But if I'm not the person that should be starting that business, then it shouldn't be me. And I think you have to understand and try to understand who you are, what your motivations are and what your passions and skills are, because the authenticity of the founder is so important to a business success. In my opinion, I think there will be no point me starting a theatrical business, because that's not in my background. I don't have experience in it. It's not my passion. Whereas even if it was a brilliant idea, I'd be better just to give that idea to somebody that is positioned in that place. So I think understanding yourself is a really great place to start and not worry. I suppose at the beginning it is a little bit confusing because you are constantly refining. And I think the way you refine your brand is partly by putting things out there and then seeing the reaction you get back and seeing how you feel about it. I've done things in the past and I just cringe now thinking, oh, that so wasn't me. And it didn't feel right. And so then going, okay, well, I know, now that's not me. I've got to go in a slightly different direction. That kind of do review, adjust and keep going back in those cycles. But then what I would say is that when you do start to kind of get that clarity in yourself and even through that process, the world is absolutely screaming out for good leadership at the moment. People are looking out there and they're going we need leaders that we can follow. And if you are one of those people that even has an ounce of leadership in you, all I'd say is just go out and do it. Go out and be that leader because people want to follow people with a vision and with leadership. And even if you haven't got complete clarity, if you build your own brand for yourself around your values and what's important to you and if you're willing to show others how they can be involved in that, they'll want to follow you and it's a huge responsibility, but it's a real honor and a privilege that you can start to actually get people that again that leads us into that partnership program that you end up going. Well, now that I've got people that are following me now we collectively together. It's not about me anymore. It's about us and together we can do more. I love it. That's really fantastic advice. I'm feeling very inspired. Yeah. And thank you so much. Fran, it was a pleasure speaking to you. I think we've got some really great content. It's been amazing talking to you girls as well. If you would like to get to know more about Fran and her many accomplishments, Feel free to find her on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram at franborman to find out how your business may benefit from increased diversity and inclusion through mentoring. Don't forget to check out our more recent episodes where we connect with global CEOs to explore what it takes to get to the top of successful, Established businesses. In our next episode, we talk about one of my favorite topics money with managing director Camilla love where she shares her experience of building wealth and managing investment risk. See you next time.