Reading newspapers, listening to the radio, or watching TV today is like drinking from a fire hydrant. Here are some recent headlines:

We weren't surprised by our meeting with Art. We had seen it many times before. Art and his son had founded and built a very successful retail business. They had operations across the country which were consistently producing significant year-to-year net cash flow. Art had decided recently that he was ready to sell the Company and that he wanted to get this done right away. However, as we began to visit, it was obvious Art had some roadblocks in his path that would take some time to overcome. He and his son clearly had significant differences about the future which Art was finding at this late date were becoming more and more difficult to resolve.

When Jeff Innocenti was a teenager in the Bronx, he and his brother James pretty much lived at the Gold's Gym in nearby Yonkers. "Our mother bought us our first membership and we became gym rats," says Innocenti, now 40. "Working out with weights was pretty much all we did at the time. We may as well have lived there."

As with anything valuable, lead supply is sometimes short. Yet lead demand, the lifeblood of the sales force, keeps demanding. The tectonic shifts in our financial, business, and cultural bases naturally have affected franchise lead flow, an effect that shows up differently for each franchisor. Many, however, are experiencing some sort of shortfall in the quality and/or quantity of leads, and today, more than ever, customary lead generation methods are being challenged.

Franchise Update Media Group (FUMG), the leading industry resource for franchise development, today announced the launch of its latest educational forum, the Franchise CEO Network, with host Linda Burzynski. The first webinar is Thursday, March 26, and begins at 11:30 a.m. EST.

Working to restart the economy's engine of job creation, President Obama announced Monday that the Treasury Department would invest as much as $15 billion to boost lending to credit-hungry small businesses.

Looking for deals in today's economy? Look no farther than the franchise agreement--but look carefully (and bring a lawyer). Written by franchisors to protect their brand and their interests, franchise agreements have historically favored franchisors, with little room for negotiation, especially among more established brands. That not only is changing, it already has--the result of fundamental shifts within franchising itself, accelerated by today's economic upheavals.

Over the past several years, we have spoken with business owners around the country who had decided they had reached the point of being ready to leave their businesses. However, no one was stepping up to provide them the exit results they wanted. These owners had spent all of their time aggressively working in their business, but had spent little time aggressively working on how they would eventually exit their business. They found themselves late in the game with few options to achieve their exit objectives. Simply put, they were too late.

In my inaugural column as chair of the 2009 Multi-Unit Franchising Conference (right around the corner from April 15-17 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas), I wrote "I think it is important, more than ever, that multi-unit owners like ourselves have the opportunity to hear from others dealing with similar challenges, and to network with them in an open, informal setting. Because as hard as it might have been for some of us last year, the times are even more difficult as we head into 2009."

It's no surprise that multi-concept franchising continues to soar. So much so, that for a second consecutive year, we have devoted an issue of Multi-Unit Franchisee to covering it in detail. This high-flying approach to expansion is growing in popularity for a multitude of reasons. As a growth strategy it offers more units, brands, territory, and income--while spreading risk across the different concepts in a franchisee company's portfolio. Multi-concept operators typically have a solid infrastructure in place that, among other things, allows them to hire and retain talented individuals by providing growth paths within the organization. And of course there's the leverage of economies of scale in this type of operation.

First, let's set the record straight on what's going on. This isn't just a credit crunch crisis. It may have been triggered by credit issues, but it is much bigger than that now and won't be solved by governments throwing money at it, although that is a necessary first step. This crisis will get solved when consumer income and debt levels can support a stable level of demand, not just in the U.S., but worldwide.

"How has the capital market for franchise financing changed in the last 3 to 6 months, and what are you doing differently in franchise sales in the next 3 to 6 months?"

Everyone knows what the McDonald's logo looks like and what the "Golden Arches" represent. No matter where you go in the world, if you set foot inside a McDonald's you can order a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder and know exactly what it's going to taste like. Established brand awareness, reliability, and uniformity are part of the power of franchising.

Franchise Update Media Group (FUMG), the leading industry resource for franchise development, and digital marketing leader Oneupweb today announced a unique pairing of resources. Oneupweb will deliver comprehensive digital marketing services to Franchising.com, including enhanced search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing. The companies have joined forces to develop industry-leading white papers and studies, and Oneupweb will also deliver important online marketing resources, including webinars and white papers to the franchise community through Franchise Update Media Group.

Does it affect all aspects of franchising? Does it affect all industry categories? How can operations and franchise development work in harmony to have the franchise system thrive (yes, thrive) in a tough economic climate? Let's take a seven-step approach to "Tuning Up Your Franchise System" in an uncertain economy.

There may be some lag time, but experts note that every recession since the 1950s--with its rising unemployment and weakened economy--has been tied to an increase in crime, most notably property crimes and robbery.

You'd think selling franchises in one of the worst economies since the Great Depression would daunt even the hardiest franchisor. But many franchisors, both well-established and new to the scene, keep on plugging when the economy goes south. Some even consider this a great time to grow.

When franchise sellers seek exit strategies, they most often look to strategic buyers, other franchisees, their franchisor, or financial investors such as private equity as potential buyers for their businesses.

Many franchisors have reached their limit on expanding into suburbia, but the imperative to grow remains strong. In response, an increasing number are training their sights on America's cities.The move to the suburbs has been a decades-long trend in the United States, and franchisors have followed suit. But more than half of the U.S. population live in the country's top 25 metropolitan areas, and nearly 80 percent live in the top 100 metro areas.Cities are complex, crowded places, running the gamut from blighted ghettos to luxury high-rises. Suburban commuters flood into them by the millions each day to work and shop, creating a vibrant marketplace. And the under-served inner cities are hungry for retail goods and services, jobs, and entrepreneurial opportunity, making them fertile ground for franchisors who take the time to learn, understand, and develop relationships with the people who live there.The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter, studies inner cities with a focus on economic development. According to ICIC, "[T]he inner city retail market offers significant profit potential for retail companies now operating in the highly competitive, over-saturated suburban markets." According to an ICIC study, the country's inner cities contain:

Franchise Update Media Group (FUMG), the leading industry resource for franchise development, is sponsoring the premier event in multi-unit franchising, the 8th Annual Multi-Unit Franchising Conference, April 15-17, 2009 at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. This is the only conference in the country with an exclusive focus on multi-unit franchising, the fastest-growing sector in the industry, where franchisors can meet and network with successful multi-unit franchisees looking for new opportunities.

Greg Hamer, Sr. grew up working in his father's Louisiana oilfield service business. But in 1982, he began to put time and money into growing a franchise business that has since grown to 50 locations.

David Ambinder spent more than 25 years on Wall Street, most recently as a senior vice president of global support services for Lehman Brothers. When he got a pink slip last summer - just months before the investment bank filed for bankruptcy - he turned his attention to more humble endeavors: fixing up people's homes.

Franchising depends on access to borrowed capital for new units, updating existing units, working capital, and the transfer of units between owners. Where is that capital going to come from?

John Smythe says he was a typical 21-year-old when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965. "I was just kind of rolling through life and not really giving it that much thought," says the 62-year-old veteran today. The Army was a good experience for him, and where he learned the skills and philosophies he's using today as a CMIT Solutions franchisee in Everett, Wash.

For over a year, the headlines have been rife with dire warnings that seem to indicate the demise of the world as we know it. For example, we learned that in June we experienced the worst percentage decline in the broad market averages since the Great Depression. We also discovered that home prices are declining faster than at any time in recorded history, and that debt levels (personal and governmental) have never been so high--nor have gas prices, even factoring in inflation. Gold is going through the roof and the dollar is falling through the floor. Corn, copper, steel, soybeans, etc. are shattering more records than Michael Phelps. And woe is us: flu season is right around the corner. Could this be the year of the "Great Pandemic"? It's no wonder that consumer confidence has dropped to multi-decade lows, and that stock markets around the world are misbehaving. But what could actually go right as a result of this upheaval?

The Office Visit is arguably the most important step in the franchise sales qualification process. The Office Visit goes by many names: Discovery Day, Information Day, Audition Day, Support Center Visit Day and on and on. Regardless of what you name it, it is the day for the management team and the franchise candidate to "get to know" each other beyond phone and email and decide if this is a good match for both parties.

German beer makers are often cited as the originators of franchising. Dating back to 1800s Europe, many beer makers granted pubs and taverns the rights to sell and use their name. In fact, the word "franchise" is a French derivative meaning privilege or freedom.

Standard operating procedure, or SOP, is a term widely understood by those who have served in the armed forces. SOP refers to a step-by-step method for how a mission or function will be carried out. Veterans understand the importance of implementing and following SOP for a task to be executed and the mission completed successfully. This systematic approach sounds very similar to the franchising model, and is why more and more veterans are finding successful post-military careers in the world of franchising.

As you may recall, in my last column I asked if the hiring managers in your organization know the answers to the 15 questions that make all the difference between success and failure in recruiting, selecting, and retaining the best employees. Here now are the answers.

Technology tools have become a mainstay for every multi-unit franchisee, used for planning, budgeting, forecasting, and many other daily activities. Today franchisees are embracing technology for demographic research and site selection.