Brands & Suppliers: Building Partnerships That Last
Social Geek Radio | Host: Jack Monson
Duration: 38 minutes | Air Date: Fall 2025
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts 🎵 Listen on Spotify ⬇️ Download MP3
Featured Panelists:
Kristen Pechacek — CEO, MassageLuXe
Ali Kraus — VP of Marketing, Benetrends Financial
Derrick Ableman, CFE — Brand & Marketing Director, Northeast Color
Danielle Wright — Franchise Consultant & Business Development Expert
Brought to you by: Northeast Color, Hughes, Citrin Cooperman, Thunderly
What We Discussed
The three-legged stool of franchising—franchisors, franchisees, and suppliers—only works when relationships are built on trust, challenge, and mutual growth. The Rock Stars explore what brands really need from their partners, why saying "no" is the ultimate act of partnership, and how to keep supplier relationships fresh in a rapidly changing industry.
Key Takeaways
"I want a monthly challenge, not a yes man partner" — The best supplier relationships push both parties to innovate, not just check boxes and maintain status quo
You owe your client that "no" — Suppliers who only rubber-stamp client requests aren't providing real value; guidance means saying "stop" when something won't work
Personal relationships fuel professional ones — If you can't have a coffee or beer with your partner, the business relationship won't survive tough conversations
Find the note behind the no — When clients reject ideas, dig deeper to understand what they're really seeking; curiosity drives better solutions
Signs of silently quitting — Canceled meetings, "circle back" language, and going quiet all signal a client preparing to leave
Partnerships are like dating and marriage — They require continuous discovery, date nights, and knowing when it's time to part ways respectfully
Build relationships with people, not logos — When your contact moves to a new brand, that relationship moves with them; invest in individuals, not just company names
Creativity beats contract checking — The question isn't "what's in our contract?" but "what are we changing this year to stay fresh and valuable?"
Three-month planning replaces annual roadmaps — In rapidly changing markets, nimble quarterly planning outperforms rigid 12-month strategies
Episode Guide
00:00 — Introduction: Episode 1200 Celebration
03:00 — Setting Up the Three-Legged Stool
05:00 — Kristen: I Want a Monthly Challenge, Not a Yes Man
07:00 — Derrick: You Owe Your Client That No
09:00 — Ali: Saying No to Conference Invitations
11:00 — The Power of Personal Relationships
12:00 — Finding the Note Behind the No
13:00 — Danielle: Be Different, Be Bold
15:00 — Jack: Nimble Planning in a Changing World
18:00 — Ali: Creativity Keeps Partnerships Fresh
24:00 — Kristen: Working with Routine Partners
26:00 — Signs Your Client is Silently Quitting
28:00 — When Relationships Are Exactly Like Dating
30:00 — The Hard Breakup Stories
32:00 — The Client Who Became a Seven-Figure Relationship
34:00 — Building Relationships with People, Not Logos
35:00 — Ali: Job Movement Has Slowed
37:00 — Derrick's Closing: Love as Continuous Interrogation
"A really healthy supplier-franchisor relationship is like any happy marriage—it thrives when each party is dedicated to continuous discovery and development and it's not mired in complacency. This is a live wire. Let's be awake for it."
— Derrick Ableman, on what makes partnerships work
"I don't want a yes man partner. I don't want a monthly check-in. I want a monthly challenge. I need to hire people who are gonna say no and who are gonna challenge me."
— Kristen Pechacek, on CEO-agency relationships
Explore Related Topics
→ Bad Bosses: Leadership Lessons — How to avoid becoming the problem
→ Work-Life Integration — Building sustainable business relationships
→ Northeast Color Partnership Philosophy — Our approach to supplier relationships
→ View All Podcast Episodes — Social Geek Radio archive
Key Resources Mentioned
Thunderly Marketing
Jack's agency offering franchise development marketing services. Kristen Pechacek delivered a keynote at their annual conference on CEO-agency relationships. Visit thunderlymarketing.com
Jesse Itzler
Mentioned for his powerful quote: "Pressure is privilege." Popular speaker in the franchise industry known for challenging conventional thinking.
Milan Kundera - The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Referenced by Derrick for its description of "love as a continuous process of interrogation"—a framework applicable to business partnerships.
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INTRODUCTION
ANNOUNCER: AI was not used in the creation of this podcast. This is the Social Geek Radio Network.
JACK MONSON: Hello geeks and welcome to the Social Geek Podcast. I'm Jack Monson, your host and marketing consigliere. Today, the Social Geek Rock Stars are back—Kristen Pechacek, Ali Kraus, Derrick Ableman, and Danielle Wright. We're talking franchisor and supplier relationships. What do brands need from their partners and vendors, and how should suppliers best manage those relationships? It's episode 1200 of Social Geek.
WELCOME AND SPONSOR MESSAGES
JACK MONSON: Alright, today's show is brought to you by Northeast Color, Hughes, Citrin Cooperman, and Thunderly. Imagine starting 2026 with a refreshed fran dev website. Imagine converting 7% of your fran dev website traffic into leads. That's three times greater than the industry average. This fall, it's time to electrify your franchise development marketing. Visit thunderlymarketing.com.
Social Geek Rock Stars are back with us today. It's Kristen Pechacek, Ali Kraus, Derrick Ableman and Danielle Wright. Scott Greenberg could not join us today. He's probably flying overhead in a jet bound for some franchise conference right now. So rock stars, how are you doing?
ALL: Good, Jack.
JACK MONSON: I did wanna mention too, thanks to you guys for doing all of these Rock Star podcasts with us, and thanks to everybody out there for making this the most popular franchise podcast. Today celebrates episode number 1200. So 1,200 episodes down and who knows where we'll stop. But it's been a good 16 plus years and still going. So thanks to everybody for considering.
KRISTEN PECHACEK: You better not stop anytime soon, Jack.
JACK MONSON: Yeah, well talk to the bank that holds the mortgage on my house and they'll say, "No, you got about 30 more years to go, man."
DERRICK ABLEMAN: Well now you can count down. Just figure out how many you do in a year, look at 30 years. That's how many podcasts.
JACK MONSON: Yeah. Okay, so we've got 4,000 more to go. Let's keep going.
SETTING UP THE CONVERSATION
JACK MONSON: I really wanted to talk to you guys about this sort of niche conversation that we've all had individually, and I know a lot of you have had with your teams about how franchising is sort of—it's the old three-legged stool, right? It's the franchisor, the franchisees, and then the suppliers.
And Kristen, maybe you could give us a little background on your chat, but you came to my team's annual conference, the Thunderly team, and you gave possibly the best keynote speech and conversation that I've ever seen in this industry, and I'm not kidding. Kristen talked to our entire team about what a CEO is looking for with their marketing agency, and that kind of sparked the idea of, I'd love to have a conversation today about how people can work with their suppliers better, their vendors better, how suppliers can work with the brands better, and what that relationship really looks like. Maybe not so much in the past, but in the future.
So anyway, KP, thank you for coming to the conference. Everybody loved everything you shared with us. What was the spark that made you think, let's talk about the CEO and agency relationship?
KRISTEN: I WANT A MONTHLY CHALLENGE, NOT A YES MAN
KRISTEN PECHACEK: Yeah. You know, it's funny, I had so much fun in Nashville with your team and although the intent was for me to educate your team on what I was looking for, I actually ended up educating myself a little bit on what I needed to do to be a better partner and to reinforce what I was looking for. So I found that when I was speaking to your team about things that I wanted in the relationship, I wasn't doing my part in providing those things to you. And I think you probably saw that come to life a little bit. Like, I'm like, "Man, this is what we should do, but why haven't we done this?" Right?
And some of those key points, when I started to think about how I was gonna talk to your team, really had me thinking about all the relationships that I have in franchising. And as I was putting together the deck, and Jack, you pointed this out, perhaps one of the most powerful points that I was making to your team was, I don't want a yes man partner. I don't want a monthly check-in. I want a monthly challenge.
I want a partner that isn't gonna act like an internal part of my team, which is crazy because I've always said I want a partner that's an extension of my team, or that's part of my team. But the reality is, if you're part of my team, you may just say yes all the time 'cause I'm the boss and you're gonna go with the flow.
And so what I found myself asking your team is for you to say no to me and to tell me that I should do something differently. And it was a good reminder as to why I don't just staff all of my marketing functions in house—it's because I wanna get stronger and better. And in order to do that, I need to hire people who are gonna say no and who are gonna challenge me.
And so for me, again, it was just really refreshing not only to meet the team and spend the time, but for me to realize, man, I gotta push harder and try harder with my partners in order to make sure that they know that this is a space that's comfortable enough for them to challenge me.
JACK: IT'S OKAY TO SAY NO
JACK MONSON: Yeah. I think it was refreshing for my team to hear from someone that it's okay to get that no, because I think there are so many agencies and whether it's advertising or other types of suppliers, they're so afraid of the client being unhappy and saying no isn't always indicative of your unhappiness. Right? I think you said something about if you are not saying no, we're not really trying hard enough. Right? We're not coming with enough ideas or new ideas or pushing the envelope enough.
Derrick, I know you work with a lot of different types of brands as well. Is this sort of vibing with how you are working with some of your favorite clients right now as well too?
DERRICK: YOU OWE YOUR CLIENT THAT NO
DERRICK ABLEMAN: Yeah, I mean it's funny that you bring this up because I had a meeting about this exact thing today where we had to tell a client no. The client wanted all of these different things, all of these different variations, and we had to stop them and say, "Listen, we will happily do as you ask, but what you're asking will cost a lot of money, won't make a big difference. No one will be able to tell, and it's just gonna be thousands of dollars you're gonna spend on these samples. Instead, please, please allow us to help you save money, move you in the direction. We can experiment in these other directions, but..."
I think that in my experience here and in other work, you owe your client that no. You owe them the guidance. They need to be told, "Stop." Like, "I'm not here to just rubber stamp everything that you want because you don't know what you want." You're not educated enough about my expertise. That's why you've hired me. Right? Or you would make your own, whatever it is.
And so I think at the end of the day, a really healthy supplier-franchisor relationship is like any happy marriage—it thrives when each party is dedicated to this kind of continuous discovery and development and it's not mired in complacency. 'Cause that can kind of build into a stack of disappointments that concur into grievances or these little habits where you're not listening to each other, you're not really being present, you're just sort of "mm-hmm, mm-hmm, well, okay, cool." And that's—we're making business together. Like this is a live wire. Let's be awake for it. Let's push, let's find out, let's say yes and no.
ALI: SAYING NO TO CONFERENCE INVITATIONS
ALI KRAUS: Yeah. For us, I would say, again, it's not the client side that we have to say no to, it's the partner side. So to our franchisors and to our consultant networks, I think unfortunately we probably say no more than we'd like to. But for example, something we have to say no to is going to every franchisor conference that we're invited to. We, outside of the franchisor conference world, go to 50 to 60 events depending on the year, and we just don't have the support and the infrastructure to do that.
So we work with 600 plus different franchisor brands. If we were to go to every conference and spread the love and be that supplier that they invited at all of them, we would have nobody ever taking calls and getting people funded. So unfortunately, one of the things we have to say no to very often is franchisor conferences. As much as we love them and we wanna be there, we just can't do it.
JACK MONSON: Yeah, you could make a full-time job out of—actually you could make about five full-time jobs out of going to all of those shows, right?
ALI KRAUS: Yeah. And they're a good time, don't get me wrong. And I've been on the franchisor side so I understand the importance of having your vendors there to represent and your franchisees wanna see your vendors. But until we have a team of another 15 traveling-only people, it's just not something we can make happen. And that's always really hard 'cause I understand the value, I know the importance. We appreciate and love our partnerships, but it's just impossible to say yes to all the time.
KRISTEN: NO, BUT... AND THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS
JACK MONSON: What's a good way for a CEO to say, you know, "no, but..."?
KRISTEN PECHACEK: That's exactly what you have to say is just because it's no, doesn't mean that that doesn't spark another window to be open. You shut the door, you open a window, you figure out a different way out of the house. And I think that the foundation of being able to do that really comes down to having a personal relationship with your partners, just as strong as your professional relationship.
And I often say like, I don't wanna do business with you if I can't have a cup of coffee or a beer with you. Like, I need to know who you are if I'm going to trust you to have my back in business. And if that trust is there, that relationship is there, then the nos, they aren't as hard, right? It's like, "No man, that's silly, but let's move on to this," or "let's try this," or "you know, that might not be right for right now, but maybe we put a pin in it and do something a little bit differently."
And so the relationships that you build on the supplier and the client side have to be strong in order to have those tough conversations just as they do with your employees.
DERRICK: FIND THE NOTE BEHIND THE NO
DERRICK ABLEMAN: Kristen, if I could just add something to the end of that, 'cause I thought that was a really insightful point. The approach that I think is really healthy from a supplier to take is when you do get a no, is to try to find the note behind the no.
Right? Like you were saying no to this iteration, but what is it in service of? What is the larger idea? You don't like this color. Okay. Why? Like it's that follow up question and I think being told no and being redirected—you can get blunted and no one likes to be judged, right? But honestly, like if we're gonna make something better, we have to try to find out what is behind that. And again, it comes to that, I think curiosity, interrogation, just like, "Tell me more. Let's find, let's follow this thread."
DANIELLE: BE DIFFERENT, BE BOLD
JACK MONSON: Danielle, I wanna bring you into this sort of from a whole new perspective. You work with franchisees and potential franchisees and franchisees and other suppliers and probably, you know, six other legs on that very big stool. How do you see things going in the franchise space right now? Are these relationships getting better? Are they getting harder? Are they getting fuzzier? What do you see going on out there these days?
DANIELLE WRIGHT: Oh, that's like the toughest question I think you have ever asked me. From all the different viewpoints, personally, there's not a lot—I'm contradicting myself here in a minute, but there's not a lot of competition. Everybody's doing the same thing. So to the point of this conversation, I would love anyone that is a supplier, anyone that you're working with, be different, be bold and be okay with, like you're saying, say the nos. Give the reason why.
Because all of the relationships that we have right now, everybody's telling me the same things. Do something different, be inventive. I think we are all okay with it not being status quo. I mean, look at the world at large. Nothing is status quo when we wake up in the morning. So I think those that are willing to challenge are having a better success rate and long-term partnership with whomever they're partnering with, right? They want the direct, they don't want it nasty. They also want the ability to adapt to change quickly and those kind of things.
So I just—from all the vantage points I see everybody's still doing the same old thing. So why can't we do something different? And I think you're gonna see your partnerships sustaining long term when you're asking them to do something different when they're working with you.
Transcript edited for clarity and readability.
About the Panelists
Kristen Pechacek serves as CEO of MassageLuXe, where she leads franchise development and brand strategy. She recently delivered a keynote presentation on CEO-agency relationships at Thunderly's annual conference, challenging marketing partners to bring monthly challenges instead of yes-man check-ins.
Ali Kraus is VP of Marketing at Benetrends Financial, working with 600+ franchisor brands and numerous consultant networks. She brings extensive experience from teaching, franchising, and supplier roles, with a focus on creative partnership activations.
Derrick Ableman, CFE serves as Brand & Marketing Director at Northeast Color, where he helps franchise brands maintain consistency and impact across hundreds of locations. His background in journalism, fashion, and creative writing brings unique cultural perspective to supplier-franchisor relationships.
Danielle Wright is a franchise consultant and business development expert working with franchisees, potential franchisees, and franchise suppliers. She advocates for bold, different approaches that challenge industry status quo.
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Episode Milestone: #1200
This episode marks a significant milestone—1,200 episodes of Social Geek Radio spanning 16+ years of franchise industry conversations. From supplier relationships to leadership challenges to marketing innovation, Social Geek Radio has been documenting the evolution of franchising since its earliest days.
Thank you to every guest, sponsor, and listener who has made this journey possible. Here's to 4,000 more episodes (as Jack's mortgage requires).
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Northeast Color is a proud sponsor of Social Geek Radio. For over 25 years, we've partnered with franchise brands to deliver branded experiences that build trust, consistency, and lasting customer relationships. Our approach? We bring monthly challenges, not just check-ins.