Nick Lopez is joined on this episode by Zack Fishman, the Chief Growth Officer of Fishman PR. Nick and Zack dive into what has made the Fishman PR company successful within the space. The Fishman Family’s humility and service to the industry are apparent as Zack dives into all of the ways that the Fishmans provide networking events with the basis of cutting-edge technologies and best practices for the franchise space. From UnConference to Young Conference and Springboard, Zack dives into the differences between each conference and the benefits each one provides for franchising throughout the year. Additionally, the Fishmans are contributing to a new way for the franchise community to work with vendors through the revolutionary Franchise Supplier Network. What makes Fishman PR and Franchise Elevator two PR firms that are perfectly positioned to take a franchise brand to the next level? Let’s dive right into the episode today!
In this episode, our guest is the Chief Growth Officer with Fishman PR. He routinely co-hosts the MODRN BUSINESS Podcast. He also runs the Franchise Supplier Network and YoungConference. Zack Fishman, welcome to the show.
It’s nice to be on the other side for once. I feel like I never get to be the interviewee, so thanks for having me.
It’s a pleasure. How did franchising find you, Zack?
I’m sure a lot of people that you have on this show typically give the “I fell into it on accident” answer, and that’s a lot of what I hear on mine. For me, it was pretty on purpose. My parents have been in franchising both of which for a considerable amount of time. They’ve been running our PR firm together for 31 years until now, 2023. My mother has been in franchising since she was 23. It was her first job out of college.
For me, if I’m being honest, I always wanted to be my parents. A lot of kids, when they were younger, wanted to be a firefighter or a basketball players. Especially because I’m in Chicago, they wanted to be Michael Jordan. I always had an interest in franchising, business, and entrepreneurship. Specifically, it’s such a consistent thing within franchising that we see a young entrepreneur like my mom. She was 29 when she started the firm. It was female-founded and all that great stuff. These are stories that we hear in franchising all the time. It motivated me to want to get into the space and follow in both of their footsteps.
Such a unique blessing. You said something that I absolutely love. You said people grow up and want to be this or that, but you specifically wanted to follow in your parent’s footsteps. What were some aspects of how they lived their life and how they lived out their career? What are some things you think back on that I hear so much? It’s not about what you say, how you raise your kids, but more so, they catch what you do. What were some of the things that Sherri and Brad did that you caught and that gave you the franchise bug?
Those who have met Brad Fishman will know that he is certainly one of a kind. I have one thing that I took from him in particular. It is very helpful when it comes to business development, which is how I spend a lot of my time when it comes to the PR business and understanding people in my personal life as well. Being able to read body language and being able to understand how people are thinking based on how they respond. Nonverbal context cues are super important, and he’s really good at that. That has allowed me to level up when it comes to sales, dating, and anything. I hope my girlfriend would agree. It has helped me to be able to leverage what I’m good at and be able to read and understand people to my advantage and to the other person’s advantage, too.
From my mother, I gained patience. I am somebody who works very quickly, but at the same time, I don’t expect people to be working as quickly as I am for the most part. I am a patient person and I gained that from her. She is a very compassionate woman. You have to be if you’re in the PR business. You have a lot of clients who can oftentimes be very difficult and you have to show empathy for them. That’s something that I certainly learned from her. It’s not something that my father has all that much of, but we love him anyways. I learned very particular things from them. Furthermore, from both of them, from a franchising and entrepreneurship standpoint, I learned a lot about that and wanting to be my own person and not necessarily wanting to work for a big corporate entity.
That’s something that I learned from both because they have had this entrepreneurial spirit that has been instilled in me. I look for that in myself and the person that I want to be with. I’ve always been attracted to friends and to women in my life who share that love of working and loving the idea of building something with their own two hands or with their minds.
What a beautiful juxtaposition there. It’s such a unique combination of influence. I can most certainly see both of those things in you. Being great with people, being incredibly patient, and exercising a lot of empathy, I definitely commend you for both of those things. For those that don’t necessarily know Brad and Sherri Fishman, your parents are most certainly franchise icons and deserve that reputation. They work so hard and bring so much value to the franchise space and to franchisors like myself. What was it like to be raised and to have franchise icons as your parents?
There are pros and cons to it certainly. From a pro perspective, it allowed me to have access to people at a very young age. A lot of my mentors have been people who have started multimillion-dollar companies that have helped to shape who I am, how I interact with people, and how I think about business. I like to say that despite the fact that my parents sent me to a wonderful school in George Washington, all that I have learned and most of what has made me who I am is from the connections that I had at a very young age. I was consistently interested in speaking to adults. I was always a very inquisitive person, which would shape my podcast career in the future, which was good.
The con of it is if you don’t treat it the right way, it is hard to escape from that shadow. This is a conversation that I have with my little brother, Jake, whom you know quite well all the time. Being able to try and find a way to mold your own path in the franchise space is important. There are many examples of second-generation families that are going into taking over the business someday or trying to blaze their own path.
I’m no different. I try my best to strike off on my own and try to go to work for other companies before I came into the family business later. That helped to shape me to become who I am and be an asset to them. Instead of relying on them, we rely on each other, which is a big thing. We both wanted to be able to instill. I try to carry that on in Jake as well. I think he’s doing an awesome job in doing that too. It is hard at times, but at the same time, I’m more grateful for it.
Most certainly blazing your own past. How have Brad and Sherri helped you level up as a franchise leader?
When I got into this space, I was in the marketing realm. I then went into franchise development in terms of the supplier side, and now I’m straddling both. The way that I see it from a franchise leader perspective, they got me interested in all aspects of franchising and not narrowed in on one thing. I try my best to be very well-rounded, and that’s something that they instilled in me very early on.
Rather, it’s understanding the broker space and understanding which technologies people should be potentially working with or what’s going to be best for them. We’ll get into how I tie that all in later. All into private equity and M&A, getting into the franchise space in a big way in the past few years has shaped who I’ve become.
That’s all thanks to what my parents are interested in and what they enjoy about franchising. Being a jack of all trades is honestly the biggest asset that I can have. It’s to be that way, and my parents both are that way too. I like to say that when you’re working with us at Fishman, you get our team. When you’re working at Franchise Elevator, you get our team.
When you have us, you get that extra layer of the Fishmans and the people who are not doing your PR, but whose name is on the door in your corner and are able to help and make introductions for you. It’s intangible that we have that others don’t. That’s why people come to us for anything. It’s why we touch conferences in the broker world, private equity, suppliers, which one to work with, and everything. That’s something that they instilled in me very early on to help me level up as a person. I needed that to be able to take who I am to greater heights.
I think more of what you’re saying is people’s skills. Leading through and connecting with people, whether it’s listening, patience, empathy, or understanding non-verbal cues. As you mentioned, private equity, technology, suppliers, conferences, whatever it may be, people are people. So much of how you have leveled up as a leader in franchising is by being a great communicator. That most certainly makes sense. Where are some areas that you feel like you’ve had to improve as you’ve made this new transition to a Growth Officer with Fishman PR, I’m sure you’ve had to level up in areas. What has that process been like? How have you leveled up to step into that role?
When I first got started here at Fishman/Franchise Elevator, I had some very key goals that I was going to start with because they had never had a business development-focused person. It was very similar to a franchise. My father was the founder that was doing a lot of the sales. He transitioned into hiring somebody different as they matured as a brand, and that’s where I came in.
I had to level up into being a little bit more ingrained in everything aside from sales. I was very siloed into that. It was partially the pandemic that changed that for us because I had to dip my toes into things that I wasn’t so comfortable with or that I didn’t know how to do. Thankfully, I like to think I’m a quick study and we figured it out, but also, being responsible for having that C-Suite to my name was a big deal for me. I don’t and I never have taken it lightly.
My father is not exactly the biggest on titles. It doesn’t necessarily matter. Your responsibility is your responsibility, but everybody else, being at a PR firm, the outside appearance is a lot as well. For me, I needed to be sure that I was being the role model that I should be to our staff. Believe it or not, I am middle-aged for our staff at 29 years old which is crazy. It is the way that it is in the PR marketing world.
At the end of the day, I had to take on some responsibility for getting into operations, hiring, and B2B marketing in ways that I never really had. That comes with the territory of being in the C-Suites. That’s the big thing that I had to change. I couldn’t just be a sales guy, I had to be a coach a little bit, too. I’m all the better about it, and I think that it has been great. It’s been almost eight months now in 2023 that I’ve been in the role, but for me, it has been a major difference.
First of all, you said Brad is not big into titles, and the C-Suite title is a big title, but it goes back to the team and being a good coach. I love that you said that it’s paramount what you’re accountable to for your team and being successful in that C-Suite role. What was your position prior to the Chief Growth Officer role?
It was a title that nobody still, to this day, knows the meaning of. It was a Director of Innovation. It was purposely vague because it was uncharted territory for us. We never had anybody that filled our role before. Those who have met my father know that he is somebody who is very hands-on. It was going to be a bit of a change for him to transition into more of an advisor role with sales and taking on more of the CEO duties that he had, and not having to play or coach quite as much. We quickly found out that sales were going to be paramount. Especially during the pandemic, we were going to need to probably turn on the sales engine a bit. To be able to make up and make sure that people are keeping their jobs. That’s what it turned into over the course of time.
What an important responsibility. Helping grow the business, taking that broad title, and clearly becoming focused on one avenue. You’re doing an incredible job. What an exciting advancement in your career, Zack. I always enjoy our time together. Working with your family has been a joy. You’re doing a tremendous job. Keep it up. I want to transition a little bit here and talk about some tips. Clearly, you and your family are incredible at PR. What are some tips that you would help our audience level up around when they are implementing PR?
There are three things that I want to mention. What I’ll start with is, rather you are a brand that is in-home services, B2B services, or you’re the next great food brand. Being able to have some type of consistency when a brand first opens up in that new market for the first time is important. That has varying degrees at Fishman with more retail-based models and at Franchise Elevator as well. It is more common for us to have a streamlined program. I also encourage people that are even in the home commercial service where there isn’t a retail component to it to have something consistent. When somebody signs on for the first time to be a franchisee, you as a franchisor have something to be able to tell them that is in your systems that they will have. That’s been important.
Being able to have consistency in your brand in the new market is very important.
I’ve seen a lot of things as it relates to non-retail brands where it’s very charity-focused and everything in between. That’s been a helpful thing for a lot of our clients, I know you’re included, that have benefited from having that consistency. Having some type of budget set aside for a grand opening program of some sort is important to be able to provide consistency because that’s what franchising’s all about. Secondarily, from a consumer perspective, being able to highlight a lot of the ways that you’re giving back to the community and being able to intertwine that with being able to sell franchises simultaneously is a big deal. A lot of people believe that consumer PR and franchise development PR need to be very separate. One is fun and one is not.
Highlight many ways that you can give back to the community through franchising.
We believe at Fishman that they are intertwined into one thing. You have the ability to be that brand that is fun, but at the same time, can self-franchise simultaneously. It also does a great job at giving back to the community and it’s a business that is trying to help people align. Being able to tie that into some charitable component and why somebody would want to be a part of a brand like that is key when it comes to being able to find brand loyalty and become that thought leader in your particular industry.
Lastly, I’ll finish with, because our DNA is franchise PR, and that’s how we got started. The big thing for us is being able to find some type of way as it relates to franchise development to tackle some type of trend and not necessarily be afraid to speak about the things that may be a bit uncomfortable. A lot of people have been seeing things about inflation, supply chain issues, and employment issues.
Find some way through your franchise development to tackle some type of trend.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being able to comment on what you’re trying to do to rectify those situations, taking something that may be construed as bad, and being able to talk about that. At the end of the day, I believe that type of news is also going to be important. Franchisees not only want to see why you’re the best brand in the upscale home painting industry. They also want to know how you’re going to handle the problems that are going to come as their franchisees and in their lifecycle with you.
Being able to have them see that play out in the media is a big deal. Every brand, no matter what industry you’re in, should be prepared to answer those questions, and it’s okay to do that. What we like to call it is Newsjacking in the PR space. That’s something that we do across a lot of our clients. It’s being able to bring it to you and say, “Would you like to comment on the difficulties of being able to find staff? What are you guys doing to rectify that situation?”
Me knowing that you have a good answer to that question is only going to make you guys look better because you have thought of everything that is plaguing the economy and you have a good answer for it. Those are the three things that I would say dividing between local PR, consumer PR, and franchise development.
What a great combination of tips there to help when implementing PR. It’s pretty broad, but very impactful advice. That last one, I wasn’t necessarily expecting, but it makes so much sense. You definitely need to be tactful and need to have advisors to help you with that. Give back piece, when it comes to business, there’s such a culture around the opposite. Not giving back and not being a purpose-driven organization, granted it is becoming more of a norm. Traditionally, there’s been more so the opposite. Seeing that evolution play out has most certainly been interesting.
Frankly, you mentioned being an organization that, “We are a social franchise. We’re values-driven. We very much focus on giving back.” That’s a lot of my personal values, but from a business standpoint, I think businesses are doing a better job of educating students on the importance of doing that. I’m an advocate of it. You, being a thought leader in PR, I love that that’s core to some of your tips around leveling up. If you’re not doing that, I would highly advise you to consider some ways that your organization can build that into your culture. Shifting gears here a little bit. If I’m a franchise owner and I want to generate leads. What are some tips for implementing PR from a franchise owner’s standpoint? How can I generate leads from PR?
The name of the game, especially when it comes to anything, from home service to fitness is being able to do something along the lines of getting people through your door booking job. That’s what it’s all about. There are varying different vernaculars for that, but they all mean the same thing. You’re trying to book some type of pre-sale or job for something. PR does a great job of doing that, but it is a very nuanced answer. It’s divided into two places. The first thing is, from a national perspective as a brand, it is beneficial for a franchise owner to be able to put some type of money towards the franchisor, also known as the ad funds. A lot of that is being used for national advertising or national PR efforts.
At the end of the day, that whole ad fund is going toward making your brand the preeminent brand in X, Y, Z space, and so being that thought leader is a big deal. Through PR, that’s typically the simplest way to achieve that. You’re doing that through going to well and good or going to good housekeeping. Being able to talk about what to do to prepare your house for the winter months and how that’s going to associate with your home service brand or your commercial service brand, and you switch that out for an office. There are all sorts of things you can do there.
That’s a big deal for a franchise owner to be able to have that in their back pocket. It’s not as direct, but when people go online and they look up your brand, those are the types of things that they’re going to see no matter where they’re looking it up from. More nuanced and more direct to the franchise owner is what we like to call our regional consumer approach. That’s going to be that exact same idea, but instead of having the CEO of your entire brand be that thought leader or be that person, it’s you.
Being able to position you as a franchise owner to be able to speak on that topic and how you’re doing and manifesting the ideals of your brand locally is a big deal. That can be done through charity. It can be done through expertise. You can do that through telling a particular story from a human interest perspective. Maybe that franchisee has a great story about why they decided to buy the brand, or they’re handing the brand off to their daughter or son for the first time after running it for 30 years.
There are all sorts of ideas and how they can play a role. All of those things generate leads because our goal as a PR firm is to try and provide as much emotional connection to your prospective buyer as possible, whether it’s a franchisee or it’s somebody that’s trying to purchase your services on a consumer level. That’s the easiest way to do it. Take the pen out of your hand and put it in somebody else’s that doesn’t need to write or show anything about you but is doing it because they believe it’s important.
Do you see any of those standing out consistently as an effective strategy for a franchise owner to generate leads?
Yeah, and I think that it definitely is a little bit more indirect rather than direct, but it’s one of the things that people will see first and foremost when they’re looking up something about your brand. They’re going to see that story somewhere. That’s going to make it more likely that they will have that brand loyalty with you and that they will trust you. Here at Fishman, we prioritize this quite heavily, and at Franchise Elevator, too, for that matter, which is two metrics. The chair of voice, how often are you being talked about versus your other competitors is a big piece. It’s a PR’s version of competitive analysis. As a franchise owner, you want to be as high up in that number as you possibly can.
Thought leadership is going to help whether it’s on a national level or it’s helping you more directly on a local level. More accurately, consumer sentiment is what consumers and franchise owners care about. It’s about your trust factor. Do people trust you to eat your food, to take your fitness class, or to book you for that new home remodeling job? Those are the types of things that are important, and that’s where leads come in. The more people that trust you, the more likely it’s going to be that people will use your business and that you will find more leads through it. PR is the number one way to be able to build that trust with the general.
I’ve seen a quote by Bill Gates. Someone had asked him, “If you were down to your last dollars, what would you spend it on?” He said, “PR.” You communicated that so well on a practical level. The consumer sentiment and trust, you can’t achieve that without PR. Getting yourself out there from a franchise owner standpoint, I don’t know of very many.
I’m thinking about my space in home services. When I search competitors, I’m not seeing results in this context, more so see general search results. You can differentiate yourself as a franchise owner by leveraging a lot of what you’re already doing, but giving it a voice. I’m sure our viewers leveled up from those tips. I want to shift a little bit here and transition into the Franchise Supplier Network, which you co-own. How does that organization help franchisors like myself level up?
It’s a new thing that you’ll be learning a little bit more about at Springboard. It’s something that has been the brainchild of all four of our partners. Lane Fisher, Brad Fishman, myself, and then Ryan Hicks, who’s our managing partner and who has taken on day-to-day operations. We made our first hire. Franchise Supplier Network for us is being able to provide a place for franchisors to go to and know all the questions that they have answers to avoid all the research that they typically have to do.
When it comes to suppliers, knowing the differences, and the pros and cons between all of them, we’re going to have people who will be able to opt-in as members of Franchise Supplier Network. It’s a pretty small fee for them to be able to do that. The goal is to be able to stay as unbiased as we can. Because of that small fee, we want to be able to only have the people who are serious, get the rights, and speak to many of our friends who are going to be inbounding with us to learn more.
We have the ability to get on the phone and do consultative calls with franchisors to be able to talk them through the different options that they may have, whether it’s for a new CRM system, finding that net social media management platform, or being able to understand what POS they may want to go into. I would say that’s the major fine point of it. Lastly, we are going to be running quite a bit of content at Franchise Supplier Network. We are starting a new podcast that is going to be specifically focused towards suppliers in the space. Just like MODRN BUSINESS, except it will be suppliers instead of franchisors. This is for purposes of suppliers being able to use that content to send to franchisors that will live on our website for their particular listing.
We will also be writing blog posts and bylines. We’ll be having a newsletter all in the name of being able to educate franchisors, help them understand, and get past all of that supplier jargon that they always have to try and get through. A lot of people, especially in marketing, use a lot of the same words that don’t mean a lot. Our goal is to be able to translate for you and to allow you guys to be able to take advantage of all the great supplier partners that we have in franchising. Yet, at the same time, not having to do the research for it.
Does anything like that currently exist?
There’s not. It is quite an undertaking. It has taken two years for us to get into focus in the right way that we want to get it into focus. Now that we finally have that all done, the website will be launched. For folks who want to learn a little bit more about it, it’s www.FranchiseSupplierNetwork.com. Everything will be live. For us, it’s an opportunity to be able to give back to the franchise community. Similar to a lot of the other things that we do with Springboard, UnConference, and YoungConference. Our goal is to be able to help franchisors to get through all the muddiness that franchising may have occasionally and not make it so hard.
Personally, I can relate to being a franchisor, and launching into the franchise space started by joining the IFA back in 2016. I took a very slow approach. I received my CFE, Certified Franchise Executive, designation. I did exactly what you’re talking about. The due diligence of meeting the suppliers and understanding who’s who, what to do, and what not to do. It took me two years to do that and to travel to all of those conferences to receive those credits and meet those individuals.
I highly recommend doing that in addition to this, but this didn’t exist for me. I could imagine how much more clear the world of franchising would have been with something like Franchise Supplier Network. When I asked, “Does something like this exist?” I’m like, “I missed it.” This is truly an innovative organization. I can see by your previous title, Director of Innovation, innovations here and it’s all coming together. I look forward to learning more about it. I’m sure I’ll participate in it and learn a lot. It sounds like this was something that’s been coming together for a while now. Did that come about during COVID?
No, it didn’t. It’s been something that my father has unofficially been doing for many years. He sits on many boards and franchising of many companies that you use every day. Over the course of time, it has evolved into something much different. Where he wanted to be able to have some of his younger colleagues or his son, whichever he decides to call me on that given day, to be able to carry that torch on to do a lot of the dirty work. That’s what I have been doing but in a greater way than what Ryan has been doing to be able to make it a reality. We’re excited to launch it. Springboard is going to be starting officially and that’s when we’ll be announcing it to the world. We’re very excited.
I’m looking forward to learning more and participating. Once again, I want to transition here. Clearly, you’re doing a lot of things and you’ve done a lot of things throughout your career. Another very important project that you’ve been a part of and run is the YoungConference. What have you learned in your experiences through the YoungConference?
There are so many young CEOs that have been able to get back to the franchise community helping and learning from each other. It was an idea that we weren’t entirely sure would have a lot of hiccups. We knew that there were a lot of CEOs that were under 45, but we didn’t know how many there were until we did that research and started to meet those people. I think we knew a lot, but it has given us access to so many more people than we would’ve imagined. It is our franchise version of YPO. It has made a big difference for us to be able to provide that type of service for people that are young in the franchise space. There is that missing link of Gen X where there aren’t a lot of CEOs that are in that particular demographic.
When you jump down a little bit from the Baby Boomers, there are all these Millennials that decided that they wanted to start their own brand. People like yourself and myself, Nick, want to be able to network, know each other, join arms, and walk through this industry for another 35 years. What we’re trying to instill is that camaraderie between all of those people.
That’s what YoungConference has done for us. We’ve had the opportunity to have two in-person and one virtually. As luck would have it, I was on the phone trying to figure out where we’re going to do YoungConference which is looking like it will be in May of ‘23. It will stay there in May every year. We’re very excited about what the future holds for that. It’s something that Ryan and I ideated at an UnConference that you were at. That made it a pretty big thing for us to be able to carry that forward into future generations. We’re considered old, and maybe the Gen Zs are doing something like this, too.
It’s been a great platform for me personally to lock arms with other CEOs. We’re all going through the same thing, questions, and space in franchising. It gives such a simple and unique platform to share information. I enjoyed the one I went to in Fort Lauderdale. Are you guys thinking about doing it in Fort Lauderdale again, or not sure on the location?
It might be in Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, or Nashville. We’re down to about those three options. That’s what it’s looking like.
Either one would be fantastic. Zack, why do you love franchising so much?
Obviously, it’s family to me. When I explain this to people who are not in the space, they’re a bit confused as to why I would be texting somebody from franchising on the weekend. Why they may be staying at my house. Why I would take time out of my day to talk to somebody on a Sunday afternoon about football, but also they’re my client at the same time? They don’t understand that franchising doesn’t turn off at 5:00 PM on Friday. I love that aspect of it because it doesn’t feel like work when they’re people that you like hanging out with. To me, it never does.
From a business perspective, I love franchising because there is no other example of anything on Earth that spans so many different industries. I believe that franchising is a business model and that’s what carries it together. At the same time, it is an industry in itself, too. I just love the comradery that comes with franchising and the many different aspects of it. It allows me to be fluent in so many different areas of business and be able to connect with so many different people.
The entire point of franchising is for it to be for everybody to enjoy all over the world. That’s our goal. I can connect with anybody that I meet because of franchising. They may not even know that they interact with three franchises a week or maybe more. I think that’s the best part. I am sure I am just like everybody else that’s reading this that is a franchise person. When you’re driving down the street with a bunch of friends who aren’t in the space, you can say, “That’s a franchise. That’s my client.” Do people get annoyed a little bit? Yeah. Do they learn something? Yeah. That’s what I love about franchising. It’s something that has been instilled in me from a very early age as we discussed. I hope someday I’m lucky enough to have children of my own that I’m able to do the same.
The franchise family is definitely alive, very much a thing, and you communicated it so well. If you learned anything, I’m sure you learned plenty. Zack, thank you for being on the show. I appreciate it.
Happy to help. Thank you for having me and I’m happy to be a guest for once. I’m looking forward to seeing you.
If anyone would like to get in touch with you, how would they go about doing that?
My email, I have many, but the easiest one to reach me at is ZFish@FishmanPR.com. I’m happy to give out my cell phone, too. It’s (847) 373-8873. For those who do want to send me a quick text or give me a call if they need anything, I’m always happy to be able to answer any questions that I can answer for you.
You heard it right from Zack. Give him a call. Give him a text. Shoot him an email. Clearly, this was a tremendous show. I hope that you leveled up. Give this episode a like if you’d like to learn more from thought leaders in franchising business and high-performance personal development. More importantly, go down into the comments and contribute to this conversation. We covered so many tremendous things that go into implementing PR successfully and even more, doing business. Business is such a people business, and it all comes down to people. Zack demonstrated his heart for people and service in the space that he’s in. Please drop a comment. As always, level up.
Since joining Fishman PR in 2019, Zack has been the face of Fishman PR’s business development efforts by leading the sales process, speaking at industry conferences and co-hosting his podcast, Modrn Business. Additionally, Zack is key contact for vendor relationships in both the franchise and public relations industries.