Joe Mathews became a Partner at Cybeck Capital Partners in November of 2020. He has been in franchising since 1985 after accepting his first position right out of college, recruiting franchisees for a 20-year old regional sandwich chain with just under 400 restaurants. That chain was Subway. While it had taken Subway 20 years to open 400 restaurants, they opened 3,000 restaurants over the next few years.

Joe had four key takeaways from his early experience with Subway, which FPG still incorporates in its business model today.

First, he learned how to use franchising to create tremendous brand acceleration and market dominance.

Second, he saw that franchisees really didn’t want a business, they wanted to achieve life and career objectives. Mathews said, “What greater job is there for a marketer to have than to market people’s goals and aspirations back to them, and to know you have a product which can deliver it.” Mathews knew at age 21, this was what he was meant to do.

Third, he saw franchising was a business unto itself. He believed the moment a company elected to franchise, they took on a secondary business model called “franchising.” He was one of the first leaders in franchising to describe it as its own business with its own set of rules.

Lastly, he saw that regardless of the size of the investment or type of industry, franchise candidates make investment decisions along the same critical path and timeline. Mathews meticulously documented these steps and incorporated them into a franchisee recruitment system.

In 2002, Joe founded Franchise Performance Group to study and document franchising’s “Winning Formula.” He has since written four books on franchising: Amazon.com best-seller Street Smart Franchising, The Franchise Sales Tipping Point, Developing Peak Performing Franchisees and How to Create a Franchise Sales Breakthrough. Guaranteed. Joe has also written or was featured in about 70 articles on franchising which appeared in such publications as USA Today, Fortune, Businessweek, Working Woman, Wall Street Journal, Southwest Airlines Magazine, Entrepreneur, Franchise World, Franchise Times, Franchise Update and other publications.

In addition to publishing, Joe wrote and taught two ICFE classes and wrote the ICFE study guide section on franchise sales and lead generation.

Cybeck Team

Joseph M. O’Hara

Co-Founder, Partner and Chief Financial Officer

Joseph W. Davis

Partner and Director of Financial Services

Timothy M. O’Neil

Partner and Director of Professional Development

Ashley J. Breidenbach

Director of Research & Portfolio Consultant