Graham Weihmiller's journey from Six Sigma black belt to acquiring Griswold Home Care during the Great Recession exemplifies resilience and strategic leadership. He shares his evolution through franchising, scaling Griswold from 100 to 250 locations, and later steering BNI—a global networking organization with 350,000+ members across 77 countries—through one of business history's most dramatic pivots during the COVID-19 pandemic. This episode unpacks the art of founder transitions, the undervalued potential of franchising in ETA, and why your family are your first customers.

Chapters

• Early Signs of Entrepreneurship and Financial Distress (2:38)
• First Venture and Discovering Search Funds (6:45)
• Acquiring Griswold Home Care During the GFC (10:04)
• Why Franchising Deserves More Attention (15:00)
• Founder Transitions: Lessons from Griswold (19:31)
• Getting the Right People on the Bus (23:59)
• Acquiring BNI: A Different Kind of Transition (31:45)
• The Three Bucket Framework (36:11)
• COVID-19: Pivoting a Global Network Overnight (40:14)
• Endurance Sports, Burnout, and Family First (48:00)

Some advice from Graham:

"Your job is not to fix the processes. Your job is to get the right people in the right seats. And they will fix the processes in a much better way than you'll ever be able to."

"I don't know if this organization is gonna survive this pivot that we're about to do, but I know it's the right thing to do. Nobody is gonna get hurt if I can help it. Nothing to me is worth somebody getting hurt or certainly worse."