Featuring the Best in Career Advice, Digital Marketing and Franchising

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in September 2018 and has been updated with new content that highlights the importance of proper business planning in 2021's economy.

What is a business plan? For people who are just starting out and forming their own company, whether it's a small freelance business at home or a new venture with an office and a starting pool of employees, there's a lot of importance to a business plan. It is a road map, an outline, a document that explains what your business is, what the goals of the enterprise are, and how exactly it will set about achieving those goals. So beyond being a document that identifies your business, what else does such a plan do for you?

Each month we share an interview with one of our WSI franchise owners as we discuss their WSI experiences. Here we speak to Gunnar Hood from Oklahoma City, where he lives with his wife of 35 years, one of his three grown children (who moved home during lockdown), and an adorable pooch.

As the President of WSI and having joined the company 22 years ago, Valerie Brown-Dufour knows a thing or two about digital marketing franchising, and she has seen how the demand for digital solutions has skyrocketed in recent years. And it's thanks to that expertise that Franchise Journal featured her on their latest issue, where she talks about the relevance of the WSI business model during COVID lockdowns and how continuous knowledge sharing among franchisees strengthens the WSI Network.

Each month we are profiling a WSI franchise owner from around the world. From Geneva, Switzerland, we would like to introduce Gabor Markus – Internet Consultant with WSI since 2017, father of three, and triathlete.

WSI is proud of Bob Rogers – one of our digital marketing franchisees who was featured in Franchise Journal’s November Veterans issue.

Andreas Mueller-Schubert has been a WSI Internet Marketing Consultant since 2014. He is based in Napa, California, where he runs WSI Next Gen Marketing, an award-winning agency that simplifies the complexity of the internet for businesses and unlocks their full potential by leveraging digital marketing and its many unrecognized opportunities. 

Heidi Schwende has been a WSI Internet Marketing Consultant since 2013, and is based in Toronto. She is a Google Global Premier Partner - in the top 1% worldwide. This indicates that her agency is among the most knowledgeable, experienced and accomplished in the world as far as performance and campaign successes are concerned. She has over 20 years’ worth of digital marketing experience, including work for several Fortune 500 companies. Read our interview with Heidi here:

Jukka Jumisko is a former corporate executive who is originally from Finland and now living in Albuquerque, New Mexico (which is part of USA). He has been with WSI since 2012 and says that being a part of the WSI franchise lets him bring the latest internet technologies to New Mexico. Read our interview with Jukka:

In our second interview with Consultant Andrew Foye, he shares some of the highlights of his WSI Digital Marketing Agency. 

Andrew Foye has been married for 18 years, is half-Irish and half-South African, and has two daughters. He has been with WSI for fifteen years and he says the biggest value he gets from being a WSI Internet Marketing Consultant is the thought-leadership he has access to via access to a network of top industry consultants. Read our interview with Andrew here: