Franchise Success Formulas

After years of living out of a suitcase, Aicha got promoted to Regional Director of Operations, where she oversaw operations of 9 countries and built a leadership summit that became the blueprint for AFA's MANAGE program.

In this episode of the Franchise Success Formulas Podcast, Aicha Bascaro, CEO & Founder of the American Franchise Academy, shares the story of her final international assignment: from training workshops in Medellín, Colombia, to six months running operations in Rio de Janeiro, where she experienced total language immersion and aggressive multi-unit growth, and learned the lesson every franchise leader needs about why a business can't run without a District Manager.

Nicaragua was supposed to be the scariest country on the list. It became one of the best experiences of an entire career in franchising.

In this episode of the Franchise Success Formulas Podcast, Aicha shares a true story from the road: a franchisee with zero financial statements, an office with way more overhead than three stores could support, and the real lessons every franchise leader needs about fear, financials, and scaling the right way.

In this episode, Aicha Bascaro shares the wild story of opening Domino's Pizza's first store in the Dominican Republic, training dozens of scooter delivery drivers, running the dough production overnight, and dealing with a container of cheese that arrived refrigerated instead of frozen just weeks before the grand opening.

In this episode of the Franchise Success Formulas Podcast, Aicha Bascaro shares the story of how she became a "nomad" for Domino's Pizza International in 1992, traveling the world as a training specialist to help master franchisees launch and stabilize new markets.

The episode covers her first assignment: helping open the very first Domino's Pizza in Spain during the 1992 Seville World Expo, where she led a brand-new team through a high-volume, high-pressure launch. From there, the story moves to her next assignment in a remote, snowed-in Michigan/Canada border town, where the challenge shifted from explosive growth to simply breaking even through a slow winter season.

Follow our CEO & Founder through three very different stores she ran during her Unit Manager phase: a low-volume location, a store with a serious retention problem, and one of Dallas's highest-volume stores. 

After her first business failed at 22, our founder Aicha Bascaro took a job as a Domino's Pizza delivery driver just to pay the bills. Little did she know that this job would end up teaching her more about business, franchising, systems, and leadership than business school ever did.

In this episode, we go back to where it all started: the front lines of a corporate Domino's store, where processes, training pyramids, and P&L statements laid the foundation for everything American Franchise Academy teaches today.

Aicha shares the story of her first business, a boutique she bought right out of college with no experience, no mentor, and no idea what she was getting into.

In this podcast, she walks through why it failed, how painful it was to close it, and the lessons that now shape how she coaches franchisees at the American Franchise Academy.

The foundation has been built. The programs work. The graduates are proof. Now it's time to make sure the people who need this find it.

In this episode, I'm sharing the vision for AFA's next decade — going louder so more franchisees discover what's possible, wider so we reach franchisors and industry partners at scale, and multilingual so that language is never a barrier to building a better business. I also have a personal ask for you in this episode — because I cannot do this alone.

Learn more about Franchisor Partnerships here

We’re celebrating a massive milestone: 10 years of the American Franchise Academy! We wanted to take a moment to introduce you to the heart of our mission: the amazing team working behind the scenes every day. Meet the people who help us empower franchisee leaders and hear why we’re so passionate about what we do!