Craig Slavin is a fraud, liar and manipulator. This fast talking, name dropping, high-priced franchise 'consultant' is nothing more than an underachiever with an inflated ego. It seems it is impossible for him to deliver on even the simplest of agreements.
We hired the Franchise Architects after 3 or 4 conversations with Slavin by phone. Mistake. We would have saved 1000's of dollars, great inconvenience and lost opportunity if we had been more thorough in our due diligence. It was only later when our legal team reviewed his track record and phoned 5-6 franchise companies on the Franchise Architects client list we discovered his consistently hostile interaction, poor execution and lack of deliverables.
Slavin told us he had a large team of experts he could deploy to execute on our plans - naming them by name. He claimed he had marketing professionals, technical writers, franchise development specialists, financial experts, PhD's and MBA's etc., all on staff. Lies.
Slavin is a one-man operation. There is no team, there are no experts. After working with him a few weeks one could readily see why. His interpersonal skills and ability to collaborate where painfully lacking. Not a day would go by, in-house or telephonically where Slavin was not in an arguement with one of our executives.
Time and time again Slavin promised to deliver and failed to do so. He was incapable of executing on the agreements. What he was good at was extracting fees by threatening to withholding deliverables. He is a classic salesman, overpromising and woefully disappointing in delivering. I'm embarrassed to say we spent more than $50K on nothing; my higher-ups are now cautious of all outside consultants after this experience.
We would caution anyone considering hiring Slavin, Franchise Architects or Franchise Navigator to call companies he claims as clients. We discovered out of 6 companies we alled 1 was in litigation/dispute with him, 2 claimed they were not clients, 1 told us to not use the Franchise Navigator as the reports were generic, unscientific and inconclusive, 1 said as new clients they were underwhelmed and that he delayed for months delivery of an analysis and 1 CEO called him by a name no gentleman would repeat, said 'run man, run then hung up the phone.
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