Four Partners Purchase Dale Carnegie Franchise Units

One of the top nationally recognized programs available as training for most any sales force recently changed ownership. 

Jerry Wilson & Associates of Little Rock sold its Dale Carnegie Training franchise to four partners in a deal that closed on Jan. 3.

Three of the partners are former contractors who worked with Wilson’s franchise.

The new company, Howard Mohorn & Associates LLC, will do business as Dale Carnegie Training of the Midsouth and be based in Memphis. The franchise will have offices and trainers in four submarkets (Springdale, Little Rock, Memphis and Springfield, Mo.) all of which already existed under Jerry Wilson & Associates.

The new partners are Daren Howard and Les Risner of Memphis, and Seth Mohorn and Buddy Wray of Springdale.

Mohorn worked as the manager of the Springdale market for eight years and had been with JW&A for 10 years.  Howard has worked with JW&A since 1994 and managed the Memphis area for five years.

Wray retired in 2000 as Tyson Foods’ president and chief operating officer.

The group declined to share terms of the deal, but a typical franchise fee from Dale Carnegie Training is $35,000 per unit and as much as a 20 percent in royalty and marketing fees.

Mohorn said there are a total of 26 qualified instructors and 12 business consultants across the new company’s territory.

Dale Carnegie Training offers several short-run business seminars and courses for just about any industry, Mohorn said.  Course titles range from “Effective Communication” to “World Class Customer Service” to “Creating an Executive Image.”

Mohorn said the most popular publicly offered courses in Northwest Arkansas are Breakthrough Communications and “High-Impact Presentations.”

Dale Carnegie Training will also run private customized corporate seminars, depending on the needs of the customer.

“We have an instructional team that will write curriculum to meet the core business issues being faced,” Mohorn said.

Public tuitions range from $1,125 to $1,595 per person, depending on the number of individuals a company sends.

“On average we’re running four classes per week and the average class size is from 15 to 40 people,” Mohorn said.

Some courses, such as the “Sales Advantage,” run eight weeks long for one evening each week.

Mohorn said the quality of instruction is what sets Dale Carnegie apart from other business-related seminars, many of which are traveling businesses.

“You can go buy training anywhere but it takes an instructor to drive an impact in the classroom,” he said.

Mohorn said the corporate training entity left by Dale Carnegie (the man died in 1955) has continued to tap into the absolute truths found in business while continuing to modernize its training.

“We’ve proved we can adapt and change with the environment,” he said. 

“We work with people in aerospace, telecommunications, banking – there’s not an industry we can’t or don’t work with,” he said.