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Back in the latter decades of the 1900s, one of America’s leading serial entrepreneurs was a Massachusetts businessman named George Naddaff. He is most widely known as a successful multiple franchise owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, for the expansion of the fledgling Boston Chicken into a national chain, and for the founding of Living & Learning Centers, which he sold to KinderCare.

But it was a lesser-known enterprise, VR Business Brokers, that perhaps suited him the most. Naddaff was a deal-maker and a grower of businesses, and VR fit his personality to a T. Built up in the 1970s and early 1980s, his concept was to take the mom-and-pop industry, known as business brokerage, where a middleman would help sellers market and sell their businesses to prospective buyers and create a unified national network.

Naddaff’s role in the company, besides founding chairman and CEO, was to recruit franchisees who would open VR business brokerage offices across the company—something he was very good at (he ultimately sold his 300-office/3,000-broker network to a British investment house). Every Friday morning, a group of potential franchisees would assemble in a large conference room at VR headquarters. Once seated, there would suddenly appear from a side entrance toward the front of the room a dapper 50-something-year-old man, who wouldn’t just walk in . . . he would run in, brimming with enthusiasm, and advance to the podium.

As Naddaff addressed ...