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Jimmy John's in Leesburg, Virginia[/caption] Shortly after they were married 32 years ago, Janet and Glenn Berry wanted to open a deli but Glenn landed a good corporate job and they put their plans on hold. But their dreams of owning their own business never faded and almost two years ago they started to look at franchising. Their search led them to Jimmy John’s, one of the fastest growing franchises in the country. Today they are the happy and successful owners of a thriving Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches shop on Catoctin Circle in Leesburg, Virginia and have done so well in their first year of operation that they are already in the early stages of opening a new unit in nearby Ashburn. What they lacked in quick serve restaurant experience, the Berry’s compensated for with an unrestrained and confident drive to succeed. Janet says that she “knew that if we worked hard we would be successful. I never had any doubt about our ability to succeed with the Jimmy John’s franchise.” And that’s an attitude entirely consistent with Jimmy John’s own formula for success. On the franchising section of their website, Jimmy John’s lists “11 Steps to Opening a JJ Franchise.”  Number 11 is to “Work harder than you ever have in your life.” Many franchisees are wooed with promises of great franchisor support only to find that the honeymoon ends not too long after the ink is dry on the franchise agreement. Not so with the Berry’s, who have lived in Leesburg for the past 14 years, and Jimmy John’s. Janet, who worked part-time as administrative assistant before becoming a franchisee, says that the franchisor support “has been very good. We see a business coach every six weeks who grades us and gives us all sorts of helpful advice.” The Berry’s training was also very good as well as fairly intense: both Janet and Glenn went through three weeks of on-site training at the corporate headquarters in Champaign, Illinois and Glenn, a former operations manager and experienced pilot, trained for an additional month at a corporate-owned unit in Cary, North Carolina. The Berry’s biggest challenge so far has been finding and retaining good staff. But that’s the only negative Janet could think of when I asked her to describe the ups and downs of her and her husband’s foray into franchising. Everything else has been positive including, almost immediately after they began operations in August 2011, their cash flow.