Here's a weird thought: You can walk into a McDonald's in Tokyo, Toronto, or Tulsa, and get basically the exact same Big Mac. Same taste, same wrapper, same slightly-too-cold-but-somehow-still-soggy fries. That's not an accident. That's franchising, baby. The franchise model is basically business cloning. One company figures out a winning formula, then sells the right to copy that formula to other people who want to run their own business without starting from scratch. It's l