Here is the guide to promoting yourself through franchising your business. As an owner-operator entrepreneur, it’s a long road that sometimes seems like it’s unclear whether you're really making any progress at all. Moments that come to mind are when you pay that big tax bill, a key employee leaves or a customer turns on you and just makes you feel terrible. These things happen in business and just about every day, certainly every week will turn something up that you didn’t expect and many times will disappoint you.
When you first start your business, it’s the honeymoon phase and everything is exciting and thrilling, these little bumps in the road are perfectly fine and ok because there’s so much opportunity on the horizon and energy behind you. It’s what happens 5, 10 and 20 years into the business that really makes being an owner-operator a true test of willpower. The other day, we were conducting a franchise your business consultation with a bright, ambitious and charming female business owner who used the phrase the first time I had heard it and it stuck.
She said, I’ve been working hard now for over ten years in my business, I just turned 40 this year and I decided, it’s time to promote myself through franchising. She was an exceptionally strong communicator and someone who was instantly likeable, it was clear why she was successful in building her company, but the words hit home.
There is a point, no matter how much you love your business and love what you do that you need to promote yourself to the next rung on the ladder. Henry Ford realized this over one hundred years ago as he moved his factory workers from one job on the assembly line to another to avoid too much redundant behaviour, the same is true for a business owner.
After enough years, you have done everything there is to do in the operations of the business. You’ve tried marketing tactics, invested in people, built a nice office space or invested in new operating technology and CRM solutions. You’ve hit the glass ceiling in your position as manager and now is the time to elevate.
Franchising isn’t the only way to promote yourself, but it certainly is one of the ways you can do this as a business owner. When you franchise your business, you essentially transition from operator and manager to strategic director. Your time instantly becomes more valued as your words, wisdom and knowledge are sold for $35,000 franchise fees and entirely new businesses are born with each new franchise owner you support in opening a location of your brand.
Not that it isn’t incredibly important, but if you are spending your time and energy helping the next customer order a $9.99 sandwich, it’s easy to see how simple the flip is when you begin to spend your energy on franchising your business.
In my helping business owners franchise their business, I’ve seen in most cases a complete 180 as a tired, worn-out business owner who is many times on the brink of wanting out entirely from their business gets a complete sense of renewed energy and ambition from franchising. Franchising sparks innovation, the joy of seeing the brand grow and the excitement of a new endeavour make the growth model particularly thrilling.
One entrepreneur in particular that we helped franchise in 2010 was in a services industry segment and essentially working the business himself with maybe 3 or 4 employees. Every day and night were long hours and lots of extremely engaged, tiring days. My first conversation with him was to talk about either selling the company or franchising the business, which may seem ironic but is not an unusual conversation we have on a franchise your business consultation.
Fortunately, he chose to franchise his business and over the next five years, we opened fifty new franchise operations.
One of those franchises was his own company location which he sold as an operating franchise even. His daily routine slowed, his hours worked dropped to about half what they were and his sense for strategic initiatives grew sharp as he had more time to determine the direction of the business. He said to me after the first five years, franchising helped me love my business again.
So, even if you have just about had enough of it, I guess the point is, maybe have a look at franchising your model, it could be a way to capitalize on your time and years of investment into your business with a different perspective that could make all the difference.
For more information on how to franchise your business, contact us. Also, check out our digital marketing services.
FMS is a team of expert franchise consulting professionals based in Canada that provides solutions for franchise development, franchise consultation, and expansion of businesses globally.