Tom’s Franchise Information Blog

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As organisations start to shed their 45 - 50 year olds - as they do on an alarmingly regular basis, the justification being that they can probably hire two 25 year olds for the same price as one 50 year old - we find a whole segment of the working population looking for other opportunities. After all a 45 - 50 year old still has an amazing amount to offer and at least 20-25 years before they plan to retire.

An obvious move - rather than starting to slide DOWN the very ladder they have just spent years climbing - is to look at the possibility of buying a franchise. After all - they will be their own boss - no-one will be able to make them redundant ever again, their kids have probably grown up now so the financial strain on them isn’t as high as it was. And so buying a franchise seems like a marriage made in heaven.

HOWEVER

I realised after franchising my team building business several years ago - that the people who wanted to buy one of my franchises had never owned a business before. They were used to that wonderful regular amount of money appearing in their bank account every month. Most of the 11 people I sold franchises to over a three year period were in senior management positions. I chose them for that reason. But what I hadn’t factored in, was that they had become used to their company car, health benefits, a secretary and all the other golden handcuffs a corporate gives to their best employees. And mostly of course, they were responsible for one discipline in the corporate. HR or marketing or sales.

Now they had bought a business with NO income, NO client base, NO secretary and now suddenly they had to be responsible for every aspect of their own business.

And one by one I watched them give up. Which was heartbreaking. Even though at the interview stage I had said:

* It may be a year before you earn any income - are you OK with that? And they had all said they were.

* Because you don’t have a client base yet, you will have to get out into the communicty and network for all you are worth. Will that be a problem for you? And they said it wouldn’t.

* Getting started with your own business will also require you to do a lot of cold calling - have you had previous experience of having to do that? Not a problem they said.

And so I learned a valuable lesson over those three years. Firstly, in the franchising world there is an expression - the dirty dozen - apparently as a franchisor, you will need to recruit and lose at least 12 franchisees before you are really clear what you are looking for in your perfect franchisee. Secondly that when looking for potential franchisees be very clear that a lot of people think they are buying a job, and finally, I learned that potential franchisees don’t know what THEY don’t know either - so when I asked questions like - are you OK with the fact that you may not earn a single cent during your first year - of course they said yes - because they had never experienced what it feels like to have no income for a year.

And so I wrote a letter to my franchisees - which is now a book called My Dear Franchisees - where I outline all the frustrations we would all experience as we built this business together. The letter served to remind them what they had said at interview, and what I had explained as my role and my own experience of building the team building business in the first place. My encouragement to each of them was that every time they felt down, or overwhelmed, to re-read the letter. Because being a franchisee isn’t easy, but neither is being a franchisor. It is that - together - we could make the business work. After all, wasn’t it a team building franchise they had just purchased!!

In the end though, I realised that being a franchisor didn’t make me leap out of bed in the morning. I was down to my last three franchisees when my mother became very sick 12,000 miles away and so I had one of those life changing events - when I was flying home after burying my darling mum - I decided that I just didn’t have the energy to look for my next dirty dozen. And the universe conspired to free me anyway - when I got home one franchisee called and said that he had been offered an amazing opportunity to work in-house for one of the clients he had secured - and I urged him to go for it. Another of my remaining three was new to the country and just didn’t have the networks - he is now in a senior position with a bank - and we have a coffee on a regular basis. And my third and final franchisee, and also my best sales person, is now licensed to use my products. A much better arrangement all round.

So if you are a franchisor reading this article - don’t fall for the warm-body-hot-cheque lure. Take your time to be very clear what your franchise is and what it isn’t, what your role is and what it isn’t, what you can do for your franchisees, what you probably can’t. But most importanlty, realise that building a franchise is like any business, it takes time and patience.

Good luck.

Ann Andrews CSP is a team facilitator, ex Franchisor and the author of four books - Shift Your But, Finding the Square Root of a Banana, Did I Really Employ You? and My Dear Franchisees.

She is also a contributor to - You don’t Make a Big Leap Without a Gulp, The Power of More Than One and Mum’s the Word.

Ann is a professional speaker, consultant on human resource issues, and MD of The Corporate Tool-box - http://www.thecorporatetoolbox.com

Ann can be contacted at ann@thecororatetoolbox.com

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