Hi I’m Brad Sugars, Chairman and CEO at ActionCOACH. The team asked me to make a quick video because a lot of people don’t understand franchising, and I recommend franchising highly. When I recommend franchising, people ask me why do you recommend franchising. Well, if it’s your first business, 100% I would recommend franchising. In fact your first 1, 2 or 3 businesses, I would recommend franchising.
The reason I recommend franchising…well there’s actually 7 main reasons I would recommend franchising. It’s an interesting one, but entrepreneurial success is not something that comes over night, entrepreneurial success takes time. The reason other people don’t succeed as entrepreneurs is they try and do everything all by themselves the first time around.
Be Your Own Boss
Reason number 1 I believe that you should join a franchise if you want to be successful in business. especially if it’s your first business is to be your own boss. Whilst you’re out there on your own, you’re not actually on your own. Being part of a franchise, you’re in charge of your own business, it’s your business…but you’re part of a grater team. That ability to be your own boss while still having support and still having other people around you is a very important aspect of why franchising works.
The reasons most of us go into business for ourselves is so that we can be in charge of our own lives, and so that we can take our own freedom and build something that’s for us. The challenge of doing it on your own is rarely super successful, it’s a very ask…especially when you consider what you’ve got to learn.
If we break it right down, reason number 1 I recommend franchising for your entrepreneurial success, is that you’re in business FOR yourself, but you’re not BY yourself. You’ve actually got a team of people, and yes being your own boss is wonderful aspect behind success is any sort of thing. Really, the people that go into business for themselves, have to be congratulated. It’s seen a very risky proposition. I think it’s more risky to have a job and only one income check, whereas if you’re a business owner you’ve got multiple income streams coming your way.
I’ve teaching people to be entrepreneurs, I’ve been doing it for many years. In fact my book Billionaire In Training has taught literally tens of thousands of people how to get into business for yourself.
My ActionCOACH team around the world are ALWAYS supporting business owners.
Training & Support
The second reason I support franchising, and where I think franchising is a very important aspect of success. You get a level of support and training you wouldn’t get otherwise. If you go into business for yourself, often times it’s a very lonely road. I’ve often said that being a business owner is the loneliest job in the world, because who can you talk to?
The greatest thing about a franchise, is you get a support network, you get a team of people. You get training and support. The training of how to run the business, how to do the business, how to build the product, sell the product. All of that needs to be taken into consideration.
What would it cost you to NOT have that training is probably the biggest question you can ask yourself. How many businesses fail because they didn’t get that training, they didn’t get the ongoing support. Support can be in customer service, it could be in sales or marketing, it could be in product purchasing. I’m on the board of a franchise call Urban Clean.
In that one there, the level of support we give our franchisees in sales marketing and getting customers is so massive. Another business of mine that’s in franchising…Luv 4 Marketing. Phenomenal business, but the level of training, and updated information is so important. That level of support and training is very important for any franchise organization. It’s very important to understand that when you go into a franchise, when you want to be a success entrepreneurially you’ve got to look at what is the support level, what is the training level that’s it’s going to be about.
In ActionCOACH, one of my first ever franchises. Now ActionCOACH is in 64 countries around the world, just opening in Japan. I sit down and I look at it, we do 10 days upfront training with our new franchisees, on top of 90 days of off site training where they have to do online learning and all those things. So remember, the training is a very important aspect of how you succeed as a franchisee in any business.
Systems
The 3rd reason I support and I suggest franchising is systems. It takes a lot of work and a lot of years of work to develop systems in a business. Be it soft systems like scripts for sales, or be it hard systems like ‘here’s how you make this’ or ‘here’s how you sell it’.
The systems that are already there in a franchise, they blow away what it would cost you in time, energy, effort, and money to do it on your own. Can you imagine how many years it would take to develop it all yourself? How much trial and error there would be, and how many mistakes you make along the way. That’s one of the big reasons I suggest franchising.
One of our franchises is Profit Plus, which is a bookkeeping and financial analysis business. When I sit down and I look at the systems, just the technology systems and the literal hundreds of thousands of dollars that have gone into developing those. You can’t do that on your own. You have to be part of a franchise, so that it’s economically viable to have those systems developed, and be a part of how to run the business.
Learning
The 4th reason I love franchising is there’s a lot less learning to do…learning to be a business owner…now let me define the difference. Business is a commercial profitable enterprise that works without you ultimately, that’s what you’re aiming to achieve. When you go into business for yourself, you’ve gotta have knowledge on everything; from sales, to marketing, to finance, to legal, leasing, operations, purchasing, you name it, recruiting, training, leadership, management…
All of these things are part of what you have to do to be success as a business owner. If you go into a franchise, the level of learning is far less. They’ve already learned and developed the systems, they’ve already learned what products sell, what products don’t sell, services, pricing structures, marketing structures, sales systems. All of these things have already been learned for you.
You’ve really gotta learn how to run that segment of the business. You have to learn how to be a good leader, and a self starter. If you already know those things, that’s understandable. Most people have to learn all these aspects from it, and do it. When you step into a franchise, you’ve gotta learn the basics of being successful in business, but you don’t have to learn the nitty-gritty of what price should I charge for this, or how should i structure that. Those things have already been learned, and you don’t have to put in that time, energy and effort.
When I look at a business and I see successful business every day and I see challenged businesses every day, and every now and then I see businesses that are failing. I sit down and look at what are the similarities? It’s not the lack of hard work that is a challenge, most business owners are extraordinarily happy to do the work. They’re willing to put in the time, energy, effort, and hours. The challenge is that they just didn’t have the knowledge.
If you have a problem with sales in your business, it’s because you don’t know enough about people, management, leadership, delegation, recruiting, hiring, induction training. All of this stuff you have to learn to be in business for yourself. When you go into franchise, the learning is reduced dramatically. That is one of the biggest things that I say to people. Understand that the amount of learning is gonna challenge you when going into business for yourself. Make sure you understand that.
Lower Cost
The 5th reason I would highly suggest franchising, and it’s a very fundamental reason…is that it costs a lot less to start a business in a franchise, than it does to start a business on your own. If you go to try and start a business on your own, even simple things like Graphic Design. The amount of money you’ve gotta to spend on graphic design, whereas when you buy a franchise all of the graphic design is done for you. From simple signage and advertisements, packaging and products. All of that stuff is already done. If you add up what you’d have to spend on just Graphic Design alone…forget all the marketing and the website and all that sort of stuff, just graphic design alone. In a lot of cases they’ve spent at least as much as the franchise fee on graphic design.
Think about the fact that if you go into a franchise, it is actually going to cost you a lot less. The other reason it’s going to cost you a lot less is time. A lot of people don’t think that time is valuable, and when you go into business for yourself, the biggest challenge is how much time it takes for you to develop a very strong brand, for you to develop a strong system, for you to develop products and services. Most businesses it takes a year to 2 years just to develop what is it we’re actually going to sell, and what pricing structure are we going to have. What is the market going to buy, and what are they willing to pay for it? That’s a lot of learning to be done.
When you sit down and look at the cost of the time of the developing, it costs you years and many many months of profit. Whilst the time isn’t really a cost, it IS a cost! Life is very short. Life is only 4,000 weeks, and that’s if you take care of yourself from a health perspective…if you don’t it’s about 3,000 weeks. Wasting a year or two on a business because you thought, well I’ll do it myself it’ll cost less…is actually not true. It costs you a lot more to do it on your own, not just because you have to pay for everything, but also because of the time factor that’s going out there into the market.
The Team
Reason 6 I think this is one of the most important reasons I suggest franchising. The team of people you’re going to join. When you join a franchise, you join a group of people that are in business with you. Not necessarily your partners, but they’re in business with you. One of my clients has a pool business, they do all the pool cleaning and all that. It’s a franchise. When you join their group you got a whole bunch of other people that you get along with that you can learn from and learn with. They’re willing to help you and coach you into building your business.
I know at ActionCOACH, our business coaching franchise, with more than 1,000 people in the organization, there’s always someone willing to help you. It’s almost impossible to put a price on getting involved with a team like that. The value of it, I guess again it’s almost impossible to put a value on it isn’t it?
What’s the value of having a team of people that are either online, or on the phone or in your neighborhood that are willing to help you grow your business? That’s part of being in the franchise, is a team of other business owners who are just like you. They own a franchise just like you. They’ve had to learn it, they’ve had to do it. Some of them have been around, 5,10, 20 years in the franchise and they’re willing to teach you. So for entrepreneurial success, is franchising something I would recommend? Absolutely! Why? Well reason 6 is that there’s a team of people, of phenomenal team of existing franchisees in that organization that are willing to assist you, help you, and help you grow the business.
Build Your Own Asset
Reason 7 I would highly suggest franchising, this is the 7th of all my reasons. I guess I learned this one very early on in business. The aim of a business isn’t just to build income. The aim is to build a business that is an asset, or a business that is wealth for you. That’s really one of the big things I see in franchising. You can often build a saleable asset. You build something that is valuable to others. Not all franchises are structured that way, some are very low cost entries, and what you’re looking to do is build yourself a job.
I know even within our portfolio of franchise companies. Within ActionCOACH, we have one of the franchises there where it’s a very low entry cost, and therefore people aren’t willing to build a big large business, but then at the other end when people want to build a business that works without you they can invest at that level. There’s many different styles. I know in our Urban Clean business, that one there very clearly has a model where you can build it work without you, Profit Plus does, even the master license or master franchise models. Make sure you examine those and get to know some more about it.
One of our companies FranDepot, if you go to FranDepot.com you can find out about franchising and learn all about it. Even my book on franchising, Successful Franchising, McGraw Hill publishes that you can find it on Amazon. Any of my books that are published, you can find on Amazon as well.
The building of wealth…when you start a business first thing you should really do is to set a date by which you think you’ll finish the business. By what date will I have this business working so that I don’t have to work.
I haven’t run ActionCOACH for 14 years now, my CEO’s run the company. I build a business that works so I don’t have to. That’s what ActionCOACH does, it teaches and educates and coaches business owners to do exactly that. To build business that work so you don’t have to.
The point of that is, you’re building an asset, you’re not just building an income stream, you’re building an asset. Build a business that works so that you don’t have to, and that’s really what you’re aiming to achieve.
So overall franchising, I definitely recommend it especially if it’s your first 1, 2, or 3 business, and especially if later on you think you’re going to franchise a business, get in get involved, learn about it, and understand how franchising works. Evaluate the franchise. I know with ActionCOACH we just hit the hall of fame of 10 years in a row for the top 50 for franchisee satisfaction in the FBR, the Franchise Business Review. I sit down and I look at that, and you’ve gotta evaluate where a franchise is at to make sure of that.
Here’s the top 7 reasons:
Number 1 you’ll be your own boss, but you’re in business with yourself, but not by yourself.
2nd the support and training, make sure you understand how much support and training a franchise gives.
3rd, the systems they bring to the table. Systems make it so much easier and cheaper for you.
4th, there’s a lot less learning. When you’re in a franchise there’s a lot less learning to do. They’ve done a lot of the mistakes for you, you don’t have to make those mistakes for yourself.
5th lower cost.
6th, the team. You’re gonna join a group of franchisees. Not JUST the corporate team, but the actual other franchisees in the organization who’re going to be willing to help you, assist you to grow your business.
7th, you get to build something that’s yours. You get to build an asset. You get to build some wealth for yourself. That to me is one of the main reasons we go into business for ourselves. Not just to build an income, but to build an asset for ourselves.