Choosing the right franchise for me

“To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.”

—Novelist Anatole France

Business ownership is a noble calling, full of opportunities and risks, delivering both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. As such business ownership is for the special few.

Going into business is not for the week, in fact, it takes guts. We are talking about leaving your ‘safe’ job and taking charge of your own destiny. Wow!

To this equation you add franchising as a form of business ownership and you add both simplicity and complexity to the decision and the ensuing relationship. Simplicity because you immediately derive the benefits of a system, a brand as well as the benefits of training, support, purchasing power, on going research and development—saving you huge amounts of resources. Complexity because the relationship between a franchisor and a franchisee requires balance and maturity to appreciate the inter-dependency between them.

Franchise Mind™ has developed a framework to help examine if you are suited and ready for business ownership.

The five areas include:

1. Clarity of reasons
2. Desire vs. Calling
3. Success mindset
4. Franchise mindset
5. Support network

Reasons for going into business

Before taking the major step of going into business, it is important to be crystal clear about why you choose business as a career choice. There are no right or wrong reasons. The “Why” is personal to you. However, it is important that you have clarity of the reasons and that you they are written. Your reasons must be strong enough to motivate you to take action—away from your career path to a new path of business ownership.

Desire vs. calling

Many people have the desire to go into business but less than 5% actually take the step and go into business.

Sometimes the desire is spawned by a ‘bad day at work’ or some other frustration. Once this agitation passes, most people revert back to their existing career choice of being employed by someone. The primary reason people don’t go into business is a four letter word: F.E.A.R. False Evidence Appearing Real. This is when they believe things that are not real because of the fear of what will happen when they do go into business.

Once your head is filled with FEAR, you begin to doubt yourself, you question your abilities, you magnify risks and you rationalize your actions. As a result, you continue operating in the same manner as you always did, justifying to yourself that your current situation will somehow have a miraculous change. Really? Keep on dreaming.

On the other hand, when you cannot think of anything else and are obsessed with going into your own business, we term this a “Calling”. This is when you will be driven internally to take steps necessary to accomplish your goal of being in business. You will not rest until you achieve that objective.

Success mindset

Once you decide to go into business, you have chosen a path where you are placing faith in your talent, skills and hard work, to create a successful enterprise. A burning desire must emerge inside you to succeed. Mr. Napoleon Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich has written extensively on this subject. He puts forth several important points to having a Success mindset, some of them include having:  a clear mental picture of the goal; personal initiative to take action towards your goal; a positive mental attitude; faith; persistence; self-discipline; and a focus on budgeting your time and money efficiently and effectively.

Franchise mindset

When you join a franchise you are participating in someone else’s vision of how to deliver the product or service to the market place. Your experience and desire to re-invent the system is somewhat irrelevant. Instead in order to achieve success in a franchise, understand, believe and be prepared to follow the plan laid out for you. Appreciate the power of resources available to you by being part of a franchise system and take advantage of those resources to create your success.

It is important to understand that as a franchisee you are not ‘buying’ a franchise. You are acquiring the rights to operate a franchise. These rights include operating a business system that ensures the delivery of a consistent product, service and experience for the customer in a particular territory.

The better the franchisee is at implementing the prescribed system, the greater the chance of the franchisee achieving the intended results for the franchise unit.

Support network

When you go into business, you have to be prepared for long hours, hard work and the ups and downs that are normal to any business. It is at that time you need to have your support network in place. You may have others that you consider as your support network, however, as a minimum make sure that your spouse, your children, your parents and your friends are supportive of your decision to go into business. This support does not necessarily consist of financial support. Many times it is emotional support from people whom you love that they have faith in you and believe in you and what you are doing. Do not under estimate the power of this support network—you will need it.

Franchise Mind Corporation Is a US based franchisor support services organization that employs a holistic approach to educate, strategize, guide and mentor their clients. The end result is to produce global standards of franchise excellence, exceptional operating results and phenomenal growth.

Until next time, keep your MIND focused on business ownership.(franchise)