How to choose the right franchise for you

Because the business is a widget. It’s important, but what matters more is you: what you want your life to look like, what you want more of and what you want less of, and what fulfills you. People focus on the business, get into it, and find out it isn’t what they expected. That homework comes first.

I’ll talk with people whose background looks perfect, and I’ll wonder what’s missing. When we dig a little deeper, the answer is usually that they’ve been very successful, but they’re not quite where they want to be.

We all want to keep growing. When we stop growing, we go the other way, and none of us want to go the other way. It’s also where every conversation with me starts.

Buying a franchise means buying into a process, and some processes are more specific than others. Some companies want an operator who follows the process closely. Others are more consultative and give you room to move. Neither is better. The right one is the one that fits how you work and where you’re most fulfilled.

Look at the company’s own background too. Some talk about having an entrepreneurial culture, which is great if you want to take things a little further. But you need to understand your own parameters first.

While I’m asking you to evaluate yourself, I’m evaluating you as well, so together we can build a personal model of what fits.

It can be, if you let it. But most franchise companies aren’t looking for the person in the truck. They’re looking for business people who can run a business and build a fleet of trucks, something repeatable. If you leave one job and buy another one, don’t expect to end up anywhere different.

Being sick of working for somebody else isn’t a reason to own a business. There has to be something you’re running toward. I talked about that on Sound BITES too.

Yes, with a general manager running the day to day, and many people I work with do. But you still need your arms around the business and an understanding of the key performance indicators it runs on. If you think you won’t be involved at all, it’s probably not the right fit for you.

Be careful when you hear “semi-absentee” or “semi-passive.” Whether you’re the owner-operator or you own it with a manager in place, there will be challenges along the way, and you need to understand what it takes to be successful. Either way can work.

I never want anyone to think they can make an investment and simply wait, without putting something in or understanding what’s happening.

Don’t try to read it all in one sitting. Start with how the company was founded, who the founder is, and whether it has failures, litigation or transfers of ownership. A few of those can have good explanations. Too many is a red flag, and if something’s there, I want the company to explain it.

Think of it as the company’s prospectus. Item 7 tells you what it takes to invest in the business. Item 19, where a company includes it, covers financial performance, and most of the companies I work with include it. That’s where the real numbers come from, along with owners already running the business, which is why I won’t put numbers on a website.

The franchise agreement is in there too, so you see it up front. It can read as strong, even one-sided, but you want a company that can protect the brand. If a neighboring franchisee isn’t living up to it, you want the company able to tell them to get in line.

Because every company follows the same format, you can set very different businesses side by side, a mental health business and a painting business, say, and benchmark how each one fits you.