Franchise Hurdles
Opening a franchise can be a great opportunity from a number of perspectives. It can be a great investment, it can be a crucial life change, and it can be fun! But, opening a franchise is also a pretty significant investment for most people. You don’t want to go through all of the time and effort to find a franchise, put down the necessary money, and then realize that the franchise wasn’t right for you. Here’s a few things you should watch out for while hunting for your franchise and some tips on how to avoid them.
Don’t Spend Beyond Your Means
It seems obvious but it’s something you need to be aware of. Make sure you have a good idea of how much you are able to spend on your franchise and how much you can expect the franchise to make. This doesn’t mean that you are limited by the financial resources you have one hand because there are many great options out there for financing a franchise, but it does mean you should be very diligent when considering these options. As we’ve talked about in the past you should always analyze a franchises’ Franchise Disclosure Documents carefully before investing in a franchise. These can give you good insight into how much you can reasonably expect your franchise to make in a given year and can give you an idea about what various fees are associated with operating the franchise. If you figure out how you can safely finance your franchise and have a reasonable idea about how much your franchise can make then you should be in pretty good shape from the financial side of things, but that’s not the only potential consideration when opening a franchise.
Don’t Blindly Dive In
The first point I made ties into this, but you need to make sure you’ve done your research before you go ahead and sign a franchising agreement. And that doesn’t just mean from a financial perspective. There are so many other aspects in running a franchise that you need to understand before you get started. Most of this information can be found in the Franchise Disclosure Documents. Some of the most important things you should take a look at would be any legal issues the franchisor might have and the churn rate of franchises. Both of those could potentially be pretty significant red flags that might make you want to reconsider whether or not you want to open that franchise.
Don’t Do Something You Don’t Love
This is a big mistake that a lot of people make with their careers, whether it’s for an a college grad going into entry level job or for people looking to open their own business. If you’re going to make an investment into a franchise you should be passionate about what you’ll be doing. Running your own business can be a lot of work and can be stressful at times. But if you are passionate about it then it can be incredibly rewarding.
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How Much Do You Have to Spend?
Whether you’re purchasing a whopper from Burger King or joining the Burger King franchise system, the old mantra holds true: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. When you first get started running a franchise you need to pay a fee to allow you to enter into that franchise. These fees are the largest fees that you will normally pay a franchisor and typically range between $5,000 and $1,000,000 depending on the franchise. The franchisor charges this fee as a way to recoup the costs of expanding the franchise and to continue to grow. From a franchisee perspective, this is a major outlay and can take a long time to make back, but is a necessary step. Aspiring business owners must understand how much capital is available to them so they can ascertain how much they can afford. The cash you have at your disposal is known as liquidity, and there are numerous ways to increase your liquidity above the balance in your bank account. As a result, many people don’t realize how much capital they actually can use for investments, like launching a franchise branch. We’ll run through some of those methods below.
Female NASCAR Driver Learns Life Lessons and Transitions to Succesful Franchisee
[Matt Wilson, FranchiseHelp]: Hello everybody. This is Matt Wilson coming from FranchiseHelp.com. I am here with Deborah Renshaw-Parker,former NASCAR driver and Apricot Lane Boutique franchisee. Deborah is coming to us from Bowling Green, Kentucky, where she owns an Apricot Lane franchise. We want to pick her brain a little bit. Thanks for coming on the show.
The Future Of Franchising
Franchises have found a way to be completely immersed into the future. With zero human contact or interaction, franchise brands have taken technology in the franchising industry to a new level.
