Franchisee resource center

These are difficult decisions. The solutions are not clear cut from a business or from a legal perspective. It is critical that a company in this position work with qualified counsel to identify an alternative that will have a reasonable basis for an exemption and still make sense from a strategic perspective. The balance of this chapter will look at the many alternatives currently being tested by many U.S. and oversees companies. As you can see, the lines of demarcation are not always clear. The differences between many of these alternatives may in fact be in name only. Some of these concepts are truly innovative and have not been truly tested by the courts or the regulators. In these borderline cases, a regulatory “no-action” letter procedure is strongly recommended. Other concepts are not very innovative at all and merely borrow from long-recognized and analogous legal relationships such as chapter affiliation agreements in the non-profit arena or network affiliation agreements in radio and television broadcasting.

BIG MISTAKE!

Topics to be covered in this strategic audit should include at a minimum these ten (10) items:

Back in the day when I used to own a UPS Store franchise, I always looked forward to receiving the quarterly list of the Top 200 stores nationwide. I often wondered what these top franchisees were doing differently that helped them gain so much more business than the average UPS Store franchise. But for one reason or another, I never found the time or the opportunity to reach out to these successful owners.

Early in my career, I encountered a franchise buyer who had made a rash decision that turned sour quickly. The funny thing was that he was intelligent, experienced and had a great deal of corporate knowledge – all the attributes that franchisors desire for their many franchise opportunities. I was intrigued that this experienced and generally deliberate person would make such a bad decision. So what went wrong?

[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 most successful entrepreneurs, however, eventually come to recognize that achieving long-term success requires that they step back and put in place the right systems, processes, and people to expand their company beyond what any one individual -- no matter how motivated and sleep deprived -- could possibly manage on his or her own. Once a business owner sees what's possible when employees take on operational responsibilities that free management to actually manage instead of act like their own employee, he or she quickly understands the enormous power that scalability means for a business.

FranchiseHelp.com interviews Right At Home franchisee Diane Fortner. While working as a commercial insurance broker with a six-figure salary, Fortner felt the entrepreneurial itch, and soon discovered her calling after underwriting a policy for a successful Right at Home franchisee.

As far as the incentives go, there are three main categories that franchisors tend to work with when they're looking to increase access to their systems for minorities. The most popular method used, by far, is to offer discounts on initial franchise fees. The second most popular incentive offered to minorities by franchisors is financing assistance and other discounts to help pay off the sizable franchising fees that new franchisees incur. Finally, in rare instances, franchisors offer minority franchisees administrative and development support above and beyond what they provide to the non-minority franchisees in the system. Here is a list of franchises that have gone the extra mile to reach out to minorities looking to get involved in franchising.