A brand new business can be an excellent choice following a career change, or if you sincerely want to get into a type of work but maybe lack the qualifications or experience that would make you attractive to an employer. Or maybe you may be someone who has reached a point in their life where they don’t have the desire or the means to retire but has had enough of the grind of the day job or the stress of the rat race. Perhaps if your spouse is in a similar position to yourself you could set up in business in an field that suits you both rather than spending your days separated .
Beginning a new venture can be a daunting thing in it’s own right and , whilst someone who has spent a large part of their earlier career as a middle manager, say, or in a skill or profession that gives them company experience there may be a lack of specific, transferable skills. You might have spent most of your prior career in one field , or working for one company but for one reason or another you find that this has come to an end and now, rather than get out into the shrinking employment market, you’d like to give self employment an attempt .
Often that’s where franchising comes into its own. The Franchise For Sale area is large and expanding continuously and there are hundreds of Franchises in the UK alone . Everything seems to be represented here. From a mobile dog grooming franchise, if that’s your thing to a Home Based Franchise doing web development for local clients , there seems to be Franchises to suit everybody .
The franchise model in general requires that the franchisor do a period of due diligence finding out the Franchise For Sale’s way of doing business , and what the outgoing costs are , through to the sort of people the franchisor is trying to to get on board . This should be a two way process as, roughly speaking, it is not conducive to the franchisors interests to have a miserable franchisee on it’s books, or indeed a franchisee that is not able to stick to the business principles that the franchise uses.
It’s really important to decide from the beginning what you don’t want to do as well as what you want to do. You need to evaluate your own situation and make a decision on which is the best way forward and where you see yourself in the future. What may be an worthwhile opportunity for somebody else may be an absolute nightmare for you , regardless of whether the franchise is a good package or not. This is where you need to as yourself some of the following questions :-
1. Are you in this as a lifestyle type of business or are you mainly financially motivated. It may be that you will be happy with just following a profession that you have an interest in rather than be building up a large business.
2. Would you prefer a mobile franchise, premises based franchise or a Home Based Franchise. Obviously when premises are involved the costs and responsibilities go up but there a issues with home based and mobile working too.
3. How much cash have you really got and how much does your franchise in fact cost? It’s not just the initial fees that count. Continuing monthly fees , minimum spend commitments and the fact that there may be a real lag between starting off and seeing any return coming into the business can all eat away at your initial pot of cash.
4. Would you use this Franchises services. Can you see the viability ? Can you see yourself doing the actual day to day work that this franchise involves? You need to put yourself in the position of being a number of months or even years down the road as you will be making a substantial commitment in terms of time, money and effort.
One organisation is the BFA – The British Franchise Association. This association is dedicated to making sure that their members stick to their rules and regulations and behave in an ethical manner. Full BFA membership is a solid indicator that a franchise package has done its homework and has something of a track record for dealing ethically with its franchisees.
Another organisation out there is Matchpoint. They will do research on your behalf and for free to try and match you up against the ideal franchise of your choosing. These sort of third party businesses usually recoup their fees from the franchise organisations themselves as the Franchises spend buckets of of money on dealing in the enquiry stages with prospective franchisees and small business owners, issue a lot of promotional and marketing material , spend a deal of time on the telephone etc only to find that the franchisee is not suitable in some way for the franchise and does not go through to taking up the opportunity. Plainly both the franchisor and the franchisee have wasted their time and energy here which is why a breed of these franchise matching organisations have sprung up acting as middlemen to ensure a better fit.
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