Steven Wade is a family law advisor (McKenzie Friend) with nearly 20 years of experience helping people represent themselves in court. Having been through the system personally and supported thousands of others since, he knows what it’s like to face the stress, confusion, and pressure of doing it alone. This blog shares practical insights that empower you to take control of your case — without the legal jargon or the hefty solicitor’s bill.
Superstar Franchisees – their top 5 habits
Family Law Assistance
The only alternative to a solicitor.
5 Habits of Superstar Franchisees
- Introduction
- Superstar franchisees – A model for your own business
- I – Following the process
- II – Committing enough time to the franchise
- III – Showing up
- IV – Communication with your franchisor
- V – Continual learning
- Superstar Franchisees – a conclusion
Introduction
Being a franchisee takes a lot of the guesswork out of owning a business.
Go it alone and starting from scratch can be an exciting, frustrating, learning, disheartening experience. You’re almost certainly going to learn the hard way repeatedly while your business grows (or closes). Statistically speaking, 60% of all businesses in the UK fail after 3 years.
Because owning a business – especially at the start – often requires the owner to be a `jack of all trades’ until they get to a point where they can employ others or outsource experts to handle things for them. Until then? As well as working in the business you’re probably going to be the accountant, IT person, business advisor, HR manager, customer relations executive, brand developer and more.
Being a franchise is a great way of avoiding many of the above problems. Read on more to find out why this is and what a successful franchisee can do to thrive.
Superstar franchisees – A model for your own business
Compared with a business – a franchise has a much lower failure rate. According to the British Franchise Association it’s around 10%. If these figures can be believe it means you have 6 times the chance of owning the franchise you bought in 3 years than the business you plowed your time, money into effort with still existing.
It’s a sobering thought.
Of course – this is an average figure. Because franchises and businesses come in all shapes and sizes (as do the people who work in and own them). Depending on your personal situation, you may be in the minority and you’re destined for business success. If you’ve never owned your own business before the uncertainty can be crippling. If you go it alone you’re almost certainly on your own to succeed – or fail. There’s no backup, no cavalry and no safety net: You’re flying by the seat of your pants and there is no help.
A franchise is something differing: It’s a model for a business. A model you didn’t have to develop over the years that many businesses fail. It’s a model where – often – the franchisee has developed by trial and error, at great expense in terms of time, money and effort. They’ve almost certainly learned the hard way how to and not do things.
It means you’ve got a set of people available to you who will be able to help you shortcut many of the problems anyone else who has set their own business is probably facing that.
But despite this…it doesn’t always work out like that.
Throwing away the operating manual
One of the big things you’re paying for when you buy a franchise is finding out how to operate it. Think of your franchise as a expensive piece of machinery: You are going to want to learn how to use it before turning it on because if you don’t…you could wreck it (and invalidate your warantee).
A business can be an extremely complicated thing and the reason things are done the way they are done is for a good reason – it’s to ensure things are working as best as they can be. It’s to save you time, money and effort and to give you the best possible chance of success. And the franchisor has a vested interested too – they want to be able to point to you as a shining success, to be able to use your amazing business as an advert for even more franchisees and higher sales for everyone.
The great thing here is that a good franchisor will go out of their way to make sure you’re doing well. To do that – here are 5 habits you are going to want to adopt if you want to be a superstar franchisee!
I – Follow the process
Your training will teach you how to operate your business. There should also be an operating manual or documents to remind you. Not only that, your franchisor should be in communication with you to ensure everything is going smoothly and on hand to answer any questions you have during the day to day running of your business.
If you’re not clear about something – ask!
The process will have been developed over years in most cases. It’s been `road tested’ in real life situations, with your franchisor learning what works and what doesn’t.
This information can be priceless!
II – Committing enough time to the franchise
Running and growing a business takes time. If it’s not high enough on your priority list, you’re increasing the chances of it failing. There’s no way around this.
Your franchisor will have developed a model that saves you time, hopefully automating steps and dealing with aspects of the business that eat up your time for little return. That’s just good busienss practice.
But your time is required too. A business needs a minimal amount of input from you. If you’re unable to commit sufficient time to doing this, a franchise is probably not for you.
III – Showing up
If you drop off the face of the Earth for periods…you’re damaging your prospects. Your business needs time (as mentioned above) but it requires you to be consistent and to work steadily. diligently and consistently to ensure your clients (and prospective clients) aren’t going to be worrying that at the time they need you most you’ve gone AWOL and are completely uncontactable for irregular and extended periods with little or no notice.
Similarly, you need to stay in touch with your franchisor and often your fellow franchisees too. This can be for meetings, for training sessions and other meetings (either virtual or face to face) to enhance your knowledge and your connections throughout your franchise.
That’s not to say you need to be on duty 24/7. It’s more a case that you need to make sure people can rely on you!
IV – Communication with your franchisor
There are absentee franchisors out there but the good ones want to be in communication with you. They want you to let them know how you’re doing, what you need help with and to further build the brand.
Communication comes in many forms. It could be team meetings, emails, phone calls, etc. but it could be the occasional post (or comment) in team chat groups or something similar.
Chances are your franchisor will have a general sense of how you’re doing and able to spot things about your franchise even if you have gone radio silent and a quick chat can often clear things up very quickly.
Back to the top
V – Continual learning
A business isn’t a static object. It’s evolving, learning and growing. As the franchise you’re part of grows, you’ll want to grow with it to take advantage of developments.
Those developments could be industry news, new regulations or laws, changes in systems in structure, processes or systems in your franchise that have been developed to enhance how you work. Your franchisor should be keeping your abreast of these changes in a variety of ways and is often more than happy to provide as much training as you need (and ask for!)
Superstar Franchisees – a conclusion
It’s not rocket science. It requires time, effort and money but a good franchise will give you everything. Owning one will maximise you chances of success and a huge component of improving those chances are determined by what you do (or don’t do).
The franchise system is built in such a way that everyone involved is incentivised to work together. to benefit from working together and to learn from each other.
Good luck!
This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
Still need some help? Here’s what to do next…
About the author…
[trustindex no-registration=google]