Franchise Management For Dummies. Mazero Joyce

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СКАЧАТЬ and the most popular brand name, the franchisee is often the key ingredient to making the business successful.

      For emerging franchisors, how they design and develop their franchise system is essential to their ability to grow and support their franchise system successfully. Unfortunately, there is no legal baseline on who can become a franchisor, and how you structure your franchise system is up to you – and no one else.

      Have we discouraged you? Scared you? Confused you? Don’t worry. The rest of this book is designed to help you in many ways. Franchising, when done right and entered into with eyes open, can be a profitable, highly enjoyable way to spend your future.

Chapter 2

      Franchises Come in Different Sizes

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      ❯❯ Understanding the different kinds of franchised businesses

      ❯❯ Exploring franchising arrangements

      There are a wide variety of franchise opportunities and levels of investment available today. The choice of products and services offered by franchised businesses is limited only by the imagination and skills of the men and women who create them.

      More than 120 distinct lines of business use franchising, including hotels, home healthcare, agriculture, car rentals, payroll services, hair care, lawn care, mosquito control, mold detection, restaurants, fitness centers, and everything in between. Because of franchising, national and local brands have leaped into our national consciousness and improved our quality of life.

      As you begin to explore franchising, you need to cast a wide net because a number of industries and companies will likely surprise and interest you and the breadth of what is available is wide and deep. Although running a restaurant may be one of the most popular choices available (close to 20 percent of all franchised businesses fall into the restaurant category), restaurants are not the only – or necessarily the best – way to go. You are just getting started. Take your time and explore, and we promise you will not be disappointed by the variety of the opportunities you will find.

      Don’t dive into the pool too quickly because the selection of possible franchise opportunities can be overwhelming. Wade in slowly, get your feet wet, and choose carefully because becoming a franchisee can be life-changing. This chapter simply introduces you to what is available.

Getting Started with a Single Franchise

      Many people naturally begin their exploration of franchising by first looking at the restaurant and food-related franchises because they seem to be on every corner. Without a doubt, food franchises have made many franchisees happy and wealthy (they were probably already wise, so franchising cannot take credit for that). But don’t be too surprised when we tell you that many non-restaurant opportunities not only do better financially than some of the better-known restaurant concepts, but they also may offer a more stable investment and might even be easier to operate.

       Where to start: It’s two in the morning and you can’t sleep

      We have all been there. The career we trained for in school and the job we thought was the one we would have until we retired are under challenge because of the economy and/or technology. Maybe your company is moving out of state, or you’re simply bored and it’s just time to change direction. Beginning to work for yourself and achieve what some call, the Great American Dream of independent business ownership might be something to consider.

      Going it alone and opening your own business from scratch are very good options. Many people do, and it can be highly successful. If you are a true entrepreneur, it may be your best choice. But if going it “alone” includes being part of a branded system, franchising is a path to consider.

      A good place to begin exploring franchising is on the Internet, and the good news is that at 2 a.m., it’s open. At this stage of your investigation all you want to do is begin to narrow your search to industries and companies that are attractive to you.

      Every franchise opportunity has a website touting why it’s the perfect investment opportunity. Each will have multiple competitors including many you have never have heard of. You are also going to find industries using franchising today that you didn’t know even existed. To begin to understand the breadth of the opportunities, you need a guide. Thankfully, there are numerous compendiums of franchise opportunities, and the best ones are online.

      We admit that we are partial to the online Franchise Opportunities Guide published by the International Franchise Association (IFA) at www.franchise.org/franchise-opportunities. It may seem disloyal if we were not, since both of your authors have held leadership positions in the IFA for quite some time. But there are also other outstanding web portals you should consider, including the following three:

      ❯❯ Franchising.com published by Franchise Update Media (www.franchising.com)

      ❯❯ Franchise Times (www.franchise.org/franchise-opportunities)

      ❯❯ Entrepreneur magazine (www.entrepreneur.com/franchise500)

      Both Franchise Update Media and Franchise Times are franchising giants that are read and relied upon by the professionals in franchising. As with the IFA, each publication also contains resources including articles written by professionals, educational tools, conference information, and contact information for professionals in franchising. Entrepreneur includes a ranking of the franchise opportunities they list.

      

We may take some heat for saying this, but based on our experience we recommend that you never choose a franchise system to invest in because of any third-party ranking. Chapter 4 explains why.

       Sifting through the options

      As we mentioned, over 120 industries use franchising, but to make your review a bit easier, here are the broad lines of business categories:

      ❯❯ Automotive

      ❯❯ Business services

      ❯❯ Commercial and residential services

      ❯❯ Lodging

      ❯❯ Personal services

      ❯❯ Quick service restaurants

      ❯❯ Real estate

      ❯❯ Retail food

      ❯❯ Retail products and services

      ❯❯ Table/full-service restaurants

      As you begin your exploration you will find within each line of business a long list of franchise opportunities in a variety of industries. Unfortunately, there is no universally adopted classification system in franchising, and each source guide will use different industry and business classifications. That can make things confusing, because you may think that companies within a given category are similar, but that’s not always true.

      For example, take something as simple as pizza. Some pizza franchisors provide a system in which pizza is delivered to customers’ houses, whereas others don’t provide home delivery. Some may only have eat-in СКАЧАТЬ