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The Wild Ride Into Business Ownership…

THAT “Make vs Buy” Question I’m Never Prepared For…

I’ve had several clients hit that point where they say, “Why Should I Go With A Franchise vs Figuring It Out By Myself?”

Surprisingly, I’m never prepared for this question.  I should be expecting it – it is the equivalent of “make vs buy” decisions that you generally see in software development.  In fact…I once went through this EXACT same thought process in my history as an entrepreneur.  And I will happily share, privately, the outcome of that experiment!  (Perhaps not so surprisingly, I’ve seen similarly spectacular fails in software development too!).

Here, I will suffice it to say that it has made me a believer in franchising.

Can A Business Be Built On Your Own? Of Course! But Should You?

Back to the question.  Every time it comes up, I give examples of benefits off the top of my head and know that I’m probably missing a few.  We discuss, we move on.  Full transparency, I’m never quite sure if I’ve been “heard” during these particular discussions.

Talking about this topic with clients always weighs heavily on me and I end up sharing with a friend that I had another “Why” talk.

Every. Single. Time.  I regret that I’m not recording the responses from my colleagues.  Adding that to the to-do list!

Here are a few excerpts of the responses:

“Good Luck finding suppliers for the raw materials.  Or finding the materials for any where near a decent price.”

“Oh My Gosh – I easily spent 12-18 months and thousands of dollars making mistakes, figuring out what I needed to do and trial and error – all by myself.  In hindsight, a franchise would have given me someplace to go to ask questions and previous successes that I could have used to learn what I needed to do.”

“I didn’t know anything about running a business – especially this business.  So, I opened up the Operations Manual and started working.  I found that my skills were well suited to being a franchise owner and I ended up being a top franchisee multiple years.”

Explore The Value Of Partnering With A Franchise

It is a natural reaction to believe that you can do whatever a franchise business is doing.  Sure you can!  The founder of the franchise had to figure it out for themselves, didn’t they?

My friends expressed their dismay based on their hard earned experiences as entrepreneurs – both within and outside of the franchising space. 

Yes, there are thousands of successful non-franchise business owners, and conversely, there are thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs that don’t want to spend their time “figuring stuff out”; They want to spend their time, effort and MONEY ramping up the business.  A Franchise Business provides a support system, an instant “tribe” of other franchisees and a playbook for success.

Because I can never remember all of the benefits of working with a franchise (too many to mention? 😉 ) I have created a reference document – Benefits of Franchising.  It is not as fiery as some of my friends’ responses however it is a handy referral source when you are thinking about exploring franchise businesses to own or talking to a franchise/current franchisees during the evaluation phase.

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Photo by Stephen Hateley on Unsplash