See, there are 3 things that can make a franchise a really bad fit for an entrepreneur:
Cost – When you join a franchise, there is usually a very significant franchise fee and an ongoing royalty that you’ll be paying for a minimum of 5 years…either a monthly flat fee or a percentage of your revenue. In addition to that, you’ll be either paying to build out your new location to fit the franchises specifications or you’ll have to pay to adapt your existing location to fit their specs.
All in all, the costs will range anywhere from $30,000 to well over $100,000 (and much more if you’re just opening your business) to be part of a franchise organization.
Commitment – Along with the cost, being part of a franchise requires you to commit to joining their organization for a minimum of 5 years, adhering to their philosophy, style of training, branding and more for a relatively extended period of time.
Autonomy – For me, this was the reason I moved away from franchising as my own preferred business model. I became an entrepreneur because I wanted to call my own shots. I wanted to be able to take ideas, strategies and tactics from various sources and blend them together to develop my own business rather than borrow someone else’s entirely…and I wanted to spend the majority of my time coaching others who felt the same.
Franchising (justifiably) requires you to follow the franchisor’s system. To essentially clone their business model. It’s great for some…but it wasn’t for me.
Now that approach may be perfect for you…or an area-exclusive licensing program that employs a similar, but somewhat scaled back approach might be right instead.
But Fred & I wanted to present you with an alternative that provided much of the upside those models have to offer with virtually none of the downside.