Successfully Operating a Franchise

The Human Equation
FranSynergy
June 23rd, 2007

PizzaGuy's idea of looking at Success, is in my opinion a good idea. Here are 10 Tips for Success.

Tips for Success

  1. Learn as much as you can about the business before you commit your time and resources to the business.
  2. Accept the fact that in business everything takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you think.
  3. Study successful competitors carefully.
  4. Don't go into business with the sole objective of making a lot of money. Chances are you won't. But if you put proper pricing, service, quality, and customer satisfaction first - the money will follow.
  5. Be willing to work harder and longer than you have ever worked before. Forget about the eight hour day and the forty hour week.
  6. Keep complete and accurate records for tax purposes, for your banking needs, and most importantly, for your own guidance.
  7. Ensure you have the right people for the right job.
  8. Find a lawyer, accountant, banker, and insurance agent and seek their counsel as needed.
  9. Beware of absentee ownership. No one will look after your money, your property and your business like you will.
  10. Prepare a comprehensive business plan before investing your money. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Believe & Succeed,DaleFranSynergy, Inc.www.fransynergy.com

Success: Another Definition

Thinking that PizzaGuy's "Success" idea was a good one, I thought I'd drag the conversation over to a new forum.

Perhaps another definition might be along the lines of:

A successful Franchise business is one that:

  • (in time) provides you with the income needed, and
  • the satisfaction of doing a job, while maintaining the lifestyle you choose.
  • that completes the term of the original agreement, or is sold prior to the term of the original agreement at a price acceptable to the seller.

Here's a few more ideas about business success from some who I think we can all agree have been successful in business.

  • Goals are the first step to business success. Jim Rohn believes that "If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us."
  • Action should follow your goals. "Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment." says Ralph Waldo Emerson.
  • Persistence is also important after your initial burst of action. "You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile." Brian Tracy
  • Good questions will keep you on the right track say Anthony Robbins.. "Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers."
  • Change with your business or be left behind. "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Charles Darwin
  • Luck and timing will ensure success, so be prepared for luck. "I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity." Oprah Winfrey
  • Success comes when everyone profits. "I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well." Alan Greenspan.

Believe & Succeed,DaleFranSynergy, Inc.Synergizing Franchising!www.fransynergy.com

Posted by FranSynergy on June 23rd, 2007

Elizabethtown

We just popped in the movie ELIZABETHTOWN (see description below) 

In the opening scene the character Drew Baylor defined:

Failure: the absence of success. 

A definition which validates Pizza Guys position that Failure can be easier defined if success is first defined.

ELIZABETHTOWN 

Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is fired after causing his shoe company to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. To make matters worse, he's also dumped by his girlfriend (Jessica Biel). On the verge of ending it all, Drew gets a new lease on life when he returns to his family's small Kentucky hometown after his father dies. Along the way, he meets a flight attendant (Kirsten Dunst) with whom he falls in love. Cameron Crowe directs.  

Believe & Succeed,DaleFranSynergy, Inc.Synergizing Franchising!www.fransynergy.com

Posted by FranSynergy on June 24th, 2007

Succesful Franchising

As I suspected - when looking at it from the other side of the equation you have to plan for a succesful outcome.

Potentially so much more profitable but so much less opportunity to regurgitate venom and vitriol 

PizzaGuy

Posted by pizzaguy on July 3rd, 2007

Does Z-Rube have a role in Elizabethtown?

Tell us about Z-Rube's charactor, please!

on June 24th, 2007

Amen pizzaguy

Blue Maumau has been hijacked by Z-rube in his feeble but urelenting attempt to vindicate his UPS Store franchise failure.

I believe that franchising is the great american success story and should be celebrated. What other business model had elavated so many from such humble beginnings? We can certainly talk about problems in franchising and people like Janet Sparks (she should introduce some balance in her reporting), Michael Webster, Paul Steinberg, Ricky Solomon and even Z-rube are welcome to opinionated and vigorous discussion of the issues, but please stop the incessant stupidity that destroys what could be the best franchise topical site known to man.

on July 3rd, 2007

American success story

Guest writes: I believe that franchising is the great american success story and should be celebrated.

That is akin to saying that "employment is the great american success story."

Franchising is a means of purchasing capital and labor. As such, it is neither "great" nor "terrible" but is simply a business model (and an industry) which needs to be evaluated on its own terms.

I know many happy and successful franchisees. One thing they have in common is that they are pragmatic businesspeople who would get a good laugh out of the "great american success story" hype.

Conversely, many failed franchisees marched down the road to ruin propelled by this "in business for yourself not by yourself" "great american success story" crap.

on July 5th, 2007