When looking to buy a new business, one of the most important steps is doing a thorough due diligence. The big question for many: How do you know you’ve done enough? One thing’s almost certain, if you think you’re done, you’ve probably only just begun. As a franchise coach, we always give our clients a great deal of assistance in this area, suggesting what to read, who to talk to and questions to ask. Ease of research and availability of information is precisely why we often steer folks to a franchise. With a franchise, you can get all the information you need in the Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD), which federal law requires all franchise companies make available to prospective new franchisees. With a little digging, you can learn if you’ve got what it takes — from the money, experience and skills — to succeed with this particular purchase. By far the most important part of the process is talking to franchisees to learn how the system works. You can find their contact information in the FDD. You want to find out: Are they making any money? Would they make the purchase again, knowing what they know now? This critical step separates the truly serious would-be entrepreneurs from those only dabbling — because if you can place calls to strangers to learn the ins and outs of a business, you pass the first hurdle toward succeeding with your own business. Using myself as an example, when I was researching the franchise I eventually bought, I called every one of the 42 franchisees then part of the system. Of course, not all of them called me right back — but that’s because they’re a busy bunch.

Patience And Perseverance

When reaching out to franchise owners you don’t know, a little patience goes a long way. Since you want as many perspectives on the business as you can get, it’s certainly worth your while to try a couple of times to connect. Don’t take it personally if a business owner fails to call you back in a timely manner. The call likely slipped to the bottom of their to-do list. But even the most successful, intimidating franchisees once stood in your shoes, and many will happily set an appointment to speak to you about their experiences, either on the phone or in person. The franchise business that I spent months researching, eventually interviewing 20 franchisees, now provides the lion’s share of my income. And it got there faster than I had projected. Putting the time and energy in upfront is like money in the bank. Its value accrues with time as you gain greater knowledge and intelligence to help your business thrive for the long term. 

Ready to make your dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true? Get your free evaluation today! Contact Dan Citrenbaum to help you create the career you’ve always wanted. As a business coach, Dan brings years of experience helping people select and buy a franchise or existing business. You can reach Dan at dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484) 278-4589.

Once you’ve decided you want to start a business of your own with a franchise, the question becomes: How do I choose the best franchise for me? Related: Everything You Need To Know To Succeed In Business Your investigation of the wide world of franchising, in which a variety of businesses offer various levels of brand identity, support, and training, is the most important part of your purchase. Only with real knowledge can you get beyond the superficial and learn about enterprises that offer the best opportunities to suit your own particular set of skills and interests. The fact is not all franchises are created equal, and some have far better training and support services that can make the difference between success and failure. To ensure you make the most educated selection, your evaluation of the quality of the franchises that most interest you is paramount. (See Part I on Making the Right Choice)

5 Steps To Selecting A Quality Franchise

1. Consult a franchise coach.

You can benefit from the expertise of these professionals who have vetted thousands of franchises, eliminating those that are not first-tier, so they can recommend franchises with the greatest chances for success. While you should conduct your own research as well, you should use every resource available to you, and a good franchise coach can save you a lot of time and headaches later on. Best of all, this resource is free.

2. Conduct a review of franchise types.

You will find a list of the 75 industries represented in the huge world of franchising at the International Franchise Association website at www.franchise.org. Keep your mind open as you review various franchise types that include tutoring centers, an array of B2B services, fitness centers, storage facilities, as well as the most well-known restaurants and more. You will find opportunities that allow you to work largely on your own, part time or build a multi-franchise operation.

3. Read the Franchise Disclosure Document.

All franchises are required by federal law to disclose certain aspects of their businesses. These documents, written in everyday English, can be obtained from the franchises that most interest you. You should zero in on some key nuggets:

• The business history — How long has the franchise been in operation?
• Litigation history — A record of lawsuits would be a red flag.
• Any earnings claims? — though this is an optional item
• Financial statements of the franchisor – Are they solvent?
• A full accounting of your costs, including outlays necessary to set up the business
• A list of franchisees.

4. Interview franchisees.

Once you have the list from the FDD, you should start calling franchisees. You can learn from no better source how good the franchisor’s system works. Is their support and training excellent, merely sufficient or inadequate. Would they purchase the franchise again? You should also make a point to talk to franchisees who have not been successful. Find out what went wrong. Remember, sometimes people choose franchises that don’t suit their expertise, interests or personality, and this can cause failure as much as problems stemming from the franchisor.

5. Talk to and meet representatives from the franchisor.

As part of your preparation, you will talk to representatives from the franchise. If you’ve moved farther along the process, franchisors will provide written materials to help educate you about their system, as well as one-on-one meetings with executives, either on the phone or in person. This process culminates in Franchise Discovery Day, where you visit a franchise, meet the support staff and make your final decision on whether this franchise is for you. All along the way, you will have ample opportunity to reassess and decide that this franchise isn’t for you, either because you don’t connect to the business or its executives. This in-depth process ideally will lead you to the business of your dreams. But before you sign on any dotted line, you should also consult a franchise attorney and accountant. While a franchise offers many great benefits, you have to make the right match to make it work for you. 

About the author

Ready to make your dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true? Get your free evaluation today! Contact Dan Citrenbaum to help you create the career you’ve always wanted. As a business coach, Dan brings years of experience helping people select and buy a franchise or existing business. You can reach Dan at dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484) 278-4589.  

You’ve made the decision to buy a franchise. The key question then becomes which one of the 3,000 franchises in the marketplace is right for you. The choice will make all the difference on whether your new business limps along or flourishes. You can maximize your chance for success by using two critical criteria.

• Determine whether the role of the owner in the business suits your particular strengths and
• Assess the quality of the franchise.

The beginning of your process will consist of exploring franchise types (there are more than you think), assessing your own strengths, and developing a list of possible options to investigate further. One of the key things you need to find out is what exactly are the owner’s job responsibilities for each franchise.

The Role Of The Franchise Owner

What the owner does may be drastically different from what you may think. For example, maybe you’ve been thinking how you might like to open a little bakery or a little cafe because you love to bake and would love to have all your friends drop by for socializing and tea. But once you look more closely at what the owner of such a franchise does, you’ll find the owner is mainly responsible for managing employees and marketing, focusing on building a customer base to grow revenue. Generally, the number one goal of the owner is to build the business, which allows you to earn a good income, have happy, productive employees and an ever-expanding customer base. On the flip side, you may find yourself veering away from types of businesses that at first sound unappealing, such as cleaning services — since you don’t want to spend your days scrubbing and polishing — but the owners of firms like this should not be doing the cleaning work. Your job is to hire good, reliable employees and create a solid customer base for repeat business. Franchise companies will tell you upfront what the role of the owner is in the franchise. And you can further assess this by interviewing franchisees, both successful and unsuccessful ones, to learn about what their day-to-day responsibilities are. Bottom line: Don’t make your choice based on preconceived notions about the business.

Match the role of the owner with your skills and experience.

So now that you know the owner’s job profile, the question becomes, does this suit you? You want to create a realistic appraisal of your skills and experience so you get into a business where you can enjoy your work and apply your talent and skills for long-term success. Do a quick inventory of your skills and take into account your interests, since when you make a choice to build a business of your own, you want to like going to work! Are you proficient in and do you like:

• Selling, which always includes selling yourself, as well as your products or services?
• Managing people? Do you think you could learn how to do it?
• Working with people or do you prefer working on your own?
• Marketing, which might include advertising as well as making presentations?
• Getting into the details or do you prefer to delegate?
• Networking — creating links with people who can help you grow your business?

Once you get a handle on what types of activities you excel in and enjoy, you will have the information you need to make a good match with a franchise. Your research will tell you which franchises require which areas of expertise from the owner. Remember one of the attributes of a good franchise is its training and ongoing support. So even if you’re not sure you know how to do something, if you have a feeling you could learn — and you might want to ask friends for their views — you might still go ahead. And, of course, you won’t be buying a franchise that you haven’t fully vetted for quality. Stay tuned for Part II on making the right choice.

Ready to make your dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true? Get your free evaluation today! Contact Dan Citrenbaum to help you create the career you’ve always wanted. As a business coach, Dan brings years of experience helping people select and buy a franchise or existing business. You can reach Dan at dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484) 278-5489.

When you’re sitting at your desk dreaming of starting your own business, the barriers may seem as daunting as a track of high hurdles. The good news is there’s an efficient way to help you raise your odds for success: a franchise system.

With a great franchise, you gain the collective experiences of many successful business owners who over the years have helped the franchisor perfect a system, the proven procedures that provide a roadmap to long-term success.

The beauty of the system is it’s all of a piece. You follow the franchisor’s guidelines for everything from how to set up your shop, to how to train employees to how much money you should have on hand to get you through the initial startup phase. As you struggle to learn the system, a good franchise will offer lots of training and ongoing support to get you across the finish line.

While, as with everything in life, there are no guarantees, if you do your research and select a franchise that matches your skills and interest, you have a far greater chance of success than with almost any other type of new business.

Much expertise has gone into developing this system, part of the strategic positioning of the brand, but it does no good if the franchisee decides to veer away from it. So while a franchise system is one of the best ways to lower the risk for starting a business, the one rule of thumb is you must be willing and eager to follow the system. Or don’t buy a franchise.

The Beauty of a Franchise System

Upfront training

This can mean more than 50 hours in classroom learning plus more instruction on the job for you and your employees.

Ongoing support

An answer to a question is a mere phone call away. A quality franchise company will have experts to support all of your most crucial needs, whether those are staffing and training, or advertising, or sourcing inventory.

Guidelines for setting up an office/store

The franchisor will have exact specifications for the type of furniture, fixtures and supplies to purchase — as well as the number of employees you will need.

Advertising/Marketing Program

Some franchisors have national ad campaigns for which you will have to contribute, and others will help you run a local marketing program. Either way, you can be sure the franchisor will have established, proven advertising programs for you to use.

Support on leasing

Many franchisors will help you not only choose a location but also negotiate a lease. The franchisor will know what demographics make a superior location. They will share that info with you because they want your business to be in a great location.,

If you think of the system as a set of wings that will enable to you to fly, rather than a set of constraints, you will be on your way to success. But if you’re the type of person who likes to make it up as you go along, you may want to consider an independent business instead. Only then, you’ll have to develop a system of your own.

Ready to make your dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true?

Get your free evaluation today!

Contact Dan Citrenbaum to help you create the career you’ve always wanted. As a franchise coach, Dan brings years of experience helping people select and buy a franchise or existing business. You can reach Dan at dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484)278-4589.

© Dan Citrenbaum 2023

From time to time, you may wonder what it might be like to run your own business. You would be in charge of your own time. You could pocket all the profit that results from your labor. You could tap your natural ingenuity and try out your great ideas. Best of all, you would be master of your own destiny. While you get all the upside, you also bear all the responsibility when trouble hits. Knowing this causes potential owners to feel fear and trepidation – so that often they abandom their dream of ownership and continue in their stultifying day job. But what if there was a way to minimize your risk and get all the benefits of owning your own business? The answer is actually within easy reach. With a franchise, before you even invest a dime, you know everything you need to know to succeed. You get a proven system, upfront and continuing training, support for everything from setting up your office to buying equipment and supplies, and you know from the get-go exactly how much your startup costs will be.

10 Questions To Answer Before Purchasing A Franchise

The most important issue becomes your research, how well you make a match with your interest, skills, and expertise to a franchise whose system and support stands up to scrutiny.

First About Yourself

1. How much money do I want to invest?

A good rule of thumb: You will need enough to pay startup costs as well as your living expenses until the business becomes profitable.

2. Do I have the ability to put in long hours during the startup phase?

If you have significant responsibility caring for a sick relative, you might want to review your timing.

3. What types of skills do I bring to my new business?

Perhaps you’re great at sales, managing people or accounting. Whatever your strengths, you want to choose a franchise that capitalizes on them.

4. Do you enjoy working with people or prefer working alone?

You can find a franchise that matches your preference. For example, you could choose a business support service or a retail store.

5. Will your business be your primary source of income or a secondary career?

Called semi-absentee, there is a whole category of franchises for those who wish to work part-time.

About The Franchisor

6. How much are the initial startup costs?

You can find everything you need to know in the Franchise Disclosure Document, which every franchisor is required to disclose to potential franchisees. Look at Items 5-7.

7. How long has the franchisor been in business? Any glaring litigation history?

You’re looking for proof this is a company in good standing. Check Items 1-4 in the FDD. You will also want to learn how many franchisees have gone out of business.

8. Do I have a good rapport with the franchisor’s executives?

Through multiple interviews and meetings, you will need to determine if you want to work closely with these people. Do you trust them? Are they likable?

9. What obligations does the franchisor place on franchisees?

All franchisors will be highly specific on how the business is run. After all, they have a brand to protect. Check for restrictions on territory, resale, and royalties. Decide if any of these are too onerous for you. It’s always a good idea to consult a franchise attorney.

10. Is the support and training everything the franchisor advertises? Would a large number of franchisees buy this franchise again?

As the most important question in the bunch, you should plan to invest a significant amount of time calling and interviewing franchisees — whose phone numbers you can find in the FDD.

Ready to make your dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true? Get your free evaluation today! Contact Dan Citrenbaum to help you create the career you’ve always wanted. As a business coach, Dan brings years of experience helping people select and buy a franchise or existing business. You can reach Dan at dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484) 278-4589.

When shopping for a franchise, knowing how to separate the wheat from the chaff takes expertise. Consulting a franchise coach can help you ask the right questions and zero in on key issues that can mean the difference between success and failure.

While you will find a seemingly endless supply of information about franchises in any internet search, you can save yourself a lot of time and aggravation by consulting an expert who has made his or her career studying the ins and outs of what makes a great franchise.

And since one of the attributes of successful business ownership is having the wisdom to know when you should rely on the expertise of others, your first test comes during your research phase.

To be sure, there are some clunker franchises out there. But to understand how the best franchise operations work, you need to have some idea about what they should offer, and what your expectations should be. If you’re not careful, you could find yourself with a franchise with subpar training and worthless support that ends up costing you your business.

The bottom line: You want value for your money, and the costs can be significant. With the best franchises, the value far exceeds the cost.

A good franchise can provide you all the knowledge you need to have a successful business, unlike an independent startup, where you have to guess the costs and estimate the potential revenue stream. A franchise operation already has a proven system, developed over time with a successful network of franchisees who came before you.

Without exception, franchisors will tell you they have excellent training and hands-on support to help you with every facet of your new business. And some surely do. But their job is to sell you their franchise, so they may leave out the part about a recent turnover in their training staff that has left the program in disarray.

Of course, the best way franchisors can maximize their income is to create the best environment for their franchisees to succeed – spectacularly so. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case, which is why the research phase is so important.

A franchise coach can help steer you to specific franchisors, based on a thorough assessment of hundreds of franchise operations over the years. Another important goal is to match a franchise to your basic skills and personal profile — so that you can make a good living and enjoy your work.

The Benefits of Tapping the Expertise of a Franchise Coach

A franchise coach can help you figure out:

• What type of franchise you should research — based on your interests, skills and personality
• How well the franchisees have been succeeding
• How to evaluate the FDD
• How to assess franchisees’ and franchisor operations
• How well the franchisor prepares franchisees in the set-up phase
• How good the franchisor’s training program is, which includes answering questions, such as: Do you connect well with the support staff? Do you like them? Are they hands-on? Do they know what they’re doing?

In addition, as you continue your research, a franchise coach can help you answer questions that arise along the way. And best of all their service is free to you since they are paid by the franchisor.

As in every endeavor, you want to capitalize on every advantage you have, so consult the experts and get the edge in your search for your perfect business opportunity.

Ready to make your dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true?

Get your free evaluation today!

Contact Dan Citrenbaum to help you create the career you’ve always wanted. As a franchise coach, Dan brings years of experience helping people select and buy a franchise or existing business. You can reach Dan at dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484)278-4589.

© Dan Citrenbaum 2023