Ensuring Your Franchise Success

What steps can a prospective franchisee take to ensure success?

This is an excellent question because it is rarely part of the prospective franchisee's thinking or among their investigative tools.

I have long believed that two critical ‘personal’ questions must be resolved before 'any' form of business planning can be done. (Or, at least, 'should' be done.) Those two questions are "should I really be in business for myself?" and "if so, what type of business am I best suited to own and operate?".

All too often the prospective franchisee (or prospective entrepreneur of any variety – and there are several) is drawn in by a 'Hot Opportunity', or the slickest sales person’s rap, but that has to be the very worst road to entrepreneurship. The very first step should always be to determine "In what type of business (if any) do I best fit?" If and when that question can be answered logically and honestly, then all the hot opportunities in the world will matter not if the person doesn't belong in that type of business. In fact, this concept became so important to me (and I assumed to my clients), that I wrote the focus program for emerging entrepreneurs. I wanted prospective business owners to have better, more creative decision making tools for self-analysis.