Finding The Right Franchise For YOU

How many franchise opportunities do you think there are?? Have you ever thought to count them or google them?? If you have, you probably came up with seven bazillion hits. What about business opportunities, have you googled that?? Well, now you're up to 70 bazillion hits.?

How do you pick the right one for you? How do you know you're on the right track without getting lost in the Google minefield? That's where I come into play at FranNet.??

Let me help you understand a little bit about the franchise industry.? There are 4,100 different concepts and over 90 different industries, so much more than fast food and retail. How do you find the right one for you? At FranNet we are pretty picky, we narrow that down to about 350 carefully chosen concepts.

We're focused on success rate, something that should be really high on your list. We look for executive models, because primarily our clients are coming out of corporate America and they've been executives, so it's a good fit for them. We look at validation, we are going to validate a franchise the same way you are. We're going to ask about the system and talk to their franchisees to see if they're happy. We will ask the really important questions like:

• How much money are you making? That's a big one.?
• If you had the decision to make all over again, would you make the same decision??

We want to make sure there's enough opportunity for you to grow and prepare or replace a six figure income.

We will narrow it down to 62 different franchise concepts, defining the right ones for you to start looking at.? This is going to be based on our entrepreneurial profile, an assessment tool that we have. It feels like a personality profile, but we're not checking your personality. We're focusing on your values, motives, and the things that have made you successful in the past. It will also give us a skillset analysis of those transferable skill sets that you have. These are things that are going to be on your resume or your degree, things like:

• Core competencies
• Leadership ability and what type of leader you are
• Sales ability, as well as your sales desire. Just because you're good at sales doesn't mean you're willing to do it.?
• Business development skills, one unit, two units, multiple brands
• Compliance.? Are you going to follow the franchise rules?? Or do you want a franchise that has a little bit of wiggle room, so you can put your own stamp on it?

Then we are going to narrow down even more, we are going to get just 26 concepts focusing on your investment range and where your comfort level is for that investment range. We'll look at things like cash loans, SBA loans, home equity loans, and portfolio loans.??

There are all different kinds of loans that could come into play, as well as using 401k or IRA rollovers. You can use that tax and penalty free, including paying yourself a salary. The majority of our clients do a combination of any one of those to get to an investment range that's comfortable and that they can still sleep at night when they are growing their business.?

Then we're going to bring it down even more, we will look at business characteristics. These are the things that you want to do, business to business over business to consumer, trade over profession, service over product.? We will also look at characteristics, employees, locations, sales ability, maturity image, all these things that come into play and we don't really think about when it comes to business.? This will bring us to 12 concepts, and then we will narrow it down to the four or six that actually fit you. We will look at your goals, not only your business goals and what it is you're looking to grow, but your professional goals and your personal goals.? We will talk about your lifestyle:

• Do you want to be home for dinner at night?
• Is there a beach somewhere with your name on it??
• How about kids sports? Do you want to go to those games? Do you want to coach?

This is the last step to get to the four or six concepts that we are going to talk about.? If it's a fit for you, we will talk to those franchisors, if it’s not, that is okay too.??

There's no cost and no obligation to work with me.? My name is Tracy Rickman and I am a franchise consultant with FranNet.? I'd love to talk to you about your goals.