If you represent a franchise opportunity, selecting the right people to award that franchise to is crucial to the success of your business.
After all, these people will represent your brand to customers. And after 34 years in the industry, my best piece of advice is to avoid entrepreneurs.
Yes, you read that correctly. Good franchisees are not entrepreneurs. Don’t get me wrong. I have great admiration for entrepreneurs.
Their ideas can change the way we live and work, improving lives and creating jobs along the way.
After all, entrepreneurs are the ones that dream up the ideas that can then be franchised.
But once the kinks are worked out and a system in place, the key is finding people who are really good at following that roadmap.
The guesswork is over. The right franchisees don’t need to invent anything. In fact, they don’t even need to be experts in those industries.
More specifically, you don’t need to find a plumber to run a plumbing franchise or a chef to run a restaurant franchise.
Instead, you want people who respect a proven system and follow it. They need to trust the investment they are making from those who have figured things out for them in advance.
I know this to be true because before I was a franchisor, I was a rookie franchisee in an industry I knew nothing about.
Over time, I became a multi-concept franchisee in more than one industry that was new to me.
Three brands in three different service verticals into my franchising journey, and I was a first-hand advocate of following good systems.
The beauty of franchising is that it offers the independence of small business ownership supported by the benefits of a big business network.
So while you are in business for yourself, you are not by yourself.
And while new ideas are always respected, good franchisees should not spend their time trying to change a proven system, but rather focus on excelling at the execution.
The most fantastic franchisees appreciate following something that has already been perfected.
THE AUTHOR
Mike Bidwell is President and CEO of NeighborlyBrands,(formerly Dwyer Group). He led Dwyer Group and its concepts at every level. He was a successful and visionary franchisee and served as president for three Dwyer Group subsidiary franchise companies. In 2000, Dwyer Group named him chief operating officer (COO) and in 2007, Bidwell was also named president. In January of 2014, he was named president and CEO of Dwyer Group.
