Five Things We Wish We Would Have Known

About Franchising Before We Started

# 1 When you’re considering multiple franchise concepts, be honest with yourself about whether you want to manage lots of employees or only a few, the types of employees you’d likely hire, etc. The key here is knowing what kind of work needs to be done in the business and what qualities your likely future employees should have. If you see yourself enjoying managing and working with your future employees, great! If not, this could be a giant pain for you.

# 2 There won’t be a big “Buy Now” sign for you when evaluating a franchise business opportunity as much as you might like one to appear for you. Your dream team (see #5 below) will work to give you all the information and put you in the best possible place, but they can’t pull the trigger for you. The big thing for us was faith in ourselves; a belief that we were our best chance for success.

# 3 If you think the franchise evaluation process is long, the real estate process will be even longer especially if you’re opening a brick and mortar store. Landlords might not be locally based or real estate brokers might not jump to respond to the offer on the 800 sq. ft. shoebox. The back and forth process of developing a Letter of Intent (LOI) that satisfies all stakeholders takes time. Then the LOI has to be developed in to an actual lease before it can be reviewed by everyone and finally executed. Whew! Your best ally: a commercial real estate broker who will hustle on your behalf.

# 4 Marketing your business is more important and harder than you might imagine. This was a hard lesson for us to learn because we signed and paid for some downright stupid advertising deals and marketing “professionals” that, in hindsight, did not reflect our values of our business. It is so important to know your audience and have clear messaging! Those bad deals can make you reluctant to spend even a dime more money on marketing or advertising, but as nerdy as it sounds, we found a lot of value in some highly rated books on marketing that presented ideas that we could mold and shape to our business.

# 5 Line up your Dream Team. We questioned ourselves often along the way about whether we were being taken advantage of, and you will have the same questions too. Our dream team helped us feel more confident about the decisions we were making. They DID NOT make the decisions for us; they only provided us with information to help us make our own decisions. Network to find the people that will represent you and the direction you want to go.

Our dream team consisted of:

• A top-notch commercial real estate broker.

He hustled and fought for us every step of the way and he was also an ever-flowing fountain of knowledge. Real estate brokers are well connected and if you hit it off, they will refer you to other dream team members if you trust him/her.

• A franchise law attorney. This was initially a weak point for us

because we didn’t have a connection to anyone, but we’ve traded up in this department by networking with an eye toward our future needs.

• A real estate attorney. A real estate attorney is different than

a real estate broker because they enter the picture often when you’ve already negotiated the LOI and now you have a lease in hand and you need to make sure everything you agreed upon during the LOI process is actually represented within the lease. You don’t want to lose ground with your LOI negotiations due to the legal language in the actual lease. A real estate attorney can review your lease and know where and how you can pick the lease negotiation battles. Things that may seem odd or unreasonable to a commercial lease newbie can in actuality be just standard lease language.

• A notary. Okay, so this is like a lesser-known

relief pitcher, but you’ll need one, and you don’t want to make last-minute calls to find one.

• A “numbers guy/gal” This has been the most important

person on our team. Find someone that is reliable and that can spin up spreadsheets like there’s no tomorrow to see if you’ll be able to make money at this new endeavor. This team member may be an accountant or a bookkeeper but they could also be a friend or colleague good with financial models and such.

• Someone who has experience in business negotiations.

Depending on your previous business experience, the experienced negotiator might even be you. These people will help you understand what cards are on the table and what might be possible. They’ll also help you keep a calm head and not get too emotionally attached to an opportunity so that you don’t agree to something you might regret later. Someone outside of your niche market can be especially helpful because they’ll likely bring a different perspective to situations.

BONUS (because we’re just that nice) – When it doubt, SWOT it out! Whenever you’re stuck on something, and you need to step back and analyze an issue, use a SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. You can SWOT out almost anything – real estate locations, business opportunities, current business performance, etc.

Joseph and Emily Verbeke are the owner of Briton Partners, LLC., which operates the

regional development for Zoyo Neighborhood Yogurt in Michigan and Northwest Ohio. Joe and Emily also own and operate the pilot store in Troy, Michigan. Visit

thefranchisevoice.com for more information about Joe and Emily’s franchise journey.