Finding the Right Franchise Opportunity: 3 Questions to Ask Yourself

Finding the right franchise opportunity takes time, an understanding of the industry you’re getting involved with, and most importantly, knowledge of the self. How can you know whether a franchise opportunity will make your dreams come true if you’ve never asked yourself what you want, or how you intend to get it?

In today’s post, we share 3 questions to ask yourself to help find the right franchise opportunity.

• What are my personal goals?  If you want to succeed with whatever franchise opportunity you’ve identified, you need to set tangible goals and pursue them with single-minded focus. This may be the quaintest piece of advice you hear all day; it’s a painfully obvious bit of business wisdom that you’ve probably heard from almost every influential figure in your life. And yet, for some reason, the availability of good advice makes it easy to overlook. We all think the secret to success is knowing the secrets, when it has a lot more to do with identifying (and internalizing!) high-value information, which is usually quite common. Make sure you give this gem its due.
  
  Everybody has different motivations for leaving the 9-to-5 world to chase down a franchise opportunity. Do you want to make more money, free up more time for your family, or make a positive difference in your community with some vocational vision? Only you can answer this question, and it’s vital that you do, because your choice of franchise opportunity must be based around these personal goals.
  
  Be sure to set reasonable goals, too. Locke and Latham (2002) conducted a 35-year review of empirical research on goal setting and success, and their findings challenged the old adage about “aiming for the moon so you land in the stars.” In reality, performance was highest when study participants set moderately difficult goals. Setting goals that were too easy or too hard led to diminished performance. If you want to free up more time to be with family, aim for an extra 2-4 hours per day; if you want to make more money, aim to increase your monthly revenue by 10-20% initially; don’t try to change the world from day one in your vocational vision, but rather make small impacts every day to start the ripple.
  
  
• What role do I want to take in the business? Some owners want to get in the trenches and fight to make the most of their franchise opportunity, while others present the absentee/auto-pilot approach to business, treating their franchise as more of a hands-off investment than a new career. When it’s time to evaluate the franchise opportunity in front of you, ask yourself whether you would be happy working there everyday, and in what capacity.
  
  
• What kind of investment capital am I working with? Franchising can be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be. Every brand will set their own franchise fee, and they all charge different royalty fees. Generally speaking, opening a food franchise is going to cost you more than a home-based, business-to-business franchise opportunity, but the cost of overhead and equipment varies greatly from one industry to the next. Ultimately, franchising isn’t cost-prohibitive - you just have to choose a brand that suits your investment budget.
  
  

On behalf of the FranNet team, we hope this quick self-administered questionnaire comes in handy. You can find more ways to evaluate prospective franchise opportunities at http://www.frannet.ca.

References

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American psychologist, 57(9), 705.

 

About FranNet Canada

FranNet is a 29-year-old company with roots in the U.S. Its purpose being to nurture every entrepreneur’s dream of business ownership. We actively employ a specific profiling and consultation method. This method is geared to each investor with a specific business model and based on franchise trends typically found in Toronto, Ontario, Vancouver, British Columbia, or Calgary, Alberta. The most lucrative Canadian franchise opportunities are waiting for you. For more details visit - http://frannet.ca/buy-a-franchise/canada-franchise-buying-process/