Your Franchise Joy Spot

Most of the candidates I work with that are coming from corporate America want to approach Franchise ownership like they do their jobs. They want to do anything it takes to pay their bills. They will agree to be unhappy in their work if they can make enough money. 

If that sounds like you, stop compromising! Being unhappy isn’t a requirement for building your cash flow!

I understand paying bills, putting money in the bank and investing for growth. I just don’t want to be unhappy when I’m doing it and making that decision was when I left corporate jobs and became a business owner.

You can own a business, have a lifestyle, enjoy what you do and build your empire.

Is it easy? Sometimes, but not all the time.

Is it rewarding? Yes!

Can you do it? If you would be a great hire for a company, you can likely open and grow a franchise.

So, here is the scoop. In the franchise world we are fortunate to have founders of companies that have built business models and support systems in virtually any business category you can imagine and using various owner roles as the basis for operating them.

What is most important to you?

No, not the paying the bills again (we will work to make sure those are addressed later).

What are your most important things in life? What brings you joy, makes you happy, makes waking up fun?

Family? Travel? Giving back to your community? Something else?

Start by listing those things out. Do you get to spend time on those happy things in your current career? If not, then this is part of why you are not happy in that role.

Now, we don’t want to necessarily make your work about those things. This is a fatal flaw of most employees in their approach to making money.

Say I like cars and car culture (I do), so I get a job repairing or selling cars (long past personal job considerations). This keeps me from going to car shows or gatherings, keeps me at work so I can’t work on or enjoy my car(s). Between not being able to spend time on my interest and by virtue of cars being my job I start disliking a thing I had passion for. But now I am stuck in that path on top of having lost my passion.

The main goal for most people should be a business that supports your lifestyle and passions, doesn’t try to become them.

Now, that said, you still have to be good at the work you do and enjoy it. So while your work should not become your passion, it should be something you have fun doing when you focus on it.

Your skills are 100 percent transferable. Employers push back on this and want to keep you in a silo, but we in franchising get you. You have skills, we can redirect them into any business that fits. We will then give you the training, support and resources on how to apply your skills to the proven systems in our world.

But what if you have amazing management skills and are not good at sales? We will construct a role where you manage the team and handle operations and hire a sales pro to bring in the money.

Best part is that we can do the same thing in reverse for sales pros that need to hire a manager!

Once we have matches based on your skills we layer in how you want to work. Full time, executive and semi-absentee are all great options. Even in the full time role we want to bake in family obligations, kids life events, travel and your other interests.

Finding that perfect balance between your cash flow and your passions will be very important. And those times you are working you should e doing the things you enjoy doing and hiring for the ones others enjoy doing.

The type of business may contribute to managing this balance. For example, let’s say your kids play sports on the weekends and you want to be on the sidelines for every game. Maybe one of the criteria we specify is that we want to look at businesses that primarily operate Monday through Friday.

Furthermore, what if your kids have practice weekday evenings and you want to help their coaches, or even be their coach? Or maybe it is important for you to have the whole family around the table for dinner. So now the business may operate primarily weekdays and during business hours.

This is how I approach building the model that picks candidates franchises.

It never begins with what is your favorite burger or ice cream. Pick businesses that fit you as an owner, not you as a consumer.

That’s how empires are started!

George Knauf is a highly sought after, trusted advisor to many companies; Public, Independent and Franchised, of all sizes and in many markets. His 20 plus years of experience in both start-up and mature business operations makes him uniquely qualified to advise individuals that have dreamed of going into business for themselves in order to gain more control, independence, time flexibility and to be able to earn in proportion to their real contribution.

Contact the Franchising USA Expert George’s Hotline 703-424-2980.