Not all entrepreneurs can be a good franchisee – This is a fact you and I can not deny. Forcing your way into franchising can only eventually result in two exits: Struggling franchise units and going out of business.
Why entrepreneurs struggle as franchisees
By nature, born entrepreneurs are creative but having difficulty in following rules, as they think rules were made to limit their creativity. They like to play with their own set of rules and love to find creative ways to solve problems.
Those perks, despite being positive, are actually the main reasons why an entrepreneur struggles, even fails, as a franchisee.
On the other hand, I believe that entrepreneurship can be taught. In franchising, those naturally born entrepreneurs are quite often overshadowed by the performance of franchise units owned by employees-turned-entrepreneurs.
The single reason for this is because, as an employee, the made-entrepreneurs are used to follow rules – Something that constitutes a high-quality and high-performing franchisee; Franchising requires a franchisee to follow a set of rules enacted by the franchisor, because a franchisor has built a proven system that only works when the franchisees follow the operational manual closely.
I want to buy a franchise unit, but I don’t like being limited with rules – What to do?
The best thing you can do is to put on your investor hat – Change your role into investors, instead of the most-common owner-operator role.
As an investor you can hire someone as your Operational Manager, whose main duty is to comply with the rules set up by your franchisor, while ensuring the cash flowing freely to your pocket. Moreover, doing this the right way allows you to be a multi-units franchise owner or a master franchisee, as you are getting used to delegate daily franchise unit operation.
Ivan Widjaya
Being an entrepreneur-franchisee
Photo courtesy of Photos8.com
