Are you looking for a business opportunity? We’re not just talking about any business opportunity here. We’re talking about a proven business opportunity with the potential and demonstrated ability to help you meet and exceed your financial and lifestyle goals through owning a successful business. People who want to start their own business and become financially independent will find numerous excellent opportunities among the best Canadian franchises. Buying into one of the best franchises in Canada provides you with an excellent opportunity to successfully run a business that’s based on a proven system… provided that you are well-suited to run the business!
Let’s make an important point here – “best” does not mean a franchisor that sells a lot of franchise units, nor does it necessarily mean a large franchise system with a lot of units. “Best” means that the franchisor provides a proven methodology and platform that enables its franchisees to leverage their transferable skills and run the business as designed in order to achieve expected results. This also means that the franchisor’s well-financed, it has a good head office support team and it has a strong franchisee selection process.
Why Does Franchising Work So Well?
It’s often been said that franchising works because you’re in business for yourself, but not by yourself. Franchising is a great hybrid between the corporate world and the entrepreneurial world. You still have a lot of the systems and structure that you are used to from the corporate world, but you have the freedom and independence of running your own business but with some degree of safety net, through proving that systems and processes, supported by strong franchisor infrastructure.
Business Format Franchising (the most common structure of franchising today) has been described as one of the best business strategies ever created. It is a business strategy designed to get, and keep disproportionate market share, and when it works, it works incredibly well! This strategy is also designed to accelerate business growth, often simultaneously, in multiple markets through utilizing the financial and intellectual resources of franchisees. A key assumption of franchising is that people will work harder for themselves (where they can build wealth for themselves instead of for someone else) than they will in a corporate job, especially when they have their own money at risk. This assumption has been proven right many times in the past 50 years!
Consider these benefits of being a franchisee in a good franchise:
- You get to take advantage of the consolidated experience of the franchisor and of all the franchisees that have purchased before you, so you are benefiting from an exponential learning curve
- Because you’re working with proven systems, the business is that much less difficult to run than if you were starting from scratch. These systems and processes have often been developed over many years; it’s quite common to see franchisors who have invested hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in infrastructure and system development
- You get initial training and ongoing support to help you capitalize on opportunity and avoid costly mistakes
- You get to take advantage of the sales marketing operating systems to help you launch faster and achieve higher levels of success
- Depending on the franchise, there might be some name recognition to leverage
- Most importantly, in good franchise systems, there’s a culture of teamwork amongst franchisor and the franchisees. Everybody’s on the same team so there’s lots of support, and your fellow franchisees are the ones who are doing what you’ll be doing day in and day out, and when you need help, often times, it’s the other franchisees who have the best answers.
These critical factors combine to create a business platform that enables the franchisee to realize three critical accelerants over their non-franchised business competitors:
- Reduce the time from launching the business to opening the business
- Compress the time from opening the business to realizing a sustainable break-even point (where revenues cover all costs and you no longer have to inject money into the business)
- Compress the time from breakeven to full stride; full stride being the level of income you want to generate while at the same time realizing a reasonable work/life balance
All of this combines to create a business model that significantly mitigates risk for the franchisee.
Franchising – The HOV Lane Of Business!
When you ultimately pick a franchise that’s the right fit for you, your franchise becomes a business “vehicle”, nothing more nothing less. Where automobiles are vehicles that are designed to get you from point A to point B in distance, a franchise “vehicle” is designed to get you from point A in your life (where you are now) to point B in your life (where you want to be at some point in the future – usually 7 to 10 years out). Said differently, it’s a vehicle that should enable you to meet and exceed your lifestyle and financial goals, and to get you from where you are to where you want to be, and do so while enjoying the ride along the way! And as we’ve just demonstrated franchising is a proven way to reduce risk.
We’ve recently begun describing franchising as the HOV lane of business! Think about it – have you ever been in your car by yourself in one of the slow lanes that’s jammed and everybody’s just stuck in traffic, and you look over to the HOV lane and people are just zipping by you… zoom, zoom, zoom! Do you ever wish that you had just one more person in the car with you so you could get into that lane too? It can be argued quite well that people who travel in the high occupancy vehicle lanes are usually going much faster than the regular flow of traffic, doing so with more efficiency, and with less stress. HOV lanes work because governments have invested millions of dollars in developing this infrastructure and thus HOV lanes are well-designed, in locations to optimize peak traffic flow, they’re well-advertised, and yes, they have rules and procedures that are well-enforced.
Well in business, all of the non-franchised businesses are all those “vehicles” stuck in the regular, over-crowded lanes, trying to inch ahead. With good franchised businesses though, the franchisors are that “extra person in your vehicle”! They have invested a lot of money in infrastructure, they have systems and processes and rules that enable their franchisees to:
- “Go faster” – with structured launch and build strategies. You’re not guessing where to invest your advertising and marketing efforts, thus you get off to a much faster start, and do so more efficiently
- “Get there sooner” -with focused training and ongoing coaching, franchisees reach optimum efficiency much sooner, thus they consistently outperform their independent non-franchised business competitors.
- “Get more” – more customers, more work/life balance, more profitability, more peace of mind because they have a proven track to run on.
Which “lane” would you rather be in?
About Gary Prenevost
Gary Prenevost is one of North America’s leading franchise matchmaking experts. He has been a licensor, a master franchisor, a franchise consultant and a franchisee. As a Senior Advisor with iFranchise Group, Gary also works with companies to franchise their businesses; he also helps existing franchise systems improve their systems and processes. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Gary was a banker for over seven years, so with over 20 years of experience “on all sides of the franchise table”, Gary truly brings a 360° perspective to helping his clients find and buy the optimum franchise for them.