Almost all of us relate to owning a vehicle of some sort. When you think about it, and automobile is simply a vehicle to get you from point A to point B in distance, while enjoying the ride along the way, and taking advantage of the functionality of the vehicle that you need for that trip. If you need to move people your own a minivan; if you need to move stuff, you own a pickup truck or an SUV; if you like to have fun, you might own a sports car…
Well here’s the analogy – a business is also simply a vehicle – nothing more nothing less! While an automobile is designed to get you from point A to point B in distance, a business should enable you to get from point A (where you are presently) to point B in your life but from a time perspective instead of from a distance perspective. With an automobile, the progress measurements are in kilometers and possibly hours or days, but with a business, the measurements are very different – from a time perspective we’re talking about months and years, and from a progress perspective, we’re talking about progress against your goals instead of against other people’s goals.
Before you go to buy a vehicle, it is typical to take some time to figure out what you need the vehicle to do, what its payload is, what’s its fuel efficiency, and obviously how much it costs to purchase, and to carry over time. Once you’ve done this work, you’re then ready to go shopping for a very narrow range of options.
Well, I maintain that buying a business should be a very similar mental process to buying a vehicle – start by figuring out where you want to be in 5 to 7 years – what you want your income to be? What you want your typical work week to look like in terms of number of hours and structure of those hours? Do you want to be by yourself or do you want to have a team working for you? Do you want to be selling, or do you want your customers to come to you?
Once you have a very clear picture of where you want to be in seven years or so, now you want to look at where you are now and identify what resources you can bring to bear – What is your initial investment capability? How long can you go without income? (Unfortunately, most people underestimate this question and thus create problems down the road for themselves) How much time do you have to dedicate to the business?
There are myriad of questions that need to get answered prior to you going shopping for your business “vehicle” and the more clarity you have in defining your criteria, the easier your search for your ideal business will be, so please take sufficient time to figure all this out. If you need help… That’s what I’m here for!
Thanks for listening; I hope to have the opportunity to work with you in finding YOUR ideal franchise. All the best!