Sacrificial Success and Franchising Folly

Written by Jim Otto

I recently met with a top-notch franchise consultant. He had developed a franchise system that he had built out and sold for a handy profit, hence his new business of being a "Franchise Consultant". Everyone wanted to know what his secret to success was. After two days of meetings with Bob (his name for the sake of this article) he finally told me the secret. As he was describing various franchisees, he told me about his best franchisee ever.  "Our best franchisees did about 2.5 to 3 million per year, but we had one guy in Milwaukee who did almost 5 million!"

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Top 10 Questions: Will My Franchise Make Money?

Written by Jim Otto

I know what you're thinking. If I buy a franchise, will my franchise make money? Here are 10 tips to get through the "clutter" of franchising information and increase your odds of franchise owner business success!
 
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Franchise Warning! Are You Getting Sold or Recruited?

Written by Jim Otto

Candidates often ask me why we pay for all their expenses when they come to Discovery Day to see our award winning children’s salons. Well, first of all that isn't quite accurate, as we do ask our best candidates to buy their own plane tickets (that way they have a little “skin in the game”). But other than that it’s pretty much on us. Now don’t get me wrong, there is some qualification that goes on and candidates that come into see us take our free no-obligation webinar, and have sent us some financial information that we check out. We don’t feel like it would be a prudent use of company funds for us to treat candidates to a  hotel on Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza district if they weren’t financially qualified to join our system. But for those that meet our qualifications, we do feel like Discovery Day is an important part of the process.

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In Business, One is the Loneliest Number!

Written by Jim Otto

When starting a new business by yourself, sometimes it might seem like doing your own research and going at it alone is the most attractive option. But ultimately, this might not be a good idea. Not only could you possibly be doing the wrong research and making investments that might not be financially profitable over the long run, but you just might not have all the necessary information at your fingertips that can help ensure business success! You've probably heard the phrase, “You don’t know what you don’t know”. Well, once when I was out of work I went to a job fair for a major pharmaceutical company. There were perhaps around 200 people in the room, and the meeting started off something like this, “all of you who have experience in the pharmaceutical industry get on this side of the room, and everyone else stay where you are.” Needless to say, I never interviewed that day. You see, that company knew there was no substitute for experience, no substitute for having "been there, done that”, and no substitute for having to start all over training someone to learn the pharmaceutical industry.

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The Importance of Customer Feedback

Written by Jim Otto

Collecting customer feedback is an important way to gauge whether the efforts you are putting into growing your small business are really meeting the needs and expectations of your customers. Following are some different ways that customer feedback might be gained, as well as some helpful tips and useful questions you might want to ask.

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