Your Ego May Be Your Worst Enemy

Is your ego stopping you from considering a franchise? Or maybe it’s driving you to the wrong one?

Let’s look at the two biggest mistakes aspiring business owners make that are caused by their ego.

Ego Driven Mistakes:

Mistake 1

They don’t consider franchising because they’re smarter than Joe Schmoe who runs the lawn scaping company they use.

"Why do I need a franchise if I can just do the same thing under my own name?

My response: “Ok, then go do it.”

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A banker would never claim they could perform surgery because of all their experience, so why do people with a lot of domain specific experience think they can start a successful business tomorrow?

Because of their ego. They see less educated and less polished people with wildly successful businesses and say there is no way he can do it but I can’t. What they are missing are the years that person toiled to get where they are now, the classes they took from the school of hard knocks, and experience gained from 1,000s of sales calls and jobs completed.

Many non-business owners have only ever had experience in a single business vertical- sales, operations, marketing, HR, finance, management, or technology. So they see what a regular business owner does and thinks, that isn’t that hard. But they are missing all the other pieces that go into running a successful business at scale. If they do start a business, they usually realize too late what they are missing and have a high chance of running out of capital before they have time to fill those gaps. A franchise has all of that figured out on day 1 and just hand it to you.

Let’s say you are humble enough to accept you need help in business and are open to considering a franchise. Don’t go on to make mistake number 2.

Mistake 2:

Franchise candidates say they are “entrepreneurial” and they want to “have a say” in the franchise. This leads them to focus on emerging brands.

Another huge mistake, mostly driven by ego.

If you don’t have experience in business, what makes you think you can give constructive feedback with 6-12 months of experience to someone who has been doing this for decades?

If an emerging brand doesn’t have decades of experience in the business model they are franchising, you shouldn’t even consider it. At that point, you may as well just do it yourself.

If they do have decades of experience, then you don’t know more than they do and you should spend the first few years following the plan and learning as much as you can. You should not be trying to change things.

On top of all this, if you don’t have business experience then you need a franchise with an extremely strong training and support team who have proven themselves capable of turning new business owners into successful business owners. Until they have done this with 100 people, they are not proven. All because the founders ran a great business for themselves does not mean they can teach others to do it.

You are getting into franchising to reduce risk so why are you buying a brand new brand? Let people with business or domain experience buy that franchise. Once it has worked 100 times, then you can get into it. This isn’t like a tech startup. Being number 200 in franchising actually makes your chances of success increase and being number 1000 makes your chances go up in even more.

Don’t Let Your Ego Win

Objectively Evaluate Your Experience

Do not let your ego win. Be humble enough to say “I don’t have business experience and I don’t have experience in this particular industry. I am going to follow the franchise’s systems and playbook 100%, without deviation, for several years. I am not going to buy into an emerging brand to show how smart I am. I am going to buy into something that has worked for hundreds of people before me.”

All you have to do is hit singles and doubles in franchising. Once you do it once, you can do it 3 times. Once you do it 3 times, you can do it 30. Once you do it 30… well, you get it. Then you can have a mini-empire that is reliable and makes the kind of cash flow you have always wanted. That is the power of franchising. It isn’t sexy, but it can give you the life you always desired.

Want help finding a proven franchise? Send me a message and let’s talk.

Or you can go to the Tracer Franchising website and take the free 90 minute course.