“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves–or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.” - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

The Need to Stay Objective in Your Franchise Search

We are going to take a look at why you must be objective through out the franchise research process. From the start when you are surmising your own strengths to the very end when you find a red flag in the nth hour of discovery.

1. Why You Need to Focus on Objectivity

Starting a business can be, and mostly likely will be, the best or worst decision of your life. I know this to be a fact, I have had two businesses and one of them was the worst decision of my life and one was the best (outside of marrying my wife).

Why is this? To make this business successful, you need to invest a large amount of capital, time, and energy into this business. If you over-estimate your abilities, if you rely on your gut and not demographic data to pick a territory, or if you ignore a red-flag at the end of discovery because you have allowed yourself to fall in love with the concept, you could end up with a franchise that is a poor match for you, a franchise that is a poor match for you area, or just a bad franchise in general.

Imagine waking up everyday being bad at the thing that is supposed to make you a multi-millionaire. Or you doing twice the work of another franchisee who is in a better territory than you, and getting half the results. Or, perhaps worst of all, you are doing everything right, it's a perfect match for you, but you still can't make any money because the franchise has flaws you ignored. Now you have something you can't sell, can't make money with, and can't easily quit because of the contract you signed.

2. Atlas Should Have Shrugged

Imagine you are Atlas, the Titan ordered to carry the world on his shoulders. The world's population doesn't care and probably don't even know you are there, toiling, struggling, suffering. And it's all for them. But here's the thing, you probably don't have to imagine. You are holding responsibilities, expectations, and fears on your shoulders that are causing you to suffer.

It is time to shrug the world off and start living for yourself!

If you are going to own a business, you are going to own it. Not your friends, not your former co-workers, not your parents, not anyone but you. This is for you. Your future customers don't care if you start the business or someone else does. You are beholden to no one.

If Carl Jung was right, and life is a battlefield, you need to clean the detritus in your mind from the battles long fought. You need to be totally free to admit your strengths, your weaknesses, your goals, who you want your customers to be, how much you want to make, and every other critical aspect to finding a franchise that is a good fit.

You need to shrug.

3. What stages in the process is objectivity most important?

1. Initial self-assessment: What are you good at and what do you want out of this franchise?

   • To find a franchise that is a good fit, you have to know your strengths. Put all pride aside and list our strengths and weaknesses. Since this is difficult for anyone, ask former coworkers, bosses, and customers.

   • The other aspect of fit is lifestyle and earnings. These two things usually go hand in hand because there is no business that is easy, doesn't take a ton of time, and makes millions. If there was, I wouldn't be doing this.

   • Ask yourself: Are you buying this business to replace some target income and control your life? Is this a side hustle that is meant to be fun and flexible? Is this a vehicle to build generational wealth? Is this a side hustle that lets you keep your job but can scale over the next 3 years to eventually replace your job? All are different goals that require different franchises.

2. Industry Selection: What industries meet the strict requirements that make them a "good industry"? It doesn't matter how much you may love playing your Ukulele, if it's a dying market you should do it on your days off. Unless you enjoy throwing money in a ukulele shaped pit, find a new industry.

3. Franchise Discovery: Don't fall in love with a franchise. You need an objective franchise scorecard to go through as you do your research. This scorecard will tell you whether this is a franchise that can help you hit your goals.

   1. The problem is, you may find a red flag that is supposed to kill the deal but you have been researching the franchise for 3 months. You really like the sales guy and the founder. You have spoken to franchisees doing well. You don't want to start over. You have fallen in love.

4. Your territory is the last piece of the puzzle. You need to do research outside of what the franchise tells you unless they have extremely sophisticated software and data analytics which is rare.

   1. You have to ask franchisees what are the key KPIs to look for in a territory and do the research into where you live to validate those KPIs exist. A 300,000 population is meaningless unless you know the demographics of that population and what they should look like to make your franchise successful.

   2. You also need to know the competitive landscape through mystery shopping competitors and talking to potential customers.

   3. If you are bad at research, pay an outside firm to do a feasibility study.

Side note: I have a very clear research process with a note taking tool to keep the information from becoming overwhelming. This helps you keep track of everything and make objective decisions, based on the research you have done, and not on gut feelings.

4. Write It Down

Humans are emotional animals, there is no getting around it. That means we need systems to help us make good decisions when our emotions are high. Luckily, making a system is easy for franchise research. Just write it down. Write down you goals, aspirations, and red flags. Write down what has to be in a franchise for you to start it. Write down what will be an acceptable territory before you do your research. Then once you have done your research, check if it meets your criteria. If not, its a no. If it does, move forward.

• If you don't do this, you will convince yourself that the answer you found is good enough because you have fallen in love with the franchise without even realizing it.

5. Once You Start the Franchise, Stop Being Objective (in some things)

Like having an ugly baby, you have to love and care for the business you chose, no matter what it turns out like. Once you start the franchise, this needs to be the best, most amazing, absolutely spectacular decision you ever made. You need to tell everyone how you are going to crush your enemies and see them driven before you, how you will rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears.

As a tweet I saw recently said, “insanity is a moat.” If you want insane results you need an insane amount of belief.

So once you have objectively chosen the business, it's time to get a little crazy.