The Real Franchise – Ep35 – What Support Should You Expect from a Franchisor?

Rhiannon Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Real Franchise, a video series designed to deliver real information, real answers, and real insights into franchising. The series is brought to you by James HomeServices Australia. I’m the CEO and Justin is one of our owners and our head of new businesses. Together, we tackle all of the big topics completely unscripted, unplanned and unfiltered.

No sales, no fluff. We just give you information straight up. Today’s topic is one that has been inspired by an email that I recently received from Inside Franchise Business. Now they are a network that is designed to, give people looking into franchising lots of really helpful resources, guidance, support on trying to make the right decision about whether franchising, franchising is a good thing for them in their situation or not.

They are often really helpful at telling both sides of the story, and they’re very pro small business and pro putting information in the hands of potential franchisees so that they feel well equipped to make the right decision. And they send out, regular newsletters with lots of helpful resources and articles. So if you’re genuinely thinking about starting a franchise business and you haven’t heard of these guys, go look them up.

Sign up to their newsletter. Because I send out some really good stuff. It’s inside franchise business. The email that I received, at the end of last week was it had an article attached, which was four ways for you to know that your franchisor is providing good support. What does good support look like in a franchise network? And this article talked about four really distinctive areas that you should be looking into.

And making sure that the franchise network you’re considering joining really does deliver in these four areas. However, here’s the kicker the article places the onus on you to be doing your due diligence and asking based questions of the franchise networks, which is 100% correct. You need to do your due diligence. But in true James fashion, we thought, we’re not gonna wait for you guys to ask us these questions.

Why don’t we just answer them in this series and pop it up for anybody to view at any time? So Justin, that’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about what are the four things that inside franchise business recently identified as being, indicators that a franchisor is providing good support. Now, the first one is transparency and disclosure.

Now this is kind of a I kind of need to give some context to this. Franchising is regulated. And by that it means that we have a rule book that the Australian government has set for our industry about how we behave. One of the rules is that there’s a document that we must send to any person who enters into or receives a draft franchise agreement from us.

It’s called a disclosure document, and the disclosure document gives that potential franchisee basically our entire business model in one document. And also lots of information about who we are, how we operate, what we do, how the model operates, and also past and present franchisees. So just in that first point is all about the franchise. All must give this disclosure document.

Can you walk us through why that is so important, and can you also walk us through whether we do that or not?

Justin Yes. Well, that’s answer the last question. Obviously it’s it’s regulated by law. So we are by the law, obviously. And the disclosure document. Yeah, it’s set like literally even the font size on some pieces is regulated to whether it’s got to be bold and on bold. And font and all of that. So it’s a very specific document. So you can compare apples for apples.

And it does. It covers everything in my opinion. There’s too much information because I find what I walk people through this every week, and so many people get bogged down and don’t actually read all the details in the disclosure documents. I for anyone looking at a franchise. Yeah, get a disclosure document, go through it. Because the other thing it highlights is all the costs and all the costs that you may incur.

And one of the comments that you’ll see on social media about franchises is they didn’t tell me about certain costs. Now, you know, yes, we’re very transparent. We’re going to, I’m sure, talk about that in a second, because that’s, one of the comments a bit that was in that first point that you just read out. So we’re very transparent, but others may not be so transparent.

And so in your disclosure document, you’re going to find every fee, every potential fee and every operating cost and potential operating cost you may have in that business model. And so it’s there’s things in there you might not have thought of. And the relevant franchise may not have thought of mentioning through your inquiry process. So it just it’s just all in there.

There’s we can’t, not put everything in it. You know, for example, the amount of money spent on marketing is this must be disclosed. And like you said, past and present franchisees and their contact details, are in there as well.

Rhiannon So that’s a good point, Justin. We we do have, information in there. It’s it’s regulated. We must include information. We must include a list of all our current business owners. We must also include information on business owners. Anybody who has ceased to operate their business in the last three financial years. Now, space to operate can mean lots of things.

They sold the business, they chose to exit the network. So anybody that simply that was operating a business and, and is no longer their personal details are in there as well. Although I will say that changes came in only a few months ago, that meant that people can actually now choose not to have their details disclosed in there.

And we are complying with those, those, those new rights that have been brought in. But why? Why is it that we have to put in, past and present franchises and to what advantage of a potential inquiry is that? What if you were inquiring on a franchised network? What would you do with that information? What should you be doing with that information?

Justin Talking to people? Yeah. I mean, that’s what to me it’s all about. And, you know, you get let’s say let’s you go into a workplace and there might be 20 people talk in that workplace. There’ll be some people in that workplace that are really happy. There’ll be some that aren’t so happy. And often it’s very apparent, with individuals why they’re not happy.

You know, they might be personality things or unrealistic expectations, right. Versus, you know, the old 80/20 rule, 80% of people will be, you know, love their boss or you know, great workplace is such a great place. And then you get a mixed message, you know, you need to if you just speak to 1 or 2 people, you could get a warped view.

One way or the other. You know, and one of the things we do through our process, sort of jumping to the transparency side, is we actually connect you with as many franchisees as you wish to physically, talk to, and you also get everyone’s number. I mean, we’re totally transparent on our website is every single franchisees phone number.

So anyone watching this, you can jump on the website. Now go to locations tab and you can read the web page, get the phone number of anyone in an organization. I call

Rhiannon And you’ve had that before, right? You’ve had people who have inquired with you and in the first phone call that you’re having with them, they’re already telling you all the people that they’ve talked to in our network already.

Justin All the time a guy last night I met with, from Sydney, and he was stunned. He’s like, what? Oh, yeah, I see all these phone numbers. So what I can call any of them and oh, what if they’re not? I might speak to someone who’s not happy and I’m like, that’s fine. You know, do your due diligence.

That’s why it’s set up. It’s also there, obviously, for customers to be able to ring people, search their local area and ring and so if you do joining a network, yeah, you’ll have your own web page and, your phone number will be there for clients to access and search their area and you’ll come up, that sort of thing.

So yeah, transparency and and it’s all about aiding you in your due diligence, so that you can speak to people. Yeah.

Rhiannon So I think, I think we well and truly take that first box, of being transparent. And do we comply with the regulation of our industry in making sure that we, keep our disclosure document up to date and that we send it out to everybody who gets to the point of requesting a draft franchise agreement from us.

I mean, this also doesn’t happen very often, but if somebody also, earlier in that information process did actually request the disclosure document to us, we would send it to them, at any time, even if they weren’t at the point of a franchise agreement, we would still send it out because we have nothing to hide. And one of our core values is transparency.

We try, I mean, when living that value out, every time we jump on here and we do one of these videos and we talk about the sorts of things that most just don’t ever go near, you know, because it’s a tricky conversation or it’s hard or, you know, it’s, you know, it’s not the answer that most people want to hear, but we talk about it anyway, and that’s us trying to live out that value of transparency.

So so did that first one. Yes, I really am quite comfortable that we we are doing both of those things very well. The I’m just going to pull up that email. The second point that they raised that you should be looking for in a franchise or or franchise network is a comprehensive initial training program.

Justin Yep.

Rhiannon So, Justin, do you want to explain, firstly what is an initial training program. And then we move into a discussion about what we do and we’ll share some more information about that level of support that our network provides.

Justin Yeah. Yeah. It is so critical. Like we get comments, as you know, on our Facebook page, running a low knowing business. How hard can it be? It’s just cutting grass was one of the comments I saw. And and I’m sorry, but that just shows a lack of knowledge in running a business. You know, if people, if you’re looking for a good book to read, anyone listening the image great book talks about, someone can have a lot of technical skill.

You can be the best mechanic in the world and go bust in our business. And so the importance of good training needs to cover a whole range of things. So in James, we share an essential information session, how there’s three parts to the training that we provide. The third part is the ongoing training, which is something that in that email, they talk about that.

Yes. Make sure the franchise gives you the initial technical, but do they give you business development training? And to me, and I say this to everyone that I take through the information session, if anyone asks me the one area that we excel in better than anyone in our industry, I believe it’s the support. One of the ways we support people is we employ business coaches.

All of our business coaches at the moment, as you know, have had a business with us for more than five years. They’ve all sold their business. Got, you know, good money for their business. And we didn’t want to lose their skills. So we have, employed them to work with people starting out. And so if you do join us, the third part of the training is you will have one of these business coaches working with you for as long as you’re with us.

And, you know, in the beginning, sometimes it’s even every day that they’re catching up with you and as your business develops, what they’re working with you on obviously changes. You know, in the beginning, it’s just helping you get the ball rolling, get income coming in. But down the track it will be, you know, how to employ staff and manage staff and teams and, and working through the numbers of when to start putting stuff on and all that supports all there all those hard things that people stumble along in the dark when they’re on their own.

But the first two parts of the training happen before you kick off your business. First part is, is what we call our eight steps training, which is, it’s all on the business side of a business. So we all of our franchises run on an eight step business system. So day one and day two of that training, we take people through our eight steps.

And these steps they’ll be using every day. Day three. Basically we teach them how to use the computer system that we’ve spent so much money on. So that takes care of, you know, all the leads come through the quoting and then turning quotes into invoices and scheduling. So all of that’s in that first part of the training. And that’s all done in the first week, when you kick off your business, the second part of the training, which is something that I talk about in the email, is you want that business training, but obviously you also need practical training, and our training’s all face to face.

It’s not just on a zoom meeting or, you know, you’re not flowing down to a capital city to sit in a room and just be, spoken to. The second part of the training is practical. You’ll actually go out and work with one of our franchisees in their business for four days, and that business owner is also going through one of our is one of our national trainers.

So they’ve gone through training. And so not only will they show you, the efficiencies, you know, of tips and tricks to do the quality job, but quickly, they’ll also teach you, you know, how to use the products and importantly, how to quote all sorts of different jobs and that quoting system. So it’s a really full two weeks, like you’ve come back from that, brain overload.

Yeah, yeah. And then the coach picks you up from there and working with you, getting your income and business rolling. So yeah.

Rhiannon The, you know, the email says make sure that the franchisor has an initial training program. We have several we have a plethora of different elements to this. And you’ve just talked us through three, you know, the first eight steps training, which is business management. It’s coding. It’s marketing. It’s customer. It’s customer service. It’s delivering a high quality job.

It’s building rapport. It’s listening skills. It’s it’s all the stuff that that Facebook comment that you referenced initially. It’s everything that that person didn’t realize you need when you run your own business. And I wonder if that person, perhaps, you know, is an employee and, and, and just simply is of the understanding that as long as you can do the job, you could run a business, but that eight steps business management training is that whole world of it’s just as important, if not more important, that we make sure you can run a business as well as in moving into the practical training, which is teaching you to do the job.

And then we move into the ongoing training. And initially in your first 12 weeks of training, we have a very particular program that you automatically are granted access into when you start with us. It’s called our Accelerated Startup Program, and the name gives it all the way. The sole goal of that program is that we accelerate your business’s start up as much as possible.

We truncate the learning process. We truncate that startup process. We truncate the tedious trying to figure it all out stuff. And we give you what you need to know when you need to know it. We give you real time and guidance, support, assistance. We personalize it to your own skill set. So we actually spend so much time identifying where you’re really strong already and building on that, but identifying the things that you need extra support.

We then making sure that those are the areas that we’re really focusing in on on those first few weeks so that we can try and get you up off the ground as quickly as possible. Our goal is that you reach your own personalized break even point within those first 12 weeks, and we don’t have a business in the last financial year.

That hasn’t gotten me. So we’re really passionate about this call. It’s the only goal or milestone that we actually set for you. Once you’re at your breakeven, we don’t set your goals for you. We hope to understand what your goals are and then we hope to get you there. But the Accelerated Startup program is us really putting out money where Memphis, when it comes to support there isn’t.

There just isn’t another franchise network offering a program. When you begin your business quite like ours that that everybody does initial training program. So everybody does the business management training and the practical training to a degree that’s standard. If you’re talking to a franchised network and they don’t offer those things run really fast in the opposite direction because we’re all doing that.

What no one is doing except for us is that accelerated startup program, and we’re really proud of it because it’s getting great results. So I think that, again, I mean, we’re totally biased, but we really are. We really are putting an awful lot of time and effort into developing training programs that get you started with confidence and that build your skills.

Justin Yeah.

Rhiannon So the third thing that, this email called out that you should be looking for is marketing support. And specifically they spoke about make sure that your franchisor is running social media campaigns on your behalf. And make sure that your franchisor is also marketing through other channels. So we’ll start with the social media campaigns. Justin, we run social media campaigns for our new starters.

Can you just give us a high level overview of what that looks like for a new business network?

Justin Yeah. So when anyone starts a big portion of the expense that we have is these campaigns. In fact, we basically take care of all the paid advertising that needs to be done in someone’s business. You know, yes, you can go and spend extra, but we’ve got an awesome marketing team and this is something that’s just I’m so proud of the progress that we’ve had here.

You know, I was just speaking to, we had three new businesses, as you know, kick off their first week last week in, in in Brisbane, all three of them. And, and I’ll speak to one of them last night she was sharing to people who are looking at James just saying. Look, it was my first week last week, you know, over the first few days, I had 11 leads generated off the advertising, and I’ve already converted eight of them to jobs and hoping to get more.

Yeah, exactly.

Rhiannon Oh, sorry. Good. Good on it. Oh, amazing.

Justin Yes. And she’s going, you know, I didn’t expect to earn money in my first week, but over, over a thousand I think she said so she was, you know, and that’s come out of that initial advertising, you know. Yeah. There’s things she does like and we’ll teach people, they wanted they training. We’ll take people through this course called 51 Ways to Generate Leads for Your Business.

And we’ve talked about this on previous podcasts, but, we do that paid stuff on social media, Facebook, that sort of thing that starts to get the ball rolling. Inquiry. And, and then you pick it up with the training and do the quotes and turn them into jobs like Sarah has done. In a way, you go.

Rhiannon Yeah. So we absolutely do run social media campaigns. They run across, Facebook as well as Google and Facebook, also through meta, through the parent company meta. Also is tied in with Instagram. So we’re advertising on Instagram for your business too. We have got that covered, and we’ve got that down the way that I normally explain this to people who are asking and inquiring about what we do from a marketing perspective is we work in partnership with you.

This is not a we will generate all of your work situation. That’s not how we work. There are there are other videos that we’ve done that talk specifically about why that is. And we’re very, very clear on our stance on that. This is a partnership. We are in business together and so we do stuff. You do stuff, we do everything that is paid online or tricky, that genuinely requires marketing expertise to deliver in a fashion that gets results right.

So we don’t expect you to learn how to do Google ads, or social media ads, or paid advertising on Facebook, or generate, you know, video content that will be shareable on Instagram. We don’t expect you to learn that. That’s how wheelhouse. That’s what we’ve gotten really, really good at. That’s what we do. But what we teach you to do, and also what this article doesn’t mention, right?

This article mentions that your franchise should be doing all of that stuff for you. You know, that’s your measure of good support. But I want to take this one step further, though. Somebody joining us, I want to take this one step further. And I actually want to show everybody what we do, which is we not only do that stuff for people, but we also take responsibility for teaching people how to fish for themselves.

Now, this is so strong in our core philosophy, which is teaching skills. We’re not a network that spoon feeds you. You know, we want to actually build your skills. So that post James laugh off to James. You have you’ve left us with more skills and you came to us with. And that allows you to do something even bigger and better next in your life.

So what’s really important to us is that we teach people how to fish for themselves. We teach them the critical marketing skills that are free for them to do, and it just cost them their time.

So things like, you know, dropping brochures, it sounds archaic, but it really, really works. You know, things like introducing yourself to, businesses in your area, real estate agents, those sorts of techniques. We, we teach all of those sorts of things so that you’re not just reliant on the leads that we send. You’re also in control of.

I mean, if, for example, Sarah Jane, who, you know, received 11 leads in her first week, converted eight of those to jobs if she wanted to do even more than that. And I know that she she’s out there also implementing the marketing techniques that we teach her because there is there’s one thing to, you know, sit back and wait for the lights to come to you.

It’s another thing to really take control. This is your business, right? And she’s done a similar job converting eight of those into work. But she’s got big goals. And I mean, if she’s already converting eight out of 11, she’s a bit of a go getter, which is fantastic, which means that she probably wants more than 11 lights per week.

And because we teach her those skills, she’s in control of going out and doing those things that we teach, and she can go and get more work. So it allows it gives her more scope to grow her business faster, if that’s what she chooses. So, you know, whilst the article makes it, the article highlights what is the franchise or doing.

But what I want to highlight is what we also do. We do the basics right. We do that. We do the stuff that they’re asking you to make sure we do. We do it all right. But what we also do is we go the extra mile and we teach you the techniques that you can implement yourself for free, that also generate leads.

That puts you truly in the driver’s seat to make sure that you can grow your business at the pace that you want it to grow. And you’re not just sitting back, relying on us, sending lights.

Justin Yeah. And that is so important. Like the people looking at a franchise, if you’re talking to a franchise and they’re bragging it, they send you all the work. You don’t have to do anything that sounds great, but you should be extremely concerned because that means from a business or risk management point of view, you were totally dependent on them feeding you.

And if they’re not doing a good job at that, you starve, not them. You stuff and like I said, I’m not going to mention other networks names that have different business model. Right. But that particular business sends a lot of people in their area, leads. And then when they start a new business owner, all the leads go to the new business owner first.

So if you’re there, all of a sudden you’re and you’ve been just sitting there relying on being fed, all of a sudden you’re getting nothing. And if you don’t know how to grow your own business, you’re in a real bad place. And we don’t operate that way. We do all the paid stuff, but it’s like you said, it’s a team.

We’re in the boat together. We’re working hard to generate, you know, the work together.

Rhiannon Yeah, definitely. And the beauty of what we do also is that because we teach our business owners the on the ground stuff, you know, they drive their signed vehicles around, they introducing themselves into businesses that they’re going along to networking events. If, if that’s, you know, something that they choose to do as part of the strategy, they’re dropping brochures, they’re talking to homeowners.

You know, we also teach people how to make Facebook actually work because a lot of people think, oh, yeah, I’ve started the business. I just start a Facebook page and the lights will roll in. Not the case. It doesn’t work like that. Facebook doesn’t work like that. The Facebook algorithm is not designed to actually help Facebook business pages by sending them layouts.

That’s not how Facebook algorithm works. Not not whatsoever. But so a lot of people, you know, fall into the trap of thinking, I just started Facebook business page. We actually teach you how to use Facebook in a way that does generate leads. And when you’re doing all those things in your local area, what you’re actually causing to happen is lots of people selling your business, lots of people then choosing to Google clean up.

When people start googling that, that’s when our ads really start popping up, because we’re sitting there in that online space waiting for traffic to indicate that they have an interest in the service that we’re advertising, particularly on Google. And the more people googling that, that, you know, they’ve seen Sarah Jane advertise, you know, promoting her business into Facebook, they’ve got a brochure in their little, their letterbox.

You know, she talked to a friend of a friend of theirs last week, and so they’re googling then that’s where our marketing actually starts to do the heavy lifting for you. And our ads show up in front of them and show up again. The beauty of retargeting. We show up several times, and then often times, you know that business owners work on the ground.

It is online that that converts to an actual inquiry, because people will always do a quick Google search. You know, they’re always looking at gcp’s Google business profiles, always looking for reviews. So it really is a genuine partnership. And you know that that article, what it what it highlights is how make sure the franchise is running online campaigns.

What I really want to highlight is we’re doing that right. That’s total businesses usual for us. What also is business for usual for us is that we’re teaching you how to do it yourself as well. Yeah. The the fourth thing that that article highlights as, an indicator that a franchise network provides great support is this does this support shift gears as your business shifts gears?

So what that means is, once you’ve gotten through the first few months, you know, once you’ve gotten through that startup phase, you know, you’ve you’ve perhaps you’ve built a reasonable, kind of customer base. You’ve built up your regulars list, you’ve got stability in the income that your business is generating week to week. You’re starting to feel really confident in your activities as a business owner once you get there.

Where to next? Does the franchise network have any way to actually help you grow beyond that point? Justin, I’m going to hand back to you. What do we do post that initial startup phase? What do we do?

Justin Okay, so the beginning is pretty much the same for everyone. We talked about the accelerated startup program. The first 12 weeks is very we have a very set things that we know. Any new starting business needs to work through to get the ball rolling. When we get to the end of 12 weeks, everybody’s unique, everybody’s different, different goals, different drives, different.

So like I said earlier, this is where the business coaches are working one on one with you, to help you take your business, develop your business, as they’re talking about in this article. So absolutely, we have a very customized focus. In fact, I don’t know of any other business network in this industry that employs coaches to work one on one to do those sorts of things that we do.

So, yeah, I would definitely say absolutely. We do it for more knowledge to better than anyone else, more personalized. You know, I think there’s businesses out there, obviously, that have or, you know, if you want to there might have a program to help you take on staff or whatever. Right. But we literally work one on one with you.

You know, you’ve developed a tool around. And so to work you go through the financials to work out when they can afford, when their business can afford to start putting the first people, employees on all that sort of stuff. That is real, one on one information that we take the time to do.

Rhiannon Yeah. Do you know what surprised me? Like, maybe 12 months ago, maybe 18 months ago, I did a podcast with a gentleman called Jackson Milano, also known as the Wealth Mentor. Great podcast series. If anybody is in small business, particularly the service sector, excellent practical guidance through his podcast. And I was talking to him about this, onboarding staff program that we can take our businesses through the minute that they say, hey, I’m thinking about staff is we’ve got this four stepped program that we take them through.

It’s like initial training all over again for somebody who’s wanting to plan for and begin that recruitment process for staff. And like you said, it, it covers thinking about staff in the bigger context of where’s the business going, what are the goals, what are we trying to achieve then that, approach is planning for staff from a financial perspective.

When’s the right time? How are we going to fund this? Do we need a savings plan so that we’ve got working capital to be able to fund it before we get going? Then it guides our franchisees through a recruitment process, and then it guide them through an onboarding and a management process. Because recruiting a staff member is just the beginning of your relationship with that staff member, and keeping great staff is all about building a long term working relationship.

And so we teach them all of this sort of stuff as well. And I was telling Jackson in the podcast interview that we were doing about this program like everybody did what we do right? And he was absolutely gobsmacked. And and he had experience as a franchisee in a service based industry franchise network previously. And he was gobsmacked.

He was like, my franchise. I didn’t do anything like this. They had nothing. You know, if you want to staff, you were completely on your own. Now, I don’t know whether what I don’t know what other networks do in this space. Right. And this this is exactly the point of this video. It’s to say ask questions of your franchisor and make sure that you ask questions that go beyond just those first few weeks in that startup phase.

It’s it’s ask questions that help you better understand the long term goals of your franchise or, and the long term support that they have to offer you. Because what I thought was business as usual that everybody did. Turns out maybe we are the only ones that offer a program quite like that. You know, it seems to be the way that we work.

We we really do spend a lot of time developing our resources and tools that help business owners get where they want to go. The only other thing, the only other point that I want to make, I think we’re pretty much there on this episode. Right? But the only other point that I want to make on that longer term support is that we spend a lot of time with our business owners, one on one, understanding what drives them, who they are, what goals they have for their business, what goals I have for their life.

Because we view your business as a vehicle to enable the goals in your life right now, people might know that business and life is separate. We keep it separate. No, it’s kind of not because your business is is fueling your life. Your business is. It is generating your income, your profit that’s fueling your life. And so if you’ve got goals in life, you know, you want to travel, you want to buy a house, you want that new car, you want to be able to take the kids camping every second weekend.

Those life goals can only be achieved if your business is being used as a vehicle to get you there. So we spend a lot of time with our business owners actually learning about what their life goals are so that we can help them build a business that specifically is going to get them exactly there. And every single pathway that we develop with a business owner in our network is different to the last one.

There’s no cookie cutter, there’s no template. It looks different every single time. We’re using the same tools and resources. But the output, you know, that that that the pathway that we’re getting out of that and that we’re guiding that franchisee on is is different. Every single time because it truly takes into account their own goals and also their own strengths and weaknesses and what’s possible for them.

So, you know, to that question of do, does your support switch gears? Once you get through the startup phase 100%, it completely switches gears and it can go. It’s like a choose your own adventure. It can go in any direction. You tell us where you want to go. We’ll figure out how our system can help you get there.

Justin Yeah.

Rhiannon So I think we wrap this episode right there. Thank you, as always, for joining us on another episode of The Real franchise. And we hope that you join us again very soon for the next one.

Watch Episode 35 below.