Recently, someone, I was pretty excited about working with emailed me saying this.

“After weighing things up, I have decided not to progress any further with the franchise.”

This is what followed…

First, I should explain this email came after they had attended a business planning meeting with us, where we give an honest assessment of them, their intended model and the financials.

Business planning meetings are not designed to sweep you off your feet with us telling you, this “time next year Rodney….”

We actually present very real, mostly worst-case scenarios and tell you where things can and do go wrong. With an honest forecast drawn up we ask you to look inwardly and ask if this is the right decision and time for you. 

So back to the email….

“After weighing things up I have decided not to progress any further with the franchise

“My decision is based purely on the fact that, if I’m honest with myself, I don’t think I would have enough time to dedicate to ensuring the business meets the standard I want from it from the outset, which would frustrate me. If I was already in a part-time role, I think I would have gone for it.

“In terms of the franchise itself, I think it’s great and think you guys are on to a winner. You and the team were very professional and set things out in a logical manner without any pressure which I was impressed by.”

So sometimes bad news is good news.

Would this business have succeeded if we had not been clear about what it takes? Probably not and we would’ve had an unhappy franchisee with an unsuccessful business, and why would we want that?

I was in that business planning meeting. Although he has all of the attributes to be very successful in this, we were completely honest with him about the time he was able to dedicate to the business to make it work.
That’s what our discovery and onboarding process is all about.

Honest and ethical.