Starting a business can be very exciting, sometimes overwhelming and sometimes nerve-racking. With so much to do it can feel like you don’t know where to start, or where you’re going to finish.
We’ve seen an amazing amount of brilliant people join our network of amazing franchisees over the last 18 months to start their own travel businesses.
Something I talk to them all about in detail is the set-up of the business. When you join us you receive a comprehensive welcome pack outlining all of the steps you need to complete in order to launch your business. This ranges from business name and logo design, through your ABTA application to online marketing and registering your business.
Our Head of Franchise, Joanne Aldridge works with you helping you make your way through the list and you’ll work one to one with our Training Manager Chris Storey who’ll guide you through your one-to-one training.
Once your business is set up and you’re ready to launch, which takes between 12-14 weeks, you’ll be supported by our amazing support team, whose focus is to help our franchisees make more sales, through destination and supplier training to one-to-one coaching.
We’ve got you covered from the start, to break each step down and make this an enjoyable experience.
Something I always stress to people starting a business is that once your business is ready, focus on what’s important. Something that our director Richard Dixon said to me back in 2017 is “Don’t be busy getting ready”.
What he means by this is, once your business is ready to go…..GO!
It’s easy to fall into the trap of tweaking, and fine-tuning and have the feeling that you’re not quite ready. But at some point, you have to commit to actually focussing on what’s important – sales.
For every small adjustment, you feel you want to make on your website, social media pages, or stationary, ask yourself if it’s going to really make a difference? Or should you focus on speaking with your customers, building relationships?
Don’t prioritise endlessly looking through merchandise websites fine-tuning your personalised mouse pad before calling a customer back, or speaking with a supplier. It’s easily done.
I was speaking with someone considering joining us last week and said that one of the most important things to get in your head is to “Stop trying to look successful, just go and be successful. It’s you that makes that decision”
Did you know that most of the time, Mark Zuckerberg wears a grey t-shirt and black trousers? If you saw him on the street, you’d think he was Joe Bloggs. He’s focussing on what’s actually going to make a difference in his business, a business that has changed how we’ll communicate forever.
When he started Facebook, he didn’t spend days designing the ‘F’ we all recognise, because he understood that it was about the product, and his drive to push it that would make it fly or fail.
And yes, there is the controversy about who’s idea Facebook was. But there is always going to be someone that said ‘I thought of that first’, but Zuckerberg executed. Had Zuckerberg been involved in Myspace, I would say it would be worth a lot more than it is now.
If someone else had been the driving force behind Facebook, would it be anywhere close to the business it is today, or would it be another Myspace?
It’s easy to have the idea. But it’s those that execute that will be successful. Those people that really focus on what’s important that will build brilliant businesses.
Each of our franchisees has the potential to grow a business that’s bigger than our own. There is nothing stopping them. It’s not about the name, the logo, the stationary, how nice your office looks.
It’s about you. Your personality, vision, drive, and most importantly, EXECUTION.
