Michael H. Seid
Franchise Management For Dummies®
Franchise Management For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017936488
ISBN 978-1-119-33728-7 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-33723-2 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-119-33714-0 (ePDF)
Foreword
by Robert Cresanti, CFE, President and Chief Executive Officer,
International Franchise Association
In your hands is a powerful book that holds essential keys to running a successful franchise business. It is crucial that prospective business owners and entrepreneurs understand how to properly navigate the franchise business model, and Franchise Management For Dummies by Michael Seid, CFE, and Joyce Mazero offers a step-by-step approach to establishing, operating, and expanding your franchise. I’ve had the privilege of working with Michael directly in his role as an active member of the International Franchise Association Board of Directors. When I first joined IFA, I was repeatedly told to first speak with Michael and read his writings about franchising, including the older title, Franchising For Dummies, published a decade ago. His insights served as foundational elements to understanding the business model. To this day, when I need advanced/master crafted counsel on franchise issues, Michael and Joyce are at the top of my “must call” list.
I cannot think of anyone more qualified than Michael and Joyce to write this much-needed book. It contains in-depth information on the history and framework of franchising, including the three types of franchising: traditional, business format, and social. There’s instruction on how to research and select the franchise concept that’s right for you and what to know when franchising to multiple units. It also includes sections on raising capital, choosing and managing locations, conducting legal due diligence, setting up supply chains, hiring, training, acquiring existing franchises, and mapping out exit strategies. There are even chapters for lovers of top ten lists, covering the ten keys to success and ten questions to ask before investing in a franchise.
Applicable to all levels of franchising from a single-unit franchisee to a large franchisor, Franchise Management For Dummies spans the entire life cycle of a franchise business from start to finish.
Franchising is about people and relationships, both inside and outside your organization, which is why the sections on working with fellow franchisors and franchisees is so important. Attracting and keeping customers is another one of my favorites. The lessons in this book go beyond franchising to address how to build relationships and design processes that are beneficial to everyone in the organization.
This book is essential reading for anyone who is seriously examining the road to small business ownership. Michael and Joyce’s deep knowledge of the franchising industry, easy-to-remember terminology, and thought-provoking format makes this the ultimate blueprint for franchising.
According to a January 2017 report from IFA’s Franchise Education and Research Foundation and IHS Markit Economics, employment growth in the franchise sector again outpaced the U.S. economy as a whole in 2016, building on a multi-year trend that is expected to continue in 2017. The franchise business model accounts for nearly 8 million jobs at more than 744,000 establishments in the U.S. alone. It offers a path to business ownership at a reduced risk by using existing brands and operational practices.
I’m grateful to Michael and the IFA Board of Directors for their dedication to protecting, enhancing, and promoting franchising. Franchise Management For Dummies is an extension of these efforts, as it clearly defines franchising, and in doing so lays out the compelling case why the business model is so important to the U.S. economy and throughout the world.
Introduction
Welcome to Franchise Management For Dummies! In our opinion, it’s not an overstatement to suggest that because of franchising, our lives have improved immensely. We now have access, on seemingly every street in the world, to an ever-growing expanse of high-quality branded products and services delivered consistently from location to location, regardless of where we shop. Franchising is also responsible for creating significant wealth in the United States and globally through local ownership of businesses supported by franchise systems. Each of those locally owned businesses creates jobs that drive our economic health.
Franchising has also become the most important and largest vehicle for training entrepreneurial skills, while providing the “first rung” on the career ladder for many young people. Just consider the sheer number of people whose first jobs were working at a branded franchised location. In addition, in the past few years the methods and standards found in commercial franchising are being applied to many of the health and economic problems in the developing world. Social franchising is a transformational way of delivering products and services to individuals and their families at the base of the economic pyramid (see Chapter 17 for more). Social franchising holds the promise of not just saving countless lives, but of transforming economies that have held people back from achieving a better life for themselves and their communities – not bad for a method intended to create wealth and bring quality products and services to consumers in the industrialized world!
Franchising is complex – no one book can provide a complete understanding of