Research steps in the final component of our presentation today. We’re going to now talk about the different aspects of research that you will want to engage in.

As we shared with you early in our presentation today, one of FranNet’s primary purposes is to match well-suited franchisee prospects with well-suited franchisors. We’re responsible for a two-way match. Once we’ve helped you build your business model, we pre-screen any franchisors that we’re going to introduce to our clients—skills, criteria, and standards. We also pre-screen our clients to the franchisor’s desired criteria and standards. This two-way matching and pre-screening process then enables us to only introduce the most relevant franchise options.

One of the most important services we can provide is building the clarity around the business model we just spent so much time on. Once we’ve done that and educated our client on what those criteria are, we then educate the client on specific ranges of franchise options that will likely be the best fit for them.

We then introduce them to the most appropriate, well-matched franchises. Then, usually over a 12- to 16-week research process, we guide our clients through every aspect of research so that they can make an informed, educated, and defensible yes-or-no decision.

We don’t sell franchises. Instead, we operate under a very similar business model to that of an executive recruiter. Our services are always at no cost to you, the franchise buyer, and that’s because we get paid by the franchisor only on successful matches—after you’ve bought the franchise. And here’s the neat thing about it: the franchisor is not allowed to charge you a penny more for using our services than if you had gone directly to them.

So let’s get into the FranNet research process. First, we start with you. Let’s face it—business ownership isn’t right for everybody. So the first stage is learning more about you: What are your goals, your timing, and the criteria that you’re thinking about right now? From there, we get you to complete our online Personal Franchise Assessment, or PFA.

The PFA is our proprietary profiling tool that will begin to help us assess together if business ownership is a viable option for you, and also which businesses might begin to look like the most suitable. After completing the PFA, you’ll get a detailed report of your profile, and we’ll set up a phone discussion with you to walk you through the results and answer whichever questions you have at this stage.

Once we’ve reviewed your PFA results with you and we mutually decide that it makes sense to work together, the next stage will be one of the most critical parts of the entire process—and that’s working with you to build your ideal business model in significant detail.

This business modeling process is so important because it creates the foundation on which you assess every opportunity. As we just finished describing in the “Finding Your Optimum Match” section, we’ll be working with you through things like what resources you can and will be able to bring to bear, time commitment to the business, the money you have available, the amount you’re comfortable borrowing, and what are the transferable, leverageable skills.

You and we absolutely need to understand what your financial and lifestyle goals are, including a look at the annual earnings that you want to generate and what kind of work-life balance and control you want to have.

Again, as I just finished describing in the “Finding Your Optimum Match” section, we’re going to look at your short-term (0 to 2 years), your mid-range (3 to 7 or 10 years), your long-range, and your exit strategy goals. Because there’s so much that goes into building your ideal business model, and because most people have never bought a business or done this before, they struggle with it—and that’s why we exist.

To emphasize a point, I’m going to share a real estate example. Think of it this way: if you were a first-time homebuyer, would you look for open houses, drive around the neighborhoods and see what’s out there? Or would you want to engage the services of a professional real estate agent—ideally one who focuses on first-time homebuyers—because they know what questions to ask to help you identify what your criteria and needs are going to be?

The bottom line is that you and we need to have an absolutely crystal-clear understanding of what you want the business to do for you personally. Only after we’ve worked with you to fully create your ideal business model are we then in a position to make recommendations for specific franchise options.

I usually introduce between three or four options, but that depends on your criteria. In some cases, we are able to make the introduction in the same meeting. In some cases, we have to book a second meeting, usually within two to three days.

Once you’ve been introduced to these businesses, only then are you ready to begin your research. Because running a franchise is all about running a process-based business, we recommend that you use a process to research the franchise. Because if you can’t follow a process in researching the business, it’s a good identifier that you’re going to struggle with running a process-based business—and therefore, franchising might not be the right place for you.

The next part of the process is engaging with franchisors and then engaging with franchisees. Let me first talk about engaging with franchisors. You’ll want to talk with the franchisor as much as you can about their business model. This usually takes several calls, and each franchisor has a different way of presenting all of their information.

Some of the things you’ll want to understand are: What is their market opportunity? What are the systems and processes that they have? What is the initial training and the ongoing coaching? What are the critical roles that the franchisor says are required to drive success in the business?

Please remember that you’re gaining all of this information from the franchisor’s perspective first, but that doesn’t paint a complete picture.

The next part of the process is to engage with existing franchisees. Most industry experts will agree that talking to existing franchisees—or what’s known as validation—is the most important part of your research. This phase often takes longer than people expect. While you might want to get things done fairly quickly, you’re waiting for the franchisees of the existing businesses to respond, and that doesn’t always happen as quickly as you’d like. Often the greater delay is all the time it takes in trying to get these calls scheduled with these existing owners—these very busy people.

When you are talking with those existing franchisees, please remember that in most cases you only have 20 to 40 minutes of their time to ask the questions that you want to get answered. Please remember that the purpose of these calls with the existing owners is not to learn what the business model is—you should have gotten a clear picture of that when you were going through your discussions with the franchisor. Instead, the purpose of these validation calls is to get the existing franchisees’ perceptions and experiences on a number of different components.

For instance, how well is the system working? More importantly, what are their perspectives—the existing franchisees’ perspectives—on what the critical roles are that it takes to drive success in the business? How well does that align with what you heard from the franchisor? Also, what are the financial and lifestyle returns that the existing franchisees are realizing? And even more importantly than that, what is the work it takes specifically in order to be able to achieve those roles?

You’ve got to be asking yourself when you’re gathering this information: How well can I do what those owners have done, and how closely do those outcomes enable me to get to my financial and lifestyle goals?

If there’s any area that my clients find more frustrating than anything, it’s getting financial information from the franchisees. Let’s face it—that information is private information, and there’s no obligation for an existing franchisee to share that with anybody. So the way you ask the questions is going to determine how much information you get.

It’s really important that we coach you on the right way to ask the questions to get as much financial information as possible. As all of this information starts to combine to form a more complete picture, don’t be surprised that the information you hear from the franchisees about roles and critical activities isn’t completely aligned with the franchisor. This is exactly what you’re trying to figure out.

Essentially, by getting all this information and bringing it together—from the franchisor’s perspective and then from the franchisees’ perspective—how well is that rubber hitting the road? Is what the franchisor is telling you aligning well and being realized well by what the franchisees are experiencing? And as I’ve said several times throughout this presentation: How well can you do the work that’s required to achieve the level of success that the franchisees are achieving—in other words, to get to your goals?

So that’s the four-stage FranNet research process. Now, just because we’ve introduced you to the specific franchises, that doesn’t mean that we’re going to introduce them and then off you go. One of the most important roles that we have is to guide you on an ongoing basis through every aspect of this journey called franchise research. This includes regularly scheduled weekly calls to guide you through every step of the research.

Most clients take 10 to 12 weeks to complete all of the research, and most of our clients are dedicating between 10 and 15 hours per week to do the research. We do have clients who turn research into a full-time job, and those clients are often taking only 6 to 8 weeks to get all of their research done.

So that covers the entire FranNet research process and how we help you through it.

As we conclude this presentation, you should now have a much better sense of what this journey called franchise research looks like—and even if it’s possibly the right fit for you. As we’ve shared with you, we do not sell franchises. Instead, we help you to gather as complete a picture of information as you can, and then we introduce specific, well-suited options and guide you through every aspect in the research so that in the end, you can make one of two informed decisions:

“Yes, this is the right business for me—here’s why. And if it’s a yes, it’s also ‘here’s how I’m going to be able to run it.’”

Or: “No, it’s not the right business for me—here’s why.”

Our business is to help you get to the “here’s why.” No is an acceptable answer.

This concludes the video series on business ownership and franchise ownership. I’d like to thank you for investing your time with us today.

As we mentioned at the beginning of the series, FranNet is represented right across Canada. If you’re interested in utilizing FranNet services to help you find your optimum franchise, then we invite you to go to www.frannet.com and click on the “Consultants” button. That will identify your local representative. Or, if you prefer, you can click on the “Free Readiness Assessment” button and complete that. That will take you about 20 minutes or so and will be routed to the FranNet consultant, who will reach out to you personally.

Once again, thank you for your time, and we hope to have the opportunity to work with you.

Here’s wishing you continued success.