When you are looking to start your own business, become your own boss and you have decided that you want to buy a franchise, the next question is, which franchise?
Well, that is like asking ‘how long is a piece of string?’…..
In Australia, there are over 1200 franchise systems in operation, so you have plenty of choices that is for sure!
So ask yourself some basic questions like:
- What type of business would I like to own?
- Service or Product based business?
- Outdoors or Indoors?
- Do I want a ‘shop’ or would I like to be ‘mobile’ or have a home-based business?
- Do I want fixed working hours or a flexible schedule (lifestyle)?
This will lead you to the type of business or industry – such as a café or a business service or something mobile like Gutter-Vac.
Then you want to ask some questions about the franchisor and the franchise system?
- How long have they been in operation?
- Can I talk to the franchisor or CEO?
- Can I talk to the founder?
- How many franchisees do they currently have?
- What sort of and how much support will they give me?
- Do I like the ‘people’ of the business? (Franchisor, franchisees and the head office team)
- What are their values as a business? How do they treat their franchisees?
This will allow you to narrow down to maybe just a couple of franchise groups – perhaps just 2 or 3 that meet your requirements and what you are looking for.
Next, go meet them. Talk to the franchisor, talk to the franchisees. Maybe you can even have an ‘in-house’ experience – or as we say ‘go out on the tools’ for a day.
Once you have done this, you will then know how it ‘feels’. Does it feel like something you want to be a part of, the way you want to build your business, spend your working days?
In the end, it is a leap of faith to get into a business – even with a franchise with proven systems and results – so take the time to firstly narrow down your choice to the type of work or type of industry you are looking for and then look at all those ‘feeling’ items and see what fits you best.
Maybe you might just discover that Gutter-Vac is the business you have been searching for.
Gutter-Vac . . . We vacuum clean gutters, right?
You would think that this is what we do wouldn’t you? In fact, we do this, but there is something that many people miss when looking at Gutter-Vac.
Gutter-Vac is actually a customer service business that happens to vacuum clean gutters.
We take a lot of time and effort to ensure that our customer service is top notch. Whether that be for an elderly couple who wants someone to efficiently and effectively clean their gutters for them, taking away all the debris, not making a mess and to do this in a safe way so that they don’t fall from a ladder if they attempted to do it themselves. But what else do they want? They want someone to say hello, give a little chit-chat, treat them with respect.
What about our big commercial customers? Well, they too want their gutters cleaned in an efficient and effective way, taking away all the debris, not making a mess, but the big one is, they want it done by people who are fully trained to work at heights, are fully insured to work at heights and use all the correct safety gear to work at heights. They want peace of mind that the work will be done, but in a way that will not leave them liable.
What about our property managers, body corporate managers and real estate agents? Yes, they want the gutters cleaned for their clients’ properties in an efficient and effective way, taking away all the debris, not making a mess, done in a safe way. What they love is that we do a roof and gutter report for them to understand the condition of the property. This helps them. They also love that we don’t take up a lot of their time and are easy to deal with. When we say we will be there, we are there.
So in the end, we do more than gutter cleaning – we do customer service… great customer service!
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