Being small doesn’t mean you can’t make a huge impression

It’s easy to look at the big players in your market with envy, and maybe even some jealousy, with their huge national networks, expert team, and their fancy top floor offices. But being small should be a positive, celebrated, and embraced, you haven’t fallen into any of the bad habits or traps, and you can do things better from the ground up moving forward.

1) One of the biggest differences between the early years as an expanding franchise network is the owner, you. The business is your baby, you built it, and so everything revolves around you and the small team you assembled. So, how does this turn into a positive, you ask? People will buy into you and the passion you have for your business success. For example, you’re never going to meet the owner and founder of a well-known burger chain, this will be handled by one of the many franchise recruiters. You on the other hand will be meeting them, shaking their hand and seeing the white of their eyes, and of course explaining why your amazing franchise opportunity deserves their attention. People will be excited by your enthusiasm and passion, use this to your advantage.

It’s in those earlier relationships where you can discover more about your franchise model and the support you will need to provide future entrepreneurs. If you listen to those early franchisees this will also help you in finding out what motivates and appeals to get the right prospects, and what their fear may be. Once you get to 30+ franchisees it becomes increasingly harder for you to have the close relationship you once had with the early ones.

2) Ever had to go through three different levels of authority to get something changed or done? This isn’t a problem for you and your small business, you are agile enough to get the simple stuff done. When a challenge arises, you can solve this problem quickly by responding to the challenge or by developing a new structure.

This doesn’t mean you should change everything as soon as a problem presents itself and you certainly should ask and listen to the advice and guidance of your team but with your finger on the pulse of your business it really allows you to react and adapt quicker than any of the bigger networks could.

3) Don’t get hung up over size, good, no, great things come in all sizes. You don’t need to compete with anyone, let alone some of the franchising giants we all know the name of. They all started some-where, they were all once a small fish. Remember you would rather be a successful franchisor with 30 happy franchisees making a profit than a franchisor trying to put out the fires of 100 unhappy franchisees, because trust me you don’t want the latter.