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Lora Kellogg recently wrote an article for Forbes titled “Are You a Franchise Hero?”. In it, she drew from her professional career to point out what she believed to be common personality traits and best practices of successful franchises. We are continuing our series looking at each trait individually this week.
Love the Work
Occasionally, lazy employees believe that by opening their own business they’ll work less by “just being the boss” and start their own business doing something that they’ve either done on the side or as a hobby. But as anyone who has opened their own business can tell you, successful business owners work harder for themselves than they ever did for a manager. Since you are going to be pouring so much time into your business to make it successful, you need to make sure you love the work – either the actual tasks themselves or the end-result.
For example, at Fresh Coat, our most successful franchisees our passionate about customer service and take great pride in hearing their clients praise their employees, quality, and superiority to other contractors/businesses they have hired in the past. They work hard across multiple areas – marketing, employee verification…all the things that come with owning a Fresh Coat – because they are passionate about the result all those things yield. People who are satisfied with just hoping the customer liked the service they happened to render are much more likely to cut corners and experience burnout, which makes it fare less likely they’ll succeed. But for those who are passionate about their customers, that praise the customer gives them (and spreading that message to others) refuels their drive to keep going.
Another option would be to start a business that helps a particular group of people you care deeply about. Whether it’s senior care, a youth athletic business, or any other group of people you love to see benefitting from your business, there needs to be a passion that fuels you to keep going for your own business long after you would have wanted to leave a job where you worked for someone else.
Bottom line – love what you do. When you love what you do, the work itself provides more fuel to continue giving it your all, and hard work is essential to being a successful franchisee.