I ran into the owner of a wonderful cafe here in my local town earlier this week. I remember on her web site some time ago she was in the process of franchising and I asked her the question “hows it going on the franchising front?”. Her reply “I’ve decided to put the whole thing on hold as can’t find anyone passionate enough about this business”, WOW I wish I had a $ for every time I heard that one!!
The essence of growth and duplication in any business is enrolling the best possible people to come on the journey with you. I bet if I delved into this a little more I would hear things like “if only I could get my team on the same page as me”, to which I usually question – “so show me the page, where is your one page????” Verne Harnish taught me this little gem…..
To find (read enrol) the best people on your journey, you have to be clear on what that journey is, what is you end point, what does your business look like when it is finished, is your story inspiring enough to hit peoples hot buttons.
Pepsi has a vision statement that is summed up in two simple words – CRUSH COKE!! This inspires some to take the challenge and join the business. ActionCOACH has a 5 word vision – World abundance through business re-education, that inspired me to join the journey with Brad Sugars. My personal vision is to be the difference maker in business owners lives.
You get the staff you deserve! If your vision is not strong enough neither will your people be. Sure you might stumble across some great people without one, however they are unlikely to stay. You just happen to have helped them along their journey of life and then they followed someone else’s vision that might have been stronger.
So – in order to franchise you must first have a strong vision, one that sings out to the world and enrols great people to join you on the journey. Of course you cannot survive on a vision, your business model must also be fairly tight, the point I wanted to make was around the people side of things….