Rob Dorey: I'm here today with Tereza Murray from Business Success partners who specialises in the SME space with franchising small to medium sized businesses. Can you give us a sense of what sort of businesses are suitable to franchise?
Tereza Murray: I think any business in theory is franchisable as long as you can take the essence of that business and bottle it so somebody else can run it, then it's franchisable. I think if you're looking at your business in terms of if you want to franchise, it would be if you were looking for a growth strategy and you had concerns about setting up another location and putting in a manager and have them run it. Are they going to run it the same way that you would, are they going to run it with the same passion and enthusiasm for the brand as you do?
Rob: So what are the advantages of franchising? I can go and build two or three other operational stores in some other region, why would I consider franchising, what are the benefits to me?
Tereza: The biggest benefit of franchising is that you have owner operators that are passionate and have skin in the game running your business units. Unfortunately although there are great employees out there they they are the exception rather than the norm, so you immediately have somebody running that business with the same level of commitment and passion that you have.
Rob: So lets pretend I'm the business owner. What's the process, what do I go through, what do you do, how long does it take, that sort of thing?
Tereza: The the whole process takes between six to eight weeks depending, and we would start with a series of discovery meetings where I am understanding the business and running through the different options for the business owner on how they might structure their franchise.
Rob: What is the most important thing for a business owner to set up a franchise?
Tereza: I think the important thing is that the business has really strong operating processes and procedures in place and the business doesn't necessarily have to have those documented. That is something that I quite often help businesses with is actually taking their day-to-day business operations and putting them into the operating manuals.
Rob: Tereza, what are the misconceptions about franchising and what sort of reasons do people put off the decision or the decision to inquire about franchising?
Tereza: The biggest misconception that I encounter is business owners believe that they're giving up control of their business and their brand, and it's actually the opposite. They will have far more control over their brand and how the business is run with franchisees than they would with employees.
Rob: If somebody's interested in pursuing franchising or having a discussion what's the next step?
Tereza: They should get in touch with me and I'm happy to sit down with them and have a good chat about their business and we go right into the nitty-gritty of what happens on a daily basis, a little bit more into the structure of the business and how it runs and then I will start to get a feel for how ready it is to franchise. I'm always very honest with with clients about what needs to happen before we get to that stage and push go.
Rob: If I am convinced that I'm probably not ready and say I choose to have a discussion with you anyways, what sort of things might I need to do to get my business ready?
Tereza: The conversation would probably be around solidifying some of your internal processes around your operations and and the day-to-day running of the business. If you have something that you're doing on the fly and you don't really have a formula in place for that then there's going to be quite a bit of work to do so for a business owner, it's about sitting down and going "what do I do every day, what is making my business successful?", and trying to actually document that and then from there we can start to develop your operating systems and that becomes a very big part of a franchise system are the operating manuals which are the essence of the business itself.
Rob: I guess in the work that I do we stumble into businesses that aren't really performing that well but maybe have a lot of potential, how would that conversation go?
Tereza: One of the biggest things that Business Success Partners does is work with business owners to improve their business and to help them achieve overall objectives so we can actually be part of that journey at the front end before you even get to the franchising space and help you get your business to a position both financially and operationally where it's ready to franchise.
