Jeff Dudan | On the Homefront with Jeff Dudan #58

Hey, everybody, Jeff Duden here, CEO of Homefront Brands. Oftentimes, business owners come to me and say, should my business be franchise? Well, I ask them a few questions. Number one, is a product or service delivered at the point of attack in a local market by human. If so, that could be a franchisable business. Number two, is there a. Are the transactions smaller and is there a large number of transactions creating complexity and creating the need for somebody in the local market to be quarterbacking that business like a service business or even a shop, retail, location, food location, something like that? Number three, speed to market. Is there some compelling reason why your business needs to be nationwide right now you have a differentiated offering. Have you come up with a new product? And maybe you don't have the capital to expand the network yourself and do it in local markets. Franchising is a great way to let other people take their time, energy and money and invest it in your idea and help you get traction and gain market share very, very quickly. Number four, brand awareness. Is it really important over time that customers know who you are and what your standards are and what your products and services are? When I'm driving down the street and if I know that I want a hamburger, I'm gonna pick from a franchise because I know exactly what I'm gonna get there. And if that's what I'm looking for, I'm gonna pull right in. That franchisee didn't have to do any advertising whatsoever to get me to pull in there because I was already familiar and aware of their brand. Another thing that many people don't think about is, is it a heavily regulated business or is it unregulated? Unregulated businesses with a lower barrier to entry are more likely to be a good fit for a franchise model because you don't have licensing requirements and restrictions that are going to delay your opening. Or maybe they're things like physician, it takes a long time to become a doctor, or some of these other trades and specialties. And so those don't lend themselves as easily to anybod coming in and being a franchisee inside of a business like that. And the last thing would be, you know, relatively small capital investment. You want asset light businesses that you're not going to have to plunk down millions and millions of dollars just to have the equipment to manufacture or to deliver or to provide the products or the services. So those are the things that would make your business likely to be a franchise. On the other side, if you have a small number of very large customers and a Very large buying cycle like jet airplane generally that doesn't make for a good franchise model. It's be hard for somebody to invest in that and to buy that. If the services or products can be delivered largely through the mail and centralized fulfillment, meaning you can use Amazon or you can use FedEx, you can use UPS or even the US mail to deliver the product, sell it on Etsy, you don't have to franchise that business because you can service your customers anywhere and there's really no human interaction required other than any customer service on the front end, which again can be centralized, no people required inside of that. Is it a heavily regulated business, as I mentioned before? So things that are heavily regulated, that are dangerous, that are expensive, that take a high level of skill, generally franchise systems need to be simple for people to operate. You don't want to franchise. Somebody has to like fly a jet airplane. So if the business is something that anybody can come in, get trained, do a lease and do a build out if they need to, but can be in business and can offer these products or services or without a lot of regulation that's going to slow them down, then good franchise. On the other hand, if there is a lot of regulation that's going to slow them down, then you know, maybe you should think about whether this is franchise and maybe why it's not been franchised already. And then the last thing would be is it really asset heavy? I mean is it are you having to buy bulldozers, tractors, manufacturing equipment, you know, millions and millions of dollars of stuff and if so, if that's the case, may not be a good fit for a franchise unless you can franchise out the delivery of the product or service that gets gener from the machinery that you have in a centralized location that could lend itself to be that While there are 72 categories of franchising in the United States, there are many, many non food franchises, but also non food franchises that are incredible fit for franchising. So if you have a service business, you want to get my opinion on it, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, just Jeff Duden or you can go to ww.dudenx.com and fill it out and fill a simple form there. We'll get the information here, our team will look at it, reach back out to you and let you know what we and of course if you're interested in learning more about what we do at Homefront Brands, HomefrontBrands.com is the place to go. And you can also join my Facebook group on Facebook Navigating Entrepreneurship with Jeff Duden. Join my monthly webinar and you can ask me those questions directly at any time. So hope that helps. Look forward to seeing you soon on all of our channels. Thanks for listening.