Franchise law is a big part of what you must navigate as you prepare to make big money in franchising but it is worth the effort.

When you get ready to offer franchises of your prosperous business, it pays to be aware of franchise law issues that must be handled just right. When it gets right down to brass tacks, that franchise agreement that you sign with each and every bright eyed new franchise owner is a legal document.  The new franchise owner is committing to get in there and roll up his or her sleeves and make that franchise work.  That commitment includes a long term time frame where nobody cuts and runs, lots of hard work and big piles of money as well. And when money is involved in a business relationship, there are contracts.

There is no getting around that the government big shots have their noses in the middle of the franchising process in a big way. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Since the FTC has become more active in managing franchise law, the business phenomenon of franchising has taken off like a rocket ship. So clearly, for once the politicians are helping more than they are hurting.

That said, you should be on top of what is required by franchise law as you start to roll out your franchising business.  That advice is especially true when it comes to franchise documents such as the franchise disclosure statement. The all important franchise agreement is what makes everything legal and puts you and the new franchise owner in a legally binding relationship that some have suggested is even harder to get out of than a marriage license.

Finding the right franchise lawyer.

It makes sense that early in your discussions about launching into the world of franchising, you should get a good franchise lawyer involved.  Now you may think you have enough lawyers working with your company to recreate the OJ trial but think twice about simply calling in your general corporate attorneys to handle the complicated issues of franchise law and how to properly prepare franchising documents to strike the right kind of deal with future franchise partners.

Franchise law is a very specific area of government regulation. A lot of money is on the line when those franchise agreements kick in.  Not only do you call for some serious cash from the franchise owner in franchise fees, but when the big profits start to roll in, franchise royalties can fill up everybody’s’ bank accounts. To make sure that every franchise document you present to that future franchise owner is absolutely kosher, look for a franchise lawyer who specializes in this area of business legal representation.

The details of franchise law get even more complicated when you factor in franchise law for the state where the franchise buyer resides and does business. This can get pretty complicated if you begin to sell franchises in many states. The anti gets upped even more when you take your franchise empire international. You want a franchise lawyer who knows how to deal with the many layers of franchise law each step of the way. If you get that kind of help and you do all you can to understand franchise law in your daily dealings with your vast army of franchise owners, the results can be very rewarding indeed.

 

 

The franchise offering circular is required by law to be sent to your franchise applicants because it discloses everything they need to know before buying a franchise in your business.

The franchise offering circular is one of two or three franchise documents that make up the foundation of any great franchise relationship you will build.  When a potential franchise owner begins to poke around and sends up signals that he or she might be ready to buy into your business, the most important thing that can happen is to bring them up to speed with who you are, how they should get jump through the right hoops of buying a franchise and what life will be like when they are a full fledged member of your franchising community.

The franchise offering circular has gone through a lot of evolution in the last few years.  It is a standardized format because it is a document that you are required to send to a new franchise owner within the last few weeks before the deal is done. It is also a document that can get quite bulky because there are 23 different areas of disclosure that you have to cover when organizing a franchise offering circular to send it out to your future partners in money making.

That evolution has been so dramatic that the name of the franchise offering circular has gone through change as well. These days it is most commonly referred to as the franchise disclosure document or FDD for short.  The name change is worth tucking away in your memory banks because when the FTC begins to ask questions about your FDD so they can give you the nod to keep your franchise momentum going, it is good to know what they are talking about.

The name change from franchise offering circular to franchise discloser document puts the emphasis on an important word – disclosure.

For once, the government pencil pushers came up with a pretty good name change for the franchise offering circular.  For one thing, this disclosure document is far from a circular.  When we think of a circular, we think of that 5 page advertisement that you get from the grocery store that lists the specials of the week each Wednesday.  The franchise offering circular, or the FDD as we call it in these modern times will commonly get to a very impressive size.  Some complicated versions of the franchise offering circular have gotten as big as 500 pages long.

If you think putting together the franchise offering circular is a chore for you, think about the future franchise owner getting that encyclopedia of franchising in the mail.  As a disclosure document, they are expected to be aware of everything you are disclosing to them in the franchise offering circular. When they sit down to sign that franchise agreement and make this new partnership a formal affair, there is no saying they were not informed. So you make sure you pour your heart out in that franchise offering circular so if there are any questions or disputes once the franchise is open and money is being made, you can always point to that disclosure document and say, “Hey it is all right there in black and white for anyone to see.”

 

Look to your banking operations manual as a great template for training your bank employees in every aspect of their jobs.

You really do not need to look further than your banking operations manual to find the perfect resource for everything you need to train great bank employees. Whether you work at a branch or a bank franchise unit, that banking operations manual can be just as valuable as any other document you may have in the building. You can look at your franchise disclosure documents or any of the many other information resources you may have laying around and none of them will beat using a great operations manual to put together your training plan.

One of the challenges that new hires to your bank have is getting their arms around the many policies of the bank. Banking is nothing if not rich with policies and regulations enough to come out the ears of employees. That is why the banking operations manual must be a big part of that training program.  Even if you do not push the new trainees through every page of that document, showing them how to use it to tap into this gold mine of information about banking procedures can help the people who make your bank hum know where to go if they are not sure about what is ok and what is frowned on as they go about their daily duties.

Bank robbers don’t always show up with masks on and carrying guns.  There is enough creativity in how bad guys try to do bad things to get money out of banks to keep Hollywood making movies forever. But even more than that guard with a gun, your banking operations manual can arm every employee to know what to look for when it comes to dirty deeds about to be done. They can watch out for phony checks or forged currency because they were trained to become a crack team of crime busters through the knowledge that comes in the banking operations manual.

Taking the fear and loathing out of banking computer systems using your banking operations manual.

Even if your new employees are not phobic about computers, the systems that are used to be a good bank customer service representative take some getting used to. In every business in the world a good operations manual can smooth out the problems of getting employees up to speed on how to use your banking software systems.

If you are just putting together your bank training program for new employees, you can use the banking operations manual as the template for the format and content of that training.  Even if the document itself is a bit dry to read, by taking what is there and turning into exciting training materials, you know you have your feet planted in good banking policy while you use your training and showmanship skills to turn those recruits into great banking employees without killing off their enthusiasm for the job.

While the idea of using franchise document templates to save money is well known, there are better reasons to tap the power of these starter documents.

Are franchise document templates a good way to save money on high priced lawyers when getting ready to franchise your company? The answer is yes and no.  It is entirely true that you can access some outstanding franchise document templates online that have been prepared by real franchise lawyers.  This is a perfect way to get started on your grand quest to expand your empire quickly through franchising. Because the paths of franchising have been worn down nicely by others who have succeeded in making huge fortunes through franchises, there are plenty of formats of franchise document templates available for you to use to get ideas for how to create your own franchise documents.

The reason we also said the answer is no is that saving money on using franchise lawyers should not be the primary reason that you take advantage of the value of franchise document templates.  These samples of common franchise formats were never intended to replace the value a good franchise lawyer will have in helping you create the best possible franchise agreements, disclosure documents and operating manuals that you will need when excited franchisees start breaking down your doors.

In fact, a good franchise lawyer will encourage you to spend some time with franchise document templates before you consult with experts like your franchise attorney. That is because these samples will make you smarter and a franchise legal team can do so much more for you if you know what you are talking about.

Franchise document templates do not replace the lawyers.

There is a cycle that franchising gurus recommend when it comes to creating A-list franchise documentation and nothing in that cycle is about saving money.  It is about starting from scratch and learning the ropes of how to set up documents that will keep you kosher with franchise law and help your new franchise owners get off the ground to make a mountain of money for you.  When it comes to something as tricky and legally binding as the franchise agreement,  jumping through all the hoops to get it right the first time is not just a good idea.  It is essential.

Those same franchising gurus see the value of using franchise document templates early in the cycle of document development. These outlines can give you a good feel for the work you have ahead of you in creating franchise documents that are the cornerstones to your great success and wealth as a franchisor.  But franchise document templates do not replace tapping the training and Yoda like wisdom of your trusty franchise lawyer.

Before you show any franchise agreement or disclosure document to a perspective franchise customer, have them reviewed by your crack franchise legal experts.  They can make sure everything is just right so that you keep things on the up and up when your franchise plan is ready to explode into the market place and take your business into the stratosphere of success just as you want it to do.

 

A good franchise operations manual outline takes on the hardest part about writing your operating manual which is getting started.

If you can take advantage of a good franchise operations manual outline, that is a great way to take charge of the process of creating this crucial franchising document. When you are preparing to franchise your company,  you will be one of the smart ones if you get your critical documents prepared before you do your first presentation to future franchise owners. For one thing, having your disclosure documents, your franchise agreement and operations manual all completed will make you ready for any questions that might come up.

Sadly, it is easy to procrastinate on writing these important documents. Many companies will contract out this important step in developing a franchise rather than turn to a franchise operations manual outline to do the job themselves.  This is an expensive way to go and it really doesn’t make sense.  Yes a franchise operations manual outline is usually quite generic but it gives you the framework to build a franchise operating manual that is fits your company. A consultant would never be able to pull that off because they would not understand your company the way you do.

Take the ball and run with it!

There is good news and bad news when it comes to the franchise operations manual outline. The good news is that a good sample of a solid operating manual can jump-start you in a big way to get this document done.  Your franchise operations manual outline will give you that skeleton that you can hang all of the important things that you want your franchise owners to know about your business on.

The outline can serve to stimulate your imagination because you have a clue about what is expected of you in writing this valuable guide.  That writer’s block problem of not being able to just get started can be vanquished by simply downloading a well prepared franchise operations manual outline.  You will find in this document the critical areas of operations that most operations manuals have.

The bad news is that the franchise operations manual outline is not a finished product.  You have to take the ball and run with it. But that is also good news because by writing your franchise operations guide yourself, you will do a great job with it because you will make sure that it covers everything that needs to be there to make each franchise line up with the look and feel of your company and to make sure every franchise owner is just as passionate about making your company a success as you are.

Do not be stingy in how much time you give to the process of customizing the franchise operations manual outline and turning it into a work of art that skillfully lays out what you expect your franchise owners to know.  Don’t expect a franchise operations manual outline to be industry specific.  The details about how your niche works and the specifics of how you and your franchise owners deal with vendors, employees and customers is all in your head.

The franchise operations manual outline simply gives you the tools to take that vast storage vault of wisdom that is in your head and get it all on paper.  It is an ongoing process. Yes, you will need to create a draft that is essentially “done” to get on with the business of launching your franchising operation.  But be prepared to continuously review and update the operations guide. Just as your business evolves and grows, so should your guide to how to run the business.  If it is a living and growing thing as your business expands and succeeds, that operations guide will remain the cornerstone of success for every franchise owner who joins your team.

 

A franchise contract template serves a valuable function of moving you into the document preparation phase and the rest is up to you.

The franchise contract template is sometimes referred to as a franchise kit. The preparation of franchise contracts and documents is often one of the baffling phases that you must get through when franchising your company. But get through it you must to get to the fun part which is recruiting new franchise owners, getting them up and running and, of course, collecting those fat franchise fees.

Three questions often come up when a business is faced with putting together their franchise documents. Should you use a franchise contract template?  Should you prepare the contract documents yourself? Should you have franchise lawyers involved in the process as well.  The answer to all three questions is, yes. Each of these elements has a roll to play in preparing your important franchise documents.  But none of them are sufficient as the only way to accomplish the goal of having an arsenal of franchise contracts ready to roll out to your prospective franchise owners.

There are some that claim that a franchise contract template should not be part of the process because it is not specific to your business or even to your specific area of business.  It is true that franchise agreements and the other contracts will be very unique depending on your line of business.  A franchise disclosure document for a dry cleaning company will be drastically different than the same document for a grocery store franchise chain.

Nonetheless, you could use the exact same franchise contract template for both of these industry specific franchise efforts.  That is because the franchise contract template is not the end of the process, it is the beginning.  If you use the franchise contract template to give you a general structure that you then take and customize and make your own, then you are using the tool correctly.  If that same franchise contract template gets you off of your hands and overcomes that “stalled out” place many people hit when they try to create franchise documents, then that franchise contract template is doing you a tremendous service and that is how it fits in the cycle of developing a new franchise campaign.

The franchise agreement is a legally binding document so let there be lawyers.

The franchise contract template is no substitute for your involvement in creating those franchise documents.  It is your business and how well those franchises run reflect on your good name and affect how quick the franchising boom will cause your bank account to overflow. Neither the franchise contract template nor the lawyers who help you will write any of the franchise contract or operations manual documents.  You simply are going to have to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself or it will never get done right.

But you also should not think about saving a few bucks and leaving the lawyers out of the process.  When that franchise agreement is signed, it is a legally binding document.  Franchise law is nothing to sneeze at so be sure you have a crack team of franchise lawyers that understand franchise law inside and out and who understand every nook and cranny of your business and market as well.

Letting the lawyers give their final blessing on the franchise documents is the last step after you start with a franchise contract template and after you do all the hard work of writing those documents yourself.  But when everybody does their job well, you will have a vault full of outstanding franchise contract documents you will be proud of and that will support your attack on the franchising world in grand style.

A Pizza Hut franchise agreement can be the start of a wonderful career but look a little closer about what you must to do own be in charge of your own Pizza Hut.

One way to go on the fast track for owning a great pizza restaurant is to invest in a Pizza Hut franchise agreement.  By sinking your time and money into a well established name in the pizza industry, you instantly inherit a legacy of customers and a commodity that is beloved by teenagers and families every were Pizza Hut sets up shop.  That makes a Pizza Hut franchise agreement an attractive route to success and fun starting your own small business.

Everybody loves pizza.  You only have to take the family to enjoy their great product to get your mind moving along about the idea of getting a Pizza Hut franchise agreement for yourself.  To get the ball rolling, it pays to do some research into the steps you must go through to land your own franchise agreement from one of the most well known and popular pizza franchise in the business.  Pizza Hut could be the route to go but first check to see if it is a good fit to where you are in your business life and in your goals for owning and running your own fast paced pizza franchise.

The internet is a great place to start digging in and finding out the insider secrets about how to get your own Pizza Hut franchise agreement.  Pizza Hut is actually owned by a company called Yum Brands and they offer a lot of information about how to become one of those privileged owners of a Pizza Hut franchise agreement.  The actual application form is online as well as other guidelines that you need to start sorting out what you need to do as you get the ball rolling.

There is an investment to make to get your own Pizza Hut franchise agreement but in the end, it will be worth it.

As is true if you begin to research investing in any franchise, your financial ability to buy the franchise and set up shop to fulfill the terms of your Pizza Hut franchise agreement are the first consideration.  Since Pizza Hut is one of the most sought after franchise opportunities, the costs of landing your own Pizza Hut franchise agreement can be pretty steep.  Yum Brands will ask that you can show documentation that you have adequate investment and liquid capital to pull the deal off and still be ready to set up shop on opening day.  That doesn’t mean you have to show up at their offices with a briefcase full of money.  Having the credit resources is also a good proof that you are ready to fulfill your obligations of the Pizza Hut franchise agreement once things are moving in the right direction will do the trick.

Of course money is not all it takes to be the proud owner of a Pizza Hut franchise agreement. Yum brands will actually have you work in a Pizza Hut for a couple days.  That way you will experience much of what is in the franchise operating manual for Pizza Hut. It is those operating documents that are responsible for much of the success of this very large pizza empire.

With all of that preparation, the finals steps will be underway before you sign the final copies of the Pizza Hut franchise agreement and work through the disclosure documents and other details of owning your own Pizza Hut restaurant.  Not only will finishing that race as a  winner give you a tremendous feeling of pride, it will give you a very profitable new business that will keep on growing and pumping huge amounts of money into your bank account for many years to come.

: It could be that your gym operations manual will be the key to success or failure in running your own gym.

Few people know how crucial a gym operations manual is to how well run a private gym runs. But few patrons actually think very much about what it takes to open your own gym and then to keep it running well week in and week out.  That is why, whether you are looking to open your own gym by entering into a franchise agreement with a larger chain or going another route, taking some time with the gym operations manual before you buy a single bar bell or exercise bike  is essential.

Starting your own business is a gutsy step. If you have a real love and zeal for fitness and exercise, opening your own gym just makes sense.  For anyone who is launching out to become an entrepreneur, picking a type of business that you already love is key to your success.  But just as important is knowing how a facility like a gym operates. To customers, you make it look easy.  But for the owner and manager of your own gym, that gym operations manual is a lifesaver and very much your bible for how to deal with the many issues that come up in operating a facility like yours.

Maybe investing in a franchise to open your own gym has some merit.

It is smart to set aside some time as you decide on how to become a business tycoon running your own gym to review a gym operations manual or two because it will shape your attack plan.  The start up costs of getting your gym on its feet can be steep. Your gym operations manual will help you start to get a cost evaluation checklist going so you can do some basic shopping for the right site and for the many kinds of equipment you will need to offer a top flight gym experience to your customers.

Going the franchise route has plenty of benefits to offer.  For one thing, you won’t have to write your own gym operations manual out of whole cloth.  The company selling you the franchise will have a franchise operating manual that has evolved out of many hard years of experience including mistakes made.  You can tap the wisdom of that gym operations manual while running a gym that has plenty of name recognition as well.

It is that name recognition that is one of the biggest values for anyone who decides to start a small business by buying into a franchise of an existing gym.  When someone decides to join a gym to whip themselves into shape, they will be drawn to a well known chain of gyms.  One of the things that draws people to go to a gym is that sense of trust that you will maintain a well run facility with top of the line equipment and be there for them if they need help with their exercise plans.  The gym operations manual that the franchise provides can help you offer exactly that to those eager customers who come to you to turn them into athletic gods.

While you will still have plenty of start up costs when you open your own gym, by going with a well known chain, the gym operations manual will help you sort out what you need day one and how to grow your gym adding equipment and resources as you go.  You will pick up customers who come to you from other franchises in your chain and your partners will be old hats at running a great gym so you will have resources coming out of your ears to give you advice on top of that great gym operations manual on how to run a top notch facility and make a top notch profit as you do so.

 

When you write your pizza operations manual for the franchises you hope to open, make sure you keep the focus on running a good restaurant that customers will come to often.

The pizza operations manual that spells out exactly how a pizza restaurant or delivery operation will work is the backbone of the operation.  This is especially true when you make that decision to expand your pizza business rapidly through franchising.  Franchising a business has been proven over and over to be an amazing way to make your business explode with growth.  That is true in every business niche from banking to car washes to grocery chains to fast food. So there is no reason your pizza business cannot become a big time pizza franchise empire if you manage your franchises well. To do that, write a pizza operations manual that can’t be beat.

As is true of any franchise operating manual,  you may have in your head that the primary goal of your pizza operations manual is to keep every one of your franchises looking and acting exactly the same and in keeping with corporate standards. There is no question that you must use the pizza operating manual to pass along to every level of manager who may walk into that pizza place how to handle food so that nobody gets sick, how to manage inventory and even the boring stuff like how to balance a till and make sure the security system is working when everyone goes home.

That is why the pizza operations manual has to become many different documents to accomplish many different goals. To the franchising company, it is a policy manual that will keep every pizza shop from one coast to the other and even overseas operating exactly like the others.  When you consider how well most franchise chains enforce that uniformity, it is clear that a good franchise operations guide is able to do that job.

Along with keeping the pizza franchise store working right, the pizza operations manual can make sales take off too.

As you sit down with your business, legal and marketing gurus to write your pizza operations manual for that will become the Bible to your franchise owners, keep in mind that how that document is written can have a huge impact on sales. Right there in that boring operations manual that is often kept on a shelf in the back office are the keys to turning the franchises of your pizza chain into money making machines.

One aspect to consider when penning your pizza operations manual is how your franchise owners and managers handle employees.  Pizza employees usually make minimum wage and you often run the empire on the back of high school or college kids. To keep them happy, you have to give them plenty of pats on the back and let them enjoy their work.  Even when you must put the rules of employee discipline into your pizza operations manual, do so in a way that results in a happier employee, not a resentful one.

Think about what made your pizza restaurant or take out joint a big success before you decided to become a pizza franchise builder. As it true in most of retail and certainly in the restaurant business, it is all about customer service. You can dictate as a matter of policy little touches that will pass along to your franchise owners and their employees that you must love up on those customers like there is no tomorrow.

From a little thing like a warm hello and a smile when the customer comes in the door to giving them an extra package of cheese when they don’t ask for it, create guidelines in the pizza operations manual that emphasize that the customer is king.  If you do that, those very happy customers will reward your franchises with many repeat visits which means plenty of sales and profits.  That is a pretty good goal for any restaurant franchise.

 

It is good to know what is in a typical franchise agreement so that you know what to expect when the time comes to seal the deal.

There are elements of a typical franchise agreement that pop up in every franchise document that becomes part of a franchise relationship.  What shows up in a franchise agreement can vary widely because of the market niche of the business.  After all, how a fast food franchise will run is going to be outrageously different than a franchise of tax preparation specialists.  Differences can also spring up based on the goals and quirks of the franchising company.  While most deviations from a typical franchise agreement based on “culture” issues or how a much a company pampers their customers are spelled out in the disclosure document or the operations manual, there still can be some huge differences from one franchise document to the other.

Still in all, there are elements that will always pop up in a typical franchise agreement that you can look for. When it gets down to brass tacks, a financial agreement is a legal document that is binding on both the franchising company and the small business person sinking his or her life savings into an exciting new franchise.  The real binding part, naturally, is the money.  The costs of what you will have to ante up to be a proud owner of that franchise will be laid out so that when you put your autograph on the last page of a typical franchise agreement, the next documents you sign may be a series of checks to the franchising company.

The boundaries of time and space are always important in any typical franchise agreement. In fact, if there is not language in the document you are about to commit to that spells out the territory and term of the franchise agreement, send that dish back to the kitchen because it isn’t cooked enough.  When you sign a deal to build a franchise or several franchise outlets, you cannot just pop them up anywhere in the world.  You don’t need that kind of headache.  The zip codes that are yours and yours alone from the franchising company’s point of view must be in a typical franchise document.

You don’t work for the franchising company but you do answer to them.

The typical franchise agreement will also be able tell you to the month and the day when the franchise agreement will expire.  Don’t see that as termination date.  See that as your chance to decide if you want to move on or for the franchise company to do a gut check to see if they want to have you run their franchise some more.  Unlike a marriage license, a franchise agreement has an exit plan so make sure that termination drop dead date is there.

A third big time category of agreement that should be in any typical franchise agreement has to do with when, who and how you must salute the flag of the franchising company.  Franchise operations from one unit to the next are almost always conspicuously identical.  You don’t go to one McDonald’s that has Ronald outside and another that has a giant beaver for a mascot just because the franchise owner likes beavers. No, it is Ronald in every McDonald’s from Peoria to Paris.

As the new kid on the block in the company’s franchising empire, be sure you understand how you must manage the franchise. Understand the standards of quality and customer service and all of the other controls that the franchise company insists upon to make sure that when you put their name on your building, they will like what happens inside.

You do not work for the franchise company but to be a member in good standing, you must live up to the controls that are in any typical franchise agreement. When you understand those rules for living and you can run a successful franchise of a very successful chain, the wealth and fun of running a hot small business will make you glad you checked out what you were signing up for when you sealed the deal in that franchise agreement and started your new and exciting life running the show.

 

 

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