The franchise disclosure documents that you get from the franchisee will tell you all you need to know about your costs of this next big step in your life

Franchise disclosure documents may seem boring but they can ease your mind tremendously. Getting ready to buy a franchise should bring with it a lot of butterflies in the stomach. Those butterflies are a mixture of excitement about the big money you can make owning your own franchise and sheer terror. That terror is actually a good thing because the last thing you want is to be committed to the costs and obligations of a franchise relationship and then begin to think, “What have I got myself into?”

This is where spending some quality time with the franchise disclosure documents can help with that sense of terror. Before pen goes to ink to make your franchise business spring to life, a number of financial disclosure documents will show up at your door that will give you everything you need to know about franchising a business.

Those franchise disclosure documents will lay out in detail the costs that you can expect to pay to get your own franchise small business up on its feet.  There are a number of layers of costs to keep your eye on as you get into this big adventure in your life.  The cost of buying the franchise springs to mind and that can vary widely from one franchise to another. Along with those costs, there will be expenses to get your new business on its feet and ongoing costs such as franchising royalties.  Here is where your franchise disclosure documents can take much of the terror out of what you are getting yourself into.

Putting franchise disclosure documents to the test.

Before you even consider signing any franchise agreements, be sure you plow through those franchise disclosure documents and lay out in detail every dollar and cent this investment is going to hit you for. The up front costs may put some of that terror back into your system.  This is where it pays to put those franchise disclosure documents to the test.

You can put those financial disclosure documents to the test by having a meeting of the minds with other franchise owners in your village. Don’t just happily buy into franchise costs. Check it out that those fees and royalties line up with what rational thinking people pay to be citizens in the elite club known as franchisees. If the costs are not in line with reality, you can contest and negotiate what those franchise disclosure documents tell you. If the franchisee won’t play ball, there are other games in town to play so take your good business elsewhere.

As you evaluate the costs of running your own small business, don’t just blindly accept that what is in the franchise disclosure documents represent all of the expenses you may have to face.  Think about the other aspects of running a business such as employee’s salaries and benefits, hiring a clearing service and keeping plenty of coffee and toilet paper on hand. If you let no stone go unturned in your evaluation of what your costs will be, those hard numbers will put you on a path to big success. Then that feeling of sheer terror can yield to real excitement because you know what you are getting into and it is something very exciting indeed.