How to be a franchisor with hundreds of franchised units?

Small business owners and entrepreneurs looking for new business opportunities often wonder how to expand their business and how to generate more revenues. Often, these simple goals turn out to be impossible due to lack of time and lack of finance. Opening even a couple of additional business branches usually means a lot of money for inventory, equipment and staff and more long hours of work to set and control their operations.

These two major problems – time and money, can easily be overcomes if the business is franchised. Franchises tend to grow much faster. The real advantage of owning a franchise is that you can have hundreds or even thousands of units without investing your own money and without spending your time.

The most common question asked by anyone who conspires starting a franchise is “How to be a franchisor if I don’t have any previous experience in this field?” the good news is that it is really simple to be a franchisor even if you have never heard of franchising before.

How to be a franchisor? The basics of starting a franchise from a scratch

You can be a franchisor even if you have never been a business owner before. Starting a franchise business is probably easier than franchising an existing business. The first thing you need to do is to come up with a good business idea. Once you know what your products or services will be, you need to put in place the basic franchise documents. You cannot be a franchisor if you do not have a professional franchise operations manual and a franchise disclosure agreement. These can be prepared effortlessly if you use ready-to-use franchise templates. The third thing you need to do before opening for business is to register with the state authorities.

How to be a franchisor if you already have a company?

If you already have a company and what to be a franchisor, you will need to transform your current business. Although this sounds easier than starting a franchise from a scratch, in many occasions it proves to be more difficult. You will need to review all your company policies and operations and make sure they are executed in a way that can be followed by franchisees. What this means is that you will have to detailed and easy to follow system of rules regarding the way every simple aspect of your business operations is executed. Small business owners usually do not have such systems in place because of the scale of their business operations. Once you have this settled, you can proceed to preparing the franchise documents you need to register and launch your franchise.

What if you want to be a franchisor without opening your own franchise business?

You may decide that running your own franchise is much more than you can or want to handle. What you can do in this case is to invest in somebody else’s franchise. This way you will be a franchisor but you will be able to decide how involved you would like to be.