Buying A Franchise? Here Are 4 Don'ts

By

Starry eyed


The franchise marketplace is full of starry-eyed future small business owners, who can't wait to escape their current career (or lack of) situations. Some of these folks will be very successful, some won't. Here are four things that the not-so successful ones will do that you can learn from;

  • They'll choose the franchise opportunity that seems to be getting the most press. In other words, it's a hot franchise.
  • They will buy a franchise that is aligned with their hobby, or passion.
  • They buy what they feel is the perfect franchise, because they can't find a job.
  • They will forget asking really, really, important questions.

Now, I am not saying that other factors couldn't come into play. And yes, sometimes it is the franchisors fault. For sure. It's just that sometimes the moves you make at the beginning of the process, are the most important ones.

Best of luck. Do you have any more things that prospective franchisees shouldn't do?

Work with me

Filed Under: Small Business
About The Franchise King®

My name is Joel Libava, and I'm the author of Become a Franchise Owner! In addition, I'm a franchise ownership advisor. I teach people how to properly choose, research, and buy franchises.
Connect with me on Google+

  • Will R.

    Interesting one on passion. When you hear about employee morale being low in the corporate world, you hear about people lacking passion as a big reason. Shouldn’t passion be a requirement for buying into a franchise? It should not be the only factor and not the most important factor. The business model is obviously. If you don’t have passion, you will want to walk way. Might as well get a corporate job. Perhaps passion should be put in the context of transferrable skills and not a specific hobby for example. That might be too limiting in your choices of franchises to buy.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/franpro The Franchise King

    Will,
    This topic has been discussed heavily in our industry, and it can certainly be looked at in a bunch of different ways.
    I think that one needs to have passion as a small business owner, but it doesn’t have to be tied into what is being sold, or what service the franchisee is providing.
    Thank you for your comment, Will.
    The Franchise King
    Joel Libava

  • http://www.MorganArundel.com Scott Layer

    I think the point here is if you let Passion play a role in the evaluation process you might not ask the right questions or worry enough about the evaluation. I got sucked into the Pirtek sales pitch and then failed to evaluate the bankruptcies and failures in an appropriate way. I think too much passion caused me to believe the salesmans lies about Pirtek. Eventually I lost 3 years of my life and about $500,000. The data was right in my face but I felt I could over come all the objections with hard work. Pirtek does not care about hard work. Just ask the franchisees that have failed in Nashville, Tucson, Miami, Dallas, Plano, Portland, Clearwater, Indianapolis, Tampa, Los Angeles, Boston, Two Poorteks in Connecticut and there are many more. This economy is much worse now than when I was involved with Poortek so now the failure rate is greater. ( I estimate a failure rate of 70%) I passionately went broke because I sort of got duped. But I admit I duped myself too. I discovered the Poortek business model was broken and unfortunately the onerous Pirtek contract put me in for zero justice in Arbitration. If you have passion for something use that energy to write your own business plan and start your own company. I have started three very successful small businesses. My first franchise experience with Poortek taught me that a buying a franchise is difficult at best cold spell Bankruptcy at worst. More Pirtek locations have either gone bankrupt, closed down or been terminated than have ever been successful. Make sure you get the data, the complete data on any franchise. I hope this helps.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/franpro The Franchise King

    Scott,
    Sounds like you had quite the lousy experience. Thank you for sharing a bit of it with us.
    Best of luck on your next adventure..
    The Franchise King
    Joel Libava