Popular among former business executives and sales people, the business coaching franchise offers the allure of working from home in a lifestyle business while generating revenues similar to, or even better than, high flying corporate positions. So can a franchised business coach actually enjoy these kinds of benefits?

A quick search on Google reveals that business coaching franchises are a growing breed – the names that crop up include ActionCoach, Shirlaws, Quantum, Ology, The Winning Formula, Alchemy Network, Rapid Results Marketing, Business Doctors, and many other similar ones.

The franchises are generally high cost and justify this cost on the value of the training and intellectual property that they’ll give you. In essence they promise a system that will enable you to acquire clients and then to help those clients make dramatic improvements to their businesses through coaching.

There is, however, a common and worrying trend in these franchises; the number of franchisees who fail to make it for more than a couple of years anecdotally seems to be at the 50% level, or even higher. If you’re considering a business coaching franchise take the time, before you invest in the franchise, to attend a few local business networking meetings and ask about business coaches that they’ve seen there.

A conversation of this type will typically reveal that multiple business coaches have been members of the meeting for a time, before moving on to new business opportunities. This is normally because they’ve been unable to make business coaching pay. It seems that the mix of skills and personal attributes required for real success in business coaching is a rare one. The typical pattern among business coaching franchisees is that the successful ones are very successful and generate substantial incomes, while the bulk seem to struggle.

It’s also relatively uncommon to see renewals at the end of the franchise term. It is still very early days in the life of this type of franchise. Over the next 10 years or so, it’ll be interesting to see which ones have managed to sustain growth substantially and retain franchisees to build a growing platform to develop a powerful brand presence.

One perspective is that people are using business coaching franchises to help them to make the hop from working in corporate positions to working for themselves. It’s possibly a clever strategy, although the cost of entry is very high.

Key measures for success as business coaching franchisee will be your ability to attract new clients, the average spend per client and the duration of your engagement with your clients. These are certainly amongst the numbers you should be asking questions of your potential franchisors.

If you are compelled to help others to achieve success, and are prepared to buy into a new kind of business that’s not yet very mature as a model, you may want to consider a business coaching franchise. Remember, though, that it’s an immature business in franchise terms and you will be self-employed within a system, rather than building a business that works even when you’re away on holiday.

There’s something very appealing about the Dairy Queen franchise. Created from the gem of an idea in 1938 to serve ice-cream that’s soft directly from the freezer, it’s gradually grown to embrace not only ice-cream but also less romantic fast-food fare like burgers, hot dogs.

Owned by Warren Buffett’s investment vehicle, Berkshire Hathaway, the Dairy Queen franchise comes in two flavours…

Dairy Queen Orange Julius, which is probably closest to the traditional ice-cream parlour concept but also offers up to date smoothies, and blended fruit drinks. As a pure sweet treats store, it has a very clear position and would probably work very well in sunny, warm holiday destinations and also in a busy throughfare like a shopping mall.

Dairy Queen Grill & Chill is the core franchise identity for Dairy Queen and offers the traditional fast-food burgers and so on, along with the ice-creams that started the business in the first place. The question in our mind about this business is what is Dairy Queen trying to be – yet another burger joint or a specialist of some kind?

We believe that the challenge for Dairy Queen’s Grill & Chill concept is to be clear on it’s core identity so that the brand can fully grow and blossom. The trick with brands, at least according to Al and Laura Ries (global branding experts and co-authors of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding) is to make your brand own a particular word or phrase in the minds of its customers.

How does this work in practice? Well, if see the phrase “coated chicken franchise”, who do you think of first? It’s Kentucky Fried Chicken, the first and biggest of the chicken franchises. If you think of a hamburger franchise, you’re going to come up with McDonald’s first.

In fact, if KFC starting selling hamburgers and did a big marketing campaign on them, would it increase their overall sales? We think not – it would just cannibalise the sales of their chicken and confuse people about what you buy from KFC. In the same mould, McDonald’s may sell chicken and fish sandwiches, but the core of their sales has always been the hamburger.

So this brings us back to Dairy Queen Grill & Chill. What word can this franchise own in the shopper’s vocabulary? It just doesn’t seem to do it for us. And to make it worse, they’re diluting the Dairy Queen brand by splitting it into two. While it may do very well in a town that’s not go too much competition, we think that DQ will struggle for brand presence alongside the established burger joints in one corner and Baskin & Robbins ice-cream in the other.

If you aren’t really clear what your business stands for, with a real sense of identity, it’s really tough for your customer to identify you as something special, too. That doesn’t mean DQ’s businesses will do badly. We just don’t think it’s going to have anywhere near the pulling power of the growth days that the golden arches experienced. Which means you’ll not be buying into such a high flying franchise, in our opinion.

We hope that this gives you another useful angle on the Dairy Queen Franchise.

Buying a franchise is a huge decision and it’s a complicated process to go through. Finding a franchise business consultant to guide you can seem like a great idea. Here are our top 10 questions to ask a consultant before hiring her to help you…

1. What’s the fee structure – how much do they charge? If they say it’s a free service, it means they’re effectively working for the franchisors, because they’ll make nothing unless you buy one. Since starting up in business on your own without a franchise is a very real alternative, if the consultant is commission based, they’re very biased towards you buying a franchise from the moment you start talking to them.

2. How much commission do they earn? Find out what commission they are paid from each franchise that you’re interested in. Also find out the commission from other franchises that they’ve decided to exclude from your search. Should a franchise have been ruled out just because the consultant makes nothing?

3. How do you assess the suitability of clients to franchising – do you offer personality/suitability tests? There are many psychometric and behavioural tests available on the market today for reasonable cost (from $50-$1500 depending how accurately you want to be assessed). You can reasonably expect a good consultant to want to make sure you’re a great fit for franchising before trying to offer you a franchise. It’s such a big commitment that you don’t want to make a mistake that you’ll regret for years to come.

4. How many franchisees have you helped in the past? Ask to speak to a few – make sure they’re all from different franchises and talk to people who have been unsuccessful too, if you can. The secret here is find a broad spread of customers from the consultant to find out just how valuable the advice that you’ll soon be paying for has been to them.

5. Are you, or have you been, a franchisor, or working for a franchisor? If the franchise consultant has been a franchisor, or still is one, then she’s from the wrong side of the tracks as far as you’re concerned! The franchisors make money by selling franchises. They do not understand the challenges facing franchisees and will have no real empathy with your position, just a desire to get you to part with your hard-earned cash.

6. Have you been a franchisee yourself? Somebody who’s walked a few miles in your shoes will have a lot better understanding of your needs, your worries and your concerns. They’ll also be in a much better place to ask the tough questions of the franchisors and to help you hammer out a deal that works for you.

7. Which franchises would he recommend you avoid? A good franchise business consultant will have found franchises that she does not like and will be happy to tell you which ones you should stay away from. That’s a key part of the relationship you’ll have with your consultant – the trust levels must be very high if you’re to enjoy a successful outcome.

8. Are franchise agreements ever negotiable? The right answer to this is yes! Although the bigger and more established franchisors will accept very little, if any, variation in their terms and conditions, newer and less developed franchises are looking to make sales. If they want to make a sale and you’ll only sign when certain conditions are met, that’s perfect conditions for a negotiation! A franchise business consultant who’s not aware of this, and who thinks the franchisor has all the power before the agreement is signed, should be avoided.

9. How will the consultant add value to your buying process? What materials, experience and advice will they bring to the table in order to earn their money? If they’re just acting as a broker and putting various franchises on the table, you can achieve the same ends yourself by going to a franchise show or browsing the franchise directories. They must have something more to offer.

10. What questions should I ask the franchisor? A good franchise business consultant will have a list of carefully prepared questions that help you get to the pertinant facts quickly and accurately. If they’ve just got a page with a few key points on it, the chances are that they’re just sales agents and not a lot more. For example, The Franchise Opportunity Workbook has over 20 pages of powerful questions to help you pull back the covers off your potential franchisors to make sure they really earn your investment.

When thinking about franchise cost it’s normal to think about the franchisor being in the same boat as you and as being dependent upon your success. In truth they are in a different business – the business of supporting your franchise.

Make sure that the costs of being in business stack up. Consider choosing a franchise that makes most profit when you are profitable, rather than raking in the profits even when you’re having a tough time.
Here are seven ways your franchisor can make a profit from your franchise business…

1. Franchise fee – your lump sum investment to purchase the franchise.

2. Regular royalty payments – your regular payments to the franchisor for the privilege of using the brand name and systems of the franchisor to do business.

3. Product sales – if you buy and sell products that are exclusively provided by the franchisor, they can add a margin to make profit before you sell. In this way, the franchisor is acting as your exclusive wholesaler and can profit comfortably from the arrangement.

4. Rent – if your franchisor buys your building and rents it back to you, they are operating in the property market while your trading as a franchisee. They’ll cover their property mortgage payments with the rent you pay and benefit from having a tenant that’s tied to their franchise agreement too. There’s a lot been written about McDonald’s franchise about property ownership.

5. Updates and improvements to systems – Since you have to operate to the standards defined by the franchise, they may be legally allowed to make you invest in new systems or services that they create for the franchise. If they do this with additional monthly subscription fees, it can be very lucrative for them.

6. Training and Conferences – It’s quite likely that you’ll have to attend quarterly or annual conferences with your franchisor. If they charge for these, you may want to confirm that they are charged at cost only and that there is no charge for the franchisors time involvement.

7. Giving your time away for free – You might not realise it, but when a franchisor asks you to help another franchisor and does not offer to pay you for it, they’re charging you a “membership tax”. Because you’re successful you’re expected to go help out other franchisors for free. Make sure that any support you’ll be expected to give to other franchisees is paid or supported in other ways, rather than just being a cheap source of training and support to the franchisor.

Hopefully you’ll see here that there’s more than just the up front fee and monthly royalties involved in the cost of a franchise. Check out The 7 Myths Of Franchising to find out more by entering your name and email address in the box at the top of the page.

Typically a retail franchise opportunity will fall into one of two broad types – business format franchises or brand/product franchises. There’s a massive difference between the two types, and you need to be very clear what you’re investing in when choosing either. Let’s look at these in more detail…

Business Format Franchising

Investing in a quality business of this type is a bit like being recruited into the armed forces! That’s because the franchise operates with a very high level of consistency in products and “look and feel” of the outlets. It’s that same level of consistency that McDonald’s offers.

In fact, the McDonald’s franchise example is probably the ultimate example of successful business format franchising. At McDonald’s you can expect to eat the same food, prepared in the same way, served by people using the same words, wherever you go to eat it – from New Yord to Orlando, from Toronto to Venice, Benidorm to London.

This consistency has helped to build the brand by giving customers no surprises, wherever they eat McDonald’s. That consistency of customer experience is what a good quality business format franchise is all about.

So if the thought of being trained and tested to operate to exacting standards in a systems, products, services and methods of running your business appeals to you, this may be a great choice of franchise opportunity.

Brand/Product Franchising

A very different approach to franchising gives you a license to sell a particular brand of product. You would normally expect some constraints in the way you can operate, to protect the brand and prevent you bringing it into disrepute. At the same time, you will not receive training in how to operate your business, it’s strictly about the product and branding.

A great example of brand franchising can be seen every time you drive down the road – the vast majority of gas stations (petrol stations if you’re British!) are brand/product franchises. The big thing here is that you buy your product (fuel) from your franchisor and sell it under the brand name.

You must maintain certain standards of presentation, etc, to the brand. In addition it’s usual to pay a royalty to the brand for using their tradename.

So Which Type Of Franchise Is Best?

Both of these franchise formats have their place. The brand/product franchise is only worthwhile where the brand is a significant, well-known brand. It’s not uncommon for a rogue franchisor to try to “sell you” on the brand, even though it’s got no real pull in the marketplace. Watch out for these rogue franchisors, as they’re a sure sign that you’ll lose your money fast.

So, when it comes to choosing a retail franchising opportunity, take the time to consider what you want from it. If the whole approach to business matters to you, go for the business format franchise. If you just want the power of a brand, but the freedom to operate more or less as you please, while respecting the brand, then the brand/product approach might be the best fit for your own retail franchise opportunity.

First of all, why is independent franchise advice so important to you?

Because just about everybody you speak to in a professional capacity about franchising wants you to buy a franchise. Let’s just go over your options to more clearly make the point…

Franchise Associations – the franchise associations, such as The International Franchise Association covering the USA, the Canadian Franchise Association and the British Franchise Association, are self-governing organisations that represent and protect the interests of franchisors.

They are not there to protect the interests of franchisees. You have to be a franchisor to become a member, rather than a franchisee and so it’s hardly likely that they’re going to give a balanced view of both the positives and the negatives involved in the franchise advice they offer.

Other Franchisees – these have spent thousands themselves on the franchise. Most will tell you what a wonderful business it is and how fantastic an opportunity it presents. That’s simply because they’ve bought it themselves and to tell you that it’s no good they’d have to also admit to themselves that they made a bad choice.

They simply won’t tell you the bad news – so the only information you can really trust from other franchisees are the hard facts about their business: how long have they been in business, how much profit do they make, what do they find tough, will they renew at the end of their franchise term. You can base your own opinions then on the facts of the situation, to balance their opinions.

Lawyers – in our experience it seems that lawyers fall into two broad camps. There are those who deal with a lot of franchise agreements and are specialists in franchise law, and there are those who are general business lawyers.

The specialist franchise lawyer will probably tell you that franchises are good, that you can’t change the content of franchise agreements significantly and that as an established business model they are a safe bet. What they don’t mention is that as a specialist franchise lawyer they need people to keep buying franchises – their own specialist law practice depends on that business!

The general business lawyer is a far safer and more neutral animal. They have no vested interest in whether you buy or not. However, most lawyers will only advise you about the legal aspects of your franchise agreement. They will help you to understand the commitments you’ll make when signing up for your franchise but only from a legal perspective. You won’t get a broad, general business perspective to help you evaluate the pros and cons in a useful way.

Accountants – are great at saving you money on tax bills and protecting your business. However, they don’t normally have much direct experience of marketing and branding, both of which are critical elements of starting up a franchise business for yourself. They also stand to gain a customer if you buy a franchise, so they’ll help you to structure your purchase and to minimise the tax bills relating to being a franchisee, but they’re not going to advise you on the wrinkles involved in becoming a franchisee.

Franchise Consultants – many of these work on commission for the franchisors and so they want you to buy. Steer well clear unless they will give you complete disclosure of how much commission they make per franchise sale. It’s not uncommon to earn $5,000 or more per franchise sale, making it a lucrative way to make an income for the unscrupulous salesman.

Remember also, that as you put your trust into a franchise consultant, they will have a strong influence over your decision making and the facts and figures you hear. You’ll learn only about the franchises they can make the most money from and will hear only the good news about them.

On the other hand, if you can find a franchise advisor or consultant who takes payment from you for helping you and does not make any commission from sales, you’re far more likely to get truly independent advice.

Friends – be very careful here. Every friend will have an opinion and want to give you advice without any kind of expert knowledge or experience. Would you take medical advice seriously from a friend? Would your friends tell you if your wife or husband was cheating on you? Or are they only likely to tell you the good news? Most of our friends don’t want to pee on our parade! They’ll tell us the good news to keep us smiling and then join us in complaining if it all goes wrong.

So, getting impartial franchise advice is clearly difficult to do. That’s the need that The Franchise Opportunity Workbook was created to fill, and it’s the same reason that this website has grown from being a single-page sales letter to the information rich site that you’re now on.

Ultimately, each and every franchise offers something different and you must gather information from various sources to form your own panel of expert franchise advice.

If you’re at the start of your franchise journey and are trying to figure out which is the best business franchise, this article will help by giving you five simple steps to eliminate the poor performers and leave the best franchises from which you can pick your winner.

There are estimated to be over 3,000 different franchises operating in the United States at present. The number in other developed countries will be similar. With so many franchises on offer, how do you figure out which one is the best business franchise for you?

It’s often said that knowledge is power. And for you to have the power of choosing from the top franchises available, you will be rewarded by investing some of your time to research franchising in general and then narrow down your choices to a small number of high quality franchises.

So what sort of criteria would help you to pick the best business franchises? What’s a smart way of selecting from such a vast range? Here are 5 powerful steps to help you weed out the really poor performers and find the better franchises.

1 – First think about what you are interested in. Don’t waste your time looking at a fast food restaurant if you’re a health food fanatic and hate junk foods. Let’s face it, you’ll struggle to put your heart and mind behind a business that goes against your personal values. Chopping out the kinds of business that don’t interest you at all will certainly help you to narrow the field.

2 – Choose a strong brand name. In their terrific book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, Al and Laura Ries make the point that the biggest brand in any market will ultimately control 50% of the sales. In the cola drinks world it’s Coca Cola, with Pepsi trailing in a strong second place. There’s only about 20% of the global cola drinks market left for all the other brands to squeeze in. So if you’re going to buy into a brand, make sure it’s likely to be the number 1 or number 2 brand, not an also-ran.

3 – Eliminate franchises less than 10 years old. In a research study, it was found that a large percentage of new franchisors businesses fail within their first ten years. If you’re looking for the best business franchise, make sure it’s been around for a long time first.

4 – Look for a track record of successful growth. McDonald’s is a mature franchise that’s been operating for over 40 years. They have around 30,000 restaurants and a history of steady growth through most of their life. The best franchise will either be a mature one, or a franchise that has passed its troublesome first 10 years and is growing steadily and successfully.

5 – High percentage of renewals. The franchise agreement you sign will have a limited life – normally around five years. If 75% or so of the franchisees renew after five years, you know that the franchise is giving them what they expected and you can be confident that they have picked the best business franchise for themselves. Some franchises have a dropout rate at this same level – would you want to spend your money with a company that loses three quarters of its franchisees every 5 years?

So there you have it – if you filter out the things that don’t interest you, choose a brand leader that’s been around for over a decade, has a track record of continuing growth and that the franchisees love so much that most of them sign up again and again after their franchise term expires, you know that you’ve found just about the best business franchise around.

Going to a franchise show (often called an expo) is one of the very best ways to get up close and personal with a wide range of franchisors and see what they’ve got to offer. This article explains a great way to get maximum value from your time at the franchise shows and to make sure that you come home with a great idea of the franchises to investigate in more depth.

Here’s the strategy in outline. You’ll need to do a little preparation before heading out to the show to make the day of your time worthwhile. Remember that going to this show is a business day out – take it seriously as your future may depend upon it.

Two brothers we spoke to in 2006 wanted to buy a Subway Franchise. After spending a day at a show wandering around without structure, they ended up buying a printing franchise instead! Two completely different types of business, one in retail, the other in B2B (business to business).

Their reason? Because the printing franchise (Minuteman Press) did great follow-up after the show. We think it was probably because Subway didn’t have to chase, they were popular enough to let eager buyers come to them. Help yourself to buy the right franchise by following this guide to getting the most out of a franchise show…

Step One – Create Your Key Questions For Franchisors

You”re just in the initial stages of selection here, but a few great questions to help you narrow down your choices might include:
1. How much does the franchise cost?
2. What are the attributes of a successful franchisee?
3. How many people who invest in the franchise are still with it after five years?
4. Most franchise agreements have a fixed term – how many franchisees drop out after their first period?
5. What”s are the total revenues and net profit for average franchisees?
6. How long does it typically take to get to this level of operation?
7. How many fail to make it to this level and operate below it?

These seven questions are a great basis for you to start your franchise discovery process – add a few others that spring to mind as being relevent to your situation. The whole point of going to the show is to see as many franchises as possible and to get a quick overview of the ones that interest you. So let”s move now to getting the most out of the show itself.

Step Two – Make A List Of Franchises That Interest You

Before going to the show, make up a list of all the franchises that have caught your attention and that you”d like to know a little more about. The trick here is breadth – we don”t want to start getting into detailed serious discussions with any single franchisor just yet, the whole point of the show in The Franchise Opportunity Guru strategy is to help you create a list of possible contenders.

Your aim is to come away from the show with up to 10 or even 12 different franchises to explore in more depth. You”ll want at least three or four. So before you go, see if you can get a list of attendees or a show guide in which you can highlight the companies you”ll want to investigate.

Step Three – At The Franchise Show

Spend your first 30-60 minutes racing around to see who is there. Just march up and down the aisles to see where your “hot pick” franchises are and to choose your priorities. On the day, some will seem more appealing than others – that’s your gut instinct and you’re encouraged to trust it!

Once you’ve zoomed around and seen what’s on offer, start your franchise research in earnest. Give each franchisor between 5 and 15 minutes to answer your questions and make sure you write down your answers carefully. Take a bag of literature away with you from each franchisor and you’ll quickly get yourself a selection of great franchise opportunities from which to choose.

And Finally…

We think this guide gives you the best chance to get real value from a trip to the franchise show. Good luck in your search, and make sure you’ve read our free report, The 7 Myths Of Franchising, before you go. Get it by signing up with your name and email address in the top right corner of this page.