Had my first consultation today.
I sent out messages via FB/Messenger to people who recently expressed a need to have someone review their Franchise Disclosure. 2 responded, one needed something today given he was due to sign the franchise agreement on Wednesday.
Call begins, it’s him and his wife on the phone. I ask if there are any other stakeholders who should be on the call (I asked him this earlier as well) and, not surprisingly, just those two were needed. He is a regional big wig of a hardware chain most of us had heard of, buying the franchise is his idea, but she was the one who wanted the call: she liked that I billed myself as skeptical.
First question is simple: “What do you want out of this call? What would make you think value was received? What questions do you need answering?” And, in the end, they wanted to know if this specific franchise was a good opportunity. Then I asked them to envision where they want to be in five, ten years… and he wants to run 5, 10, 15 units, kind of like he is doing now for Big Corporate. He doesn’t want to run a store, he wants to run 10 of them and pay other people to run the stores.
A few more questions along those lines and then we reviewed the disclosure document together, they following along, one of them typing the entire time. And, long story short, he was stunned to find out that what he thought he was buying into was not what he was buying into, and that this specific franchise was, in no way, going to help him achieve his goals. In the end, she summarized the franchise as “Amway, but with a truck and credit risk”, which is apt given that you, the franchisee, are responsible for personally financing your customers credit for their purchases.
Anyway, they were leaning towards signing on Wednesday and, well, now they are not. $300k and 10 years, saved!