I’m interested as well.
OK, I created a folder for the webinar video on the Google Drive account, made y’all editors, and still Google will likely require me to give you, one-by-one, access to the drive because Google is stupid.
One thing about my recording - I use Prezi which has a viewer for the presenter (which is hidden from the presentation). The viewer contains presentation notes - additional information which I can add to the presentation so I’m just not reading the screen. Unfortunately, what you will see is that viewer overlaying the presentation. But since I linked to the presentation above, you can listen to the Webinar while, in a separate tab, following along with the presentation. Or you can just watch the video, see my notes, etc.
In short: You Have Options.
I suspect military personnel coming right out of service aren’t that well off financially. If you can’t afford to pay and you are not making a profit, what recourse do they have to make you pay?
I know this is a common belief, but recently separated military personnel are quite likely to be doing better financially than the average worker. You can get a lifetime retirement pension with only 20 years of service, and people who are involuntarily separated are eligible for some fairly generous separation pay in lieu of retirement if they do not have enough time in service for a pension.
(The rest get to choose whether to separate or not, and presumably would not voluntarily leave unless they had something else lined up.)
That’s actually why these franchises prey on recently separated military personnel. Because they often have funds available to invest, and by definition are in a transition period career-wise.
Ah, OK. That makes sense. I wasn’t thinking of 20 year vets, I was thinking about your in and out types, 4 to 8 years.
To close out the year, here are two stories that kind of tie in together…
Someone asked the question on a FB Franchising group “What are the most important qualities of a successful franchisee?”
The 2nd-most liked response had literal bullshit saying “Financial Runway, Grit, Respond Well to Systems”. (GRIT? What the fuck?). All three people who liked this response were franchise sales people.
The most-liked response… 4 responses, all of them actual franchisees… was “The desire to turn $3,000,000 into $1,000,000.”
I’ll give y’all one guess as to which response was mine.
Story the 2nd…
Inna and I have an accounting firm. We have had a great year this year, tripling our revenues. We just (like, today) landed a new client, the new owner of Bombshells, a military-themed restaurant that hires young ladies to serve.
Anyway, this one is/was a franchise. The system isn’t doing all that great, they have just a few franchised locations, and here are the numbers:
- Initial Investment: $3.5 million
- Median restaurant revenues: $5.7 million (not a lot of data points here, but the range was $3.7 to $6.1 million)
- For that median restaurant, the franchisor took out a minimum of $500,000. Not the worse I’ve seen.
OK, so our new client bought this from the original franchisee.
For $275,000. $250k for the business, $25k for the fixtures.
He also told the franchisor he wasn’t paying royalties or minimum advertising or whatever. So all he’s paying the franchisor is a flat $25,000/year for brand licensing. That’s it - not $500k/year, just $25k/year.
Like I said, the desire to turn $3,000,000 into $1,000,000… or just $275k… is the single most desired quality a franchise salesman can find in a franchisee.
Congratulations! Ending the year on a high note!
Looking up their website, they’re down to ten locations, all in Texas, the odd one out being in Denver.
Didn’t realize they weren’t more widespread. I guess most of them must be in the Houston area, including the one down the road from here they opened up next to a Hooters. That alone I question - how can any area really support such density of breastaurants, especially out in the family oriented ‘burbs? Haven’t ever been myself, but I’m guessing I’m not missing out on any great culinary experiences.