Life changes and potentially buying a franchise
- Thread starter LesClaypool
- Start date
I know that is just the LR thing to say. But being for real, they don't work that hard. They just have to take crappy stores in bad locations for the first 5-10 years. But as far as the physical work, not bad at all. And they take plenty of time off as well. The Chick Fil A system is a find tuned machine. Once they get their people in place they almost run themselves. Operators come in watch the truck unload and make sure things look clean. They will then help during the rush, and that's about it...that's if they choose. Some don't even do that.
A good friend of mine ones three Armstrong-McCall stores. They are hairdresser supply stores that caters to the profession. He does very well. From speaking with him, have good managers and take care of them. I think, if I was going to go into a franchise, it would be something in that type of market or childcare/early development (Kumon). Food industry stuff does not seem to be that great of a gig.
Yeah, I've seen people buy places and 'own' them and see them go out of business time and time again while sucking the poor bastards dry. If you want it to be successful you have to put in the sweat equity to do so, so that when you finally hand the keys over you know what's up. Piggy comes to mind as the right way to get it going...
I'll just throw in a franchise up close that I've seen grow like crazy, i9 sports.
My son started flag football with them about 7 years ago when they were just getting started in the area. A young couple started it, the wife took care of the admin and the husband refed the games and did a little coaching. They started with one field, and now they have four fields going all day Saturday and Sunday. They've now got several employees helping them run game days.
They run other sports as well, but from what I can see flag football is their bread and butter.
Their model is great. It's one day (afternoon, night, whatever) a week, practice for an hour, play the second hour. The kids have fun, it's football without the health scare, it's the easiest season my son plays, I never see any hassle with parents. As a business, it's clearly a lot of time and work on game days, and depending on how many sports or days you run, you could be quite busy, but if you like to be outdoors and like to be around kids sports, it seems like a great business. And I have to imagine the popularity of flag football is just going to grow.
My son started flag football with them about 7 years ago when they were just getting started in the area. A young couple started it, the wife took care of the admin and the husband refed the games and did a little coaching. They started with one field, and now they have four fields going all day Saturday and Sunday. They've now got several employees helping them run game days.
They run other sports as well, but from what I can see flag football is their bread and butter.
Their model is great. It's one day (afternoon, night, whatever) a week, practice for an hour, play the second hour. The kids have fun, it's football without the health scare, it's the easiest season my son plays, I never see any hassle with parents. As a business, it's clearly a lot of time and work on game days, and depending on how many sports or days you run, you could be quite busy, but if you like to be outdoors and like to be around kids sports, it seems like a great business. And I have to imagine the popularity of flag football is just going to grow.
Lou,
My boy did i9 for the first time last year (U8) and I have to agree. The 1 day practice followed by a game is great.
My guess is that ours has about 500 kids out there a weekend in flag football in the spring, @ $140 a pop. That's $75k gross for about 12 weeks. Do it again in the fall, and what I imagine is a smaller group in the winter. Now, obviously they pay some money to the local high school to the fields, there's some insurance, and the kickback to the franchise. The refs are paid for by the concessions they sell.
I'm guessing they've got a solid ten hour day on Saturday and Sunday, and put in an hour or two a day between them during the week. Probably several weeks in the year when you don't work at all. They're probably not going to make generational money, but that's a pretty good living on your own terms. I don't know if that kind of participation is normal, or just the area I'm in. But the main attraction is there isn't some massive investment or build out or inventory like there is with a store or retail. There's the cost to get in on the franchise, but you can basically build it up from the small time.
But it's a LOT more than two hours a week during the week. 500 kids is how many teams? If you put 20 on a team, you have 25 teams. I bet it's closer to 35. Coordinating all that is a lot more than you would think. You're dealing with coaches who can't make practices, parents who have issues they think are important, continued dealings with the leases of the fields, dealing with setting up the inevitable picture deals, advertising for the next season, and a lot more. I am not saying it's a bad deal, but it's a lot more than an hour or two a week.
I'm thinking a couple hours per DAY per week, per person, not a couple hours a week. And I'm sure there are days with more. The bigger misleading thing I'm sure was me saying 12 weeks..I'm sure there's pretty heavy lifting for a good month before the season starts, when a lot of what you're talking about gets done.
My guess is it's probably pretty full time during the week for several weeks before the season, and then heavier on the weekends during the season. But even during the season, if you're working 10-12 hours on Saturday and Sunday, if you're working even a couple hours a day during the week during the season, you're definitely pushing full time. And again, I'm looking at a couple doing it, so that's a lot of time invested. They're probably making a nice living, but nothing bonkers.
Definitely not saying it's easy riches, didn't mean to imply that. But that's a lifestyle/schedule that many people would prefer to their current, or a restaurant where you could easily be putting in 18 hours x 7. And more importantly, you're probably not dropping half a million into it at the jump, it's the rare franchise that you can grow (of course, it's still $40k+ to get in).
Oh, fair enough. I suspect doing that and making 120-180k may be a great thing to do as opposed to a lot of other options. And if you are good at it, you can expand it and hire people to do a lot. As long as folks know it's all hard work. The only other thing about which I wold worry is someone else coming and and taking over. Those are hard niches to maintain at times.
I'm assuming everyone on here is smart enough to know that there's no easy work/big riches/zero risk options.
To me the appeal is the lower investment/ability to start small, not having to hold a ton of inventory, invest in building out space, or sign long term rental leases, or be bound to certain hours (outside game days).
My wife is a bit enamored of franchises because a cousin of hers bought a few Mailboxes Etc early in that life cycle and did pretty well with it, and his parents ran one of the stores in their old age and it all worked out for them. But there are very few franchises that hold appeal between the sunk costs, the lack of freedom (have to be open x amount of hours), the royalty, the need to be on site, etc. I keep telling her we aren't going to be sitting on a ton of cash where we could just throw a quarter million at something and see if it works out...if we did one of these major franchises, it would be us basically throwing everything we had at it. In that context, there's very few that hold much appeal. I'm telling her that in most cases, better off taking a swing at building a small, low risk business from scratch, as someone mentioned with the private branding of products that they sell.
This is just one franchise, probably because I literally saw it grow up, that has some more appealing aspects to me than most.
Instead of franchising consider buying a business (that may or may not be a franchise). You will have an established client base, you can sample the place, and you negotiate the price. It is WAY easier than starting anything from scratch and the odds of success are vastly higher. You also get to see revenue and profit before buying so you will know an approximate ROI. You will also be blown away at what businesses make money. Many do stupid amounts of money with tiny percentage profit where others do low money high profit. Subway and Papa Johns are brutally unprofitable from a percentage basis. I'm talking sub 10k per year per location in many instances while doing over 500k in sales. Meanwhile Cell phone screen repair places may only have 100k in sales and make 50k.
Also don't be afraid of getting into something different. My parents bought a pest control company (then 2 more and merged them all). Built it up and sold the whole thing to Terminix and True green (one took lawn, the other took inside). He was a finance / computer consultant for his career and knew nothing of the business. He liked it because it was one of the few businesses where you get recurring revenue with about 50 percent profit.
Also don't be afraid of getting into something different. My parents bought a pest control company (then 2 more and merged them all). Built it up and sold the whole thing to Terminix and True green (one took lawn, the other took inside). He was a finance / computer consultant for his career and knew nothing of the business. He liked it because it was one of the few businesses where you get recurring revenue with about 50 percent profit.
Funny you should mention this...aside from my post-rat race idea of driving Uber, I've been thinking of learning smartphone repair. I've done bit of screen replacement on my own phones over the years. There's places you can go for training, but you can also teach yourself a lot of it online. I was planning on starting teaching myself by buying broken screen phones, repairing them and reselling them until I got good enough at it, which can actually be a moneymaker itself if you do enough. It has the advantage of not being locked into storefront hours and not potentially destroying a customer's phone and having to replace it.
Assuming you get good enough just hit up a local Car Wash and ask for a space to do business. People are there already waiting and if they have a cracked phone and see they can have it fixed while they are waiting it's a no brainer. Split the profit in some manner with car wash owner. Doesn't cost the car wash a dime, potentially brings in business in the opposite way (need phone repair, may as well get the car washed while they are there). If it takes off hire a couple guys and call it a day.
You could do a kiosk in a mall as well. That and develop some channel partnerships with local Verizon and ATT reps.
Boom...
This is a great idea. You could start as small as you needed to and not be under any pressure to grow. If it takes off all the better...
Not outright IT, per se. I've sold higher ed technology and SaaS though, if you count that.
Send me an email. I might have something of interest to you. iambrianrowe at gmail dot com.
Just resent.
Is it brianrowe? Or iambrianrowe?
I sent it to both this time.
Thanks!
Les
I think about this scenario sometimes and would want a Tropical Smoothie or a Waffle House.
Waffle House just seems so basic and easy to run. Hire old people. Nothing special about the menu and the everything is cooked in front of the customer takes a few minutes.
Waffle House just seems so basic and easy to run. Hire old people. Nothing special about the menu and the everything is cooked in front of the customer takes a few minutes.
Well said! I am in the same position as the OP in terms of feeling burned out in a sales job. I have decided to take a shot on my own in the new year and hope that the added autonomy makes me career more enjoyable (and profitable).
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