Creating a successful franchise is something that hundreds of people have done. When you look at successful franchises many of them have become exceptionally large and prosperous making the founders rich and in many cases creating rich franchisees too.

If you have a successful local business then the idea of replicating it by franchising to cover the whole country, or even overseas territories can be very attractive. So how do you do it?

Although it is a significant undertaking to create a franchise and make it a success it doesn’t have to be as hard or as expensive as some people make it. It just requires a systematic step by step approach and considerable effort. It certainly isn’t a ‘get rich quick’ scheme.

You will need to spend some money up front to get started and it’s best to start from a point where the business to be franchised is running like clockwork, growing and creating good profits. If that isn’t the case then some preparatory work is advisable first.

The initial work to get yourself set up normally takes between 3 and 9 months followed by another year or so getting your first few franchisees on board and up and running.

You’ll have to free yourself up to spend time working on franchising, whether by outsourcing some of what you do or by getting existing staff to cover for you.

Having said that, franchising your business can be a great way to grow a valuable asset you can retire on, leave to your children or sell.

Even better, done properly your franchise owners get to do the same do the same.

There are also other options which may be right for your business now, such as setting up certified practitioners, and these can be upgraded to a franchise in the future too. If you want to find out more about how franchising works, download our What is franchising? presentation. Take our quick quiz, to find out of your business could be franchised. Contact us to get started or to find out if franchising, licensing or certified practitioners could be right for your business.

Large scale example

We mostly work with people who are starting off on a small scale but it sometimes helps to look at what a franchise can scale up to. In this piece (below) you hear about a highly successful franchisor who started off as a franchisee of a franchise that went bankrupt. He realised what you have to do to make it work and within a few years has build a multi-million dollar franchise. It can be done!

It's easy to find out more