
Now when Sorber talks with would-be franchisors, he advises them to start this process sooner rather than later.
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In short, the Sorbers figured out their "secret recipe"-the systematic codification of operations, customer service, marketing and product handling into operation manuals and training. When we figured that out it was a big, big deal." We had to figure out the desirable attributes of our potential franchisees and tell some of them no. They eventually left or we got rid of them, but it was really difficult. Some people were full-blown entrepreneurs who couldn't live with our system. "We had early franchisees who complained that our mission statement was wrong or that our uniforms sucked. "Another mistake we made was thinking anybody who wanted a franchise would be a good franchisee," Sorber says. Specifically, if you can replicate the business in the next state over, your future franchisees are going to have that much more confidence that your success is not a fluke." "Then you've proven that your success is not an anomaly, that you don't just have one good location that works. "It helps to become a small, regional chain first," he says. It's a mistake Cohen has seen many wannabe franchises make. We learned that spending money on advertising is useless if it's spread all over the place." 1 in Detroit, then in the region, and then you can spread out. Sorber says that they should have focused on filling in their home territory at first: "You want to be No. "Absolutely everything went wrong."įor starters, they scattered their franchises across the map, opening locations in Georgia, Colorado and Michigan. "We were not prepared at all for franchising," Sorber admits. Their mother heard about franchising at a business conference, and she signed her sons and daughter up as her guinea pigs in the early 1990s. Sorber admits that he and his brother had no clue about franchising from the start. Or you have to hire staff to help you with that." You have to be patient and very, very detail-oriented, a good trainer and a good systems person. It's like adopting a bunch of businesspeople and teaching them to do what it is you do. "While they might be passionate about the space they're in, whether that's self-serve frozen yogurt or pet grooming, and they're good at managing staff and day-to-day responsibilities, they have to have a different skill set to franchise.

"What most small-business owners don't realize is that franchising is a separate business in and of itself," he says. John Cohen, co-founder and president of North Carolina-based Rhino 7 Franchise Development Corporation, isn't surprised.
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But unlike many successful franchises, which are created with franchising in mind from the start, the team behind Two Men and a Truck had to make the transition through trial and error.

Over the next two decades, Sheets, who now serves on the board, and her boys built Two Men and a Truck into a 228-unit, nationwide franchise with more than 1,400 trucks.
