PROMOTION Lean thinking
Mike Hanrahan on the low-cost route to franchising
After much jargon busting (“franchise information memorandum” anyone?) I declined the consultant’s kind offer to ‘help’ franchise my business and decided to fi nd a fl exible consultant who was happy to offer advice and leave me to do the donkey work. This was the start of my lean-thinking journey into franchising.
My limited budget forced the need to question every penny spent whilst developing my business. I recognised that franchising my
T
en years ago, I was in the market to franchise my cleaning business. I had read some US-style books on how to franchise a business but none of them approached franchising from an angle of
keeping expenditure to a minimum or running an effi cient franchised operation from a lean perspective thereafter.
Having traded my own operation for the
previous decade and grown it year on year, some 400 cleaners worked for the brand and I had to get it on the franchise market somehow in order to continue growing. I did what many franchisors in the same position would do and approached the consultants to the industry. Being naïve I didn’t even know who to contact for advice; I wasn’t aware of the bfa and there were many people calling themselves consultants even in those days. There were no discounts offered for businesses such as mine that wanted to enter the market around the £10,000 level. The consultants I approached seemed to view franchise development from a one-size-fi ts-all perspective – all franchisors must pay the same. One told me: “To get your brand to pass the bfa accreditation process with us it will cost you £30,000.” Of course, this was not true – but I didn’t know that! After recovering from the apoplectic fi t this news induced, and experiencing the cold reality of not having a budget of £30,000, I realised that franchising my business was not going to be a walk in the park after all. All I had was a strong desire to franchise and a willingness to apply my own effort and knowledge of lean six-sigma wherever necessary.
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business would be a personal learning journey, with some aspects unique to my business alone and others common to all franchisors alike. Getting the right advice for the right price at key stages would be another critical aspect. How could I do this from a lean perspective with a very limited budget? I quickly realised that some of this advice could be gained for free by networking and talking to successful franchisors that had done it before me. It also became apparent that not every corner could be cut nor all advice relied on.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Mike Hanrahan started Maid2Clean, a management business in the domestic cleaning sector, in 1993. In 2013, some 14,500 cleaners worked for the brand, making it the largest domestic cleaning franchise in the UK.
‘The Lean Thinker’s Guide On How To Franchise your Business on a Shoe-String Budget’ is available through Amazon and at:
www.theleanthinker.co.uk.
The Lean Thinker is about using business acumen, resources, and independent drive to duplicate your business model – with limited financial investment – to create a successful franchise, and is aimed at anyone wishing to get the maximum yield from their expenditure when developing or improving an existing franchise operation.
“All I had was a desire to franchise and a willingness to apply my own knowledge of lean six-sigma”
Neither could all good advice be acquired for free (legal agreements from a bfa-approved solicitor, territory-mapping demographics, cost models, marketing brochures, etc), but a great majority could be if I was prepared to put in the effort to turn the information into tangible deliverables myself.
I unashamedly asked for discounts from every supplier I approached and moved to an alternative if I met with infl exibility. After 24 months of hard work I fi nally brought the franchise to market, but this was only the start of the business. As territories began to sell, my core focus became how to operate the franchise operation as effi ciently as possible whilst being as lean as possible. In franchising, there are dozens of ways
to reduce costs that don’t adversely impact the franchise operation and fi nding these avenues is an ongoing process. In terms of communications, for example, invoices can be set out via email and key business documentation can be stored on the intranet or cloud, reducing the need for hard copies. Seven years after launch, when the Maid2Clean brand passed the one-hundred franchisee mark, I knew that I wanted to share the experience I had learned with others in the industry.
Over a two-year period I wrote ‘The Lean Thinker – A guide to franchising your business on a shoestring budget’ and I hope it will help and positively infl uence those that wish to take a similar approach. n
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