The American Dream—owning your own business—is the source of plenty of great stories. One is the story of the technician: the lady who makes such great cupcakes that all her friends encourage her to open a bakery, the guy who does such a terrific job encouraging his neighbors that they tell him he should go into business, the couple who parlay their passion for healthy cleaning products into an e-commerce empire.
Unfortunately, people who happen to be great bakers are often terrible businesspeople. A franchise business can be the solution: the franchise offers a proven business system, so the technician can focus on providing those wonderful goods and services, while the franchise system takes care of the rest.
That’s not the only way to go. It may not even be the best way to go. The alternative is the executive style franchise. Geared towards individuals who are skilled at managing profitable businesses, executive style franchises use the support of franchise services and trained technicians to do the job while the franchisee manages the business for better profits.
One franchise that can be approached either way is The Groutsmith franchise, a company focused on cleaning and restoring grout in homes and workplaces.
Franchisees who want to use The Groutsmith as an executive style franchise join their technician for 80 hours of training with the franchisor staff. Technicians learn how to perform proprietary Groutsmith techniques to clean and restore grout and tile in the homes and businesses of customers. After training, executive style franchisees return to their territory with a trained technician who completes the work at customers’ locations. Technicians also sell proprietary Groutsmith products to customers that help them maintain their grout and tile for an additional revenue stream.
As a Groutsmith franchisee, you can choose the optional call center feature of the franchise. Let your services sell themselves through advertising and use talented schedulers to take care of setting appointments, turning the franchise from a manager style franchise into an executive style one. A franchisee’s job, instead of day-to-day business operations, is to direct profitability and oversee growth. Day to day tasks are left up to talented technicians the franchisee hires.
However, if you’re a talented technician in one of these areas, Groutsmith franchises aren’t strictly executive style franchises. If you’re skilled at sales, you’re not required to use the call center service and can manage that aspect of business. Even better for growth, franchisees can start off as technicians at their own franchise and expand to multi-technician businesses. As a franchisee needs more time to oversee growth, the franchisee can change to an executive style franchise and delegate tasks. There are very few limits to the flexibility of Groutsmith franchises.
Not all franchises allow for this style of growth from operating a franchise as the primary individual to delegating day-to-day business tasks. Be sure to ask questions about stipulations on the owner’s role in business operations and what happens if growth requires that to change. These aspects are always outlined in the franchise agreement so be sure to read through the requirements before signing on the dotted line.
This article was originally published by America’s Best Franchises
Published: October 16, 2013
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