Franchise Your Business

The Guide to Employing the Greatest Growth Strategy Ever

By: Mark Siebert, John Leonesio - foreword

Narrated by: Al Kessel

Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Expert franchise consultant Mark Siebert delivers the ultimate how-to guide to employing the greatest growth strategy ever-franchising. Siebert tells you what to expect, how to move forward, and avoid costly mistakes as he imparts decades of experience, insights, and practical advice to help grow your business exponentially through franchising.

Learn how to:

• Evaluate your existing businesses for franchisability
• Identify the advantages and disadvantages of franchising
• Develop a business plan for growth on steroids
• Evaluate legal risk, obtain necessary documents, and protect intellectual property
• Create marketing plans, build lead generation, and branding for a new franchise
• Cultivate the franchisee-franchisor relationship

©2016 Entrepreneur Media, Inc. (P)2018 Gildan Media

Lots of valuable, detailed info... but beware.

Overall, this was a great first introduction to becoming a Franchisor. It's well worth the price (or credit), even as a Canadian. However, you should know that the author is directly connected to the iFranchise company. Which means, this can sometimes come across as a 13hr commercial for their consulting business. Still, they do a good job with the book. After finishing, you will know whether your particular business model is suitable to be franchised, rough developments costs, the direction you should head, where to begin and who to enlist for help. Knowing this info will save you a lot of time, hassle and money, that's for sure. It also does a good job of telling it like it is, pitfalls and all - tempering expectations.

It's a smart play by iFranchise. As a company that offers their services worldwide, the book essentially prequalifies prospective clients quite thoroughly for them. But it goes both ways - as you'll also know what to look for in a good franchise consultant - one that will help you grow as a franchisor, step by step - safely and with as little risk as possible. Win win... yes, but not cheap.

Why not 5 stars? Mostly due to the "wolf guarding the henhouse" scenario. ie. be cautious if you decide to deal with iFranchise directly and perhaps check out their competitors too. There are a few other minor nitpicks: one being the heavy use of "she" throughout the entire audiobook. ... which, being male, kept throwing me. Why not use "he or she", "they", "someone", "them" or "you"... where gender isn't identified? There's also a glossary at the end. It's only 3-ish mins, but pretty much useless in audio format. And there's no PDF document either - where some diagramed flow charts, written bullet points, summaries and lists would've been highly appreciated. None of these are deal breakers though.

Please Re-Record

Some great content. A little bit of repetitive common sense down talk. But please please re-record this book with a different narrator. My wife said she thought I was listening to a 1980s speak and spell toy. Best analogy I can provide.

This book is a hidden treasure for any business owner, or anyone likes to learn from someone else’s wisdom!

You don’t have to have an intention of franchising your business to love this book. Any business owner would benefit from the business wisdoms shared through out this book. The amount of business wisdoms shared in one book making this book such a steal, and a bible that any business owner should have.
This book debunks a lot of misperceptions of franchising and also prepares you for almost everything you need to know about franchising. The language used in this book is so down-to-earth, making big concepts so easy-to-understand and impressionable.

For example, the author says his mom taught him that no-one would buy your cow if you already gave them all the milk. The example was used to illustrate the point that you shouldn’t give your business prospects all the information prematurely, but instead, only give enough information to trigger curiosity and interest. I don’t think only a business owner would benefit from this advice. Anyone can relate to this wisdom and applies it in their own area of practice.

I am very busy and don’t have time to read the paper version. I listen to the audible version. I listened to this book back in 2017, then again in 2021 and I listen again now. At every step of my life, this book still helps me look at business and life in new lenses each time. Thank you the author for writing such a great book and for the generous sharing of his decades worth of wisdom.

Detailed instructions

I was impressed by the detailed instructions that were given in this book. The authors took all the elements of starting a franchise and gave a new franchisor many things to consider that they may not have thought about originally. I listened to two books, and by far this was the best.