What Is The Hottest Franchise!

So what's the hottest franchise out there right now?

That's the most popular question that I get almost every day. You know what the reality is? I don't know what that there is such a thing as “the hottest franchise”. Now, before you argue with me, hear me out. There are lots of awesome opportunities out there! Of the more than 4,000 franchise opportunities out there there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds that are absolutely great! I have absolutely no doubt about that and I see them every single day. I see people having tremendous success. I see people improving their lives by going into a business that works really well for them. But you know what the crazy thing is? It's not always that it was a hot franchise.

The thing that was so darn hot about it is the fact that it was a perfect fit for that person. I owned a franchise in the service business a number of years ago. My wife and I built it and we sold it at a substantial gain. Guess what. There were lots of other franchise opportunities in that exact same industry, in that exact same sector that all looked awesome on paper (or on the computer screen). In fact there were others that easily appeared to be better. Hotter! There were some that were growing faster. There were some that had people making tons and tons of money. There were some getting attention in national business magazines. For some reason, those weren’t the hot ones for me.

You know what made mine so darn hot for me? It was the way I was able to interact with the people at the corporate office of that franchise company. It was the way my wife and the operations team clicked with each other. It was the people! We liked them and they liked us.

Really what I'm saying is we were a good fit for each other. Not just because I had a checkbook and they had a franchise to sell, though. We were a personal, cultural, and just plain old good fit! If those corporate franchise folks were my neighbors, we’d be grillin’ and chillin’ almost every weekend together. They were the kind of people I enjoyed being around.

In the last two decades, I've seen a lot of people do great with franchised businesses and I've seen the opposite, too. The common denominator in the ones that don't do well is that the people just weren't a good fit. In those cases, if the franchisor and franchisee were neighbors, they probably would just wave and say, “hello” to each other but they wouldn’t actually get together for coffee or a beer on a regular basis. They wouldn’t say, “Hey, what are you up to this weekend? Come hang out!” On the flip side of the coin, the opposite held true. When a franchisee and franchisor just seemed to like each other, well guess what? They ALL did better. They did great!

The reality of business ownership is that there are going to be bumps in the road. There are going to be bad days sprinkled among the awesome ones. When two parties that are interdependent and intertwined run into issues or bumps in the road, they are able to ride right over them much more easily when they actually like each other. The the opposite is also true. Almost any little bump in the road can seem like a jarring, horrifically huge pothole when your business partner is someone you like, on a personal level. Being able to trust and rely on your partner means a whole heck of a lot. The franchisor needs to be able to trust and rely on the franchisee. And, the franchisee needs to be able to trust and rely on the franchisor.

So, what’s the hottest franchise? The beauty is that it might be any number of the opportunities that are out there. All of the research on the numbers, trends, markets, industry, and legal documents has always been and will always be of paramount importance. So is the potential for a solid relationship.

If you are interested to learn more about what will really make a franchise “hot” for you, reach out to Tim Church by email at tim@thefranchiseconsultingcompany.com or at 727-222-8485.