Resilience, a key trait for your first year as a franchise.
Firstly we will need to know and understand what even resilience is, why is it even a key trait?.
Well, resilience is, in simple terms, it is the capacity to recover from complicated problems, to cope with a crisis of a particular thing mentally.
Are you able to recover after encountering something difficult?
Let’s say when one of your close relatives has passed away, how quickly did you stand up after facing such adversity?
When one says they have a resilient body, it means that they can go for long periods of time to exert themselves and recover quickly from any illnesses.
But resilience as an ability often gives us the strength to continue with our life and is a key trait to achieve our goals. It’s a skill that works covertly, and once you have reaped your success, it’s time it can indeed be seen.
This is where resilience comes into place when it comes to the first year as a franchise.
The first year of a franchisee will be the most challenging year you’ll ever experience; why do you ask?
The first reason is the pressure; like any new business, peer pressure is normal, but if you can’t cope with the stress, your franchise might just fall out and not work at all; the second reason is the expectations your mind is creating, high expectations can lead a person to be quote on quote cocky, you might not work as hard as you should and well, might as well quit.
With resilience and a good mindset, you can actually cope with the pressure and focus on working hard on your franchise and build a very successful business. Highly resilient people tend to be more successful in franchises than others because they focus on their goals and only their goals.
How does resilience aid you in your first year as a franchise?
Let’s first take a look at what business is in the real world.
When we first think about business, we think about big influential organizations, like Disney, Apple Inc, Tesla, worth billions of dollars. But there are many smaller organizations that offer successful franchises, across retail, restaurants, and children’s activities franchises.
But in this day and age, the business environment is ever-shifting, there are risks and downfalls, and you have to learn who to trust.
Several critical factors like the ever-present globalization, new technology, and government regulations place CEOs in a constant state of unease.
The financial crisis of 2008 is known for being one time where businesses lost their shirts. In an article by Reeves and Deimler it says that since 1980 there’s been a huge increase in business operating margins, but they were mostly static before then- with few changes happening over 50 years worth of data!
Winners have always seemed to trump the losers (with high vs low margin companies), though lately things haven’t changed much either way: people who operate within these industries will continue trends depending on if you’re winning or losing money.
And this is where resilience thrives on a business is defined as a dynamic domain, where we maintain a quality working environment and plan our best strategy to ensure success.
Whereas resilience is defined as the ability to recover from issues for a person, resilience as a system is determined to withstand and compose itself in response to a crisis.
How do we apply resilience in a franchise?
When we say resilience, it is the mindset that counts on how we can cope with modern-day life and the daily pressure in our first year as a franchise. According to what I found in my research, the first one is Market Opportunity. Please do your research on the market your business is targeting; it will give you a better understanding and better idea of making your franchise work in the first year.
The second is Financial Performance; You don’t want your business to go bankrupt, right?
Plan out how to spend your money on your franchise, then think about how you can make it a profitable business from the money you spent. The third is a differentiator; making a franchise that is something unique can get more clients for your franchise as it stands out from the quote on bland quote franchises that are only repeating the same idea.
This applies to resilience, to go for the best and keep striving for the better. According to statistics, approximately over 20% yes 20% of new businesses fail in their 2nd year of being a franchise, and it goes up the more years pass by, during the five-year mark, over 45% yields. After ten years, over 65% fail, which is very high.
Preventing failures in the first year as a franchise.
Now, the cause of why your franchise fails is because it is maybe connected to one of these reasons, one is poor people skills. Without the skills necessary to communicate, how would you even expand your franchise in the first place? With skills like that, you can attract more customers to your franchise and make more profit.
Now for the other reason, it is the reluctance to follow the formula. This is one of the reasons why your franchise will fail; without the necessary steps and, worse enough, skipping the steps, you are more likely to develop a lousy foundation resulting in an unstable franchise that will eventually fail, and we don’t want that right?
With resilience and the mindright?set to make your franchise not a burden for your first year, it will be smooth sailing if you focus and put your time and effort into the franchise. Without resilience, we can’t even develop a good foundation.
Resilience is a crucial trait because it is the foundation of our franchise.
No business is perfect, and you will encounter problems along the way. But know that you can pick yourself back up and start your new strategy using resilience.
As the pandemic persists and continues to change lives on a worldwide scale and the economic circumstances confronting company owners remain unclear, it is critical to examine the potential of resilience. This essential human trait has enabled individuals all around the globe to overcome adversity and, in some cases, actually alter the world.
Fostering resilience in your franchise is essential. Having a mindset that shows a “never give up attitude” is a significant characteristic that is often neglected through out the prime years of having your own franchise.