When people hear that my husband, Mike, and I own a window cleaning franchise and have a general manager running the day-to-day operations, they sometimes ask, “So what do you do?”
It’s a fair question. We have a team that performs the work and a general manager who handles much of the day-to-day operation. But hiring people doesn’t make the owner’s job disappear. It changes the job.
Mike was a firefighter before we became business owners. In some ways, he still is. When a problem is beyond what our team can solve, we get the call. It might be a customer issue, an employee decision, a marketing campaign that isn’t working, or a month when expenses are climbing faster than revenue.
We also make the decisions that determine where the business goes next: whom to hire, where to spend money, what to measure, and when to change course. Some days that work is exciting. Other days it’s uncomfortable. All of it is part of ownership.
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Some owners do the sales and manage daily operations themselves. Others keep a separate job and hire someone to run the business. Some build a team and focus on leading its managers.
Each approach affects the money you need, the time you’ll spend, and how quickly the business may become profitable. Mike and I chose to build a team early. That supported the kind of business we wanted to create, but it also meant taking on payroll before the business had grown enough to cover it comfortably.
That’s one reason I ask prospective buyers a question before we start looking at brands: What job do you actually want to have?
Do you enjoy selling? Leading employees? Building local relationships? Managing numbers? Are you willing to be the person who makes the difficult call when there isn’t an obvious answer?
The owner still has to lead the business through the parts that don’t go according to plan.
Understanding that job before you invest in a franchise is one of the most useful things you can do for yourself.
In addition to being a franchise owner herself, Diana Miller is also a franchise consultant who helps future owners find the franchise that best aligns with their interests, backgrounds, and goals, positions them as high-priority candidates, and guides them through the due diligence process. Schedule a free consultation call to learn more.
