Franchise model

Michael Gerber – the small business guru said to me, “Minna set your business up like a franchise otherwise you will never be able to get away from the daily grind”.  Michael is a huge mentor to me; and I have admired and respected his work for so long so when he spoke to me it was almost like God talking to me.

So franchise system, Ok now what?  I read the E-myth over and over again…what is this system?  I spent numerous days at Chapters looking for franchising books and countless hours of hours on Google looking for the best way to set up a franchise.  Nothing! Absolutely nothing, there are tons of information about how to SELL one or how to market one but not to set one up.  I guess that is the million dollar secret that no one wants to let out.

It was only last month that I had my AHA moment.  I was fortunate enough to be able to ask Brian Scudamore from 1800-got-junk some questions about setting up a franchise.  At the risk of sounding stupid, I asked…what is this franchise SYSTEM? It was so simple but made so much sense….Brian basically said “it is the best way to do something” and it can just be hand-written on one sheet of paper. 

Simple solution to complex problems is my new mantra from now on.

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Because "it felt right"....

“A Business Without a Dream is Like a Life Without a Purpose,” explains Michael. “Most entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs are dreaming with a small-d–dreams fashioned from personal expertise and by what is expedient in solving the problems of the moment, be they personal or business issues. This kind of incremental dreaming always becomes prison and can never bring the true freedom the entrepreneur seeks, or the true miracle he wishes to create”

It was a Wednesday night, I was pacing the floors tweaking our wireless connection at the office and I got a call from Keith – founder of “Rent-a-geek” who asked me if we could chat. Of course, I wanted to talk to him! He and I share a mutual love of Michael Gerber and he was coming to town and Keith said, “Minna, let me tell you what he has done for my business.”

Well, enough said I’ve read his books 6-7 times over and I need to attend a workshop with him. By Friday, I was ushered into the Wall Centre Hotel with 20 other people. Michael entered and he said, “Today is the beginning of the rest of your lives” in a very ominous God-like voice. This little man in a white suit, pink tie and a booming voice said he was going to teach me how to dream.

What?!!?? Dream???? I paid my hard earned cash to learn how to better my business. Is this all I’m getting for it?!? I have to sit here for 3 days through this dreaming hokey pokey?

But after everything was said and done, it became clear that it is indeed about my business and even more than that, it is about me. Every business begins with a dream – that dream has to be big enough to sustain itself.  Unfortunately, we dream small dreams, the “incremental dreams” as Michael Gerber puts it – because we are scared of what we are capable of, so we shrink our dreams to fit our comfort zone. 

 It is almost as though there was not a decision made, but an act moving one forward.  First I was here, and then I was there.  There’s no way in most cases that one can explain it.  It simply felt like the right thing to do.  Talking to hundreds of thousands of people who had made that choice, the majority of the answers to the question: So why did you take this step? The  answer almost always was…”It felt like the right thing to do.”    

I’m glad I kept an open mind and was receptive enough to his words because they were some of the most inspiring and mind opening I have heard in a long while. If you are thinking about starting a business or have your own business, you definitely need to read Michael Gerber’s books – THE E-MYTH or attend the Dreaming Room and see Michael in person.

A business is a reflection of its founder – what were you feeling at the moment you conceived your business?

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Toiling in isolation

My very first business, Atomic Media started from home. What’s not to like about working from home? There is no cost for overhead, I work when I want and it is just really comfortable to do work in your pajamas! This was during my high school years and it wasn’t the best setup but it was the most logical option for me as I had no money to get the business off the ground.

Let me tell you about the day I decided to move out of my home to seek other entrepreneurs…

Let’s backtrack to 1999, I landed a client from Victoria Island – an import car garage business. He wanted an edgy, interactive websites with all the bells and whistles that the dotcom era is pumping out. Macromedia Flash was all the hype during this time and so I decided to work with program to create the shiniest website any one has ever seen – the only problem was I’ve never used Flash before.

Toting a Macromedia Flash newly bought from Chapters, off I went my merry naive way home to start working on this website. I had it all in my head about how it was going to look and how things were going dash across the screens to the oooh’s and ahhh’s of the users. I was doing quite well from just fiddling with the interface, referencing the book and the support until it was time to put it all together and putting on the finishing touch…

It was late at night, I was trying to put together a pre-loader effect for the website. I am trying to tweak this one effect but it kept giving me error messages. My brand new $60 reference book couldn’t tell me what was wrong, my Macromedia Flash support also couldn’t tell me what is wrong….. Flash is too new and there aren’t too many support forums. Asides from the occasional break to have a cigarette and get a coffee, I did nothing but work on this one effect…. I spent over 8 frustrating hours trying to resolve it but no matter what I did, nothing worked. I broke down and was just so tired from trying I wanted to just collapse. I don’t know if it was because the one small nagging problem got to me or it’s because I can’t vent my frustration to any one. I am sure now it was probably a combination of both.

I was craving the human connection of some one else who can relate to what I was going through. Starting a business and running it by yourself is incredibly hard – without a support network of like-minded individuals to support and bounce ideas off of, it becomes an incredible frustrating experience.

The Network Hub is set up so that there is a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who can share their frustration with each other and support each other business. Finding like-minded individuals has become an obsession for me ever since that day – it materialized in form of The Network Hub. Which I was more than thrill to get started when my two partners and I came up with the idea.

My advice for startups and other entrepreneurs is to make sure you have a network of support – online community or offline board of advisors as a source of inspiration, support and ideas.

Don’t toil in isolation……

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