So, would you say your franchise is really just a marketing machine?
Why have all the employees etc?
I wouldn’t call it a marketing machine per se. The franchise does all marketing, advertising, websites, seo, logos, branding, training (both to get licensed and on-going), systems, etc.
Regarding employees, I choose to pay myself based upon my own production because it’s more than most people make, I could stop inspecting tomorrow and still make money from the business but not as much as when I’m inspecting (obviously).
I leave the excess money in the business to continue to grow, my long term goal is to build a business I can one day sell.
I’m sure you’ve seen the guys on here trying to sell their one-man show for 50-100k (with little success). I’d like to grow to have a (very) large market share and critical mass so that I can sell for millions of dollars.
I’ve had the business assessed and appraised and it’s worth 500k-1M.
Thank you Patrick! You’ve answered quite a few questions that I had. Long term growth is definitely a consideration of mine to include employees, etc.
How long after making the decision to go franchise did you start hires?
How long after your initial investment did it take to get out of the “red?” I know that hinges upon the amount of inspections performed, amount financed, etc, but I’d like just a ballpark idea.
Thank you for your contributions!
Thank you for sharing this information. I am curious, if you scale this and can sell; does the franchise jump in and dilute the $$ or obstruct the process?
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Good question!
I think the initial franchise fee was 20K and equipment in the first year was maybe 10K, so I was out of the red by the 2nd year.
Like several others here, I worked part time at a different gig for the first year until I could do inspections full time (which was spring of my 2nd year)
I saw your question in an earlier post about connecting here’s my email: ORPTOLBERT@gmail.com
Email me and we can setup time to talk over the phone, or just fire away if you have three dozen questions in the email LOL.
Cheers
Im always happy to (over) share, I think it’s better for all of us, this industry is so small and fragmented. I’m of the abundance mindset.
The franchise has a “transfer fee” and they are allowed to pre screen the buyer to make sure they qualify to be in the franchise (background check etc). But money wise it’s a nominal amount (5K or something I don’t remember exactly).
I imagine there’s work arounds that I could do as well, because technically my business LLC has the franchise rights, I could probably sell operating rights to my LLC or something, honestly it’s probably not worth doing.
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