The many advantages of starting a franchise include enjoying greater freedom, pursuing your entrepreneurial dreams, working as hard and passionately as you want, and being your own boss. Those benefits can be multiplied if you find the right business partner for your franchise to share responsibilities and challenges while synergizing one another’s strengths and skills to run a more efficient and productive business.
But matching your skills, experiences, and aspirations with another motivated entrepreneur can be difficult. This article provides aspiring franchise owners with strategic tips on identifying, evaluating, and securing a strong business partner who aligns with your preferences and vision. Neighborly®, the world leader in home services franchising, can help you and your business partner avoid the hassles of running and expanding a franchise because we’ve proven it time and time again.
Is a Franchise Business Partner Right for You? Key Benefits to Consider
The necessity of acquiring a business partner depends on the entrepreneur’s preferences, desires, and needs. Partners aren’t for everyone. There are some outstanding benefits of working with another professional. Having a partner may help ease the financial burden of running a business, from starting a franchise to successfully running it to expanding it in the future.
Partners also help share day-to-day responsibilities. With support, you can balance the strengths of each partner and help each other benefit from the connections, knowledge, and skills of one another. If both partners merely duplicate skills and resources, the advantages aren’t as great as if the two synergize their experience, know-how, and partnerships, enabling both to perform together what individually they couldn’t accomplish on their own.
Traits to Looks for in a Business Partner
All franchise brands are different, requiring different skills and resources. And all partners are different, with various strengths and expectations. Picking a good partner you can benefit from and enjoy working with can be a challenge. To work efficiently and effectively, there needs to be the right mix of similarities and differences to maximize your efforts.
Shared vision and values will help you decide where you want to go and how to get and stay there.
Complementary skills will enable the team to fill in the gaps where critical areas are lacking.
A commitment to strong communication skills and business acumen will also maximize success. Similar motivation and work ethics as well as a desire to learn and grow will help both partners overcome strategic and operational challenges.
How To Find a Business Partner for Your Franchise
Knowing you need and/or want a business partner is one thing, but finding the right franchise partner is another thing, and it takes effort. Here are some good places to start looking:
Leverage Existing Relationships
When seeking the partner best suited to you, start with former colleagues, business associates, or past clients. The people you’ve worked with successfully and enjoyably will likely be the ones with the proven skills and work ethic that complement you and inspire you to be better. There's no need to limit yourself to people who have worked in the same companies as you. Former clients, service providers, or other business associates may also be the right fit.
Network and Expand Your Search
By joining business networking groups, attending franchise or industry events, and entrepreneurial meetups, you can discover people with similar interests and motivations. There are also many online platforms like LinkedIn and other social media platforms where you can find like-minded professionals. Check out How To Network Like a Pro to gain key insights on how to use this strategy to maximize your efforts.
Consider Friends & Family
You should be cautious when mixing personal and professional relationships, but friends and family give you the benefit of working with someone you know and trust. This is why a business partner agreement is important: so you can set clear expectations and everyone knows their responsibilities and expectations.
No Partner, No Problem: Get Started with the Right Franchise – No Partner Required!
A franchise partner isn’t for everyone, and it’s not the only way to get support. Neighborly home services franchises offer many advantages to a franchise owner that may make the difference between success and failure. These benefits include comprehensive startup training, ongoing mentorships, marketing and business management resources, a network of experienced franchise owners, and preferred vendor discounts.
With the right franchise system, you don’t have to go into business ownership alone, with or without a partner.
Download the Franchise Ownership Guide to see how franchising aligns with your business dreams and philosophy. You can also contact Neighborly to help you learn how to start a franchise business so you can work at the job you want and operate it the way you want.
