Image of Tereza Murray

The Journey

My franchising journey began in 2006 with the news we were expecting twins! At that time, we had around 60 employees in our property services business; we were working 16-hour days and would routinely have between 4 – 6 staff call in sick most days. In short, we were constantly putting out fires and dealing with performance issues that weren’t sustainable even before the news of the twins.

Franchising was one of three options we considered to enable us to be less hands-on along with using contractors for our larger contracts or selling the business outright. Both options had their own limitations, as using contractors meant we were putting our competition in charge of our clients and selling outright meant we need to start again at some stage with a new venture.

Franchising was a clear choice as it meant we had people servicing our clients who had a vested interest in doing a good job, didn’t call in sick and had responsibility for the day-to-day running costs associated with servicing the client.

The franchise model we started with was fairly basic and lacked many of the systems and structures needed to manage compliance effectively. As each new franchisee came on board, our systems and processes got better and better, our documentation became more robust, and our transition from employers to franchisors started to deliver the benefits we had hoped for.

Having experienced first-hand the challenges of scaling our business with employees and then the solutions franchising provided when done right, left me with absolutely no doubt as to which is the better model. In today’s post-Covid market, that has never been truer as small business owners battle against large employers with bigger budgets to find good staff and keep them.

Today and Beyond

I have been working as a consultant for over ten years, and along with my fantastic trans-Tasman team of experienced franchise professionals, assist entrepreneurs in scaling their businesses through a franchise model. 

Our focus when working with new clients is to guide them to establish a franchise model that works equally in both parties favour. The Franchisee can operate their own business, benefitting from proven systems and support, and the Franchisor has someone committed to the success of the brand and providing excellent outcomes to customers. This sets both parties up for long-term success. The key thing to remember is there is no pre-determined franchise model that we try to fit your business into; the opposite applies. Our job is to create accurate and comprehensive documentation that represents your unique operating model to enable you to replicate it. Our job is to capture the secret sauce!