If you’re considering becoming a franchise owner, you’re likely looking into your own qualifications. You’re looking into your background to see if you have “what it takes” to own or run a business. And, no matter how many titles you have under your belt, nothing will make you feel less qualified than in taking on a new venture. If you’ve never owned, let alone, ran a business, you’re looking into your own background to prove you have what it takes. Even if you have, you’re doing the same.
One of the first areas you’ll likely look is within your own education. Do you have the book smarts? And the creds to back yourself up?
But even if you don’t have the degrees, it doesn’t mean you can’t be a qualified business owner. Papers aren’t required to show you’re a smart, business-savvy individual who has what it takes to find franchise success.
Here’s why:
Everyone learns differently. One business owner might be a huge reader. They subscribe to newsletters and take in great info from each title they read. Another might have natural business savvy. They learn as they go, watching others operate and getting hands-on data. Others listen. Some still use their degrees from classroom settings. There are many ways to learn, and just because you don’t fall into one of the categories that can be tracked on paper, doesn’t mean you won’t be a successful franchisee.
Use Your Best Skills as a Franchisee
The point is, of course, that it doesn’t matter where your education comes from, only that it comes in a format that’s accessible to you, as a potential franchise owner.
Whether you got a GED or PHD, you can find success. Put aside your own expectations that you “need” a type of degree in order to move forward in buying a franchise. Instead, look at your skills, expertise, professional accomplishments, and your drive to find success as a business owner. In fact, the latter might be the most important aspect of all. If you want to create forward growth, you’ll stop at nothing in order to make it happen.
Your drive will push you to learn, to overcome, and to achieve. It’s this passion that can make the biggest and most successful (and most enthusiastic) franchisees among them all.
In order to get started in utilizing your own best skills, look at what you’ve done and what you have achieved in your personal and professional lives. What have your past careers looked like? How did you work your way through the ranks? Did you earn any awards? How did your achievements make you feel?
List it out on paper so you can show your future franchising company you have what it takes. And that, even if you don’t have a long line of paper degrees, you still have more than enough business smarts to become a success.
How to Put Your Background First
As a potential franchisee, your background checks will more than speak for themselves. Prove what you’ve done and how you’ve worked in the past in order to communicate your business skills and knowhow. This will come standard after a long career (or even a short one) and all that you’ve managed to achieve.
Results speak louder than words on paper, and believe it or not, degrees don’t make successful business owners. They might provide the qualifications on paper, but they don’t guarantee that they have what it takes to move forward as a growing business owner.
Stop looking at qualifications in terms of what you think a franchisee * should * have, and start looking at what makes you stand above the rest. What do you have that no one else does? Your personal background? Your work ethic and ideas? Your personal umph!? Your unique insights, and your ideas and what will allow you to create brand growth. These should be the main focus within your pitch for becoming a franchisee. The things that help you create your own success in ways that no one else can recreate. Show what you have and how you can use it, not what degrees say what you’ve studied in the past.
Are you ready to look at your own qualifications and see how they can help turn you into a successful franchise owner?