What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur

Million Dollar Franchisee

Written by Ashwin Satyanarayana for Gaebler Ventures

You don't have to spend a lot of money and start off a fancy office to be a million dollar franchisee. You just need to do the right things at the right time. Here's what you will need to get started as a million dollar franchisee -- hot tips from successful franchisees.

You started your business and now you want to see it get bigger. Even better, you picked up a franchise business. Would you like to be a million dollar franchisee?

Owning a million dollar franchise doesn't have to mean that business is run out of a fancy office with glass facades; it can run straight from home, making calls off the kitchen table and while watering your plants. Here are four tips for being a million dollar franchisee:

It is really not your business; but now it is as much yours as theirs - so run it that way

A franchise is typically someone else's business idea that you choose to run - just as it is run originally, with the branding, systems, operations intact. However, when you pick up a franchise, this business now belongs as much to you as it belongs to the franchise owner. It is yours now and you may run it the way you would have if you actually had any other business. Go out there and get your clients. Build your business one client at a time.

It takes long time, effort and patience

If you thought you could make money by just taking a business-in-a-box and push buttons, you would be disappointed. As in any other business, it takes sweat, toil and tremendous amount of effort to get there. Not to mention the stress, a single-minded focus that is demanded of you and the bullish attitude you will need to sustain yourself. You will have to be patient, ride out your problems slowly, put in the efforts and make it all happen.

What you make is not proportional to where operate from

You invested in a franchise - which is as good as investing in setting up a business -- and now you need to work on it. Most business owners think that an office is required, but it is not. At least for most businesses, an office is not required. You can work from home and make millions in sales as revenue.

Invest in marketing

One tip most successful millionaire franchisees have is to invest heavily in marketing (I am biased because I see myself nodding my head vigorously). Nothing else you do in your business actually gets you money than sales and marketing. Every other department in your business is a cost centre while marketing is a revenue generating function. If there is only place where you should see yourself spending big-time, it ought to be marketing.

Ash has an undergraduate degree in engineering and an MBA from Ohio University. Today he is a corporate trainer, business coach and a freelance writer.

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