Franchise Ownership: Full-Time vs. Part-Time - Which is Right for You?

Full-time or part-time franchise ownership? 🤔 In this episode, Giuseppe Grammatico explores the pros and cons of each approach, helping you determine the best fit for your lifestyle and goals. Learn about owner-operator vs. semi-absentee models, effective management strategies, and how to empower your team for success.

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#franchise #franchising #business #entrepreneur #smallbusiness #franchiseownership #semiabsentee #owneroperator #worklifebalance #management

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Transcript

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this is really where the franchisee is taking a step back, working on the business, not in the business as much. by wearing all the hats, you get to experience all the roles. You gain a better appreciation. You learn the business much faster help you scale and then figure out the roles that you're most comfortable with that you'll enjoy the most. If you're ready to make that transition to business ownership or want to create that safety net, you know, you're, you're, there's been a lot of downsizing and, and you want to really protect yourself in the event of the next layoffs. Give us a call. Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast, where you can escape the corporate trap through franchise ownership. Here's your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, The Franchise Guide. Welcome to the franchise freedom podcast. I'm your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, your franchise guy. Thanks for joining us today. The show where we help corporate executives experience time and financial freedom. We have a really exciting show for you today. And just as a reminder, if any of you have any questions or just want to, you know, jump on a, on a call and discuss franchising, go directly to our website. We just redesigned the site, a lot of cool stuff, podcasts. So it's ggthefranchiseguide.com take a look, tons of resources. There's a search option there for the podcast and blog. If there's a specific topic you're looking for and more than glad to sit down. If you live anywhere in the U S or Canada looking to potentially explore franchising, whether it be now or later, thinking about how it would work more than glad to walk you through the process. So again, ggthefranchiseguide.com you can book a call. If you just have a general question you can hit the contact tab and send me a message directly. I respond to every email. Even if you're looking to be a guest on the show, have some topics you'd like discussed. Feel free to send us a message. So thanks again for your support. What I wanted to tackle it today was, you know, I was thinking about topics that we've, we've covered. And then I've had I would say the last three or so weeks. Quite a few questions around full time versus part time ownership in a franchise. You can also be called owner operator versus semi absentee or an executive model, so wanted to to really Cover that topic because there's, there's a few things at play and would like to you know, I said, you know what, I, I explained this over and over again. This is probably really beneficial. So, since the questions are out there, so number one what is better full time or part time it depends. That's the simple simple answer depending on your situation. So with that being said, full time or owner operator, someone that's running it full time, certain brands will require that. Maybe they require it for the first year for the first six months learning the business and then potentially taking a step back and hiring a general manager. That can be a requirement for that specific brand, not industry, but actually the specific brand itself. Semi absentee people call it an executive model. There's lots of terms there. Essentially what that means is you can either keep your job or not run the business full time. The franchise or allows that and that you typically will have an empowered employee. Or a general manager in place that is running the day to day. So that is one of the key differentiators. Number one is the franchise or allows it, you are keeping your job or maybe you don't have another job, but you, you are running the business part time. There's no set amount of time. That's going to vary which we're going to talk about here in a second. So the franchise or allows it in many cases. They will potentially help you find a general manager or they will recommend finding the general manager and bringing them to training, which is what I highly recommend so that you and your general manager are on the same page. You know, so that's what I consider you know, part time semi absentee ownership. work, you need to make sure you are very clear with that general manager or that empowered employee what the expectations are. So really outlining the role specifically what their role will be. All the, you know, responsibilities and things like that. And when you should be contacted. So maybe it has to do with customer cancellation, any legal matters, working with the accountant, things like that have to go up to the, the franchise owner, the owner yourself. And the general manager can handle the rest. That has that. So, so a combination of, of, of finding the right franchise that'll work. And then also not being a bottleneck in the business, which is a mistake I made early on in my mid to late twenties. When I had my first franchise is allowing that general manager to, to make those decisions and not wait on me to approve every single decision. So mistake I made, made it for you. So you don't make the same mistake. I want you to be as efficient and as successful as possible. So, you know, getting really clear on the roles. Another part of that is if you have another job or doing other things, making sure you're clear with your manager, when you are available what we would do is weekly meetings, you know, Wednesday meetings, a lunch meeting, breakfast meeting, the whole office got together. If they were available or someone was on the road, they, they logged in via. At that time with Skype they would log into those calls and just kind of have a debrief what's going on, opportunities, updates, issues. And then sometimes we would have one on one time where go in, maybe having a specific issue with it, with a client. You know, the the travel has been you know, kind of, lots of issues, lots of travel. How do we How do we kind of resolve that? So I think those meetings are crucial. So in the case of semi absentee ownership, now, you know, you have the weekly meetings as, as a team, and then you maybe have, you know, a Friday meeting with your general manager, recap the week, discuss what's outstanding, where they need help. You know, is this the time to hire additional staff? Do we need a bigger office equipment, another location and things like that. So this is really where the franchisee is taking a step back, working on the business, not in the business as much. And really helping on the, on the big picture stuff. But the crucial part, again, to reiterate is you don't want to be a bottleneck in the business, empower that manager to make certain decisions and just list it out. And this is an evolving list. Maybe it's on, on a Google docs. I'm big on Google, as you know, it's Google calendar. We, we did a show on time blocking and and creating goals and habits and things like that. Creating a Google doc. So it's live. So the manager can review it, make suggestions. So if there are changes there, because things will come up and say, you know what, I'm going to take this, or I want you to take that, or we need to, you know, send that and have another employee handle that. So taking one step back. So we talked about kind of the differences between the two. And again, there's no set amount of time, semi absentee ownership. There's different amounts. So if, if it's not full time, it can be 20 hours a week. It could be less. It really all depends on not just the franchise company, but specifically what you're having what your tasks and roles will be. Based off availability. And, and, you know, what that, what that manager is going to be really assisting with now, which is better to be full time or part time. And, you know, the verdict is out. If you can be full time in the business that is something that I did. I ran my business full time. I dislike my job. There was enough pain there. My wife was working, we had savings to allow me to work full-time in the business. There's definitely a benefit there. Number one is you're gonna keep the cost low'cause you are also the general manager. You don't have a salary and a compensation schedule to be paying out. So there's definitely benefits of running the business full-time yourself if, if you can afford it. If it's possible you will also learn the business much faster because you're running the day to day. When I went from wall street to the franchises I was in, I learned those industries quick, got to meet the vendors got to also wear all the hats. That's a big, big plus here because you may have a background in sales but you may not want to do it necessarily the sales in the business. Maybe you want to do more of the, the networking, the overseeing of things. So by wearing all the hats, you get to experience all the roles. You gain a better appreciation. You learn the business much faster help you scale and then figure out the roles that you're most comfortable with that you'll enjoy the most. So that's another major benefit in running the business full time. So you learn, you learn kind of all the, the, the jobs, the roles, the business, the industry much faster. And kind of figuring that you keep costs low and then at some point, maybe you have a goal. And that's something we were going to put on that map from the previous episode in six months in 12 months to be out, out of this this role, hire a general manager, create a task list, have someone review it. And then in 12 months, maybe you back off and say, okay, I'm available three days a week or certain hours during the day, whatever the case may be. Yeah. It's something that. You know, it can be figured out at a later point in time. So there's definitely benefits, but it is not a requirement unless the franchise or is requiring you to be full time in the business. Going back to semi absentee ownership trends and things I've seen is that. If you're going to go that route, we've seen a lot of franchise owners as I follow up and check in they, they you know, have gone the route of phantom equity, you know, giving your general manager a quarterly distribution bonus based off the profitability of the business. So not actual underlying equity in the business, but a piece of the action, a piece of the profit so that. You know, for every dollar that the business is earning, they may get, you know, 5, 10, 15%, whatever that number is. And maybe you have them earn a percent a year or a few percent a year, up to a max so that they're getting compensated. So when you do have the phantom equity, you have someone that really has a vested interest in the business that's growing. The more profitable the business, the more they'll make on top of their, their salary or however they're paid. And they'll think twice about spending additional funds when there's no need to spend an additional marketing. If you can double down on referrals in the business which shouldn't cost you much. Do we need additional staff members or, you know, can we use AI in certain ways to help with our marketing and not have to spend additional funds in that area. So that's something I've, I've seen as well. So, so yeah, so that, so to recap, owner operator versus semi absentee semi absentee full time versus part time ownership. Number one, figure out the best route. It really all depends on personal preference. Does the franchise or allow both if they allow semi absentee, they're going to allow full time, but not all full time brands will allow a semi absentee to start, but if you're okay, being full time the first six to 12 months and then transitioning out. Now we open up other brands and then getting very clear on your roles and not becoming that bottleneck empowering your, your manager to really take an active role to make decisions in the business, grow the business, give them, you know, a piece of the profits and then everyone's goals are aligned, right? We want to keep the business lean. We want it to grow. We want it to be profitable. And as an owner, you don't want to be in the business. 24 seven, you want to take a step back and, and really work on the business. So definitely some benefits there. You know, maybe, maybe one last thing I always tell someone is that sometimes the owner operator option makes sense on paper, but at the end of the day you can't get past that, not having a paycheck. Maybe not you know, the, the benefits, which you'll have to get under your business. So in that case on paper, it makes sense to be full time, but it'll keep you up at night. It'll really stress you out to leave your job. And in those cases, that's okay. You can maybe stay on the job for another six months while you kind of transition into the business. Have a general manager in there and work in the business as much as you can. So sometimes it makes sense on paper, but you are unable to make that drastic change up front. And that's okay. If the franchise or allows it again. You know, you may want to go that route, keep the job a little bit longer, keep the benefits and pay and, and just say, Hey, I have a hard, I have a hard day here of June 1st. I'm going to be out. I'm going to have a general manager in place and no matter what happens, we are going to be moving forward full time on, on June one. So, that's a, that's another thing to think about. So this is a topic I talk about every week. I've noticed this question coming up a lot more. So I told the last person we spoke with this week that we're going to. create a show and not share any names and be more than glad to further discuss. So go to the website again, gg, the franchise guy. com. The contact tab, you can send me a message or book a call. There's some questions on there about franchising. We'll have the answer before booking the call and we'd love to hear your feedback, additional questions, additional scenarios and things like that. Be more than glad. If you want to get into partnerships and Kind of multi territory multi location more than glad. And that's the purpose of those calls is to take a deep dive and see if it makes sense. Just say, you know, in general, if a franchise makes sense. So, again, thank you for your support. Thank you for your questions. This is what keeps the show alive. I respond to every single message. If you're ready to make that transition to business ownership or want to create that safety net, you know, you're, you're, there's been a lot of downsizing and, and you want to really protect yourself in the event of the next layoffs. Give us a call. We'll see if it makes sense. Maybe it's something that we start talking about and transition at a later date, but I want to really answer your questions and address your concerns to see if it's a good fit and then put together that path. Reverse engineer, you know, figure out where you want to be. And then figure out and put some some dates in place some ideas, some options regarding franchise ownership. So thanks again, guys. Looking forward to the the new year, some new content. We have some great guests that signed up for the show. I'm going to keep that a secret until we record them. And until we talk again, take care. All right. Bye bye. If you want to learn how to make the transition from corporate to owning your franchise, join Giuseppe on the next episode. You can also follow on all social media platforms and achieve financial and time freedom today.