Harness the ‘clean slate’ energy New Year brings to reconnect with your founding vision and reset your franchise for 2024.
As a brand-new franchisor, your business’ vision is often crystal-clear. From improving your personal circumstances to bringing about change in your sector, there are real, tangible reasons to get up in the morning. Sales conversations crackle with energy. You say “Yes” or “No” with your full chest. Every new day feels full of possibility as you set about making your dream a reality.
Then, somewhere along the line, you lose sight of your purpose. Signing up a new franchisee just means more paperwork. You obsess about other operators and develop ‘comparisonitis’ – making reactive changes with little thought or planning. Before you know it, your founding vision is a distant speck in the rearview mirror, and you’ve steered perilously off-course.
Here, Cheryl White, founder of the Mercury Franchise School Ltd, invites you to reconnect and reset this January – finding renewed meaning in operating your franchise.
At a basic level, most franchisors start out wanting time freedom and financial security. Being your own boss, having an impact, creating a legacy or building a saleable asset may also have been on your wish list. The important thing is to get clear on what vision, mission and goals were uniquely yours.
Dig out old photos of yourself from ‘way back’, when you first started out in business. Look at them and try to connect with your past self – journalling about what you were thinking and feeling. If you cannot remember, ask people who knew you then: “What did I tell you was my one big goal?”
Use these prompts to go deeper: Does my franchise in its current form align with what I set out to do? How far have I strayed from my vision and mission? And, in what specific ways?
Write down every success and challenge from the intervening years – being compassionate for every version of yourself. Entertain the possibility that it is a good thing you are no longer on the same path. Maybe you were playing small, responding to less-than-ideal circumstances at that time, or you are a whole different person now because of life events.
Reconnecting with your original vision for your franchise (or creating a new one to better reflect your present-day circumstances) will equip you to attack 2024 with renewed purpose. Knowing what you want personally, and how that aligns with what you want to bring into the business for the next 12 months, will bring a renewed sense of meaning to owning your franchise.
Meaning is one of the key pillars of positive psychology. It connects us to our sense of motivation so we can be our best, most productive self. That feeling of being focused, energised and excited by the work at hand – seeing the value in what you do – is known as being in your ‘flow state’. Keeping your meaning front and centre so you can ‘get in the zone’ is key to being a successful franchisor. That involves getting very specific about your goals. Whether it is reducing your working hours, selling up entirely or scaling up massively, the next step is to figure out exactly how many new franchisees you would need to create the necessary income.
From how you treat each other to how you treat your customers, your values should unite your franchisees and their teams, so you are all pulling in one shared direction. Having a vision without values is like setting a destination without any means of travel. Reconnecting with them as part of your New Year reset is a vital step!
Once your vision and values for 2024 have been communicated to existing and new franchisees, ask for honest feedback (face to face is best) on how well you are doing at supporting them. Do they feel like they have a voice in your organisation? Share the results franchise-wide and set timescales for when they can expect to see change. You may not be currently operating your franchise the way your younger self imagined, but it is never too late to use positive psychology to get back on track.
