Where has your entrepreneur inspiration come from? Does it run in the family?
Growing up we have always seen our dad look for businesses and always wanted to take the plunge. Due to responsibilities and been part of a sandwich generation he never could take such a risk. I believe this was a way for us to follow through on his ambition and make it a reality.
What attracted you to the franchise model?
The fact that we can easily replicate, the model has been proven. Our main concentration is taking care of our staff and operations. This simple partnership allows for us to be able to replicate this model for multiple sites and nurture and build great staff. Which we believe to be the core of our success.
Why did you decide to scale up your initial franchise investment and how did you successfully do this?
After experiencing the success of our first site, we realized how well we could operate the store. We were ambitious, hungry, young and full of passion. We worked all hours of everyday and if we weren’t going to be employed what would be our career progression, surely for us it would be to multiplying of sites.
Having great support from the bank not just for the loans but the relationship building and networking has supported us too. We met some great experienced and successful individuals.
Why did you decide to invest in multiple brands?
The fact that we had two individuals within one business gave us a more of an opportunity to take the leap with this. We decided do diversify into different sectors. We could have done multiple brands within the same sector but we believe in learning through our journey. We thrive on learning from more people and different environments. It has broadening our understanding of different challenges and strategies. As a challenge in one business can mean the proactive increase of efficiencies or productivity within another.
What have been the benefits and challenges to this?
In terms of challenges, initially getting into the business is always a challenge. However not in a negative way, the challenge is only the learning and time of understanding. I believe there are not many more challenges.
This is another benefit of franchising, having a model which is proven and constantly developed on allows us to just concentrate on operations and staff. This model makes it much easier, I would go further to say that it elevates the performance of all the brands. Multi brands across multi sector allows a great insight into different forms of operations, technologies and strategies over the entire business.
What has been instrumental to your success?
It has been staff, empowering, training, mentoring and constantly engaging our staff. Witout them we could have not come this far, we invest in our staff constantly and do not strongly budget for it. Its more about feel then physical numbers and figures on paper. We treat them as family and out come some real gems from the most surprising individuals. We also believe having a larger goal than just the financial one allows you to strive harder and give you and your teams more motivation to do the best you can as one.
If you could impart a bit of wisdom on an upcoming franchisee entrepreneur, what would it be?
Build great relationships and always help the network, and do not forget your staff. Take the time to find out who they are and show them who they can become.
