Franchises, not my cup of tea

The past few weeks I have been researching about franchises for my class.  I have learned that it is not for me.  Maybe you could call me lazy, maybe you could call me a wimp, but the amount of time, commitment, and money it would cost to open a franchise seems overwhelming to me and not worth it.  Obviously, it is very worth it for many people or we would not have over 11,000 Dunkin Donuts locations and 35,000 McDonalds, with another 3,500 Holiday Inn franchise locations.

I also conducted an interview last week with a franchisee for Dunkin Donuts named Nick Apostaleres.  I would like to share some of his insights on franchising that I think are useful to anyone who is looking to start a business, even if it isn't a franchise.

• "You must be hands on and be prepared to work your butt off and pay yourself last."  
• “Make sure you don’t run the business by the numbers; customer satisfaction is the most important.”
• “You have to pick a franchise (or business) that is relevant to people.” 
• "You cannot expect to go into business just to make a lot of money, if that is why you are doing it you will be very disappointed."

As I stated in my last post, this past week was really the last week of my bread business for the $100 challenge.  I made the final loaves of bread on Friday that had been previously ordered.  I wavered back and forth and finally decided to use the remaining ingredients, especially of zucchini and make two final batches of chocolate zucchini bread.  I believe this was a smart decision, I did NOT want to make the bread, as I was totally over it.  However, I knew that by doing it, I could use the majority of the remaining ingredients and make a little bit extra money for the challenge rather than the money I would have paid myself to buy those ingredients to liquidate the company.  As I did so, I used the rest of the zucchini, sugar, cocoa powder, mini chocolate chips, baking soda,and applesauce.  (Earlier I had finished the shortening and honey to make the other breads.)  Essentially the only remaining ingredients were maybe 6 cups of flour, a 1/4 of a bottle of cinnamon and possibly a 1/3 of a gallon of milk.  I made the following post on Facebook to officially close my business:

Thank you for everyone's support of my bread business for my class project. My "business" has closed, but I still have four loaves of chocolate zucchini bread if anyone wants them. They are $4 each. Let me know.
Thank you!! I met the required goal by my class and almost met my personal goal. Thanks again and for those who bought and got to eat it, I hope you enjoyed it!

I sold the last 4 loaves of chocolate zucchini bread all to the same person at church and delivered them to her on Sunday.  With the final loaves of bread sold and my business closed, the profit for my business is $147.81.

Money and Business

This week we read an article that talked about seeking riches, called United in Building the Kingdom of God, by L Tom Perry.  This was an interesting read as I have pondered over the last couple of weeks with my family's financial situation changing.  As you know, I quit my job of 17 years at the end of April.  My husband and I had been planning this change for a little over a year.  We had worked on paying off our credit card, the car loan and purchased another rental property.  We thought that I would be able to not only manage the rental property business more, but I would also open an Etsy store.  I have done both of those things but we really haven't made any money at it yet.  We were smart as we worked through this change, we never relied on needing the other income to be able to meet our financial obligations.  We knew that it would take some time before I would make any money with the Etsy store and we knew there were serious repairs and upgrades that needed to be made at the rental property using the money we have been saving from the income each month.  So while we still haven't technically made money on either business, we are laying the ground work and eventually hope to make money, just to supplement my husband's income.  Maybe we will be successful with both businesses but maybe we won't and that will be okay because we have what we need.  It seems that people born in the late 70's and beyond want everything and want it now.  They want to own fancy cars, buy big houses and clothes to impress their neighbors and friends.  We have also found that as your income grows so do your expenses.  My husband and I have been talking about ways to downsize.  While we aren't planning on downsizing our house, we are considering selling the second car and some of the other "things" that we really don't need.  I think that we are coming to realize that we don't need all those things and the money we have been seeking in the past doesn't mean much if we end up spending it all, plus some and have to go into debt to get those things we think we want, but definitely don't need.  Elder Perry teaches us that we need to focus on seeking the kingdom of God and not necessarily the riches of the world.  If we are lucky enough to have both sought the kingdom of God and earned the riches of the world and are willing to use those riches for good, then I think we have achieved something few have.  However, if we are poor as dirt, but have the gospel and truly live it at all times, then we will be blessed beyond measure in the world to come. Ultimately for my family, we have decided that we would like to start making money with our two businesses, but it will just be able to be used to save money for our future or speed along the process of paying off our house sooner rather than looking to become wealthy or never having to work again in our lives.  However, if those things do happen, it will just be gravy on top.

For my $100 challenge, I fulfilled all the orders I received at the end of the last week.  I spoke to a couple of friends at church and other places I saw them and asked if they wanted to order anything.  I have realized this is definitely not a business I want to do.  It takes too much time and energy to fill these orders.  I feel like I don't have time to do anything else and am either making bread or delivering bread.  This is way too labor intensive for me...and during the middle of the summer in Florida, way too hot!  Since I am leaving on vacation and will not be back until class is ending, this is the last week of my business.  I posted on Facebook on Wednesday my going out of business sale so that I could sell the remaining loaves of bread that I have ingredients for or have already made that were the extra from the batch I had to make.

As a response to Brother Broderick's request to comment on his intro video.  The only thought I have is that if this is the first video students have watched of yours they won't be able to comment on what you need to do differently or be able to grade if they would watch them or not.  I would wait until week 3 or so to make that type of request.  Just my thoughts.

Hiring Slow and Firing Fast

This week we have been talking about hiring and firing.  As we have worked through the assignments this week, I learned that it is important to take your time to hire someone so you make sure you hire the right person.  Not only do you want someone who is a good worker, but you want someone who believes in your company culture.  If you have a certain vision for your company and the way it should be run, you must find someone who fits into that culture.  Otherwise, you will constantly be bucking heads with each other.  This is not productive or a good environment.  We learned that you have to be focused on what you want, have a job description of what the job entails and then be willing to wait until you find the perfect person for the job.  This could take days, weeks or even months.  What is important is that you find the right person to fill the job not the person to fill the job right now.

However, if you are unfortunate enough to hire someone that isn't working out, you need to be willing to cut your losses as soon as possible.  In this day and age, it seems as long as someone is working, at least a little, companies are willing to keep them on even if they really don't fit the company culture or aren't truly putting in an honest day's work.  Of course, also in this day and age, you have to make sure all your bases are covered as you don't want to find yourself in a legal battle for wrongful termination.  This makes finding the right candidate even more important to begin with.

The lesson learned for me is to don't be too anxious to hire just anyone.  Make sure to take the time to find the right person for the job.

This week has been a productive one for my bread business.  I was able to make the bread to fill all the orders from my bread party last Friday.  I had a small mishap where two out of the three loaves of a batch of banana bread the bottoms completely stuck to the pan and the bread was ruined.  I was so annoyed and not sure what to do, but my kind-hearted son offered to buy them from me so I could still meet my goal and not lose all the money for the lost bread.  However, I did tell him I would give him a two for one deal, he could pay me for just one bread and I would give him the other free.  He was STOKED! haha  Not to mention, glad to clean up my mistakes. So instead of the $2 per loaf I would have made I only made $1 per loaf, but any profit is better than a loss.  In addition, I finally got a chance to post about the bread business on Facebook.  In the 24 hours after I posted it, I received orders for 20 loaves of bread!  That will push my profit over the $100 mark and on my way to the $200 goal I had for the project.  So this weekend and next week will be busy making bread, bread, and more bread!  Luckily, my friend let me borrow her bread pans today so I don't have to wash them between each batch! This will make the process go a whole lot quicker.

Great Leaders

This week we have learned about being good leaders.  As I have read the articles and watched the videos for class this week it has reinforced the things that I have learned over the last six months about leadership.  The first one for me is trust.  It is important that we have leaders or are leaders that can be trusted.  If you say you are going to do something you need to do your very best to get it done. This has been huge this week for my husband and I.  We have worked our tails off at one of our rental properties for two weeks now.  We had told them we thought we could get them into the house last Saturday, but that we had to wait and see how the flooring went.  Well by Saturday we knew there was no way we would get it done so we told them we would do the best we could to get them in as soon as possible.  On Monday, we decided to tell them we for sure they could move in on Saturday.  However, the progress this week has been super slow even though we have been there for at least 4 hours every night after work and on a few days I went over with my son and worked on it during the day for a few hours.  It has been exhausting both mentally and physically.  We finally did get it done today and I am so relieved.  We had to ask for help, as we never could have done it ourselves.  I hate asking others for help, when I know people are busy and it is for our rental business where we will make money and not necessarily for a personal thing.  However, people were willing to help and we are grateful for it. In the end, we were able to keep our word and our commitment and the tenants took possession of the house this afternoon.  I hope we showed that we can be trusted and will fulfill our commitments, even when it is a difficult situation.  As a leader, those around you have to be able to trust you.

For my $100 challenge bread business, as you can see we were super busy with the rental property, so it wasn't until Friday that I was able to work on the bread business again.  I made several loaves so they were ready for the bread party in the evening.  I sold out and have orders for several more.  I will make those on Monday and deliver them to the recipients.  I am now up to $58 profit, the initial investment has been paid back and at this point I have almost all the ingredients needed to get me through the rest of the challenge, except for the perishable ones.  I will be setting up another bread party, hopefully for next Friday.  I am glad I have finally made a profit and have two repeat customers and one of the customers her daughter even bought some bread for her boyfriend.  It has been slow, especially with everything else that has been going on, but I have definitely made progress each week.  I still hope to make a $200 profit by the end of the challenge.  I'll keep trying until it is finished.

Customer Experience

These past two weeks have been difficult.  I have been working on repairs at two of our rental properties.  First, I have never been a handy person and my husband is even less handy than I am.  Second, I am overweight and have arthritis in my knees and back so manual labor is very difficult for me.  Even though we have all these road blocks standing in our way, we are determined to get the repairs done and make the properties acceptable and even more than acceptable but great for our tenants.  Last week I learned how to install a new subfloor and tub in one of our rentals.  This week I have been painting, cleaning, caulking and now we are putting in laminate.  It is exhausting and I hurt terribly.  I want it to be great for our tenants and I don't want to let them down but I have been overwhelmed by the amount of time and energy that it takes to make these repairs.  I don't want to fail, but I also worry that I am pushing my body too far.  It is difficult to find the line between customer service and your own personal health.  I know no matter what I will keep trying and keep pushing and take care of myself the best I can.  I want to do the best for my tenants.  I know they are counting on us to get things done so they can move in.

As happened last week, not much has been able to happen with my $100 challenge bread business because of all the time spent at the rental property.  However, I did get an order for 3 loaves of bread so I did make a batch of bread this morning and delivered it this morning.  I also sent an email to my mother in law and asked her if she wanted any bread since we will be seeing them on Sunday and I can take it to them (they live about 45 minutes away so it has to be on a planned trip otherwise it won't be profitable to me).  I have not heard back from her, but at least I am trying to make sales without overwhelming myself with the other stuff going on.  Progress is slow but steady.