I have a gifted franchise development candidate that I am thinking of hiring, but I am hearing that I should not have the franchise employee work within the existing corporate structure, but, rather, work within a separate structure designed just for the new franchise side of the business.

Does anyone have an opinion on this or do you have resources of how a new franchise initiative/division should be separated from our traditionally company-operated organization? 

As a young franchisor however, the drawback is the shell corp looks like a shell corp.  When you are working with candidates who just lost 1/2 of their net worth and are looking to claw their way back in 10% unemployment, they will want to do business with a company with staying power.

It is one of those things where the "legal advice" is "separate your liabilities" but the business advice may be combined the organizations to show staying power and financial health.

How's that for a non-answer.

Joe Mathews
www.FranchisePerformanceGroup.com

Joe Mathews
Franchise Performance Group
www.FranchisePerformanceGroup.com

Good day,

Congratulations on your success and growth of your company. In any time this would be impressive and in current conditions your decision to grow further, via franchising is commendable.

Having the right person in place for development is crucial and taking advantage of the existing system rarely hurts.

A bigger point would be someone’s knowledge in “franchising” is more critical than ever. Putting together the “operation” first is much more important than just getting ready to bring franchisees on board and that is where the difference in having franchising experience would be astonishingly helpful. Knowing how to take a success business and create a successful franchise organization expanding via the model of franchising.

To often a company jumps into franchising for the wrong reasons and woefully unprepared and suffers. Some companies may actually be better as a chain or network and if they do franchise, become a local or regional franchise system first.

You may also want to consider using the corporate success as part of the FDD until you have a group of successful franchise owners to validate the business on it’s own.

You don’t mention the industry or the reason you have decided to franchise or whether you are looking for single, multiple, area or master franchising as your strategy. Please don’t hesitate to ask the many professionals who can be “the third set of eyes” to help as you move forward.