If you want your franchise to succeed, you need to give 110% of your efforts; you have to be in it to win it. As a former franchisor, I can tell you that the most successful franchisees went above and beyond the call of duty, they took their businesses as serious as their families, and because of that their success seemed to know no bounds. In fact, I was often humbled having franchisees that had succeeded in my business model better than I had succeeded in it prior to franchising that business model.

Why were they so successful; was it because they were smarter than me, better business people, or had better friends in the right places? No, it's because they gave 110%, worked very hard, and seized opportunity. Let me tell you a little story. This happened in Fort Myers Florida sometime in 1998 or 1999. It was Christmas eve and I would be leaving in two days after setting up a franchise. I knew I wanted to do more, but it was the holidays, and although our marketing mission did well, I did not feel we met the objectives that I have set for the team.

Therefore, on Christmas Eve I went out to do selling to sign up new accounts. Our business model was one that cleans fleets of vehicles. My blitz marketing team reminded me that everything was closed, and there was no one to sell to. I thought to myself that's not true there are businesses that run on Christmas Eve; actually there are lots of them. So, I started making a list of all the types of businesses that would be operating on Christmas Eve.

One was airport shuttle service, and there was an international airport not more than 10 miles away. So I took one other blitz team members and we went to do sales. It turns out one of the shuttle drivers was the owner of the shuttle company that had 15 vehicles, and he was working on Christmas Eve because he was Jewish, and he didn't want any of his other workers to have to work on that day. Interestingly enough, we talked to him for 20 minutes and signed up the account.

This turned out to be a wonderful account, and put us right up against the goals I had set for marketing mission. As the franchisor, I was giving my 110%, but our franchisee was not, he said it was Christmas Eve and he didn't want to work, even though you just spent over $100,000 investing in his business which would support his family the next 10 years. As it turns out he didn't do very good follow-up with the business owner who we signed the account up with.

The shuttle company owner called my personal telephone which I had given him and asked me what was going on with my franchisee and why he wouldn't come out and clean the vehicles, so I called our franchisee, and he said the vehicles had to be cleaned after hours, and he didn't want to work after 5 PM. I thought to myself wow, here is a $5000 month account, which would take about 5 to 7 hours per week to do, and our franchisee wouldn't put in the effort to get it done.

Yes, that franchisee succeeded, but he always complained, and never really succeeded up to his own expectations of what he had hoped for or the goals we had set for him. I am telling you this story because if you run a business, you have to give 110% if you want to win and be successful. If you are lazy or want to take the easy Street, you shouldn't expect to succeed in business against your competition. In fact, quite frankly you don't deserve it. I hope you'll please consider this.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes in hard work ethic in business. Note: All of Lance Winslow's articles are written by him, not by Automated Software, any Computer Program, or Artificially Intelligent Software.

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