Episode 399: Franchises In The Pet Industry… Good or Bad?

  Are you feeling uncertain about franchising your pet business? Wondering if the promised rewards are truly worth the risks and responsibilities? Imagine – seriously think about this – you’re at the brink of expanding your business, but looming questions about franchising are holding you back. In this week’s episode of the Bella In Your Business podcast, we’re going where most wouldn’t dare – straight into the heart of the franchise debate. We’re diving headfirst into the world of franchising with a special guest – Liz Ilig. With nine grooming shops and years of hard-earned entrepreneurial wisdom, Liz has been through the trenches. The big brands have courted her, trying to lure her into franchising her business. Yet… she remains unfazed, standing by her decision NOT to go that route. Why? Because success in franchising isn’t as clear-cut as it seems. Learn why brand recognition doesn’t always translate across state lines and how the responsibility of someone else's success can be more overwhelming than anticipated. Think...could giving away your ‘secret sauce’ actually dilute your brand’s integrity and success? If you’re contemplating diving into the dog franchise world or considering other avenues for scaling, this episode is your manual. Tune in to hear why going bigger doesn’t always mean better and how keeping control could be your secret to sustained success. Ready to make the right move? Timestamps: [04:35] Franchise opportunities for successful business expansion. [09:20] Factors impacting success beyond sharing business model. [11:46] Franchising involves responsibility, mentoring, and financial commitment. [14:57] Entrepreneur values independence and controls brand recognition. [18:17] Understand and standardize to grow your business. [23:26] Consider building business with future sale in mind. [24:39] Consider margins, investment, and legacy in business. Notable Quotes: "A lot of my success in the business has been because of the people that I’ve hired, plus me being able to activate decisions right away, changing. And here’s the thing—I have to be accountable for myself." "You can build a successful business without signing on to somebody else’s success." "In the simplicity of it, a franchise model is, 'Hey, do A plus B and you will get C,' but there is so much interpretation and ways to mess up or severely hurt that investment." "Our margins as business owners are already tight on a monthly basis. Think about how much you could use that money for advertising or a coach to build your empire instead of giving it back as franchise fees." "No matter how you build your business, do it as if you’re selling it one day to an investor, someone that can walk in and pick up exactly where you left off." Resources: Instagram: Legendary Ideas Group Email: liz@ilig.com Did you love this episode? Make sure you never miss an episode! Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify to subscribe to Bella In Your Business. Transcript: Welcome to another episode of Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, and today, in our 399th episode, I've actually got a brand new topic for you. Yes, that's right, a brand new topic. I've been heavily involved with the franchises of our industry lately, the past couple of months, and, you know, it's really sparked a question for me. And that is about a couple of years ago. I know a lot of you were approached by two major companies, national companies, trying to convince you to franchise your business. They promised you could make so much money, and it would be easy. They knew nothing about your business, your profits, but they wanted to charge you to do it. Now, some of you did it and had horrible experiences. Some of you did it and didn't really sell many of them but still paid them. Today, I wanted to bring on my good friend who's been on the podcast before, Liz Ilig. She has been instrumental in so many things in the pet industry. She has nine grooming shops in the Phoenix area, where people have told her multiple times, "You should franchise." And so I wanted to bring her on to broach the topic about how franchising isn't as easy as everyone makes it sound. Whether you're thinking about buying a franchise or franchising your own business, I want you to hear from someone who already has nine locations and concepts on why she would or wouldn't do it. So, Liz, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. It was a fun conversation with you, and we're like, "Let's do this." Yeah. And, you know, I love how organic this is, too, because we have these wonderful conversations, and we're like, "Oh, we should have this on the podcast." And this is how this happens. So, Liz, why don't you fill in the blanks a little bit? If this is someone's first time hearing you or seeing you on the podcast, give a little bit of a quick bio of who you are and what you've done. Yeah. So I started my first brick-and-mortar pet grooming business in 2013, and I currently have nine locations. And it didn't happen overnight. People look at me and go, "Oh, I want to do exactly what you've done." And it takes time, dedication, finances. It takes a lot of things to get to where I am. And so, you know, I've always said I'm my own narrative of my story, and I've been able to create this sense of, I would say, you know, like, I have to first say that this was never my intention to grow a large business. I literally thought when I bought the first one, I would be at that first shop for the first ten years and try to get it up and running. And now I'm sitting at eleven years with nine locations. So, you know, going into this, I didn't think I was going to grow and expand the one business. But it just happened organically and also because of my brain and how my brain works and how I'm able to build things. I'm very operational savvy, and so I understand operations from head to toe, how to document it, how to excel in that, how to teach people to do the things that I don't want to do anymore or find people that can do it better than me because that is a real thing to acknowledge. And so I have built this strong company. In the meantime, I was working with people and seeing people at networking events, and people were like, "I want to work with you." And I'm like, "You can bring your dog into my grooming shops." And they're like, "No, I want to know how you were able to be successful." So I took that and was like, "I will help you build operations for your business, basically standard operating procedures, and really teach you how to put your secret sauce into how you do business." And so that's been going on for six or seven years now. I'm sitting at a place where I'm really like the investor. I'm kind of the person that oversees the vision of the company. So I'm just sitting at a different spot than I thought I was going to be, and it's super rewarding. That's awesome. So when people come up and ask you, you know, when you start a franchise, an ethical franchise, right, you're essentially saying, "Hey, give me X amount of dollars, I'm going to give you my secret sauce, my proven method of making money, and you just pay me some royalties, weekly, monthly, whatever it might be, and you can do it, too." And I'll still kind of be that visionary for you. So if you have proven that it works nine times, which is amazing, I applaud you and respect you so much for that, why are you so against turning into a franchise and going even bigger and doing what you love to do, which is scaling and the operations of it? Shed some light on that. I've always said, my whole business is "the buck stops here." Since I'm the visionary, I want to continue to evolve and be able to make decisions overnight. I don't want anybody overseeing myself. I want to really have the freedom to make decisions and not have to go through different chains of command. And also, having a franchise is a whole other responsibility. If I had a franchise, I would have to tailor down and tell them why we're doing this and how we’re going to do it. And to be honest, I know my market. Market is a big thing. Yeah. Because of that, it’s important that you understand, like, I don’t know if I could be successful in Texas, I don’t know the market. I always have employees saying, "Hey, I’m going to move to Colorado and start a grooming shop," and I'm like, "I don’t know anything about that demographic." I will say I know a lot about Phoenix. And so, I don’t know each city in particular, but it's also within my reach or a drive away. If I was in a whole other state, just getting somewhere would be more difficult. The buck stops here. I like to be the decision-maker. I don't want to have to go through a board of directors. I don’t want to have other people. I have been successful because I can act within a 24-hour period or even 1 minute, and make calls for my business. That’s why I don't want to put myself on the line per se to have them fail when I don’t know anything about them. Like, I can have standard operating procedures for my business and they all run really well inside of my orbit, but I’m saying, here’s a silver platter, here’s my business, go and run it somewhere else. That doesn’t necessarily, you know, they can look at me and be like, "Oh, she’s been really successful, I’m going to do it." But I’ve also been successful because I have drive, determination, I'm a self-starter, I can do things quickly and activate. I don’t want to be held responsible for somebody else’s way of life or how they interpret what they want for business. I just want to stay in my own lane and be able to have a successful business because I can make the decisions. Yes, if I was the owner of the franchise, I could still make decisions, but it trickles down differently, and there are levels of command in that.