Franchising the Good the Bad and the Crooked my life as a Franchisee Part2
Jeff The Windscreen Part 2 of my Franchising Journey
I said to my wife I might as well look for a franchise as the 20k inheritance will just disappear we have nothing to lose. Thinking back that was a hell of an amount of trust she showed me all her inheritance gambled on me making a go of it in the franchising world. I looked at various opportunities and was impressed by Philip Milburn and his operation Highway Windscreens as they were just short of national coverage and if they could gain that I could see a great future with national accounts. The only problem we had was I lived in Northampton and that area was taken the nearest area to me was North Birmingham. I talked things over with my wife and decided to go for it paying my £12,000 fee and with no experience in the field of windscreen replacement or glass replacement which they did as a sideline I signed up. Of course, there were other problems apart from being a milkman I had never been in business I had never been in charge of anyone before never had any business training or even read a book on business. Another big problem I found was that after visiting the Northampton franchisee he made me feel I was not good enough and I came away ready to give up. It was more my insecurities at the time understandable I suppose I had nothing to offer. Luckily, I was still working out my final month at the factory and remember sitting by my machine feeling down and sorry for myself. Then a security guard walked by my machine without him ever knowing it he changed my life. This guy must have been under 5ft tall his arms were hidden up the sleeve of his jacket he was that small. I looked at him and said to myself if this guy has the confidence to apply for a job as a security guard, I can take on a franchise.
Prior to training, I met up with a representative from Highway Glass Mark Harvey and we looked at various units in Tamworth. I chose Tamworth being outside Birmingham I thought I would stand more chance than being up against the bigger companies in Birmingham. The next thing we had to do was pick my staff I was advised to start with a windscreen fitter/glazier and an office person. On the day of the interviews, I signed on at the Northampton Job Centre in the morning and then drove to the Tamworth Job Centre where I met Mark who interviewed the applicants for me. Wonder what the applicants would have said if they had known I was on the dole myself. I must say I was given a lot of help starting up and boy did I need it. We picked out a young lad Adey and an older lady Pat soon after I went to Norwich for 3 weeks training which was almost all practical. Ady joined for the last 2 weeks I was out with windscreen fitters for 2 weeks in the final week I had 2 days out with glaziers a day picking up my new van uniforms etc followed by just over a day on admin and finance. Ady had a week of windscreen training followed by a week of glazing training. Pat came along to do some admin training in the last week. That’s it the 3 of us started on the following Monday. The Head office did something I thought was invaluable and have never seen it repeated in other franchises I’ve been involved with. For the first 3 weeks, we had head office salesmen staying with us getting in sales and advising us. They were very good and we started with some nice jobs and the confidence to go forward. The difference that makes to new starters is invaluable.
The inexperience started to show though we had no real idea how to do the job luckily Ady was very practical a trait I do not have in fact my old metalwork teacher used to refer to me as a right-handed left-handed person. I am right-handed but look as awkward as a left-handed person with tools. In our naivety, we just laughed our way through it. Even after all these years as this was in 1992 last time I saw Ady he said we had a great laugh but I would not want to be in that position again. Two complete novices Ady had worked for a double glazing firm never actually cut glass or knew much at all about glazing. Our glazing training was around putting in shop fronts. Pat left almost straight away as the job was more involved than she wanted. Some of the mistakes we made were looking back laughable but at the time some not so funny. Typical of how we got through things. I managed to get on the police boarding up rota straight away. Early on they called us out to board up a pub window. The landlord asked if we could replace the double glazed unit. Ady said yes well I had no idea if we could or not so we measured it and off we went to see Ady’s mate who made them. He did one while we waited, we returned installed the new unit and the landlord said I will just go and get some cash to pay you. I said to Ady what shall we charge he said “I don’t know” I asked what his mate would charge us for the unit he replied “not a lot” we had absolutely no idea then Ady looked at our number plate UCL 164 sounds good to me so he was charged £164.00 pounds. I remember pricing up our first shop front for the insurance it was so much then my wife is going shopping better add another £100 on for that. On the windscreen front, the worst that happened was I was told in training there are 2 types of windscreen sealant. One is a fast cure which is more expensive and only to use it if the car had an airbag. We are talking early 1990s when a lot of cars did not have airbags. Most of our sealant was marked up fast cure so I told Ady not to use it we had some that just said sealant. Now we were busy and under pressure, as the head office team had been successful we should have noticed the sealant did not set off on our wipes well, to be honest, I think it was mentioned. Luckily enough a sign fitter we fitted a screen for was putting up a sign in an Autowindscreens depot. He had been told we were using the latest super sealant fresh in from America. There was a great saying in Highway attributed to Mark Twain Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. He told the depot owner all about it who pointed out that what we were using was a non-setting sealant designed to flow into small gaps and his windscreen would most probably fall out in time. We had to phone all our customers up and redo their screens telling them we had a bad batch of sealant. Franchisees the world over can tell you similar stories and I have many more at the end of the day franchise training is a week maybe 2 or 3 in most franchises. They take an unskilled person and try to teach them the skill and how to run a business in that short time. Then set them loose on an unsuspecting public.
Philip the owner was an entrepreneur and it seemed like every week there would be a new service or offering we could make to our customers. Sunroofs, car alarms, hidden buttons that you pressed in a car before turning the engine on. Without pressing it the engine would not start. All of which we offered achieving small amounts of success. One of the best was Armaglass a security film you put on the back of windows making it far harder to smash them. Theory being when a thief was trying to break in if the glass does not give way with a couple of blows they tend to panic and rob someone else. I was quite impressed with it you could literally hit the glass with a hammer and still not get through. I managed to sell it to a company that had about 6 very large double glazed units and had been broken into a few times. Luckily enough Armaglass themselves came down to fit it being such a large job at the time anyway. Our client did query the fact that they were not taking the unit out and installing the film to the edges but the Armaglass installer assured them that you did not need to. Well, a week later we were called out again to board up after yet another break this time though there was no mess with broken glass all over the place. The glass came out as Ady described it like a draw bridge all in one piece making it easy for the thieves to just walk in and take what they wanted. The windows are now bricked up.
As I knew nothing about finance or cash flow etc you will not be surprised to learn that my cash was running low. At the time driving 60 miles from Northampton to Tamworth and back was also taking its toll. The solution was to sell my house and find somewhere in Tamworth to rent while we looked for a house to buy. Well, no doubt you can guess what happened my money from the sale was fast disappearing as we were encouraged to take on salesmen send them on training pay them a wage plus commission it was even harder to make it work. The accountant I used was part-time and terrible at helping or advising I had to go to the pub on a Monday night if I wanted to see her. My fault as well I did not realise the trouble I was getting into. My sales were very good compared to other depots but we were sinking fast. Pressure started to tell both at work and home as my wife had moved up to Tamworth away from her friends and had 5 children to look after she was lonely and struggling. We did manage to keep enough money for the deposit on a house though and somehow got a mortgage. I remember there were 2 houses we were looking at and I said to myself we might as well go with the more expensive one as we will be thrown out of whichever one we choose we might as well have a better house for a while. I kept all our troubles to myself my wife had no idea regarding the mess I had got us into. I had bailiffs for both the VAT and National Insurance visit us the only asset I had was an old van which I signed over to both as security if I did not pay. The laughing was over this was now bloody serious I booked myself in for a week at head office to see if that could do anything to spur me on. While there I took a call from the VAT man as I was struggling with making payments. The call ended up with me saying not word for word I will let you imagine what I actually said. Well if you are not going to give me more time to clear the debt I will close the business and the government can pay out dole money to me and all my staff. Philip overheard well to be honest, I completely lost it so I dare say half of Norwich overheard. He sat me down and said tell me the truth how much mess are you in.
I told him about selling my house and the debts I had built up and worse of all were the fines imposed by the VAT and NI for late payment. I told him the bank manager has had me in telling me I had lost my money and I’m not going to lose their money. My overdraft was being reduced by £1000/ month, bailiffs had visited us the lot
Philip said Jeff you have the fundamentals to make it your sales are high, and you are top of our customer service surveys. He also said Jeff your problem is you’re a nice guy that’s great but don’t be a walkover you lose respect. Trust me he said I will help you out of this mess. Well, my thoughts returned to when I started, and Philip said he would change my life. He achieved that with spectacular results. I had a home money hair now I have none of those pretty sure I had shrunk an inch as well. I went back to the hotel that night and for the first time cried I thought I had lost it all. I said sorry to my late father in law for losing his money. How was I going to tell my wife we have moved to a new town she knows no one but now also has no money and a useless husband who is bankrupt. That was a low point so many other franchisees I have known have gone through and many did not recover worse of all the pressure can end up in ruining a family as well as divorce even suicide. Having been that low I can see how these things can happen.
Lessons to learn for franchisees is they can not teach you it all you need to know and understand your numbers. Ask for help directly you see it is not going as well as promised believe me it never does. Help can be from the franchisor a fellow franchisee or outside help. Philip helped me once he knew but other franchise owners in the same situation have been more concerned with making sure the franchise gets paid their fees. Then on top of going under will sue you personally for a termination fee and your expected weekly fees till the end of your term. That friendship they showed when you joined soon disappears. This is kept quite as you will have no money left to sue them they threaten you till you are so scared you will do anything. At this, they will make a deal whereby you pay a reduced exit fee and sign an NDA. So none of this gets out.
Lessons for the franchisor. You tend to forget these new starters know nothing or very little about running a business. The very reason Highway sent someone out getting work in and helping with running the business. New starters need individual help and guidance, not just compliance checks. This could be another trusted franchisee, not just head office staff. Stop bullying your franchisees it will come back to bite you. Regulation will come in because of those rogues who act as they do. If you think or say to yourself, we can do this because the franchisee can not afford to take us to court you need to look at yourself.
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