“To be, or not to be, that is the question”. Many of us know this quote from William Shakespeare’s play, ‘Hamlet’, but when it comes to running a franchise business, with full entrepreneurial drive, who should we aspire to be and who should we avoid being, at all costs? Here’ a different insight into the whole thing.
All of the famous people below – real and fictional – help us focus on the skills-set that is required by successful entrepreneurs and Aspray property claims management franchisees. They also highlight which traits we should not follow. Looking at the lists of who to be, and who not to aspire to be, may puzzle you at first, but let us explain!
| TO BE | NOT TO BE |
| Craig Ballantyne | Dolly Parton |
| Sir Winston Churchill | Gabriel Heinze |
| Tomy Hilfiger | Serena Williams |
| James Dyson | Harry Potter |
Who ‘to be’ in your property claims management franchise business?
1. Craig Ballantyne
To be successful in any franchise business, you need to be a disciplinarian – largely to control yourself! The name Craig Ballantyne may not be immediately known to you but, suffice to say, he is known as the “world’s most disciplined man” and one who built a business, teaching high-performing executives how to excel, based on principles drawn from his career in fitness coaching. Quite simply, without self-discipline, or a regime or framework in which you will diligently work as a franchisee, you will not get far. You need to survive the loneliness of the long-distance business runner through your own drive, determination and schedule planning, setting your own goals and achieving them through hard work. Without this, your franchise business will not fly. Discipline is key.
2. Sir Winston Churchill
Churchill was one of the world’s greatest communicators, known for his ability to rouse a nation and keep spirits high in the darkest of hours. Any loss assessing franchisee within Aspray’s network needs to have strong communication skills, whether they are communicating with clients, talking at networking meetings, marshalling their contractors during property reinstatement, or negotiating with an insurer’s loss adjuster. If you cannot communicate well, you will be hampered as an Aspray franchisee.
3. Tommy Hilfiger
Fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger is someone who built his success on knowing what his competitors were doing and, rather than viewing it as a threat, using it as a way to make his own business stronger. He studied his market, the players in it, and used that knowledge, including insight into the tactics of others, to his business advantage.
Now, you may think some Aspray territories have no competitors to compete with. Wrong. Competition is not just another loss assessor in the same area, it is often the insurer’s loss adjuster, because they are often monopolising the role of negotiating a claim for a client and not advising that client that they could appoint their own representative, in the form of a loss assessor. Competition, in a sense, is also the client who negotiates their own claim, as they are a substitute for your service. As a franchisee, you need to take on this competition and get yourself known in your franchise territory. If you study what’s going on, and why it’s happening, you should be able to compete, by creating your own strategies for success. Fail to study the competitive picture and you may fail.
4. James Dyson
Being successful in a franchise business requires you to be a James Dyson. By that, we don’t mean vacuuming business up, but do mean being resilient, taking the knocks and getting back up to fight again. Did you know that James Dyson created 5126 prototypes for his bagless vacuum, before he got it right? If he had thrown in the towel at the first hurdle, he wouldn’t be the iconic entrepreneur we know today. Being a franchisee is not an easy road. You have to take the setbacks and use them to make your business stronger.
Who ‘not to be’ in your property claims management franchise business?
1. Dolly Parton
If you believe that being an Aspray property claims management franchisee is all about working 9 to 5, you are sadly mistaken. Entrepreneurship relies upon you doing whatever it takes to make a success of your opportunity and that means getting up early to go networking meetings, turning up to assist clients when they need you, not when you feel like it and doing the administration and paperwork at weekends or out-of-hours, if that’s what is required. On the plus side, if you are running your own business, you can often make your hours suit your other commitments, as long as you put in the hard yards at some other time of day.
2. Gabriel Heinze
Gabriel Heinze was an Argentine footballer who played for Manchester United. Unfortunately for him, he is one of the football players to have played in the Premier League who only has one goal to their name. In business, if you are truly to make a go of your business, you need to be setting lots of goals, and not just focusing on one, achieving it and then sitting back. Setting goals throughout your franchise journey will push you on to the next milestone and keep you motivated. Additionally, by not just setting one major goal, which realistically would only be achievable in five or ten years, you can keep mentally rewarding yourself, every time you achieve the stepping-stone goals that will ultimately get you to where you wish to be. If you don’t do that, the likelihood is that you will never achieve your one big goal. Alternatively, you may achieve the one goal of having worked for yourself, without having made a success of it.
3. Serena Williams
Serena Williams is a self-confessed perfectionist, with this perhaps the reason for many matches in which she exhibits frustration or hollers at the umpire. Whilst her talent means she can move on to another match within days and keep winning, being a perfectionist in business can take the fun out of things, annoy regular contacts who may not appreciate your need for perfection and make your day-to-day running of your franchise much more difficult. Taking on board a franchise territory is not easy and you will make mistakes along the way, as you build your business. If you cannot take that, because you are a perfectionist, you are likely to become disheartened and quit before you have achieved your goals. Striving for perfection, but occasionally accepting you and others are only human, is likely to be a better way to approach your franchise journey.
4. Harry Potter
As a franchisee, you should not be expecting to be a Harry Potter, having the magic touch that will instantly build your franchise business, at a click of the fingers or a wave of the wand. It will take a lot of very hard work to launch your business, get yourself known, build up a referral network and organise all that needs to be done to do the job at hand. What you will have, however, is a book of spells, if you like – a franchise model that will show you the wizardry you need to perform at every stage of the property claims management process. And, for good measure, you will have Aspray’s head office ‘Hogwarts team’ to help you, whenever the magic seems to be waning away.
Take on board who to be and who not to be and your franchise business should benefit greatly. If you think you can be a Ballantyne, Churchill, Hilfiger or Dyson, please get in touch on 0800 077 6705.