I have seen statistics that a franchise business has a 90%+ chance of succeeding 5 years in business.

Why do manufacturing businesses and franchises do so well?

Due to the relatively high capital costs, manufacturing companies are forced to be well capitalized and have tight controls on production and business systems.

Franchises generally have a proven profit generating formula and operating system. They also tend to provide good ongoing support, sustained marketing, as well as measuring performance and adhering to standard operating procedures.

How can a small business mirror the success of a franchise?

Create a franchise prototype for your business. This means examining every area of your business with a critical eye and putting into place:

• systems: document how you do things. Pay especially close attention to those areas of the business that are most "critical" to your success.
• training: closely linked to systems -- train every employee and create standard operating procedures for staff to follow.
• measurement: after you have systems and procedures in place now you msut track and measure adherence to your performance standards.

Building your own franchise prototype is a significant task. You cannot build your prototype in a day. However, over time, you can test, modify and evolve your business systems to create your own 'prototype'.

The benefits are increased control, improved profits and best of all -- it will allow you to easily expand into multiple locations.