As a Franchisor, I try my best to be as open and honest with people as possible on all aspects of running their own Franchise. Our company, Pizza Hotline, has been franchising for decades and is extremely proud of the success we’ve had with our long-term Franchise Partners. We attribute that success to one thing above all else – transparency. Simply put, people need to understand what they’re signing up for, and actually want what their signing up for. While this might sound simple, you would be shocked if I told you how many people I speak to about Franchising who simply don’t understand the process and haven’t really figured out if it’s something that they want to do. When we meet people like this, our company always takes the same approach: we share the truth, we tell them what we think the pros and cons may be (based on what the person has shared with us), and we always advise them to go back to the drawing board and take some time to reflect. We do this because we want to bring people into our organization that we really believe we will be able to share in long-term success with. But different people do better in different environments. Workloads, industry, size and complexity of the concept, level of direct customer interaction, even daily drive time or noise level in the business’ offices and more can all have huge impacts on the quality of life and ultimate success of a Franchisee. In the end, it all comes back to the simple question: what do you want? The answer, however, might be harder to identify.