David Holland from ActionCOACH
What does your franchise offer?
We are the world’s number one business coaching firm. We are in 32 countries worldwide and there are 1000 coaches. Typically, what our coaches do is they work with business owners of small and medium sized companies from one or two employees to 20 or 30 employees helping the business owner to get better results: could be make more money, work less time, build the business, and sell the business or whatever they choose to do with it.
So how wide-spread is your franchise having in mind that you have a team of one thousand people?
We are in 32 countries now and we coach in seven languages as well. We have a joint venture in Beijing, China and in India as well. I have been very fortunate; I have been to many of the countries within ActionCOACH so I have been to Indonesia, Mexico, the USA. ActionCOACH started in Australia 17 years ago and spread through the English speaking world very quickly. Now we are looking to working within non-English speaking countries as well.
What kind of franchisees are you looking for?
I was a franchisee myself. Eight years ago I bought a franchise so this is what a franchisee looks like (pointing at himself). Typically our franchisees will be people who have business experience either corporate or self-employed. Sales and marketing background is very very useful and so is the ability to link with people, connect, to influence people and ability to persuade them.
What is the trend for the services you are providing around the world?
It’s growing, especially in what we are calling Eastern Europe and developing countries. In the USA and the UK and the English speaking countries we are growing very very quickly but certainly what we find in Bulgaria and Poland, we are in Hungary already, for example, is a developing market, an evolving market and entrepreneurs want to learn how to build the business. And what we offer is a proven model, we are proven all over the world, so we are expanding very very quickly. I find people in these regions to be very open for new ideas and very entrepreneurial which is refreshing so we are growing very very quickly.
Do you have any particular requirements, like financial or educational or business skills? And how do you answer the question “how much do I earn from this franchise”?
An ideal franchisee will be somebody who has business background of some sort. In saying that, I am looking at our top coaches in the world. One of the guys from our top coaches in New Zealand was a bee keeper, for example and a lady coach was a nurse in a hospital. So it is business background and knowledge and experience but also passion, integrity, personality. And if people are keen to help other people and they are passionate about it they can bring that to a business model that works very very well for us. In terms of how much money you can make in this business – it depends. Some coaches want to work in this business full time or may be work part time. Our top coaches right now are earning an excess of 90 to 100 thousand dollars per month in their business. So how much is possible? 100 000 dollars per month is possible.
What are the challenges of your franchise?
One of the challenges we have, compared to other franchises, food franchises for example, we don’t have a shop or a store or a product we can show you. Our product is intellectual property; it is a proven method and a proven system. So when people want to buy the franchise we are really looking for them to understand the concept of a systemized approach to building a business. Then they work with our own models and concepts that have been proven. They bring that to their clients, the clients get great results and that is how they build the business.
