Validation is the stretch of the process where you call people who already own the franchise you are considering and ask them what it is really like. It is the best predictor of whether you will be happy two years in, and it cannot be delegated.
Most people go into these calls and ask questions that are almost designed to produce a comfortable answer. “Do you like it?” gets you a yes. “Would you do it again?” gets you a yes from anyone who has not yet admitted to themselves that they would not.
Ask these instead.
About the work itself
Walk me through last Tuesday. Not a typical day, an actual one. Specific beats general, and it is much harder to gloss over.
What do you spend most of your time on that you did not expect? Every owner has something. The answer tells you what the brochure left out.
What part of this job do you dislike? If the answer is nothing, the call is over as far as useful information goes.
About the money
How long until you were drawing a real income? Not breakeven. Income.
What did you actually spend to open, against what the disclosure document estimated? Overruns are common. The size and cause of the gap is the useful part.
What is your slowest month and how do you handle it? Seasonality is a cash flow problem long before it is a revenue problem.
Be aware that franchisors are restricted in what earnings claims they can make. Franchisees are not, but they are also not obliged to tell you anything. Some will be remarkably open. Take what you get and look for patterns across several calls rather than trusting one.
About the franchisor
What happened the last time something went wrong and you needed head office? This is the single most revealing question on the list. Support is easy to promise and expensive to deliver.
What have they changed in the last two years, and were you consulted? Tells you whether the system is evolving and how owners are treated when it does.
Are there things you are not allowed to tell me? Occasionally there are. Knowing that is itself information.
About the decision
What would you have done differently?
Who should not buy this franchise? Good operators usually have a clear answer, and it is often more useful than anything positive they say.
How to run the calls
Talk to more than the list you are given. Franchisors will suggest names, and those names will skew positive. The disclosure document contains a fuller list, including people who have left the system. The leavers are worth a call.
Do not take notes you will never read. Write down the one sentence from each call that surprised you. After eight or nine calls, those sentences are your answer.
We tell candidates what to ask before each round and help make sense of what comes back. That is step five of the process.