This is something i have always said, so many business owners franchise out thier business when thier business isnt really ready for franchising. Brand awareness is really what your buying, and a business model that is profitable for both the franchisor and franchisee. Jo blogs window cleaning whos brand has only infiltrated a few hundred people, or even a couple of thousand isnt going to stand out amongst the hundreds of other window cleaning brands that also have only infiltrated a few hundred or thousand people. You might get one or two franchises but due to your brand limitation thats all your only ever going to get.
What you need to do is grow the business first, by employing. If you can get to 20,000 customers and 20 vans your starting to make a small dent in your brand awareness, and increasing the value of your franshise proposal. You can then sell reigional franshises that are much larger, higher value that wont attract the cottage industry investors, but the sorts of companies that actually invest in francshises as thier business. Macdonalds, dominos and subway for example, most are bought by Ltd companies and they may own 3 or 4 with millions invested. Thats the sort of franshises you want really, but many run before they can walk and will only get cottage industry imvestors...not thats a bad thing, if your happy with that of course. From a business point of view though in order to make the franchise pay for itself as a franchising businss in its own right, instead of a simple means of expansion , then you need to grow the businesx into something worth investing in, and just being ready to do that can be years and years.