Avoid franchises in window cleaning is pretty damn good advice rather than pretty poor advice and i am happy to tackle anyone with any figures on the table to explain exactly why.
Strangely though,running your own succesful window cleaning business and then franchising to others would be seen as good advice and theoretically removes one from the daily grind of manual labour and a way to achieve higher income.
Supporters of franchising window cleaning rounds generally if not without exception have this ideology at the back of their minds and therefore the advice is biased.
I know the figures you disagree with: It would indeed be daft for
you to buy a franchise.
Well, put yourself in someone else's shoes and bear in mind that not everyone has your business brain. So, they aren't going to do the planning and surrounding work involved in setting themselves up. They aren't going to knock on doors to build up a round/plan large leaflet campaigns. In which case they are stuck. They can buy a round, sure, but that's fraught with ways to be ripped off, so they may shy away from that as well. So they drift away.
Alternatively, they are prepared to buy a service from a franchisor whereby they get the round, the kit and the support in how to run a successful window cleaning business. For that they pay an initial fee on top of the kit they buy (largely as a form of commitment); compared to buying a round it should be pretty trivial. The way all this is paid for is as an ongoing fee.
Now, as I say, you have to take yourself and your clear business-starting abilities out of this. Once you do this, can't you see that
there are people out there perfectly suited to that kind of business? If you can't see that, fine, but to me it's as clear as day.
Vin