This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success. Hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. It's Chris Guillebeau. And guess what?
With that introduction, you might already know, this is Failure Friday. Failure Friday, our weekly collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, all of the things that go wrong, all the things that don't go exactly as anticipated or expected or even hoped for. And just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you get to hear directly from a side hustler or a new business owner, an entrepreneur, somebody who has struggled to get something off the ground. And they tell you the story along with a lesson that you can apply in your own quest to create extra income without quitting your job. Now, speaking of jobs, today's short story features Mike in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania.
Mike decided to buy into a franchise. Long, long ago, that was my aspiration as well. Back when I was, I don't know, 20 years old or something, I wanted to own a mailboxes, et cetera, franchise. Never did that. And as Mike explains, maybe I made a good decision actually.
Maybe it wasn't a bad decision to skip that whole purchasing a franchise thing. Although for him, it also wasn't the worst decision in the world. Like just to be clear, this is not a true disaster story as he will explain. Nevertheless, if he could go back, he'd do something different because he discovers, well, let's just let him tell the story. Mike from Pennsylvania, I'll be back with a quick wrap up.
[Music]
This is Mike in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania. So for most of my life, I wanted to own a business. I played around with different ideas and nothing took off. That's when I decided maybe I should buy a franchise. It just seemed like a smart idea.
If I went with a national brand, you know, one that everyone knew and found a good location, it'd be a sure thing. Or maybe not a sure thing, but at least an opportunity that would be hard to screw up, you know? Here's the thing. This isn't a disaster story. It's more like a be careful story.
I chose the brand and took out a loan to cover the costs, which were substantial. Now my store hasn't been a disaster. It's technically profitable and it's been fun in some ways. So what's the failure you're asking? Well, I'm making less than I was in my day job.
And of course I have a lot of debt to repay now. Now eventually it will get paid off, but I just, I feel stuck. That's the biggest problem. There's no opportunity for advancement. It really feels like every day I'm going to work.
And while technically I'm my own boss, I have very little say over how I run the shop. Every month the company has new promotions that I have to honor. And I'm dependent on them for everything. To the point where it really seems like they're the boss. The long story short, I wish I hadn't gone this route.
I may try selling my franchise rights at some point, but most people who do that end up taking a pretty big loss. So I guess that would be the true disaster. We'll see. Maybe it's just a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of going the franchise route. Now that I've been in a while, I don't know anyone else who loves it.
Even though the company itself has a good reputation. It seems more like the franchise model just comes with a lot of built-in limitations. Anyway, thanks for letting me share this story. I hope it doesn't come across as too discouraging. I still enjoy the show and I look forward to a time when I can experiment a bit more.
[Music]
Mike, thanks so much for sharing that story. And I want to encourage you, never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. Indeed, maybe you would have made a different decision knowing what you know now. But thankfully, as you said, it wasn't a true disaster. So hopefully you'll be able to find your way out of that and into something new.
I'm glad to share this with our listeners because I do get questions about franchises. Should I go out and buy a, whatever the name of the franchise is, we purposely didn't include it here because I don't want to cause any difficulty for anybody who actually has a franchise with that business and enjoys it. But I do hear stories a lot like this of it's not quite what I expected. Basically, I bought into somebody else's business, which is fine for some people, but not for a lot of us. Anyway, thanks Mike for sharing that story.
Listeners, if you've got a question or an update about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions, let me know what's going on, what you're working on, what's going well, what's not. And I hope you'll subscribe or follow and come back because we have a new episode every single day. That's it for now. This is Chris Guillebeau for "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
