
Youâre never too young to dream BIG…
Many young entrepreneurs are seeing franchising as a route into business and are utilising the franchise business model as a low-risk way to run their own business and carve out a career for themselves.
A new report from the BFA has revealed that:
âą 18% of all franchisees are now under 30, more than ever before
âą In the past two years, 27% of all new franchisees are under the age of 30
Here at The Travel Franchise, almost 7%* of our franchisees are 29 and under and we fully expect this figure to increase in the coming months as we are receiving more and more enquiries from prospective franchisees who are under the age of 30.
One of our younger franchisees that has really made an impact is Frazer Webley. At the time of joining, Frazer was 19 years old, and after reviewing the packages available he purchased the Elite package (our most popular package).
*based on a recent survey of a selection of our franchisees
We caught up with Frazer to find out why he chose to start a travel franchise and how he feels about being one of our younger franchisees.
âWhen joining The Travel Franchise, I was aware that most of the other franchisees’ would be older than me, but that didn’t put me off as I still believed I could run my own business.
I was very excited and eager to start as I had always wanted my own business, and this was my opportunityâ.
Trial and error
The Travel Franchise teach all new franchisees in training that the best way to find new customers is to reach out to everyone they know, but Frazer admits it wasnât quite as simple for him.
âI found the first few months a bit of a challenge because my friends and most of the people I know are either were either at university, doing an apprenticeship or had part-time jobs – meaning they weren’t really in the position to be booking holidays for themselves.
I realised quite quickly that I’d have to source my customers from elsewhere, relying only on the people I knew wasnât going to be effective.â
But this didnât stop Frazer. After some trial and error with different methods, he finally found things that worked for him. He says that there will always be hurdles when it comes to starting your own business, but that he feels there are many advantages to being a young business owner.
âI tried many ways to grow my customer base and try and find the right target market for me. There was plenty of trial and error involved and along the way I tried many different strategies that werenât effective or simply werenât going to work for me.â
Networking
Frazer later went on to discover how effective business networking could be for his business. His local BNI group was particularly helpful and he says they were able to put him in touch with people he wouldnât normally have the opportunity to speak to.
âOne example of this is an event planner that I now work with. They organise stag and hen dos, and before I started working with them, they used to send their customers to Sky Scanner for their flights.
After meeting them and telling them about my business, I now take care of all of the flights for them! I also signed them up as a Partner in Travel, so they also benefit from referring their flights to me.â
So if youâre wondering âam I too young to start a business?â the answer is absolutely not…
Frazer is the perfect example of how everyoneâs business is different, and the beauty of franchising is you can choose to run your business however you like, but youâll always have the power of the brand behind you.