Age is just a number when it comes to success.

You’re 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:

• 18% of all franchisees are now under 30, more than ever before

• 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.

“When 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 opportunity”.

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 wasn’t quite as simple for him.

“I 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 wasn’t going to be effective.”

But this didn’t 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.

“I 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 weren’t effective or simply weren’t going to work for me.”

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 wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to speak to.

“One 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.”

So if you’re wondering “am I too young to start a business?” the answer is absolutely not…

Frazer is the perfect example of how everyone’s business is different, and the beauty of franchising is you can choose to run your business however you like, but you’ll always have the power of the brand behind you.

How does an instant travel business with all the marketing and sales support you’ll ever need sound? If you love planning holidays take the first step today with our video tour OR if you’re ready to talk about your plans book a call here.