eSignature Lawfulness for Franchise Contract in Australia

How to eSign a document: eSignature lawfulness for Franchise Contract in Australia

hi um looks like we've got a fair few people in here already um my name is corey whelan i'm one of the senior lawyers in the franchising team at legal vision and i know you've registered to hear from me about how to franchise your business um i've got jackie here hi everyone i'll let her introduce herself yeah i'm jackie i head up our growth team here at label vision and i work really closely with our franchisor clients sort of from them first coming to vision through their journey with us um so yeah thank you so much for coming and spending some time with us this morning hopefully we can make it um punchy but powerful we've got 30 minutes where i'll be asking for questions mainly questions that we've both been asked you know hundreds of times from clients over the years and then also opening up 15 minutes at the end for you to ask any questions and that we'll try to get through so if you do have something that comes up as korean is speaking feel free to drop it in the chat box and we will come back to those and um address them at the end so you may as well jump straight in but thanks again for joining um i think a good place to start is just to be clear on what is the franchise yeah so a franchise is essentially a franchisor so that would be you in these circumstances who will be providing or growing their business by essentially creating multiple units of a business that you've already created the way you grow that is by licensing all of the goodwill intellectual property and you know all the reputations the way you know how to run that business to individual franchisees which are the other business owners so you can expand your network you can have multiple business units but by having other people involved in the business and helping run the day-to-day side of the business but essentially licensing the ip great and french i think obviously isn't the only way a business owner can grow their business uh what are the benefits why would someone consider franchising as an option that might work well for them yeah so obviously franchising isn't the only way but franchising is fantastic because it allows you to expand your business but still have control over how your brand is sold and represented out in these networks there are so many other benefits it gives employees for example if you want to have them as your franchisees it gives them a say in the business it has gives them a bit of an ownership right they take ownership over that business they grow that business themselves and you get to spend time in the background helping to grow your branded reputation as a whole without needing to run the day-to-day aspects of each individual store that you might find that you would have if you were growing through a normal corporate structure for example um there's a lot of things that make it really really good as well like yeah you can continue to protect it so you can make sure that people are doing what you want them to do rather than kind of going rogue which is one of the problems you see in licensing quite often because it can be a bit too hands hands-off so you're giving them a little bit of a right whereas franchising you have more control um it's also more cost-effective generally speaking because it means that you are able to grow the business without having all of your own money invested in it it allows franchisees to invest in it and pay you a recurring fee but also to grow the business on their own and to derive a benefit and a revenue from that so it's essentially two people winning from the relationship yeah that's what we hear a lot is it's less capital intensive if you're in an industry that requires a lot of upfront costs whether it's machinery expensive fit outs franchising is a way that you don't have to foot the bill of those costs but you can still benefit from the increased footprint of your brand in australia overseas and doing it more quickly than if you were having to rely on cash flowing it or getting uh lending and funding um i know another thing we hear as well is that um if you need to have a local presence you know it's hard to manage a team remotely by having a franchisee who has a network this existing network can be really valuable exactly so if i was um you know thinking about franchising and thinking that obviously as most of you must be um where where should i start what do i need to do first yeah so the first things i would say to think about are how do you want to structure your model do you want to have particular control over a corporate structure or not how do you want to see it flow through do you what kind of fees do you want to charge what kind of territories do you want to allocate or do you want them to have territories there are all kinds of aspects to franchising that should be thought about and you should probably get assistance from a lawyer as you do it um it's really important to understand whether you want to provide a franchisee with exclusivity for example um and there's ways you can start planning that out from the beginning through talking to a lawyer and experts in the industry to start flowing that out and working out okay i want a franchise but what practically does that look like and how do i keep expanding and do it in the right way to make sure it complies with the legal obligations as well yeah yeah so what do you think's the number one thing that a business owner should be doing if there's one thing they have to do to get themselves ready what's the different thing definitely get the legal documents right okay so yeah i would highly recommend get a franchise agreement get your disclosure document and talk to a lawyer about what those two documents look like and what the requirements are um obviously franchising is regulated in australia which is something that a lot of people don't know when they first come to me so the way we draft franchise agreements and your disclosure document which is another required document you have to have in australia um depends on so many things that are specific to your business so don't go it alone make sure you have help and someone there that legally knows what to do and how to drop those documents and can help you provide this opportunity and grow your business in a way that's tailored towards your individual business needs so yeah definitely documentation um what are things that people forget or maybe get wrong in the early days of franchising yeah so i would say kind of similar to what's important and what we've just discussed some things that often do go wrong um franchisees being on board that maybe shouldn't have been onboarded which is again another reason why we would say it's important to get legal advice and to make sure your documents are set up right and to help you know in the process of granting those franchisees and those franchise agreements um so quite frequently you know there will be times when a franchisee will be on board and maybe they weren't right for your business and that's okay because every network goes through it um it's just important to know that that is something that can go wrong um the other thing that i would say to contemplate is obviously in a similar vein what your legal obligations are and to know what they are because often it does happen where franchise laws may not fully be aware of what their obligations are and that's when things can get a little bit sour or when it you know might come up when you've got a franchise in the network who's maybe flagging some issues with you and that's when you realize oh man like we didn't do this right we weren't compliant here so those things can be easily avoided if you do have someone there to help you along the way and it's done kind of in the proper process with lawyer involved yeah um yeah i think that recruitment part of this of who you bring into the franchise is just so important and ensuring in that process that you're not over selling the dream yeah that's how we also see things go wrong that kind of realistic expectation setting of course on the one hand you want to get people really excited about the prospect of joining your business of becoming great advocates for your brand and helping you to grow your business but if you are off telling them you'll be doing a million dollars in month two and the margins are incredible you know you can't beat them anywhere else there's a real risk that's going to come back to buy you yeah exactly understanding what you can do in conversations with franchisees yeah important so you're not creating issues for yourself down the line yeah usually misalignment of what's going to happen yeah misalignment of the relationship um usually from the beginning kind of representations that may or may not have been made um or misunderstandings between both the franchising and the franchise can quite frequently come up one other thing that i've actually just thought of that i should mention where things can go wrong is in relation to your intellectual property and protection of the intellectual property so quite frequently with franchising franchisees who come into the network often think that because they own the business they own all the intellectual property derived from the business um obviously that's the case because you're the franchisor you've built a brand you've got built a reputation and that's something important to consider as well to make sure that those rights are understood at the beginning and those obligations are understood at the beginning to ensure that there's no misunderstanding with the franchisees about who owns what during the franchising process yeah yeah i think and what can we do practically as business owners to make sure we're protecting our brand as much as possible yeah so i mean it's so important franchising is essentially you trusting someone else and sometimes in most cases a stranger or an employee with all of the confidential information of your business how it's profitable um and you know essentially giving them all the right to use your trademarks and the things that make your brand unique so the best ways i would recommend protecting it is by having date of confidentiality um and non-disclosure agreements and they're usually provided to a franchisee prior to having them sign up and into the franchise network that way if you're sharing some information through the normal franchise agreement and things like that you can protect it another way obviously is through the documentation that's given to a franchisee when they sign up so their franchise agreement in there there's normally guarantees which is complicated but essentially help protect you where someone's entering into something as a corporation and moreover another thing i would recommend is your corporate structure so we generally recommend that you separate out a your entities in a way that helps protect the assets in those entities that way you don't have you know someone can't make a claim against you in relation to intellectual property and you can protect those assets while you've got you know maybe potential other companies that hold other assets or potential other liabilities so all of those things are ways we could help you and a way a lawyer should sit down with you to help you understand okay what is your specific need for your business what kind of intellectual property are we dealing with do we need to register some trademarks do we need to work through all of these things um how should we essentially draft or create your business structure in a way that protects all of your assets and helps you onboard all your franchisees yeah awesome yeah i think trademarking a lot of the clients we speak to haven't yet trademarked yet which is okay you know we can do it at the point of setting up your franchise but it's almost just a non-negotiable we must do that to make sure we've covered you yeah um and another thing you mentioned nda i think it's yeah that's that can be really helpful kind of but also making sure that you are not over sharing to early prospect franchisees uh you know there are things that you want to you can you know you can have open conversations about but if you have some really um you know business critical confidential information it might be a recipe it might be a way of doing things that might be a supplier list might be a way that you price your product um whatever that is that's unique to you you know maybe keep that close to your chest until you're more progressed in conversations or you've actually onboarded them as a franchisee of your business certainly yeah uh something really all the time from franchise from potential franchise laws and where i think people get quite confused and maybe overwhelmed just how do i price this thing you're really confident in how you make money off your own business but now that you're franchising it how do i actually um what are what are the fees i should be charging to franchisees to make sure you know everyone's winning whatever they do so there are several fees that we would normally recommend you charge um but also the fees you charge will vary depending on the type of business you're running um and how hands-on you want to be in the franchise um an example of a fee that you may or may not want to include as a marketing fee or a marketing fund which is you undertaking marketing on behalf of the entire franchise network um some franchises decide to do that some don't and that's why it needs to be individualized and tailored the most common fees that you would charge would be an initial franchise fee that you charge as a one-off payment for initially providing all the relevant documents um and all of the i guess goodwill and ip for the brand on top of that you would have a recurring fee and normally the recurring fee is and it can be any number it could be a set figure it could be a percentage of revenue um and that kind of is an ongoing fee that's paid almost you know as a royalty for continually using the brand and reputation and depending on the fees you charge it's really important to make sure that those fees are charged in a way that will both provide you with enough money to continue to run your business and operate your business as a franchisor to you know update and provide resources and make sure that you are able to help out the franchisees in your network but it also needs to be a fee that makes it reasonable and makes it a financially reasonable business for the franchisees um if your fees are too high then franchisees will be deterred and they will probably not want to be you know entering into an agreement where it looks like they're not going to make a huge profit so it's it's important to balance the fees about what you're getting and what you want to give the franchisee in order to make it profitable for them in almost all circumstances uh the success of the franchisee becomes the success of the franchisor and that's really really important to keep in mind when you're rolling out franchising um so yeah royalty fee as an ongoing fee initial franchise fee usually we have documentation fees and that covers you for the legal fees you're us preparing any relevant um you know grants which is when we sign up a franchisee for you or when you find a franchisee and we prepare the documents for them um marketing fees and then there's all kinds of ongoing fees administrative face some franchise also more hands-on and help with some payroll obligations or help with you know a day-to-day advent of the business and depending on that there's yeah we can kind of i can talk all that but it's also important to consider that um that is also a very commercial element that should be understood from your own perspective and your own knowledge of the business but also if you ever have questions and you aren't sure what your face should be and what is profitable in the industry um there are particular consultants and people out there that do help find out and you know give you that information in order to grow or develop the business in the way that works for you yeah and if you're already doing some mystery shopping around competitors and what they charge can give you a good baseline and a lot of times we have to comfort our franchisors to let them know you don't you don't have to lock into these fees forever you might start with something that you think is a little bit more generous for a new franchisee and increase it with time uh and uh you know as you mentioned during the the early franchisees really become proof of concept they're going to be the sort of shining beacons of what it is to be a successful franchisee in your business so starting with something that makes sure they can win is going to mean maybe delaying the profitability that could you could have but possibly build in a really long term successful franchise network that i i think is what you're all kind of wanting to do yeah yeah uh we've talked we know obviously we think when we think franchising we always think about the legal elements of franchising because that's what we live and breathe what are the key legal documents or legal things that a franchise or needs to have or do yeah so the first two main documents that you are required to have are the franchise agreement and a disclosure document franchise agreements sets out all of the commercial elements of the arrangement and essentially dictates the relationship between you and the franchisee now a disclosure document is a particular document that is prescribed by the franchising code of conduct which is the relevant legislation that dictates franchising in australia uh that document is provided in a specific format uh it isn't necessarily you can't just kind of add things to it which is again why i would recommend you talk to a lawyer and you get a lawyer's assistance in having these documents drafted because that is a very specific document that needs to be drafted in a very legal way um and as it's the franchise agreement you know you i've seen some agreements that have been you know 13 pages long and if you have a franchise room in those 13 pages long it's very unlikely that that is going to meet all of your legal needs and protect you adequately as the way you would want to um as you franchise and grow your business so we'd highly recommend making sure your franchise agreement and your disclosure document in place and then any ancillary documents depend on the structure um and the model of your business and i guess how hands-on you want to be but as i spoke about earlier an nda so a non-disclosure agreement of some kind that you would normally provide prior um and a license agreement or a step indeed where you are dealing with a lease so obviously if you're taking on the lease for a franchisee or the franchisee is taking on the lease um in your place there are different documents that are required and we would help you and be able to assist you in getting all of that done so they're the kind of other ancillary documents we would normally draft and that we would recommend as kind of crucial ones to consider yeah awesome so if i've gotten those documents set up you know you've spoken with the legal team they've drafted them based on your your instructions and your plans for business then i've gone out and i've found maybe i've already got someone interested in franchising my business i found someone who i'm wanting to bring into the network wanting to onboard them what do i do then what actually happens yeah so once you've found someone to onboard into the network we would provide you or draft a niche agreement for that particular franchisee so they need to have documentation that sets out what the requirements are and what the expectations are of them in the franchise network so that's where we would draft a personalized franchise agreement for them insert their details they also need to receive at the time of being granted or provided with the franchise agreement a copy of that disclosure document that i just just spoke about so you would need to be providing the franchisee with a franchise agreement and a disclosure document any of the ancillaries that we've discussed and you would need to be giving that to them now a franchisee actually has to have those documents for 14 days before they can execute them which is something again most franchises or most people looking to franchise don't know which obviously in business 14 days can be quite a long time and can protract things but it's important to ensure that you do comply with that because it's dictated by the code so it can be a bit of a waiting game but it is important so there is kind of those initial steps that i would recommend um you know training the franchising as well once they're onboarded you need to think about what that looks like practically particularly if you're based in one state and they're looking at another state what does all that look like practically how do you onboard them what kind of procedures do you have in place for getting them built up as an individual and becoming part of your business yeah and usually that would be all covered in operations manual wouldn't it or some kind of playbook that you know it could be as specific as you know how to you know with mcdonald's how many pools of the salt shaker for you know the amount of fries it can be really prescriptive to make sure the quality of service and product is consistent which ties back to retaining the kind of integrity of the brand which is so important if you've built that up and worked really hard on that and also helps give them more value you know showing them how to do things and do it properly yeah so we've talked a lot about the legislation and needing to comply and that there are some great consequences if we fail to do so you know it's with the 14 days it can be that the franchisee can get out of the franchise because if we don't do that so pretty significant consequences so maybe just touch on that what is the franchising legislation and that we need to be aware of yeah so the franchising conduct is part of the australian consumer law in australia and what it does is it dictates predominantly the obligations on franchisors as they franchise in australia uh it does prescribe some obligations of rights in relation to franchisees uh and the idea of it is unfortunately it came about as a result of a lot of people franchising and doing the wrong thing so it's one of those circumstances where a few people ruined it for the lord um but the idea of the code is to help assist franchisees and to protect franchisees uh so what that means for you as a franchisor or someone looking to franchise is that you should be familiar with the code because it has a bunch of obligations and a lot of things that you should be on top of um for example the disclosure document that i spoke about earlier that actually has to be updated yearly uh and so there's an ongoing compliance kind of check that you should be doing you should be regularly touching base making sure you are complying with the relevant obligations of the code the code prescribes a type of procedure for disputes for example so there's compulsory mediation which is something a lot of people don't know or understand and it's a preventative measure to stop essentially franchisees and franchisors swimming each other straight away tries to resolve disputes as an alternative resolution um rather than going through the expensive court process that is um and also taking way longer as well so the code is very prescriptive of what you are required to do what your expectations are there are potential potential and kind of some financial obligations that are outlined in it in relation to your disclosure document so there is a lot there to consider and a lot there that dictates what you should and shouldn't be doing yeah i feel like the code you know it can be a little bit scary to potential franchisors it can feel like it's you know this almighty um impossible to comply with um you know legislation that's changing all the time and just making things harder to run a successful franchise business but i think we sort of see it as being prescriptive but there isn't absolutely a way to operate well within the confines of the code and yes you should be aware of your obligations but ultimately it's for your legal team to really know exactly what you can and can't do to let you know when things have changed when you need to to do something differently um so yeah i'd say don't let that be the thing that that sort of scares you away it's just something to be kind of to accept and be aware of as part of the franchising yeah so if i've worked really hard to find what i think to be a great potential franchisee i know i've heard from you that recruitment's really important i've tried to really find someone that fits my values that i think is going to be someone i want to work with the next five to 10 years because that's how long we're going to be in business together for right um but sadly things go wrong they work the right fit the expectations haven't aligned they're not they're not it's not working they're not doing the right thing whatever whatever reason what can i do then if things go wrong yeah so when things go wrong most franchise agreements have an obligation in there about breaching a franchisee so the idea of breaching a franchisee is you find the relevant part of the franchise agreement they aren't complying with and you would send them a notice of bridge that says hey this is where you're going wrong this is where we require you to fix it and you give them a reasonable period of time to fix that problem that they have quite often the franchisee will fix it and we'll send you an acknowledgement saying yeah sorry we won't do it again yeah obviously there are the kind of what happens after that is can be varied if the franchisee doesn't want to or doesn't like what you've told them they can issue you with what we call a notice of dispute which is something again that the code allows them to do and that would put you and you will notice that the franchisee doesn't agree with that um that the breach that you've issued but then again then there's kind of proceed procedures derived by the code that explain how you will practically go about that so yeah well you could be going through mediation but like i said before much more cost effective than going to court so uh that is one thing that you can often do if they don't issue you with a notice of dispute and you don't hear back from them and they don't remember the breach the terms of the franchise agreement should provide you with the right to terminate that franchisee and manage them out of the network obviously you need that right because you can't have someone out there with your brand not adequately representing your brand and in some cases damaging that reputation in a way that can be quite bad so it's very important to consider what are the terms in our franchise agreement uh that allow us and afford us rights to either have a breach remedy remedied or to have someone removed from the network when they aren't adequately performing yeah so there's a staged process that we would step through and that's sort of set out in the franchise agreement um and the code and yeah i think you're exactly right that being you know having a strong agreement having a good recruitment process is part of it but ongoing kind of auditing or maintenance of your network to make sure people are doing the right thing is equally important especially in the sort of you know internet era where um a disgruntled customer of a franchisee of yours can blast whatever they want all over the internet which could have pretty massive impact on the rest of your network and ultimately the value of your franchise to your franchisees potentially yeah so all of that is really important yeah uh this the yeah i'm obviously thinking that things are going to go well if i'm setting up my franchise i might want to have 10 franchisees i'm going to have a vision of 250 franchisees or more um what can i be doing now when i'm setting up my franchise to future-proof it yeah so i've touched on this a little bit earlier but certainly working out how you want your territories to look is very important or whether you will have territories and whether those territories or marketing areas are going to be exclusive uh one thing you know if you if you're only looking at granting say a franchise per state then that's fine but if you want to grow your franchise network and earlier on in the piece you've committed to a whole state for one franchisee your ability to grow your franchise is going to be severely limited by the first franchise you granted in order to get someone across the line so think about it from the beginning um i would say try and avoid just winging it along the way it would be really good for you like to think about how practically is this going to work what kind of territories are we going to establish are those territories financially viable for you know that area um sometimes and quite often we recommend people go to people who help establish territories or look at the you know whether there's going to be value derived from a particular area um and you know there's all kinds of parameters in which you can view that and depending on the type of business you have those parameters are so different so definitely think about your business and what it looks like from an expansion model perspective where do you want stores where don't you want stores how will that look um so i'm sort of playing as it is starting with the end in mind a little bit not having to have all the answers yeah but having a bit of a vision for where you want to go so you don't i think franchises come to us and some things we can't undo once they're at a certain stage you know i can't just take that franchise off someone and say sorry you've got three neighbors now and that are also franchisees um yeah that's that's important to get right yeah so i would definitely say future proofing it through understanding how you're going to expand and what it will look like like you said towards the end um also it goes without saying ensuring your legal documentation is good from the beginning because if you enter into an agreement tomorrow for a five year term you're essentially locked into that agreement for five years so you know and five years is actually quite a long time in the business world so and sometimes there's an option for ten so you want to be thinking about what's my business going to look like now and what's it going to look like in five years and 10 years time so definitely be thinking and making sure that your documentation is right and adequate in order to do that yeah yeah awesome great why don't we move to some questions now thank you for anyone who sent some through um okay the first one what is an estimated cost to get franchise documents drafted it's a great question yeah and if you ask different lawyers you might get drastically different answers um yeah yeah so um if we're talking about actually doing the initial drafts of us drafting a franchise agreement disclosure document and everything up front uh depending on the size of your business legal vision has different models and i guess you know different kind of ways we charge um through a subscription model um other law firms charge from what i understand like quiet in the upper end of things um you sometimes you're looking at over twenty thousand dollars just for the initial documentation um we try and keep fifty hundred sometimes yeah sometimes we have tried to bring those costs down um throughout services that we provide um because we want to have an ongoing and long-term relationship with you we don't want to kind of burn you at the beginning and then leave you high and dry so the idea is let's create a face structure that works for ongoing reviews and ongoing legal work and sign up work and then generally um just touching on what are the costs to get after the draft after they're drafted is when you're on boarding franchisees generally you would pay a documentation fee and and that's generally anywhere between two to three thousand dollars plus gst yeah yeah which under our franchise or membership we cover yeah so if you have one franchisee you bring on or 10 in year one that's all covered under the fee in our french i mean we can talk about this um with anyone who's interested but um our membership starts at 494.99 a week um for a minimum 12 months uh and that has everything we've touched on today around brand protection um if you do need a new company set up obviously getting the core documents structured and that can be a nice way to get balance out with fees over a period of time and also have the the comfort and support of the legal team in your corner throughout that you know those early years of franchising which you know can often be the really important ones yeah they often definitely are awesome and do i need an accountant for franchise expansion or is it mainly legal that's a really good question uh yes it's mainly legal but i would recommend you talk to your accountant about expanding as well and talk to them about what everything is you know from your own financial perspective um the other thing that you will need is when you're when we're drafting your disclosure document you are required to provide some financial reports and have an audit report done by an accountant so you should have an account involved in the process and you should be regularly communicating with your accounts so that they're aware of where you're going um i often recommend that if you are looking at franchising or if you are a franchise or um talk to or find an accountant that understands the industry that's really important quite often i say hey we need these reports which you actually have to have done yearly as well so when i say hey can we get these financial reports or this financial statement done often my clients will look at me and go oh i don't know what that is so i need to you know then tell their accountant what that is and what that looks like so if you find an accountant that is franchising i highly recommend yeah we have some recommendations that we can give as well i think starting with your current accountant can they do it if not we can give you some franchise specific ones um yeah can you give some examples of reasonable franchising or licensing being charges everyone's favorite question it's really hard isn't it yeah variable yeah industry and business but what are some examples yeah so so that is very very subjective because it depends so much on the type of industry you're in uh and honestly the way you know what's financially viable for you as well like how much input you have what kind of equipment you provide initially um so often if you're providing a bunch of equipment then your licensing fee or your franchising fee might be low might be high because you're providing a bunch of things as well um i guess arranging a small coffee cart franchise that might have a ten thousand dollar franchise fee yeah and ongoing royalty what we usually see what five to fifteen percent yeah anything from five people this is kind of reasonable but you know i've seen higher you know again the higher you charge the more you've got to be really confident you're providing that ongoing value yeah um and the the franchising fee could be you know in the millions for a mcdonald's franchise so there's really such a range um yeah it's a kind of thing where it's it's doing some industry research we can talk to you about your specific business and give you a better idea once we know what you do in your industry um but you know there's lots of franchises that are in the 50 to 200k range yeah yeah that's that's kind of a common common bracket but really it's up to you and it's also what your customers when your franchise is really to pay right so if you're having early conversations with people interested in your business and your brand and they're saying oh yeah i'd be so great i've been really spend a quarter mil on getting into this franchise that's a good test of what your your potential franchise they might be willing to pay yeah yeah exactly so i think that's important just kind of recapping the fee you know we've just said it could be 10 000 it could be hundreds of thousands so that gives you an idea of how broad it can be and how subjective it is depending on the type of business you have definitely we can you know take it offline and have a conversation with you about what you would like to see what is normal for your industry yeah yeah uh how much will it cost to upgrade an existing franchise agreement so i imagine this might be someone who's already a franchise or just thinking ahead to when they need upgrades done yeah so that will depend again usually on the size of your network and how extensive the changes are yeah um i feel like jackie can probably speak yeah yeah i think i think you're right then it depends on the changes it might be you know what we see a lot of times when franchisors need to update their agreements it's forced on them by legislation changes and we have that coming up this year in july there's a likely change going to come in which will impact franchisors meaning changes to their agreements um we've tried to account for this in a membership and i keep going on about it but the membership will include any changes that you need to the agreement um sorry for the sort of life of the membership any changes you need whether it's because your business has changed and the way that you work with franchisees is now different or because you're forced to make changes based on legislation we do that for you if we were doing it it's just a one-off project you know it could be as little as a you know a thousand four thousand dollars could be more if it's a more drastic update it's you know a redraft or or really significantly changing it but that gives you a bit of an idea yeah and if you wanted us to sit down and we could actually have a look and say okay this is what we recommend yes um if i'm unsure whether or not a franchise is something i want to do or is best for my circumstances who's the best person to speak with a lawyer or someone who's already involved in a franchise that a is a really good question yeah yeah so two things i agree with both like you should talk to a lawyer because we can definitely help you decide if that's right for you we can work out you know how much control do you want to have if you don't want to have that much control and maybe licensing it is it but if you do want to have control and you really want to protect your goodwill and your intellectual property then franchising is probably the way so um definitely talk to lawyer but if you are curious and i've done this for previous clients of mine where they're interested in franchising but they're not quite sure and they want to talk to someone in the industry that knows i've actually had someone sit down with them that was a previous client that was a franchisor that had grown their network to a really large network across australia and they sat with them they said what do we need to do do you recommend it what were the troubles and spoke to someone in the industry about it so so really really recommend doing that um if you don't know anyone there's potential that we could put you in touch with someone that we know that you could talk to um but yeah and it would be interesting hearing from a franchise or even a franchisee perspective as well if someone has said oh yeah look i like being a franchise of insert franchise here maybe in the industry you're in um but i find this challenging or i felt i don't get enough support from my franchise or when it comes to marketing i'm the one who's having to put together specials and offers i really wish i had that from my franchise or whatever it is or you know they're constantly changing the suppliers i can't keep up that's all super useful to know what not to do yeah and it's because it's not all you know daisies and you know how many things you should you shouldn't understand that and we can obviously because we see the full spectrum we do see when things go wrong we can speak to that as well but um i think it's nothing better than coming from the mouth of someone who's done it yeah um average timeline there's a kind of will do speed round for the next few questions about five minutes left average timeline of the new franchise how long does it take to get up and running yeah so we usually are able to do it within a couple of weeks to a month but i would say from rolling out the franchise uh it will obviously take longer for you um just because once we've got the actual documentation usually we find the onboarding process will vary between over a few months um for from our initial discussion with you and initially kind of having a conversation how quickly it happens will depend on you know how many revisions we need to make whether you you know what kind of thoughts you might have we might give you some advice you might decide i don't want to do that anymore so it can be subject to change but i'd say on average generally about a couple of weeks to a month depending on the size of the network how much work's involved um yeah so from the legal perspective yeah within a month yeah and then for how long it actually takes to get your first franchisee in situ ready to go it kind of depends on the interest of franchisees that you have and how prepared you are with everything surrounding the label so for example having operations um manual ready to go and that will see is done alongside so if you give yourself that kind of month to get those other things ready to be having conversations with potential franchisees um we've had franchise from conversation up and running franchisee ready to go within a month yeah like it really can be it can be kind of fast track depending on how how keen you are to get it going i should say that we work first most other firms um with someone's asking about procedures what level of help can we give outside the wall we try to be really commercial and give guidance that we see from you know our experience in the industry and working with partners that specialize in other areas but things that are um better served with other other help we'll give you referrals and that you can consider for those things um so yeah i think it's it's a mix of we know our strengths and we kind of stay in our lane but we'll try to give you some guidance um as well on one other kind of generally yeah do we pay membership to get the franchise documents yeah so the membership our membership fee covers the franchise document setup fee which is the the bulk the sort of the um the most expensive part if you like of setting up a franchise and in addition to that these ongoing franchisee work as well as yes which is important uh from our experience what are the things that have gone wrong and how are they solved with your support great yeah that's a really good question um i can think of an example that i sold just the other day actually which was a franchisee that was doing the wrong thing as you would expect they were buying product from a non-approved supplier um i gave some advice to our client about whether they wanted to breach that franchisee and put them on notice that you know they needed to stop and i think at that point the franchisor had told the franchisee about three times without issuing a formal breach notice um not to do it and it was really really good to say and very very interesting to say that the second we got involved and sent out a formal breach notice the franchisee actually sent back a really lovely reply saying i'm so sorry i didn't realize i was like doing this ongoing i really apologize and we fixed it straight away and it was just one of those scenarios where it was something that could have become so much of a bigger problem but it was so easily so quickly resolved yeah um and often like another example is you know with disclosure obligations quite often franchisees and it's so fair the the legislation is quite convoluted and hard to understand and quite often franchisees don't understand it and what their rights or obligations are and often they'll be you know just they'll kind of raise a bit of an issue with the franchisor and when we step in and we say to the franchise or hey this is what we've done how we've advised you this is why what we're doing is right um we can prepare a response to the franchisee and more often than not the franchisee will go okay i get it you know please understand what you were saying i've misunderstood which is quite often the case and it's that balance isn't it of not going in too heavy-handed this is an ongoing relationship and if unless this is the point of termination let's try to approach this in a way that means we can keep that sort of as much as possible a good working relationship here um and assume good intent from the franchisee before we really you know yeah establish there's no there's no way to come back yeah okay well thank you so much for all of your questions yeah everyone hopefully this was useful i mean we had this these are questions we're asked all the time and things that we're constantly thinking about to help clients understand at that kind of crucial launch or early phases of franchising you know the things that we think you should know one thing that we'll do after this is send everyone a copy of our franchise or toolkit it really goes into a bit more detail in all the different areas that we've touched on today and hopefully you'll find that useful uh we will also send through a recording of this session for a few parts of it or you don't want to want to rewatch watch but if you do and also an option to sort of complete a survey to give us some feedback but also to book in for a strategy session with us um if you'd like so that would be a one-on-one with you talking more specifically about your business and your goals and for us to give you some you know no-cost guidance on what um we recommend you do or things that you should be thinking about where you are thinking about where you are in your stage of business and your franchising plans yeah and so do take us up on that we you know hopefully can add some value and obviously if you do need legal support and you don't have a legal partner that you work with at the moment we would love to support you and the franchising membership is something that's quite new for us that's kind of been born from demand from our franchise or clients so hopefully um you know it's something that could be of interest to you and is a way that we can support you um on an ongoing basis so thank you again for the time and we've had a lot of people sticking around which is awesome yeah any other questions yeah are they either booking a meeting with us we'll just flip them through you really have to answer them yeah certainly yeah awesome thanks so much thanks bye