Franchisor News magazine
Franchisor News is the only franchisor focussed magazine. The following is an article taken from the Summer 2008 issue.
Persistence pays…
Brody Sweeney, founder of O’Briens, through sheer resilience and hard work built the successful international sandwich chain from scratch. Editor Alison Church learns what nearly being kicked out of university, refusing to take advice from anyone and an insatiable entrepreneurial spirit did to create one of the most notable personalities in franchising.
You are well known for your strong sense of ambition and entrepreneurial spirit. Can you take us through the various business ventures you explored before O’Briens?
I wasn’t very good at school and was always looking for a way out. All I wanted was to become rich and famous and get all the girls. In my second year at university, I was about to be kicked out and, at that time, my father bought the master franchise for Prontaprint. I begged him to allow me to run it. He was very reluctant as he wanted me to finish my degree but eventually he gave in. This was in the early 1980s; we ran it for eight years, it never once made a profit, not even came close – ever!
It was a good education of life in business. I still believe a good franchise touches on all the business disciplines. You have to be good at marketing, accounts, finance and people – that’s what franchising teaches you.
What inspired you to start O’Briens?
After I sold Prontaprint back to its parent company, I went to America. I visited a company called Subway, which at the time wasn’t very big. I really liked its business model. It involved a no-cooking restaurant concept, which meant it was cheaper to build than a conventional restaurant.
When I came back to Ireland and further researched this idea, I came across a statistic that more than half of the entire fast food market in the UK was sandwiches and yet it was the only big sector without a dominant brand. That was my eureka moment!
Was going international something you wanted to do from the outset?
It was. I was keen to try and build an international business, which was the idea behind the name. It made sense from the point of view of going onto a UK high street – it wasn’t English, it was different.
The first few outlets were in Dublin, which weren’t franchised. I lost a lot of money in the first few years and struggled to try and get the business right. It was partly because of location and partly because we were still in recessionary times. There wasn’t a whole lot of disposable income. But mainly it was because I couldn’t get out of my own strife. I just screwed up, I was in the wrong locations, I was charging the wrong prices, I wasn’t minding my customers, service, etc… it was a disaster.
Did you at any point have doubts about what you were doing?
Many times. You start doing your own thing and you can’t just walk away. I had a time after two or three years of O’Briens when it wasn’t going well and I tried to get a job as a restaurant manager, but they turned me down. I was really at the end of my tether by that point.
I think what most business people do is slate themselves for a period, but that is just part of the journey you have to go through. You have to pick yourself up and keep going. I think most people go through this. It is very rare that you’ll get a business that is instantly successful. When we talk about business we spend far too little time talking about the confidence of the business owner – we spend a lot of time talking about strategies, the product development and sales, and never the fact that the owner may have lost their bottle.
When did you decide to franchise the business?
I set up the business so that it could be a franchise, it just wasn’t ready for the first six years. That was a great lesson from my first experience with Prontaprint: I didn’t necessarily have a good idea of what I should do, but I had a great idea of what I shouldn’t do, and one of the things I knew I shouldn’t do was franchise the business before I was comfortable an average franchisee could make some money. I knew not to try to franchise myself out of trouble.
In franchising the best selling proposition you have is your existing franchisees. If your existing ones aren’t happy, then they are not going to say anything positive about you, so you won’t end up selling more franchises. When I got my first few franchisees, I did everything I could to make them successful. They became great ambassadors for the franchise and great ambassadors for the brand.
Would have franchised your business if you hadn’t already been a franchisee?
I don’t think so. I think another one of the great lessons from my early days is that having a franchise is like having two separate businesses. On the one hand you are persuading thousands of people to come in and buy a sandwich and a coffee; then you have a second business, which is the franchise and costs thousands to buy. Many people who have built successful businesses think franchising is an easy way to expand. It is not the same business if you make it into a franchise. It is a separate business and a separate set of skills and competencies. It is not something that you can just bolt on to your existing business.
What did you find were the benefits of franchising?
I could never have built an international chain with the capital I had; the capital from franchisees was key in expanding the business and building the international brand. Secondly, the entrepreneurial spirit the franchisee brings means that the right people will work harder and for less money to make the business work than an employee ever will. By the nature of franchisees, they are always bringing fresh ideas and are really positive for the business.
What more can be done in the UK and Ireland to encourage growing businesses and franchisors?
I think education has got a huge part to play. Your typical secondary schools in the UK and Ireland do two things; they educate you so that you can get a job or they educate you to go up to third level. If you took your average class of school leavers from the UK or in Ireland, around about 25 per cent may become self-employed, however we have almost no education in schools to back that up.
We could popularise the success stories more than we do – franchising is great for people. We don’t talk nearly enough about how it reduces your risks, so statistically you have a four in five chance of succeeding in franchising, and that is a huge factor for people who are scared about going into business on their own. We don’t play up that fact enough and educate people enough about it – that goes back to teaching people in schools.
What more can be done by franchisors to promote this?
Franchise companies have the ability to tell their own story in a compelling way, particularly in their local media – I’ve always had the view that the media is dying for a good story, intelligently told. When writing for business, these stories are not hard to get in and franchisors are almost their won worst enemies because they don’t take advantage of that fact. That in turn would help the education process.
Do you have any advice to those who are thinking of starting out as a franchisee or a franchisor in these tough economic times?
There is a feeling in the franchise community that it is often easier to develop a chain when times are tough rather than when times are easy. This is because there is greater uncertainty in employment and more people are being made redundant. In that sense, I personally don’t believe that there is a right time or a wrong time – it is probably now, so go for it!
To what do you attribute your success?
All these things are relative. I was very ambitious when I was young, but I was also very petulant and arrogant; I was a young male so I wouldn’t listen to anyone and refused to take advice. I found it difficult to get any business of the ground and had to go through a huge learning experience where I made a lot of mistakes. I think I am probably quite typical of how people start a business. You start with an idea or a passion about something and you get stuck in, but then you realise that you’re not nearly as good as you thought you were.
I think most people do have it within them but they may not be given the opportunity.
In franchising, when you choose your people, you need to choose carefully. Franchising is essentially about human relationships. It is like a marriage in the business sense and the marriage only works if the partners go into it with their eyes open. They need to ask all the awkward questions and be prepared to work through the difficulties. The long-term benefit for a franchisee is that you have got to make it into a profitable business. I’m always convinced that your own profit comes at the back of that.
What does the future hold for you?
I have a new book out this Autumn on developing a business and I’m also running a leadership course. We’ve launched a new pizza-pasta franchise called Café Bardelli, whilst continuing to expand our O’Briens chain into the UK – our number one target.
I’ve spent 20 years now trying to be the best at selling sandwiches and coffee; clearly we’re not, but we are focused on trying to get there. So that is a lesson for other franchise companies!
Brody’s candid openness is both remarkable and inspiring. He is a true example of the old adage ‘what doesn’t break you will make you stronger’; by learning from his mistakes he came back more resilient each time. Always remaining focused and seeking new challenges, he makes the most of life and the opportunities that come his way. I can’t imagine him later in life.
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