Over Regulation Killing Small Businesses and Franchising
By: Lance Winslow
More and more people want to own their own businesses, but government obviously does not seem to want that. It is rather obvious when you look at all the hoops, forms and regulations that small business folks must deal with. For instance in our company we have a mission statement, a simple business model and we franchise this with our huge demand from customers. Piece of cake right; you wish.
But it should be that easy, as these are really simple and basic components for a good business, yet you should see our latest UFOC-Uniform Franchise Offering Circular, pre-sale disclosure documents required of all franchisors. It is 210 pages including exhibits, audits, and agreements. That is totally nuts. Think about it, we are in the mobile pressure washing business, we wash stuff right? And we make an arrangement with others to use our system, which we have all mapped out, and with the right person following the program it works; yet if someone does not follow the program suddenly it is our fault.
So then we are forced to be autocratic, to make sure everyone follows the rules so they do well. Otherwise they twist their story and come up with some convoluted variation on the events occurred and sue us? When it was actually them who did not follow the plan. Now think for a second would the attorney representing the culprits who made up the story ever care about right and wrong? No they would be filing against the entrepreneur because that is where the money is? The attorney is in business to seek relief even if the claimants are lying in the complaint. See the problem for entrepreneurs?
There is too much over regulation by bone headed bureaucrats and too many litigious lying lawyers. If America could fix this one problem our economy would take off and stay airborne for a century without these bogus business cycles. Should we cull all the lawyers and lay off all the bureaucrats? Hard to say really but something needs to be done. So consider all this in 2006.
Lance Winslow