Not happy

I'm really not happy today with the franchising world. Nothing seems easy and franchising only appears to be something that you can do if you have loads of money.

Let's just take having BFA membership for instance. At the moment, I'm not even eligible for this as you need to have 12 months accounts from a pilot franchisee (which I haven't got). But even when I am eligible, it will cost me £1,833 per year! to be a provisional member - not even a full member!!

I've found out that you don't actually have to be a BFA member to be a franchisee, but then you are hindered in promoting the franchise. Every franchise I looked at yesterday was a BFA member and I looked at loads of comments from franchisees who said that being a member of the BFA was very important to them.

I would love to be a member and this is probably something that I will do at some point in the future, but I'm not even eligible at the moment. I do intend to operate by the BFA standards from day one though.

Looking at things from this angle has made me consider how slowly the whole process moves. Pilot franchisee for at least 12 months before getting any further franchisees. I'd planned to get a pilot franchisee and see how this went for 6 months. Providing everything was going fine and we'd ironed out the teething problems, I'd then planned to get another one. Is this acceptable?
Would potential franchisees consider this model?