I posted this in response to an article comment here, where someone stated they did not have the best experience with iCracked. I want to drive home a point with this blog entry – that there is nothing better in this world than owning your success.
http://mashable.com/2013/07/08/icracked/
Dealing with difficult customers, dealing with repairs gone wrong, microsoldering on motherboards; this is the HARD stuff. What iCracked doesn’t help you with.
The easy stuff is putting up a site, getting people to call you, and getting the parts to do the basic services(just buy from Jack Telecom and you’ll save a fortune here) This is all what iCracked is selling to you. The easy part.
Of COURSE you are going to be contacted seven hours later by the people who are willing to PAY someone ELSE to do the EASY part! Because they just don’t care. if they took it seriously, they’d be doing the easy part themselves. They’re not because they have a dayjob, or something else that is keeping them from making this their livelihood. And if that’s the case, do you want them working on your product?
I feel iCracked is an amazing company filled with amazing ideas. I also fear they will be the first successful company to water down, homogenize, & generically franchise the customer-oriented business I have grown to love. The business I love watching people get into. The industry I’ve grown to accept as a business where there’s still a chance for the little guy, the entrepreneur who starts from nothing, to get somewhere – on his OWN. I don’t feel great about that.
If you couldn’t tell, I am a little hard on people who choose to franchise. Opening a restaurant is HARD. Opening a car dealership is HARD. I am not going to insult the craft here, that I have murdered myself getting into – but I will tell you right now that someone with $200 can wind up opening several stores & run a successful repair company. I scoff at the idea of someone opening a car dealership in Manhattan with the same beginnings.
Yeah, I’m being judgmental. Think of it from the customer’s point of view. If you don’t have the energy to put $200 into having a pothead modify a wordpress theme for your website, putting up a Yelp! page, and some ads, then why the fuck should I go to you? I go back to defining real businesses as people who treat their business as real. If you lack the resourcefulness to figure out any of this on your own, then I think less of you than someone who does. I put you a little lower on the real business ladder than the guy who’s hustling to figure it all and succeeding. Imagine that, the people who can figure it out on their own are the people who respond in under seven hours, the people who do better… well, duh! They’re out there treating their business as real, and it’s coming back to them.
Again, I don’t think they’re a BAD company. I’m just saying, if you want to get into this field, do it on your own. The rocket science & secrets to success lie in something no franchise will ever be able to supply to you. And, that success at the end of the tunnel will feel that much sweeter when you’ve earned it yourself.
I also feel the need to remind people that this is a very LOCAL BUSINESS – unless you plan on spending Bill Gates’ mortgage on adwords. People search for something based on what they need and location. If they see Joe’s Service has 30 five star yelp reviews they’ve earned over the past five years in the area, and one random dude with an iCracked franchise with 1 review, they’re going to Joe’s Service to have their device fixed. The fact that you are paying money to use someone else’s brand name is meaningless – one of the beautiful parts of this business is how easy it is to build your own brand name - if you do the job RIGHT!
When you open a McDonalds – yes, you are guaranteed a huge customer base that you’re just not going to get six months out the gate with your own restaurant. When you open an iCracked, you may very well have the same amount of customers six months in, in your locale, that you would have had you never paid them a dime.
New entrepreneurs, I know the economy is tough. I know finding work is difficult, and I know that breaking into a new field now may seem harder than ever. That is all the more reason that NOW is the BEST time to OWN your success – not rent it from someone else. My opinion, learn as much as you can from as many people as you can. Put your money into education, into your business. Invest in yourself – not franchising.
The post Franchising vs. owning your success. appeared first on Macbook Repair in NYC & Brooklyn | 347-552-2258.