How to Screw Up a Great Idea

Recently, I wrote about a new franchise concept that had a great name, and at the same time, seemed to be focused on doing all the right things. It’s quite refreshing to see a young company like this attempt to dominate its market.

As I was taking a little breather from my new duties as the author of a new book on becoming a franchise owner, I came across a post over at my friend Dane Carlson’s site….

Another new franchise concept has semingly arrived, this time via…well, actually, it took me more than 5 minutes to figure out where this franchisor was located.

And, it’s really too bad; the name alone would have been enough for me to reach out and talk with the CEO of this company. But, I won’t be calling him; he screwed up.

No place on the website of Rent a Grandma is there a company address. Nowhere. What’s up with that. It’s a huge red flag for this King, and anyone who’s serious about doing business online in 2011 needs to know that it creates a huge credibility gap.

I don’t even know if it’s a real franchise. I think it just launched. I’m not really sure. I gave up trying to learn anything more about it.

I don’t care. I think I’ll go back to writing Chapter 8.

P.S. It’s not personal. Yes…I’m being a little harsh, but I’m trying like heck to make my industry more transparent than they’ve ever been. Stuff like this, (as small as you may think it is) just doesn’t help!

One more thing; a new “blogger” contacted me last week, and wanted to say hi. Fine. he thanked me for what I do, and so I just had to check out his brand-new blog. It looked pretty good, but 2 huge things were missing, and I told him what they were;

1. This blogger didn’t put in his last name. Anywhere. Bad.
2. There was no geographical location listed anywhere on the site. Bad.

C’mon!