Interested in getting a better feel for what a day in the life of one of our franchisees might look like? Everyone is different of course and being a localpeople franchisee is all about an individual. Here is what a typical day could look like for a localpeople franchisee:
| 9:15 am | Sit down at computer with coffee having done the school run. Scan local news on BBC website and check your emails for new press releases from your customers and contacts. |
| 9:30 am | Seems like there are plans for a new road lay out in town. Give the council a call and after getting through to the right person have a good chat with them about what is going on. |
| 10:00 am | Write up a short article on the road plans and post it on the site – only 300 words, but with a few more details than the BBC had reported and a couple of quotes from your call. Add some photos of the roads in question and encourage comments from the community. You make a note in your diary to follow up with the council in a weeks’ time if not sooner. |
| 10:30 am | This afternoon you’re going to visit Headmasters, a hairdresser you made an appointment with last week, so you do your prep for the meeting by seeing where they are on Google at the moment and checking out their existing website. You decide it makes sense to create a health and beauty feature plan as well making use of your content advantage. You make a quick list of other companies you’ll pop in and say hello to and make a few notes about the feature itself. |
| 12:30 pm | Lunch |
| 1:30 pm | Meeting with Headmasters. Everything goes to plan – they are not seeing much response from their current advertising, and agree to try out an enhanced listing for 6 months. Great result! After this meeting you pop in to the companies you had thought about and talk to them about whats going on in their businesses and how they can become a part of the localpeople community. They’re all interested and you agree to email them with more details. |
| 3:00 pm | Pop into Sainsbury’s to pick up some food for dinner and run into a good friend. As things went so well earlier you end up going for a quick coffee to celebrate and catch up properly. While having a coffee you manage to arrange a meeting with the manager of the café – congratulate yourself on excellent multi tasking! |
| 4:00 pm | Home again and start on the admin necessary to get Headmasters’ enhanced listing ready. Send the manager a follow up email detailing what we agreed, and information and photos they need to send through. Make a note in diary to follow up in a couple of days. You also write up your notes on your other conversations and put a time in your diary to create the proposals. |
| 5:00 pm | Check website and see that a half a dozen people have already commented on the article about the roads I posted this morning. Decide to keep an eye on this over the next few days and see if local interest is sufficient to turn into a proper campaign. You send an email to your new council contact highlighting the community engagement you have. |
| 5:30 pm | You write up your To Do list for tomorrow, finish up for the day and head off to pick up children from after school clubs. |
This timetable is for illustrative purposes only and your actual working hours will depend on how you decide to run your own franchise.
Of course, not every day will be the same, and this variety and flexibility is one of the great benefits of owning a localpeople franchise. If you have other commitments or want to go on holiday, you can set some time aside for that.
Other days you might feel like you are on a roll or there might be urgent matters to attend to and you could end up working much harder than normal. There is no doubt that running a successful localpeople franchise requires some hard work, but you have the control to decide when and how you work.