"I've never worked in sales."

"I wouldn't know the first thing about designing a kitchen."

Do these thoughts sound familiar? Maybe something that's been going through your head as you've weighed up this opportunity? If so, it's worth knowing that neither worry is the requirement you probably think it is.

So, what actually makes someone good at this?

What makes someone successful with the kind of business model on offer with the goodbrother™ franchise isn't a CV full of kitchen experience - the founders didn't have one either.

It's being someone who understands people. Someone who can sit across a kitchen table, listen to what a family actually wants, and pick up on the things they haven't quite put into words. A bit of retail, sales or management experience is a welcome bonus on top, but that instinct for people is the part that's hard to teach, and it's the part you either recognise in yourself or you don't. Almost everything else, you can learn or hire in as you go.

The two skills people worry about most

Two worries come up more than any others in my conversations with people.

A lack of sales experience is the first. Nobody here is asking you to talk a reluctant customer into something they don't want - that's the old way, and it's the opposite of how goodbrother works. Winning a customer is really just a good conversation: putting someone at ease, asking the right questions, taking a genuine interest in the home they're trying to create. If you can strike up a chat with a stranger in a pub or a cafe, you've already got the raw material, and the training turns it into product knowledge you can lean on.

Design is the second, and it's the one people talk themselves out of hardest. You’re not going to be designing a kitchen. You’re going to be working with customers to turn their vision into a reality, and technology does the heavy lifting for you here.

The customer sees their finished kitchen on screen, rendered in their own room, before a single decision is made, and then a designer turns the measurements into the final plan. Some partners will enjoy learning the basics in that first year, just to understand the business from the inside; others might prefer to leave it to a designer entirely and put their energy where they're strongest.

Both are designed to work equally well under this model.

A business you build around your strengths

Nobody is expected to walk into this opportunity with every possible skill already in place, and the model doesn't ask them to. If you're a natural in front of customers but the technical side leaves you cold, you bring in people who live and breathe measurements and fittings. If you're happiest running the operation and would rather someone else lead on sales, you hire for that instead.

Some owners may want to be hands-on from day one, out meeting customers and getting under the bonnet as they learn the trade, whereas others will prefer to build a team and steer from a little higher up. Most people will probably land somewhere in between those two, and I expect quite a few will soon discover they're far better at a part of it than they ever expected.

You won't be working it out alone

None of this lands on you to figure out by yourself.

It starts with three weeks of training, one of them spent on the factory floor at Baumann, our German manufacturer, where you'll watch the kitchens being made and get to know the ranges properly. After that the support doesn't stop: someone alongside you through those first nervy opening weeks, regular visits to sharpen how you're running things, a professional agency handling your marketing, and an answer on the end of the phone whenever you need one.

This is what you need to remember more than anything else: this is a people business, and it always will be. If sitting down with customers and drawing them out isn't something you'd enjoy, no amount of training is going to change that, so it might just be that this opportunity isn’t for you after all.

However, if that part sounds like something you'd relish, then the gaps you've been worrying about are a lot smaller than they feel from where you're standing.

If you'd like to talk through where your own strengths might fit, we’re always happy to chat. Just click HERE, or on the button below to get in touch and schedule a call.