Social media specialist, Rik Courtney has ambitious plans to work with 1% of the 5.9 million businesses in the UK. Realising his firm, Be More Social couldn’t achieve this solely from a small base in Yorkshire – the CEO took a leap of faith and began franchising his social media consultancy business earlier this year.
After deciding to franchise the business in January 2021, Rik and his team worked on ensuring the franchise model was watertight before initially launching the pilot franchise model in May – with four franchisees on board. Now, the Yorkshire business from humble beginnings has a total of nine franchise partners across England and is looking to partner with more.
Rik Courtney, CEO at Be More Social explained: “It was a huge decision to move to a franchise model – especially with all the uncertainty the pandemic has caused. Luckily, despite an initial lull during the first lockdown, things quickly turned around for us and we began to be inundated with enquiries from businesses. The pandemic ended up steering clients our way as many began to realise the importance of social media to keep in touch with customers – so much so that we couldn’t keep up with demand without recruiting more team members – which sparked the idea to finally look at franchising the business.
“I’ve always had the aim to help entertain, educate and inspire 1% of the 5.9 million businesses in the UK to teach them how to get real results from social media. It’s an ambitious goal but I am truly passionate about the power of social media and want to help businesses understand how to harness this. Franchising Be More Social means we can realistically begin aiming to achieve this goal, by getting ambitious like-minded entrepreneurs on board who want to help businesses in their local communities”.
Be More Social currently has franchises across the country in Leicester, London, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Sheffield, York, Stafford, Hull and Doncaster, which has created a total of 11 new jobs so far including the franchisee owners, all of whom are aspiring to earn five-figure monthly incomes.
Rik added: “All our franchisees to date are previous freelancers or business owners – so all have valuable experience in running a business. However, we are keen to ensure all franchisees are committed to Be More Social’s values and how we work with clients as ultimately, providing exceptional service to clients is what we care about. We provide all franchisees initially with a full training and support programme which includes continuous training every single week”.
Already achieving outstanding results, Be More Social has achieved huge growth since moving to a franchise model, working with an additional 48 new clients since May. Including, ActionCOACH Orsett & Dagenham, Overford and Archform Byte Ltd.
Rik and his team have over 25 years of marketing expertise and 14 in social media to share with clients and franchise partners, to educate and inspire businesses to start succeeding on social media. With the future looking bright, the team at Be More Social want to help business owners everywhere and hope to expand their franchise further by launching overseas within the next 12 months.
