YES, YOU CAN BE À PART-TIME OWNER

Most franchises are full-time work. But some can be side hustles. Here's how to create a money-cranking side gig.

- TIM PARMETER

Can you keep your job and start a franchise? It’s a good question that many people don’t even think to ask. But the answer is yes.

This is what is commonly referred to as being a “semi-absentee owner.” It’s a fancy way of saying that your role as a franchise owner is part-time. Most semi-absentee owners have another commitment, typically a corporate job. But some people own multiple businesses and take on semi-absentee roles in all of them. Others are partly retired and make a little money with a franchise as a side hustle.

So what does semi-absentee ownership look like?

It can differ greatly from one franchise to the next. The first thing to know is that “semi-absentee” is one of the most poorly defined terms in the industry. If you ask 10 franchisors to define it, you will likely get 15 different answers. Second, their policies about it are all over the map. For example, not every franchise is open to it, while other brands seriously focus on it; some even have a fairly even split between semi-absentee and full-time owners.

Confusingly, these differences are not industry-specific. You could find two franchises that do the exact same thing—and while one of them loves semi-absentee owners, the next requires every owner to work full time. Even when franchises allow semi-absentee owners, there are usually major differences in what that means. For one brand, you might have to commit to 10 hours per week; the next may require 20 to 25 hours per week. Again, this can happen with two franchises that are similar in just about every other way. You might also run into a franchise that says it is open to semi-absentee owners but doesn’t really have any experience with that model.