The word "franchise" carries some baggage.
When people hear it, they often think about control.
Rules.
Identical stores.
Head office telling somebody hundreds of kilometres away exactly how to run their business.
And, frankly, there are plenty of stories from the franchising industry that give people good reason to be cautious.
That's something we've thought about a lot while building the Wall Walkers franchise model.
Because regardless of the legal structure or the name you put on it, I think the relationship ultimately comes down to something much simpler.
You're choosing a business partner.
And you should choose your business partners carefully.
That works both ways.
We need to find people we trust to represent Wall Walkers.
But anyone considering becoming a Wall Walkers franchisee should be looking just as carefully at us.
What do we stand for?
How do we operate?
What support do we actually provide?
And, probably most importantly:
What are we trying to build?
For me, the answer isn't a chain of identical gyms.
I don't want to build somewhere people walk into because they reluctantly need to get their workout done.
I don't want Wall Walkers to become another place where somebody walks through the door thinking:
"Ugh. Better get my reps in."
There are already businesses that serve that market extremely well.
That's not what we're trying to create.
I want to build cool places that people actually want to go.
Places where someone goes home after a climbing session still thinking about the problem they couldn't finish.
They lie in bed replaying the moves.
Maybe it was a V2.
Maybe it was a V6.
The grade doesn't really matter.
What matters is that somewhere around midnight they suddenly think:
"Shit. I think I've figured it out."
And the next morning they want to get back to the gym and try it.
That's what I want Wall Walkers locations to feel like.
The interesting part is that I don't think we can create that entirely from head office.
We can provide the foundations.
The Wall Walkers brand.
The operating systems.
The technology.
The processes.
The experience we've accumulated.
The safety and quality standards.
The lessons we've learned from actually running a climbing gym.
But the walls will be different.
The route setters will be different.
The members will be different.
And the community will absolutely be different.
That's not something we want to eliminate.
That's the whole point.
A Wall Walkers in another community shouldn't feel like somebody picked up our Capalaba gym, photocopied it and dropped it somewhere else.
It should belong to the people who climb there.
The franchise partner operating it should bring something of themselves to the business.
The route setters should bring their own ideas.
And over time, the members should shape the character of the place just as our members have shaped the original Wall Walkers.
The systems provide consistency.
The people provide personality.
That's the balance we're looking for.
It also influences the kind of franchise partners we're interested in working with.
There isn't one perfect Wall Walkers franchisee.
Someone might have business experience and discover climbing later.
Someone else might have spent years climbing and finally be ready to build something of their own.
They might be an experienced operator.
They might be someone looking for their first serious business.
What matters to us is that they're genuinely interested in what they're building.
Because while our 24/7 model and operating systems are designed to reduce some of the day-to-day staffing pressure associated with running a traditional facility, that doesn't mean the business runs itself.
You still have to care.
About the climbing.
About the facility.
About the people walking through the door.
About making tomorrow's version better than today's.
That's something no franchise system can automate.
And it's why I keep coming back to the idea of partnership.
We can provide a framework.
We can share what we've learned.
We can provide technology, systems and support.
But ultimately, somebody else has to take those tools and create a place that their community wants to call its own.
That's what excites me about where Wall Walkers goes from here.
Not seeing how many pins we can put on a map.
Not opening locations simply so we can say we've grown.
I want to see what happens when passionate people take what we've built and make something genuinely good with it.
Different walls.
Different people.
Different communities.
The same commitment to building somewhere worth coming back to.
Because if we do this properly, we're not building a chain of gyms.
We're helping people build cool places.
And I think that's a much more interesting thing to grow.
A Lesson We Didn't Expect
Consistency doesn't have to mean sameness.
As we've worked through the franchise model, we've realised that the things we need to standardise are the things that protect the business and the experience: systems, safety, quality and operational standards.
The personality of each gym shouldn't come from a manual.
It should come from the people who make that place their own.
What I'd Tell Someone Starting Today
Choose your business partners carefully.
A contract can define responsibilities.
A system can define processes.
A brand can define standards.
None of those things can manufacture a good partnership.
Find people who care about what they're building.
Give them strong foundations.
Then give them enough room to build something worth being proud of.