A Franchise Opportunity – What Is This Exactly?

The best way to describe a franchise is to imagine it as a business that is delivered to you in a box at a certain cost and after approval. When you open the box, you will find marketing materials, contract templates, business plan templates. In short, everything you need to get legally started with a business, usually in an exclusive territory where only you can operate and sell.

Why Are Franchises Popular?

Franchises are popular. Research was conducted by the International Federation Association and the National Franchise Association recently. In 2005, there were about 850.000 franchises operating in the U.S. alone in which around 10 million people are employed. Sales volume accounts for about 40% of all retail sales with around $1.5 billion.

At this point, I do not really know if there is any business left that has not been using the franchise model already. You can find restaurant franchises, cleaning services and even dental practices. Most popular franchise categories still seem to be the restaurant, deli and sandwich franchises.

Franchises all have a couple of things in common that makes them attractive to potential business owners:

1. Fast start up utilizing a working marketing system;

2. Peace of mind because it has been proven to work already;

3. Exclusive territory (in most cases).

There are known disadvantages as well. For example, a lot of franchise companies do not give the level of support they promise. Some of them can be overly strict with their branding and marketing requirements, which may be disappointing for a creative entrepreneur. And there is obviously the work pressure, especially when operating a franchise that requires staff as well.

Cost and Benefit Analysis – Quick Overview

Costs

The convenience and peace of mind comes at a certain price. Let’s look at some typical startup fees.

The average investment level is around $250,000 excluding real estate. This is the average investment requirement for about 80% of the franchises.

A typical example is Rising Roll sandwiches who requests a total capital investment of $300,000 and a net worth requirement of $500,000.

So called low cost franchises can start with a capital investment typically in the range from $15,000 – $40,000.

A typical example is a video business card distributorship that comes at a cost of around $15,000.

Benefits

No exact figures are known but I found the following indications based upon figures researched by the International Franchise Association. They found that the annual gross income for a typical franchise ranges between $75,000 – $125,000 (before taxes).

With an investment level of let’s say $250,000 you can expect a pay back time of around 3 years.

It is clear that becoming a franchisee requires cash to sustain yourself and the business in the first years. It also requires some sustained hard work to get the business off the ground so to speak.

Franchise Entrepreneurs – Are You Capable

An survey among Franchisors (by Franchise 500 and published in Entrepreneur Magazine Jan 2007) has revealed they are looking for the following characteristics in a person to be considered to become a successful franchisee.

1 – People Skills
94% of the franchisors that were interviewed mentioned this to be a key skill. Not really a surprise. Even if you do not have staff, to move goods in most industries, you need at least some communication skills.

2 – Coaching
If you are unwilling to learn or accept proven formulas and methods it is very unlikely that you will become successful. Reinventing the wheel is not what makes franchisees successful. A view shared by around 87% of franchisors that were surveyed.

3 -  General Business Skills
This is an interesting one. The percentage agreeing with general business skills being a requirement to become successful is 86%. Interesting because you would expect proven methods and systems to be in place already. Not so. In order to make it all happen, you need to study financial information, cash flow, balance sheets on a regular basis. You need to make decisions on your own regarding additional investment, marketing strategies, staff and so on. 

4 – Access to Capital
If you do not have any money to get your business off the ground, it’s better not to start at all. Careful planning is the key combined with a preparedness to live a frugal lifestyle for years to come.

Conclusion

Buying a franchise is a popular thing to do nowadays but it never appealed to me. It always felt like buying your own job. The amount of investment combined with the amount of work to put in simply does not match with my personal lifestyle. I would rather invest a bit less and work less hours but with a much faster pay back time.

There are still plenty of opportunities with proven track records over a couple of years that are suitable for lifestyle entrepreneurs and that will generate good income for years to come.

– Marius is full-time Lifestyle Entrepreneur. Helping others to become successful. Used to be a successful business development executive in IT industry. Already helped many people finding their path in life with concrete jobs, opportunities and contacts.

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Expat entrepreneurs live a certain lifestyle that allows them to be at home in a foreign country so to speak. There are different reasons why people move abroad. Retirement, health reasons, family, the climate, the career of the other half for example. I have been living abroad for longer periods in my life and I have always enjoyed it. For me, being a Dutchman living in foreign countries has always been good. We meet each other in the so called expat communities and find ways to support each other on may occasions. This really is an article based upon my own experiences and observations.

Expat Entrepreneurs Categories

I have been observing quite a few people who moved abroad initially for job reasons. If they are not diplomats who are automatically rotated to next destinations, they usually end up in three categories after the expat contract has come to an end.

1. Accept a regular job

Usually, this happens if they get roots in their new country and need to make a living. Continuing the profession they had is the easiest way to keep themselves going in the host country. Big disadvantage usually is the drop in salary, bonuses and other nice perks that come with an expatriate contract. Life is all about choice.

2. Go back or move on

If they do not have roots in the host country, they are likely to move on again. Either to another location on another expatriate contract or they might simply go back to where they came from.

3. Become self employed

If you like to be in a foreign country and have saved up some cash from your expatriate assignment, becoming an entrepreneur is a very attractive option. Most of these entrepreneurs tend to choose something they can take with them should they decide to move on. Also, because they are not completely local or might not speak the language, they typically benefit from globalization allowing them to plug in from anywhere in the world.

This way, you can set up your own company, provide a service or sell products, make a good living and still keep your options open. I am obviously situated in this category and I love it!

I found the mindset of getting started in a foreign country and becoming an entrepreneur are not that dissimilar. They are both pioneers so to speak.

Typical Expat Entrepreneur Activities

Expat Entrepreneurs often do something that provides them with an experience and skill they can take with them should they decide to move on again. At least that is my experience when talking to people.

- Real estate. Many expats who stay go into real estate business. Helping others (foreigners) to find accommodation in a foreign country, like they did when they first came. I have a couple of real estate project going myself.

- Tourism related services. A friend of mine is a medical doctor offering medical tourism services in Central Europe where fees for medical or dental treatment are more affordable than in the US.

- Online services. I am working with a friend of mine currently to establish an online academic resource service. Once this is up and running, we can take it to anywhere we want to.

- Internet Marketing. My own core activity is around Internet Marketing and helping other setting up their businesses working from home. This is a fast growing industry and obviously meets my own criteria of flexibility and portability.

- I also have seen people bringing products and services from the US to Europe and the other way around. Mostly as franchise entrepreneurs (see on of my next articles).

Do You Have What It Takes To Be An Expat Entrepreneur

Mindset

To be successful as a entrepreneur requires you to adopt a certain mindset allowing success to happen. Worry, fear, procrastination are your worst enemies, so take action to eradicate those first. Beyond that, it helps if you adopt a mindset of persistence and growth.

Being in a foreign country gives an extra dimension to being an entrepreneur in terms of an extra excitement that keeps you moving ahead.

Cash flow

In terms of material things, it helps if you have some cash at hand allowing you to survive a couple of months when starting up your business. You also would need to get your infrastructure sorted in terms of computer access, Internet access and so on. The good news is that telephony has become virtually free by now using online Internet telephony services mostly. You can conduct business all over the world at extremely low cost levels now.

Attitude

In terms of your attitude, set goals and commit yourself to an action plan to achieve them. You need to be able to learn new things quickly rather than being slowed down by minor obstacles. For example, if you have a weakness in advertising online, get yourself trained up quickly, adopt it as a new skill and get the ball rolling again.

Being able to structure your own day obviously is very important. I follow a rigid exercise scheme to keep me motivated. I also ensure to meet enough friends for lunch or coffee to keep me socially engages as well.

If you like this type of lifestyle go for it is my honest advice. There are plenty of legitimate business opportunities around. Keep in mind that the price of success is much smaller than the price of failure, so it is wise to give it your full energy and overcome obstacles quickly.

– Marius is full-time Lifestyle Entrepreneur since 4 years. Coaching others to success. Prior successful as business development executive in IT industry. Already helped many people finding their path in life with concrete jobs, opportunities and contacts.

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This is a small case study with input from leading professionals in this industry. Take advantage of the information, I did a lot of the grunt-work myself and will be happy if I can help you avoid it.

What Happened?

Last year was great. I had a couple of very simply marketing pages and the only thing I worried about was keyword marketing using Google’s pay per click system. On a daily basis, I got over 400 clicks on my pages, good for between 8-10 qualified leads per day. Keywords included ‘home business’, ‘money’, ‘million’ etcetera.

Life was good!

Until November… Because it was then that I learned that the cost per click had skyrocketed from about $0.10 per click to $5.00, $10.00 and in some cases even $25.00 per click… Given the fact that about 30 clicks generate one lead, I was looking at a cost per lead going from 3.00 to anywhere between USD 150 to USD 750 PER LEAD!

I was dead.

I needed some serious time to rethink my options and strategy. Not willing to give up my business, I was forced to think outside the box again and restart my marketing efforts.

The ‘Be-Do-Have Principle’ in Action

If you have read my previous articles about Lifestyle Entrepreneurship, you probably know that I am a great believer in the Be-Do-Have principle.

In short: it requires that you concentrate on who you really are in business and let the actions (Do) and the results (Have) follow logically. This eliminates a constant feeling of ‘lacking’ that tends to blocks positive action. It also eliminates endless analysis and procrastination, which is another sure cause of failure.

BE – My Target Situation

I asked myself 2 questions:

1- Imagine that I am already in the top-10 of Google for all my keywords, then who are the other 9 leaders here?

2- Imagine that I am one of these 9 leaders. What should I be doing that I haven’t been doing up till now?

Very quickly I learned that the top rankers all have the following things in common:

- they seem to operate in some kind of ‘keyword niche’ they occupy and keep

- they have a lot of reciprocal links but not excessive

- they do have good textual content that is very much in accordance with the keywords

DO – Action Plan

By constantly reminding me of my purpose: I am in the top-10, I started to carry out the following actions:

Step 1 – Define Niche

I chose ‘balanced lifestyle entrepreneur’ as this is something I could identify myself with and it is still a niche area that I can defend.

A keyword niche is hard to find nowadays. Try ‘Home Based Business’ or ‘Money’ for example and there are over 700 million pages awaiting your attention…  But if you try ‘Vip Entrepreneur’, you are looking at about 650 thousand pages. This is a number you can work with.

Step 2 – Relevant Content

I did a lot of reading, educated myself and discussed topics with other leaders.

Balanced content on a site is something search engines like. Everything on the page has to be in accordance with the keywords so the reader gets what he was looking for is the underlying concept apparently.

Step 3 – Links

Here’s what I did. I created links with the sites similarly to whatever the other 9 people in the top-10 created. Using a free tool from the Internet, it was easy to figure out who is linking to whom.

It’s a well known fact by now that you need to have links to your site from relevant other sites. Not too many too quickly as it makes the search engines suspicious, resulting in a lower ranking.

Step 4 – Clean up

Finally, I cleaned up my sites, restructured the content and the code.

Search engines tend to look beyond the surface as well so make sure your page is ‘clean’ and optimized somehow, it loads quickly and all links are working. Use code validators (W3C.org offers a free service) and use your keywords in different phrases. Again, don’t exaggerate.

Intermediate Results

After about 4 weeks, entries of mine started to appear in the top-20 of Google, one week later I was in the top-10 of Google. These were mostly blogs and articles I wrote with links to my sites. After that, one of my own sites started to appear in the top-10 which was really exciting. Another thing happened as a nice surprise: one of my sites suddenly got a PR of 3. A huge improvement from the PR=0 that it had up till now.

A 3-Month Objective

My three month objective is to start generating all my leads ‘organically’ again rather than from banners. These leads really are the best leads you can get as they represent people looking exactly for what you are offering.

I will simply keep doing what I am doing now and get better at it.

Key Lessons

I want to conclude this short case study with some of the things you may find useful as well:

1. Define what exactly you want your niche to be. If up till now you used keywords like ‘make money’ as your main theme, get creative and use something else for example ‘happy money maker’.

2. Design your theme around this topic using stories, content related to this. Get educated again if necessary.

3. Figure out who else in the top-10 is using your theme and figure out to whom they are linking. Create similar links as well.

4. Start writing blogs and articles. Make sure the content is again relevant to your main theme.

5. Keep it up. It is important to keep the effort going or you may experience a drop back again. Stay motivated and keep improving as you go.

For me, the Be-Do-Have principle works. Instead of time-consuming analysis and procrastination I started to work immediately and took actions in line with my goals.

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Marius is full-time Lifestyle Entrepreneur since 4 years. Coaching others to success. Prior successful as business development executive in IT industry. Already helped many people finding their path in life with concrete jobs, opportunities and contacts.

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Resources at Business Focus Group

Selecting a home based business opportunity can be a challenge with so many people offering all kind of opportunities. Promising so many ways to get rich quickly… Keep your head cool and use our 9 criteria to position yourself correctly from the beginning.

After having interviewed literally hundreds of potential entrepreneurs I have found that there are three categories:

Wannabees

People who choose something more or less randomly with a very low financial investment not really committing themselves.

They typically buy a book they can resell, or they will start typing ads or surveys from home. Programs typically costing less than $50 to get them going. If it doesn’t work, they will try something else. It’s hard to believe they will become successful but at the other end, they didn’t risk anything.

Scared

The sheer amount of possibilities and the enormous amounts of money apparently available in this market makes them scared. They give up before they even try because they believe everything is a scam anyway. They simply don’t want to make any changes to their current situation or life.

Committed Entrepreneurs

People who understand that there are indeed ultra smart ways of making a very good living online provided you do your homework and stay committed. Provided they are able to protect themselves from negative circles of influence, they are ready to investigate a serious opportunity as it presents itself. Existing home based entrepreneurs are happy to help these people as it will allow them to coach serious, next generation leaders building the foundation for a strong and dedicated community of entrepreneurs.

The information in this article is for the latter group of entrepreneurs.

New to Home Business?

If you plan to start a home based business for the first time, criteria 1-6 are most applicable to you. Your main concern is the level of support and training. Becoming your own boss for the next period in your life means that you have to start to think a little different about business. Be prepared to take personal responsibility for your actions and learn multiple tasks. Even some personal development might be required to become more effective and self-reliant.

Experienced in Home Business?

If you have been working out of your home once before but are in the process of changing, focus on criteria 7-9. You want to make sure that your efforts will pay off this time… You have a big advantage in terms of a much shorter learning curve and your developed sense for business working from home.

1-Company

Always select a company that really exists, with real people and that has been in business for at least 5 years:

- They have proven themselves in time and are likely to stay alive successfully.

- Most likely, they have been scrutinized and investigated by different bureaus and administrations and survived different levels of allegations. This is a natural filtering process that happens to any company with a certain size and functions like a filter. This filter always works and weeds out the illegitimate schemes and unsuccessful businesses. So use it to your advantage!

2-Products

These should be real and marketable. Pyramid schemes where only money is passed around are 100% illegal and cannot exist for a long time. Just be aware of them and avoid them. More over, make sure you are excited about the products yourself. Believe me it helps when talking to others and when overcoming obstacles…

Training

Step-by-step program works best with personal contact to your coach. This allows you to learn from the professionals and make corrections as you go. Make sure the business plan has been proven to work and is generating results for those following the steps. Ideally, the training system should help you to become a problem solver who can handle small obstacles with confidence.

4-Slightly Challenging

Important: if you select an extremely simple business like typing ads or filling questionnaires working from home, you cannot expect any great rewards. Anyone in the world can do this and most of it can be automated anyway at lowest cost. How motivated will you be after 3 weeks typing the same ads over and over again…

5-Longevity

You want to do something for a longer time, become a specialist and this way you make sure the opportunity remains challenging and motivating enough for you to stay involved and focused. There is nothing worse than having to restart your learning curve over and over again and not make any progress…

6-Team

You learn faster and stay motivated if you can interact with an enthusiastic team. Make sure the team works professionally and is ready to help. There is nothing worse than to work at home without any one to interact with for support.

7-Investment

Common question of many people: ‘how much should I invest’. Difficult to answer. Some of us invest in powerful computers and large desks while others use the kitchen table and a simple laptop. What is important here is the level of flexibility to be able to make your own business decisions. Being your own boss means that you make your own decisions.

8-MLM?

You decide! Multi-level marketing business has created successful companies and I do know people who have become extremely successful in this business. The fact is that for this type of business you need to be a very good sales guy. If, like myself, you are not, then keep your eyes open. Because there are opportunities out there that don’t require you to change somebody’s brains around…

9-Compensation

Last but not least, how do you get paid? In many cases there is a balance between profits on products sold and a rewards for building teams in the organization (creating some kind of leverage). Compensation plans can be very sophisticated. Bottom line: spend enough time to check it out and ensure that the compensation plan has been proven to work already over a period of at least 5 years. Also remember, these is no value in getting compensated solely for enrolling other people in a program. These plans cannot be sustained for a long time and they might be illegal as well in certain states.

Once you have chosen your business, congratulations! The groundwork is done. Treat your new venture as an aeroplane on the runway. Load it with fuel and go full throttle. Don’t hold back so you don’t crash at the end of the runway…

Enjoy your day!

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Marius is full-time Lifestyle Entrepreneur since 4 years. Coaching others to success. Prior successful as business development executive in IT industry. Already helped many people finding their path in life with concrete jobs, opportunities and contacts.

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