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While it may seem counter-intuitive, starting your own business can actually be your low-risk career move. That’s because continuing as an employee is a risky proposition in today’s economy. The data shows that the longer you remain an employee, the higher your risk of being laid off or downsized, while the longer you remain a business owner, the lower your risk of finding yourself without a job.

While it’s true that the first year of business ownership can be riskier than the first year of new employment, just like building equity in a new house, you create a future with a business of your own. One of the reasons starting a business from scratch carries risks is that you have to operationalize your vision. You need to figure out the cost of your expenditures — for everything from marketing, setting up an office, hiring employees, etc — to get your business off the ground. Then, the big question is how much revenue will you earn to cover those expenditures? And do you have the capital to keep it running while you figure it all out? Obviously, revenue-building is a gradual process as you establish a customer base. Unless you’ve done it before, you have to guess your likely costs and eventual revenue. A great way to minimize your risk and remove the guesswork is to invest in a franchise — where everything has been done many times before. A good franchise already has a proven operating system that can nearly guarantee success — so long as you’re committed to follow that system. Sure, being a business owner requires entrepreneurial thinking, but so does being an employee these days. Employment experts now estimate employees will need to reinvent themselves every three years. The difference is business owners get to keep all of their profits. So when you factor in the reduced risk of buying into a great franchise system and the increased risk of continuing as an employee, it certainly seems worthwhile to start looking into whether you might be able to find the perfect franchise to match your interests and your skills and take control of your career destiny.

The Perks Of A Good Franchise Include:

A system of support and training.

Not only will you have lots of phone and in-person meetings before you ever sign any contracts, you will also have training for yourself and your employees on everything from how to set up your store or office to ongoing support to answer questions as they arise.

A network of fellow franchisees.

As part of your research, you should interview lots of franchisees to see how they’re doing, whether the franchisor has lived up to its promises and whether they would make the same purchase again. Are their profits what they expected? This group can offer invaluable insight into the ongoing issues they face in the very same business you will enter.

Knowledge of how much it will cost.

All franchise companies are required by law to file a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD), which lists everything from the initial and ongoing costs, plus details on operations. Some franchisors will even list earnings claims.

A full accounting of potential financial pitfalls.

You can also learn in the FDD if the franchisor has any financial irregularities in his past, from litigation to a history of bankruptcy filings. Other questions you can get answered include: What types of restrictions might exist for selling the franchise? How are territories allotted? After all, you don’t want the same business locating across the street from you. While you can learn a great deal from your own research, we also strongly recommend you consult a franchise attorney and accountant to help with some of the fine print. A good franchise coach, who has already vetted many of the franchises, can also offer invaluable advice as you go through your selection process. So, when you open your business, you can feel confident that you’ve got all the answers you need to succeed.

Ready to make your dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true? Get your free evaluation today! Contact Dan Citrenbaum to help you create the career you’ve always wanted. As a business coach, Dan brings years of experience helping people select and buy a franchise or existing business. You can reach Dan at dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484) 278-4589.

Always wanted a career that allowed you do well and do good? Whether that be tutoring, promoting the use of green energy or helping people cope with aging, franchising offers many opportunities to advance your career while satisfying your spiritual goals.

For starters, you can enter a career based solely on interests rather than experience, allowing you to make a clean break from a 9-to-5 existence that provides no personal fulfillment and toward something about which you care deeply. So if you hate spending your days looking at spreadsheets full of numbers or selling the latest throwaway widgets from China and wish you could have a direct impact on people’s lives, a franchise can give you the tools you need to succeed in this entirely new line of work. A good franchiser will help train and guide you in your new profession and offer a proven system for operating your business. You will also gain the advantage of a network of franchisees, who can offer additional support and expertise. By contrast, with an independent startup, you would have to figure out your operating model from scratch and guess how much working capital you will need to succeed. With a franchise, you can get answers to your questions: How much money will it take to get your business up and running and how long will it take to get to profitability? And you can find out well before laying out any money whether you have the skills and the inclination to operate this type of business.

5 Steps To Feel-Good Franchising

In five simple steps, find your way to a feel-good franchise that is right for you.

1. Set Your Goal

You need to figure out exactly how you want to have an impact on your world. Look around and notice the arenas in which you might have the most to contribute, whether this connects more to personal skills, such as sales expertise, or interests, such as working with children. Browse the web. Make lists.

2. Inventory Your Personal And Professional Strengths

You may not want to stay in your current career, but what skills have you gained that can transfer well to another field: Are you good with people? Do you have a knack for the mechanical? Are you detail-oriented? Or do you prefer to work on your own? You will likely fare better in a field where you can draw on strengths you’ve honed over years of professional development.

3. Research Franchise Categories

Let’s say you want to help improve the environment but know nothing about environmental science. Did you know there are franchises that help people adapt their homes with everything from insulation to solar panels. Or maybe you want to work with children. You’ll find everything from tutoring to child care among franchise opportunities.

4. Meet With A Franchise Coach

Get a whole extra layer of extra vetting through the franchise coach, whose profession it is to study different franchisors and whether their support systems are up to snuff. Their experience matching clients with franchises makes them a font of expertise about why some systems work better than others.

5. Talk To Franchisees

Once you have selected a franchise or two to research in depth, get their Franchise Disclosure Documents — which they are required by law to provide to prospective franchisees — and find the list of franchisees, currently operating and defunct. Write up your list of questions — you may want to consult your franchise coach for help with these — make your calls. Politely ask them for their time, then, at their convenience, learn how they’re doing, whether they would buy this franchise again, and how long it took for them to start operating in the black. If you’re ready to find meaning in a career of your choosing and expand your financial horizons, start your five steps to feel-good franchising today!

Ready to make your dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true? Get your free evaluation today! Contact Dan Citrenbaum to help you create the career you’ve always wanted. As a business coach, Dan brings years of experience helping people select and buy a franchise or existing business. You can reach Dan at dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484) 278-4589.

If you feel like you’ve spent too long in your job, are bored and losing hope of advancement, don’t despair. Take charge and consider starting a business of your own to fully realize your talents.

A great way to minimize your risk is to consider a franchise — which offers hundreds of ways to start anew as a business owner. You get to be the boss while taking advantage of the experience of other franchisees and an operating system that has been tested over time to help maximize your chance for success. All you have to do is be willing to follow the franchisor’s system. If you are, you can reap the rewards for yourself. Not only do you get to take charge of your day-to-day life — no more clearing days off with six layers of bureaucracy — you have the potential for far greater income than you ever would stagnating as a management executive. As a matter of fact, most millionaires in the United States made their money by operating their own businesses, according to a study by the authors of “The Millionaire Next Door,” Thomas Stanley and William Danko. Franchises offer a way to reduce your learning curve in a business you may have no experience in. With more than 3,000 franchisors in 75 industries to choose from, the hard part is making the right choice, which is why it’s so important to do your research and consult expert advice. Your reward for doing your due diligence is the potential payoff of operating a successful business.

5 Tangible Advantages Of Franchising

With a franchise, you get:

A Proven System

A franchise operation has over time developed a system, complete with specifications on how to set up the operation, hire employees and run an advertising program. In addition, you get advertising material and computer software. All of these elements help you succeed. Of course, some franchises are better than others, and your research should help you weed out the worst and find the right match for your talents and expertise.

Support And Training

The franchisor will teach you how to do it all, and the company offers ongoing support to get you through the learning phase. You will get to meet the support staff and become acquainted with the corporate culture before signing any contracts, so you can ensure a copacetic working environment for the long term.

Lots Of Available Information About The Business

The single most important source of information you have about this new business is the experience of franchisees. You will be encouraged to speak to many of the franchisees – as many as it takes for you to fully understand exactly what the business is like. They can tell you how the system has worked for them, if the numbers add up as promised, if the company has been good to work with and whether they are making the kind of money they expected. Remember to expect regional differences.

Franchise Disclosure Document

By federal law, every franchise must disclose a great deal of pertinent information in its FDD. Once you show yourself a serious potential buyer, they will provide you a document written in standard English, no legalize allowed, that has 23 items. The FDD covers everything from the franchisor’s business experience, litigation or bankruptcy history, a complete accounting of all costs you should expect, from startup fees to royalties, restrictions on the sale of the business and a complete list of current and former franchisees.

Higher Success Rate 

Franchises generally have a higher success rate than independent businesses. From my experience, we feel we can confidently say our clients can achieve a 90 percent or better success rate, as a result of the research we walk them through. A recent study shows that 91 percent of franchises were still in business after two years, and 85 percent were still in business after five years. Even with all the above items available to reduce risk, you can still get in over your head if you don’t plan for enough capital to get you through the start-up phase to profitability. 

Ready to make your dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true? Get your free evaluation today!

Contact Dan Citrenbaum to help you create the career you’ve always wanted. As a business coach, Dan brings years of experience helping people select and buy a franchise or existing business. You can reach Dan at dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484) 278-4589.

Imagine you could build a business of your own, bring in extra income, and still find time for hours of leisure, hobbies — or your full time job. Sound appealing? RELATED: Ready For A Career Switch? Consider A Franchise Franchising offers just this opportunity with a specific category designed for the part-time owner. Called semi-absentee, these franchises are perfect for the early-retiree looking for an additional source of income or for folks who aren’t ready to leave their jobs but want to start planning for the future. Some may just want a little extra stimulation and a way to bring in some extra money. Semi-absentee franchises tend to be storefronts, business types where customers find you. Examples include hair salons, nutritional products, and ice cream or yogurt. A semi-absentee franchise usually relies on a manager to run the shop, while the owner manages the manager. The franchise company gives you the tools and technology so that you can know exactly what’s going on in the business, even if you don’t visit it. If your plan is to one day leave your job to be in business for yourself, it can be a great relief to know you’ve created this viable second career that you control, and that the business is already earning a good income before you hand in your resignation. You will need a talent for multitasking, but if you can juggle a couple of tasks per day, a semi-absentee may be a business avenue worth investigating. Still, if you’re one of those people who plans to keep a full-time job while running a business on the side, you may find yourself burning the candle at both ends, a schedule that’s not for everyone. The financial payoff can be significant. A typical semi-absentee hair salon, for example, might net you $70,000 per year. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you expand to five stores, like the average owner, you not only benefit from economies of scale, but now you’re generating a very nice annual income, indeed. With this model, an owner might own three or five or ten locations. In addition to the store managers, a larger operator will hire a general manager. Then, the general manager manages the store managers, and the owner still has only one or two direct reports. That’s how one owner can own many locations, but still work only 15 hours a week. Managing a multi-store business certainly requires a good head for detail, but by this time, you may be interested in leaving your day job. And you can still find plenty of time for a regular game of golf or bridge. Document. And unlike independent businesses, which have to make educated guesses, you have a network of other franchisees to help guide the way.

Ready to make your dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true? Get your free evaluation today! Contact Dan Citrenbaum to help you create the career you’ve always wanted. As a business coach, Dan brings years of experience helping people select and buy a franchise or existing business. You can reach Dan at dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484) 278-4589.

Lots of you do it every day, especially when it seems everyone’s on your case and you’re not hopping fast enough to please your boss. You begin to wonder: How can I get control of my own destiny and reap all the rewards of my labor?

Almost half of workers over the age of 35 want to branch out on their own, according to a recent survey by Harris Poll and CreativeLive (an online education company).

The obstacles sometimes seem enormous for older adults, ones who have picked up costly responsibilities along the way. Striking out on their own may sound too risky. They may not be certain they have the right skills for business ownership. The big question: How do I get started?

One way to lower your risk and help get you to a new and better career is to consider buying a franchise, which comes with a network of support to help you succeed in your new business. Another clear advantage of a franchise is the opportunity to talk to people already in the business to learn how they’re faring, how the franchise company’s systems work and whether they would do it again.

Five Easy Steps for Selecting a Franchise

1.  Rev Your Engines

Make a list of your skills and experience. Then look into different franchises in which the franchisees seem to have particular success. Start matching skills to what the owners need to do in those businesses to see where you might have the best connection.

2. Research Your Selected Business Sector

Learn where the growth is, where opportunities abound, what your geographic area may be missing, and what economic indicators are showing. Maybe local school budgets have been cut and the area has a growing need for a professionally run tutoring business. Or maybe your region lacks adequate resources for senior care.

3. Contact a Franchise Coach

A coach can help you narrow down your choices to franchises that are well-tested in the marketplace and offer the best support system for franchisees. The coach can also help make sure your research is thorough and objective.

4. Talk to franchisors and franchisees

Get the Franchise Disclosure Document from franchisors and learn the financial history of the company, as well as its key executives, and receive the list of franchisees. Franchisees are your most important resource, because they will provide the lowdown on where the franchise company is strongest and where its system may not work so well.

5. Consult a Franchise Attorney

Attorneys who specialize in this market will help you understand the potential pitfalls in a franchisor’s contract and suggest ways to improve the fundamentals to help ensure your success.

Just like any new endeavor in which you want to be successful, your preparation is critical. Making a well-researched solid selection will go a long way to putting you on the road to becoming a successful business owner so you can take control of your career.

This guest post is by Dan Citrenbaum, a Franchise Coach and Entrepreneurial Consultant who helps people achieve their dreams as small business owners.  He offers free evaluations to find out what option might be the best for you.  Find Dan at www.EnterpreneurOption.com, dcitrenbaum@gmail.com or (484)278-4589.

“Start a business in this economy? Are you crazy?” Maybe not so crazy. For the moment, set aside the fact traditional employment options might be limited because of this economy. (It isn’t a news flash the job market is tight.) Instead, let’s focus on different questions: Is a business started today likely to succeed or to fail? Are there good recession resistant businesses? It all depends on the kind of business. This might not be a great time to start a business selling luxury goods. But aren’t there other options? What about businesses selling necessities? Better yet, what about businesses selling necessities at a good value? Maybe this is a great time for that kind of recession resistant business. Tutoring services, for example, are famously steady in an off economy. No matter how tight money might be, many parents will make it a priority to see their children have the resources needed to succeed in school. What about businesses that operate almost independent of the economy? Yes, there are some. Have you ever had the misfortune of having a flood in your home? A problem like that happens just as often in economic booms as it does in a recession. There are businesses that provide exactly that kind of disaster repair. It’s hard to think of a reason a disaster repair business can’t do well in a recession. What else? What about businesses with greater demand in a down economy? There are plenty of business owners struggling today. Wouldn’t this be a great time to sell services that can help turn around someone else’s struggling company? Not to mention anyone who sells a product that will help a business to lower its costs. Wouldn’t this economy help that sort of business to prosper? There are certain demographics that are growing quickly. It might be a great time to own a business that sells to the fast growing population of senior citizens. There are several types of businesses that sell to seniors. Some might provide skilled medical care, and others non-medical care. Still other businesses provide home modification services, installing wheel chair ramps, stair lifts, or shower adaptations. If you are providing this type of service, you might do very well in a world with a fast growing population of seniors. Corporate America has cut so many positions they have created an excellent opportunity for temporary staffing companies. Many retail businesses continue to do well – sales are way up at dollar stores. And, given more people than ever work from home, pack-and-ship stores are doing more business than ever. We could go on and on. Yes, this economy has hurt a lot of businesses. But it has also created opportunities for many others. There truly are some great recession resistant businesses. This might, indeed, be a great time to start a business. You just have to find one that has the right kind of market.

Dan Citrenbaum is a Franchise Coach and Entrepreneurial Consultant, and is a franchisee himself. He has spent over 25 years helping small business owners start and grow their businesses, in order to achieve their dreams. He offers a free service to help people find an existing business to buy, or a successful franchise to start. View his company’s web site at www.EntrepreneurOption.com Mr. Citrenbaum can be reached at DCitrenbaum@gmail.com or at (484)278-4589.