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Whether you’re ready to slow it down after a lifetime in the workforce, or to restart your career after primarily being home with your kids, franchising has multiple opportunities for you to work at home.

Locating your business at home allows you to set your work hours around the needs of your life. So you can watch your grand-daughter’s afternoon softball game or take your kids to school without spending valuable time commuting. Or have more time to pursue hobbies or volunteer activities.

Working at home, in fact, is a growing trend, having increased 46 percent between 1997 and 2010, for people who work at least one day per week at home, according to the U.S. Census.

Increasing numbers of full-time workers are setting up their businesses at home, thanks to new technology that allows us to easily connect via the Internet. In its most recent survey, the Census reported that more than half of all businesses that responded to its 2007 Survey of Business Owners operated out of someone’s home.

The other main benefit of setting up a new business at home is the ability to significantly lower your overhead costs.

The advantage of a franchise is you don’t need any experience in your business of choice. A good franchise comes with a tried-and-true system, training and ongoing support to help you gain the skills you need to make a good living.

Of course, your responsibility is to do the research necessary to help you make a good match with your interests and your experience. This includes reading Franchise Disclosure Documents and talking to franchisees to fully understand not only your complete costs, but potential snags, as well.

After all, you don’t want to choose a business that requires an outgoing personality when you prefer solitary work, such as research or perusing spreadsheets. The good news is opportunities abound to suit every area of interest.

Home-based franchises range across many industries, from various cleaning services, assisted living or home health care, business to business services, tutoring and fitness training.

Characteristics of a home-based franchise include:

• Few or no employees
• Interaction with clients mainly by telephone or by you bringing your business to them
• Technology easily available at home
• Lower space requirements

We recommend you start looking into various franchises online, starting with the International Franchise Association, and then consult a franchise coach to help you fine-tune your selection.

Spend the time upfront on a thorough due diligence and you greatly improve your chances for long-term success.

Choosing a new business can be among the most exciting moments in your life. So let your goal of creating a balanced life with a business you enjoy be your guide and get started 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 franchise 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.

© Dan Citrenbaum 2020

Deciding to start a new business is a heady time for every budding entrepreneur. As any experienced business owner will tell you, preparation is the key to success. That preparation becomes much easier when you decide to purchase a franchise. You gain a huge upside as a result of the amount of information available to you. Since franchises come with a system time-tested by dozens or even thousands of others, you get a veritable operating manual and can ascertain before you start whether you have the skills and experience to succeed with this business. So, the key question becomes whether this business is right for you. Your most invaluable resource to help you find the answers lies with the network of franchisees who once stood in your shoes. We recommend you interview as many franchisees as you can. You will find a complete list of franchisees in the Franchise Disclosure Document, which franchisors are required by federal law to provide to potential franchisees.

6 Steps To Interviewing Your Way To Franchise Success

If you’ve never conducted an interview, don’t worry. Every good interview follows the same basic steps. Commit these to memory, perhaps ask a friend to help you practice, and begin to explore possible business options for your future.

1. Be Cordial And Gracious

Inquiring minds cannot just ask any question that pops to mind. Remember you are imposing on the franchisee’s time, so when you call, get right to the point, that you are interested in the franchise and are hoping he or she might have a few minutes to talk about his or her experiences. Ask if this is a good time, or when might be a good time to call back.

2. Plan Your Interview

You might want to plan a couple of layers to your interview. Use your initial research of written documents to help plan good questions. First, prepare a few questions that would take no more than 15 minutes of the franchisee’s time. Then, write additional questions you might get to if the franchisee has the time. Ask questions that only this person can answer. Be specific about what this person knows that you cannot get in any prepared written material. For example: How have their experiences been with the franchisor? Did actions live up to promises? Were training and support sufficient? Would they buy the franchise aga

3. Show Respect

You may not like everything the franchisees tell you, but you are after their perspective. So don’t argue, play devil’s advocate or in any way imply their problems are due to their own inadequacies.

4. Listen

The most important time during your interview is when you’re not talking. Try to draw out as much information from the franchisee by asking succinct questions, and then stop talking. Sometimes people need a few moments to clarify their thoughts before responding.

5. Clarify

Even with the best listening skills, you may miss some of what is said. Don’t be shy about asking your source to repeat something or clarify an answer you may not have understood. As most journalism professors will tell you, there’s no such thing as a stupid question. The question you wish you had asked is another thing.

6. Follow Up

As you go through your notes, and something important pops out that you fear you may have misunderstood or gotten wrong in your notes, call back. Most people appreciate conscientious attempts to get it right. Just remember to be respectful of the franchisees’ time. And it never hurts to drop a thank you email after the interview. You might want to keep these lines of communication open for the future.

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.  

From time to time, you may wonder what it might be like to run your own business. You would be in charge of your own time. You could pocket all the profit that results from your labor. You could tap your natural ingenuity and try out your great ideas. Best of all, you would be master of your own destiny. While you get all the upside, you also bear all the responsibility when trouble hits. Knowing this causes potential owners to feel fear and trepidation – so that often they abandom their dream of ownership and continue in their stultifying day job. But what if there was a way to minimize your risk and get all the benefits of owning your own business? The answer is actually within easy reach. With a franchise, before you even invest a dime, you know everything you need to know to succeed. You get a proven system, upfront and continuing training, support for everything from setting up your office to buying equipment and supplies, and you know from the get-go exactly how much your startup costs will be.

10 Questions To Answer Before Purchasing A Franchise

The most important issue becomes your research, how well you make a match with your interest, skills, and expertise to a franchise whose system and support stands up to scrutiny.

First About Yourself

1. How much money do I want to invest?

A good rule of thumb: You will need enough to pay startup costs as well as your living expenses until the business becomes profitable.

2. Do I have the ability to put in long hours during the startup phase?

If you have significant responsibility caring for a sick relative, you might want to review your timing.

3. What types of skills do I bring to my new business?

Perhaps you’re great at sales, managing people or accounting. Whatever your strengths, you want to choose a franchise that capitalizes on them.

4. Do you enjoy working with people or prefer working alone?

You can find a franchise that matches your preference. For example, you could choose a business support service or a retail store.

5. Will your business be your primary source of income or a secondary career?

Called semi-absentee, there is a whole category of franchises for those who wish to work part-time.

About The Franchisor

6. How much are the initial startup costs?

You can find everything you need to know in the Franchise Disclosure Document, which every franchisor is required to disclose to potential franchisees. Look at Items 5-7.

7. How long has the franchisor been in business? Any glaring litigation history?

You’re looking for proof this is a company in good standing. Check Items 1-4 in the FDD. You will also want to learn how many franchisees have gone out of business.

8. Do I have a good rapport with the franchisor’s executives?

Through multiple interviews and meetings, you will need to determine if you want to work closely with these people. Do you trust them? Are they likable?

9. What obligations does the franchisor place on franchisees?

All franchisors will be highly specific on how the business is run. After all, they have a brand to protect. Check for restrictions on territory, resale, and royalties. Decide if any of these are too onerous for you. It’s always a good idea to consult a franchise attorney.

10. Is the support and training everything the franchisor advertises? Would a large number of franchisees buy this franchise again?

As the most important question in the bunch, you should plan to invest a significant amount of time calling and interviewing franchisees — whose phone numbers you can find in the FDD.

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) 278-5489

When shopping for a franchise, knowing how to separate the wheat from the chaff takes expertise. Consulting a franchise coach can help you ask the right questions and zero in on key issues that can mean the difference between success and failure.

While you will find a seemingly endless supply of information about franchises in any internet search, you can save yourself a lot of time and aggravation by consulting an expert who has made his or her career studying the ins and outs of what makes a great franchise.

And since one of the attributes of successful business ownership is having the wisdom to know when you should rely on the expertise of others, your first test comes during your research phase.

To be sure, there are some clunker franchises out there. But to understand how the best franchise operations work, you need to have some idea about what they should offer, and what your expectations should be. If you’re not careful, you could find yourself with a franchise with subpar training and worthless support that ends up costing you your business.

The bottom line: You want value for your money, and the costs can be significant. With the best franchises, the value far exceeds the cost.

A good franchise can provide you all the knowledge you need to have a successful business, unlike an independent startup, where you have to guess the costs and estimate the potential revenue stream. A franchise operation already has a proven system, developed over time with a successful network of franchisees who came before you.

Without exception, franchisors will tell you they have excellent training and hands-on support to help you with every facet of your new business. And some surely do. But their job is to sell you their franchise, so they may leave out the part about a recent turnover in their training staff that has left the program in disarray.

Of course, the best way franchisors can maximize their income is to create the best environment for their franchisees to succeed – spectacularly so. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case, which is why the research phase is so important.

A franchise coach can help steer you to specific franchisors, based on a thorough assessment of hundreds of franchise operations over the years. Another important goal is to match a franchise to your basic skills and personal profile — so that you can make a good living and enjoy your work.

The Benefits of Tapping the Expertise of a Franchise Coach

A franchise coach can help you figure out:

• What type of franchise you should research — based on your interests, skills and personality
• How well the franchisees have been succeeding
• How to evaluate the FDD
• How to assess franchisees’ and franchisor operations
• How well the franchisor prepares franchisees in the set-up phase
• How good the franchisor’s training program is, which includes answering questions, such as: Do you connect well with the support staff? Do you like them? Are they hands-on? Do they know what they’re doing?

In addition, as you continue your research, a franchise coach can help you answer questions that arise along the way. And best of all their service is free to you since they are paid by the franchisor.

As in every endeavor, you want to capitalize on every advantage you have, so consult the experts and get the edge in your search for your perfect business opportunity.

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 franchise 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.

© Dan Citrenbaum 2019

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 franchisor 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) 278-5489.  

Franchisors offer incentives to help veterans start their own franchises.

Don’t know anything about starting a business but are determined to take control of your employment destiny?

If you’re a military veteran, the International Franchise Association (IFA) thinks you’re particularly well-equipped for a franchise. And they’ve got a program to help you take a leap into entrepreneurship and a career in which you can use the skills you’ve acquired in the military.

VetFran was founded as a special program within the IFA in 1991 to help veterans returning from the first Gulf War as a way to thank veterans for their service, according to the IFA.

Then in 2011, the IFA launched Operation Enduring Opportunity, a partnership with several organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, to help the large influx of veterans transitioning to civilian life get into franchise careers. The program has been a great success.

Through VetFran, many franchisors will waive 10 percent to 25 percent of the franchise fee, which can help veterans hire staff as they get their new businesses up and running.

In the last three years, more than 150,000 veterans have started careers in franchising, more than 5,000 as franchise owners. Now, one out of every seven franchise businesses is owned by a veteran of the U.S. military, according the IFA.

This is clearly a win-win partnership for both sides.

Franchising offers one of the very best paths to starting your own business for those with little or no experience in the business. With a proven system, training and ongoing support, novices get a franchise team to show them the way to success, helping them troubleshoot the rough spots along the way. As the IFA points out, the system is not dissimilar to the structure of military life.

While veterans can expect a little extra special treatment as thanks for their service to the country, franchise companies benefit from the particular strengths veterans bring to the franchise.

Before you or a veteran you know starts second-guessing all the ways he or she is not qualified for a career in franchising, consider the following list, compiled from articles written by Franchisors or IFA officials.

The Treasured Traits of Veterans Prized by Franchisors

Integrity and Honor

Ingrained through their military training, veterans learn firsthand the importance of executing orders with dedication to accomplish a common goal.

Respect for Rules of Operation

A military operation requires everyone to do his job. A franchise requires franchisees to follow the proven system of the franchise company to succeed. In both one person implements a plan prepared by others with proven experiences.

Leadership Training

Business ownership requires the type of leadership the military teaches. An owner is responsible for the business, its employees and, of course, accountable to its customers.

Discipline

When the buck stops with you, you need a disciplined work ethic, especially during the early days as you build your business to profitability.

Character

Overcoming obstacles, an everyday activity for soldiers in the military, builds the kind of character necessary for business ownership.

Teamwork

In the military, soldiers learn to put the success of the mission ahead of their own interests. This dedication to teamwork well suits the needs of franchisees to work with franchisors in a cooperative manner to maximize success.

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 franchise 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

© Dan Citrenbaum 2019