Author: Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

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Operations

Tips to Manage Multiple Franchises Effectively

Tips to Manage Multiple Franchises Effectively

Franchising can be traced back to 18th century England, where Lords are said to have given peasants rights on their land in exchange for compensation. That tradition of one entity managing assets for another and paying commission on those assets continues today. There are over 929 franchise brands operating in the UK, with the number of profitable franchise business listed in the 90th percentile by the British Franchise Association.

You will also need to worry about new investments, like personnel and cost of travelling from one location to another. Learning to work remotely will help, but there is definitely a “secret sauce” to managing your own franchise.

Establishing Funding

Funding will be just as much of a factor, except that you’ll have some of your own money to invest that comes out of the original business. You may have an easier time qualifying for a loan because you can show a successful track record of franchise management. You can cover improvement costs with your own cash and focus investor money on building the nuts and bolts of the business.

Hiring

The main skills you need in franchising involve time management and customer service. Consult your franchisor for hiring tips. Questions to ask during an interview, or skills to look at from a resume could mean the difference between a bad investment and a good one.

Remember that each hire is critical and a bad cog in the machine costs you money and time. That’s why investors like Jake Wand stress the importance of surrounding yourself with enterprising individuals.

Consulting the Franchisor

The franchisor can help take care of much of the stress involved with opening a second or third location. They may have ideas on locations where you can start, or provide some reduced royalties for the first year or two of operation. Be prepared to make a commitment to the franchisor if you want to take full advantage of some of these benefits, but they are often designed with your success in mind.  If the franchisor holds events in your area, attend them and work on building a strong relationship with them.

Good support is your most valuable asset.

Put Customers First

Just like your original location, your focus on customers will ultimately drive your business. Make sure your employees are well-versed in customer service interactions and know how to handle situations. Check with the franchisor to see what, if any, training exists for your employees.

One great way to get feedback on your business is setting up a mechanism online to do so. If your franchisor doesn’t have anything to offer to you, simple software like Survey Monkey can record results when customers visit a URL you give to them. Program your POS machines to print the URL on the customer’s receipt, then make improvements to your staff and procedure based on their opinions.

Don’t Compete

Before you try to corner the coffee market with three different café franchises, be sure that you’re allowed to do so. Some franchises may refuse you if they know that you own a competing location. You should also make it clear that you are committed to developing the new location and will devote resources to do so. Getting approved for the franchise is not a done deal, and should not be perceived as one. Make sure you approach the deal carefully, with the franchisor’s goals in mind with your own.

Partner Up

Partnering frees up time to devote to the new location. Having a spouse or a trusted colleague step in to manage a location can make a huge difference in your productivity. Don’t stretch yourself thin, recruit some help.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith

Categories
Operations

Should You Use Subscription Based Software?

Subscription Based Software

There are few things more frustrating than having to pay a bunch of money for something that you don’t really need and will probably never use. Unfortunately, for most small business owners or sole proprietors, that is what a lot of business software tends to be.

For instance: you know that you shouldn’t be doing your company’s books on a simple Excel spreadsheet you made yourself; your company is too big for that now. At the same time you don’t need all of the bells and whistles that the major financial software companies insist on packaging with their programs (all of which help elevate the price).

Typically, most entrepreneurs breathe a heavy sigh and go ahead and buy that software anyway. Maybe they’ll wind up needing all of those bells and whistles in the future. Maybe they won’t mind having to pay for expensive upgrades that fix a single bug at a time (ensuring massive profit for the company while potentially causing money problems for yours). This is because, until recently, that was the only option.

Today, though, you can buy subscription based software. What’s that? Subscription based software is software that you don’t actually own but that you pay to use on an as-needed basis. It’s often abbreviated SaaS for “software as a service”.

This got a lot of press earlier this year when Adobe announced that it was stepping away from the standard “here pay for this big thing” model and switching over to a monthly subscription fee. The hope was to pick up business from people using open source alternatives like Pixlr because customers couldn’t afford the hefty one-time payment for the primary software package.

Now, other types of software companies are getting in on the act. Next Process, which now offers SaaS for business process management, had the same basic idea that Adobe had—create a subscription based software service. But they took it a step further. The company also offers assistance with the processes themselves. For instance, a business owner who opts for their Accounts Payable solution can outsource the bulk of their invoicing and collections duties to Next Process and pay only for exactly how much work the system does (after the setup/installation fee).

Imagine being able to outsource the chasing down of client payments (to a certain extent)!

Subscription based software isn’t just for tech companies either. It’s a big hit in the entertainment industry as well. Just look at streaming media companies like Netflix and Hulu Plus. A better example, are gaming companies. The MMPORPG (Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game) industry is doing better than it ever has before. These are large complex games that charge a monthly fee for players to continue playing.

So, should you switch?

Before you make the leap and switch over all of your software to pay-as-you-go and subscription based services, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is there a subscription based service for what I need?

2. Is that service truly secure or could a twelve year old with too much free time hack in?

3. Can I afford the subscription fee/payment plan?

The answers to those questions will help illustrate what path you should take.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith

Categories
How-To Guides

How to Bridge the Gap Between Your Day Job and Your Dream Job

How to Bridge the Gap Between Your Day Job and Your Dream Job

Aspiring entrepreneurs all around the globe often find themselves in a disastrous scenario – broke, unmotivated, and stuck, all after quitting their day job to pursue their dreams.

The danger here is that culture makes that scenario a legendary, admirable action – quitting your day job to pursue bigger and better things. Society respects the individuals who “take a leap of faith” in their careers and quit their day jobs to pursue their dreams, and actually devalues the workers who remain working hard behind a desk, day in and day out.

Unfortunately, that system is broken, misleading, and its perceived glamour is oftentimes what prevents dreams from happening altogether.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Yet

You probably aren’t going to find that advice in a lot of other places. It’s not popular, and it’s barely even conventional anymore. There are simply too many stories about the courageous individuals who left everything to follow their passions and became wildly successful. What those stories don’t mention are the waves of workers who quit their jobs and didn’t find success.

Instead, I’m going to propose an alternative tactic, one that probably isn’t popular or awe-inspiring. Keep your day job, for now. You’ll need it for later.

Your day job can actually be one of your greatest partners in reaching your dreams. It’s a solid foundation for supporting yourself and paying the bills while you work feverishly on your dreams after sundown. Bridging the gap between your day job and your dream job will happen organically this way. Sure, once you quit, you’d probably be more motivated to work hard and accomplish what needs to be done – however, you can still accomplish a lot while working 40 hours a week.

Don’t Become the Office Slacker Either

This post isn’t encouraging you to become a mediocre, minimal-work worker who only gets the bare minimum done throughout the day. This practice can also bey very detrimental to your attitude after work; if you’re a lazy, unmotivated, and preoccupied worker throughout the day, you’ll inevitably carry those patterns to your home office where you write and dream. Workers who continue to work with excellence and stay productive during a day job will also inevitably carry those traits with them after work.

Entrepreneurs from every walk of life have found success in day jobs while working for their dream jobs. Robert Saman, CLO and secretary of STEC is an excellent example of a worker who started small and rose to the top with an astounding work ethic and integrity. If you’re working at a small business and dream of quitting to pursue bigger and better things, you’re not alone. But instead of finding yourself unable to pay the bills and loading enormous stress on yourself, adopt an attitude like Saman’s and countless other workers who chose to remain excellent in work.

Don’t quit your day job, yet. Perhaps down the road, when you have enough savings, a solid business plan after you quit, and the support and encouragement of peers and family, quitting will become a viable option. Don’t get stuck working at home with no money coming in and not getting anything done.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith

Categories
Success Attitude

3 Strategies to Positively Profit from Change

3 Strategies to Positively Profit from Change

The most common sentence I receive in coaching today is, “We’ve gone through a lot of changes and more are coming.”

Ironically, each client believes their situation is unique.

It’s all of us.

Some of us are excited by it. Others are terrified. Most are just trying to keep up.

So how do you increase sales with greater team productivity and get out of the office earlier while experiencing a fire hose volume of change?

Invite your customers to show you how.

Here are 3 Strategies to Positively Profit from Change:

Focus on Change

Focusing on the positive is an integral dynamic of your Work Positive lifestyle that is a powerful antidote to the dizzying pace of change today. One of your positives is the relationships with customers who consistently invite you to solve their problems whether it be to fix a car or financial advice on investing.

Focus on this positive with these three questions:

What are our customers asking for?

Listen deeply to their concerns, hopes, and desires. They will tell you exactly what products and services they wish you offered that hold the gold to more revenue.

How can we give them what they want?

Remember that most of us are looking for turnkey solutions. Your customers might ask, “Help me with my retirement AND college education savings” or “Change my oil AND pick up my car when it breaks down.” They trust you and that’s the ultimate currency of change. Establish yourself as top-of-mind with them and give them what they want.

Who leads us from where we are to where they want us to be?

Somebody on your team must work on the business to do the research, planning, and implementation for expanding services. Carve team time for coordination.

Filter the Changes

Remember, “Good enough is good enough.”

As you embrace change and direct it to more profits most likely you will try to perfect it before you roll it out.

Filter as you roll through the changes.

Get the product or service out the door and into the consumption habits of your customers. Ask them, “How do you like it?” and “How’s it working for you?” and “How can we improve?”

Filter the change to grow those parts of the operation that work well and eliminate the ones that don’t.

Good enough is good enough.

Forward through the Change

Your mantra as you focus and filter change is, “Forward through the change.”

Yes, you will get frustrated. Sure, you will be stretched. Of course, you will want to quit.

We all do. These responses to change are expected.

Keep moving forward. Positively profit from the change.

It’s going to happen anyway.

You may as well increase sales with greater team productivity and get out of the office earlier, right?

About the Author:

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), Work Positive coach, & speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they leave the office earlier to do what they love with those they love. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.

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Recommendations

Popular College Courses

Popular College Courses

Popular college courses, yes, but how long’s a piece of string?

So what are the most popular college courses in the world? Crazy question. May as well ask how long’s a piece of string. And the answer? Depends who’s holding the said string, and more to the point, who’s pulling it. In academia’s rarefied atmosphere, that usually means the top universities in the world – Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, for example, and MIT, Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford in the US.

There are others, of course, big players with enormous reputations and budgets. So they tend to call the shots, and pull the strings, offering the range and depth of courses which attract the brightest minds from across the planet and which smaller universities struggle to match.

In the UK, 2013 university applications are up. But rising student numbers are not confined to UK nationals. According to the UK’s Guardian newspaper, applications from EU countries have increased by 4.9% and the number of applicants from outside the EU has risen by 9.6%. At the same point last year, applications were down from the UK and European countries. Of the non-European countries, Malaysia recorded the biggest rise in applicants at 22% followed by Australasia with a 12% increase.

And the most popular courses? The big winner seems to be computer sciences, up more than 12% compared to the same time last year. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone given how much computers and the Internet tend to dominate all our lives. At the other end of the academic spectrum, social sciences, arts and languages are feeling the popularity pinch.

It’s a slightly different emphasis across the Middle East, for example, where a degree is a highly-cherished attainment. In recent years, Persian Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates have deliberately diversified their economies away from over-reliance on oil, an ever-diminishing resource, choosing instead to expend greater energy in developing construction, media, finance, tourism and other industry sectors. Thus it’s no surprise to find universities in the UAE reflecting the diversification process, or that a business degree remains the top choice for Emirati students.

If you’ve ever thought about studying for a degree overseas, perhaps even in the UAE itself, there are some fairly obvious benefits. Of course, sun, sea and sand springing immediately to mind. But there are other more important benefits, too, like the tax-free earnings potential once you’ve graduated. That alone is well worth considering as you contemplate the mind-expanding experience of living in a completely different culture.

There are also a diverse range and number of universities to choose from. One of the most popular is the American University of Sharjah (AUS) which offers students an international American university experience, its curriculum mirroring the American pattern of semesters and courses. Based in the city of Sharjah, the university, although a fairly new kid on the block, has rapidly built up a reputation for both academic excellence and multiculturalism. According to the website topuniversities.com, AUS has more than 5,000 students from 82 different nations and a highly qualified, full-time faculty of more than 350 professionals.

The website adds, “Typical of the American system of higher education, AUS also places great stress on the development of the non-academic aspect of a student’s university life. Students are encouraged to participate in all manner of extra-curricular activities,form clubs and societies, stage events, work for the university student newspaper and literary magazine, and join the various sports and athletic teams on campus.”

Sounds like the place to be. For more on AUS and other universities, click here.