Category: Business Ideas

When entrepreneurs dream about their future, franchising is rarely the starting place for their fantasy. While it’s not always choice No. 1, the benefits of franchising make it an enticing career opportunity for entrepreneurs. With an established brand and support system, franchises offer franchisees a chance to taste running a business while also giving them significant help.

“A franchise is a business with training wheels,” said Tom Scarda, founder of The Franchise Academy, a podcast dedicated to franchising. “For a majority of franchisees, franchising has proven to be a viable way to become a business owner. For the most part, it offers the lowest risks and the highest level of support. Because a franchiser doesn’t succeed until the franchisees do, you’ll find a team of dedicated professionals willing and able to help you every step of the way, from site selection to employee hiring to grand opening.”

A company that sells rights to its existing business model and products to another businessperson or company is creating a franchise. The exact definition, however, varies because of the numerous statutes passed by the Federal Trade Commission and individual states.

Franchise regulation

Federal regulations exist to protect the rights of both the franchisee and the franchiser. The FTC helps to oversee and enforce franchise laws to ensure that entrepreneurs receive full disclosure on the state of the business they are joining and that the franchiser’s brand is protected. [See related story: Should You Be a Franchisee? 5 Questions to Ask]

Early in the franchise purchasing process, franchisers must provide a franchise disclosure document (FDD) to the potential franchisee. Sometimes called an offering circular, the FDD outlines the fees, investments, and bankruptcy and litigation history of the franchiser company. There are also registration and relationship laws that govern the registration of the franchise, salespeople and advertising, as well as grounds for terminating a franchise, notice and cure periods, grounds for nonrenewal, and equal treatment. These vary by state.

Factors to consider

Franchising requires a significant financial investment in return for the benefits it gives entrepreneurs. After paying the initial fee, the franchisee can begin setting up the business premises to sell products under the franchise’s brand name.

Before launching the business, the franchisee is expected to propose a store location, business model, business opportunities and royalties. Once the terms of the franchise contract are agreed upon, the entrepreneur can begin setting up the storefront. All those activities require an additional investment of money and time.

While the appeal of the franchise is an established name and branding, it may limit your business autonomy – that is, the ability to move and grow your business in different directions to take advantage of local business factors.

It’s important to find a business with a sustainable business model and a track record of success. Make sure to research where the company stands before joining as a franchisee. Rob Holt, the founder of Two Maids & a Mop, said his franchise underwent growing pains when initially transitioning from a traditional corporation to a franchise.

“In 2013, we only opened one franchise,” he said. “In 2014, we opened one as well. We didn’t really start growing until 2015, but during those first two years of franchising, even though we only had two, we really tried to perfect what we were doing.”

It’s important to understand the parent company’s current state. The first franchisees for Two Maids & a Mop were willing to remain patient as the company experienced growing pains, whereas today’s Two Maids & a Mop franchisees are joining a more established business. Neither option is right or wrong, but it’s important to know what situation you’re getting yourself into before spending the time and money to open a franchise. [There are more factors to consider. Read this related Business News Daily article.]

Benefits of franchising

One of the biggest benefits of franchising is drawing off the experience and expertise of the entire organization. By joining an accomplished brand, you bypass many of the hardships in building a company from the ground up.

“Franchising takes the guesswork out of starting a business,” said Jonathan Barnett, founder and CEO of Oxi Fresh Carpet Cleaning. “They have established systems designed to give new franchisees a massive head start over competitors. On top of that, franchisees benefit from the power of an established brand. It’s hard to overstate the advantage of starting a business and having people know and trust your brand from day one.”

These are some specific benefits of franchising:

• Perks of the particular brand (e.g., training and discounts)
• Business model with a proven record of success
• Easier access to money and loans
• Low risk for banking institutions

Opportunities to watch

Nearly every industry has a successful business practice being sold as a franchise, from retail stores to employment services. Finding the right opportunity for you depends largely on your previous expertise and passion.

Based on our research of top franchising opportunity lists from around the web, we’ve identified 10 industries where franchise business is booming:

1. Children’s enrichment. Parents want the best for their children, and educational franchises such as Kumon, The Goddard School and The Little Gym are helping the next generation learn and grow.

2. Hair salons. Hair care for men, women and children is a consistently in-demand service. Companies such as Supercuts, Sport Clips and Great Clips allow franchisees to stand out with a recognized brand name, while kids-only concepts like Snip-its give owners the opportunity to narrow their target market.

3. Fitness. While large gyms like Crunch and Retro Fitness are going strong, selecting a niche that’s missing in your area, such as kickboxing or Pilates, can help you stand out.

4. Paint-and-sip studios. This entertaining concept, which allows participants to have a glass of wine while they take a group painting class, is growing fast for both new and established companies, such as Painting with a Twist, Pinot’s Palette, Paint Nite and Wine & Design.

5. Pizza. This is a staple of the franchise world, with competitors still finding new and innovative ways to put together a pie or slice. Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s still rule the market, but concept franchises such as Kono Pizza and Project Pie offer a fresh take on this classic food.

6. Frozen yogurt. The froyo craze remains in force, with franchises like Menchie’s, Yogurtland, Pinkberry and Red Mango continuing to grow.

7. Property management. Since 2008, the number of rental properties – and companies needed to manage them, like Real Property Management and Property Management Pros – has been on the rise, prompting growth and opportunity for those looking to fill that need.

8. Senior care. As more aging baby boomers require in-home or facility care, this field is evolving by offering services such as advocacy and placement. Franchise options include Caring Senior Service and BrightStar Care.

9. Spa and beauty services. Franchises such as Massage Envy, Hand and Stone, and European Wax Center are a part of the burgeoning self-care market. You can offer specialized treatments like waxing or massages or go for a full-service establishment with add-on services such as facials and threading.

10. Vending machines. Vending machines have been popular for decades, but the success of these models – and the variety of potential product offerings – has made franchising a viable option within the past few years, through companies including Fresh Healthy Vending and Healthier 4U Vending.

The Basics of Franchising and Today’s Top Opportunities [BusinessNewsDaily]

Entrepreneurship is one of the best things you can do in life. There is a tremendous wealth of ideas out there that you can use to build a better future for yourself and your family. Entrepreneurship allows that freedom for you and everyone else. Entrepreneurship is when you create a company that provides goods or services to other people.

Many great business ideas will be helpful to you whether you are selling sports equipment or you are creating a medical supply company. Either way, certain entrepreneur principles will hold true no matter what. It is critical to understanding the principles so that you can come out ahead in the entrepreneurial game. These principles mean the difference between finding a lot of success for yourself and ultimately failing. Depending on where you want to go, you have to make the right choice for yourself and those around you.

Understanding Your Sales System

One of the first things that every business needs to do is to make sales. Without this simple fact, you will never have a successful business. You need to have a lot of customers to buy your goods or services. That means, to be a good business owner or entrepreneur, you need to have a system for getting sales. It is the most important part of your business. It is even more important than the people you hire and other factors that decide whether your business will be successful or not.

One thing you cannot do in business is to not get sales. Your business will never survive like that. You need to continuously make a lot of sales to pay for all your costs. This fact is one of the things that most people don’t understand about business. They get started with the business and do things that look like work but mean nothing. Things like buying business cards, for example, don’t do anything for your business. They are meaningless work since they achieve nothing.

Finding Customers

Once you have a sales system, you have to have a marketing system as well. You need a way to find the customers wherever they are. You also need a method for identifying those customers so you can get them to you. Finding and then being able to sell customers will help you grow your business. Nothing else offers the same power as these two skills. Being able to reach people and then getting them to give you money for a good or service is what it means to be a good entrepreneur. The best entrepreneurs in the world have this power. They can get you to buy what they are selling by offering a persuasive argument as to why this thing will help you. You need to be able to do that for yourself to achieve the same goal.

Using the Power of the Internet

Another significant development that is essential to entrepreneurs is the internet. The internet allows you to communicate at the speed of light with millions of people from around the world. It also enables you to sell goods and services from the comfort of your home. The internet has made commerce one of the fastest-growing areas of the world. It has also enabled the transmission of knowledge at the speed of light. With all of this information, you can do many things you would otherwise not have been able to do in the past. It takes entrepreneurship to another level and enables you to build businesses in a new way. Taking the power of the internet into consideration, you can do a lot more today than previously.

Why Entrepreneurship is the Best Decision for You

Ultimately, all these technologies and techniques mean that entrepreneurship is the way to go. You can harness the best sales system and the internet to produce great results as an entrepreneur. These ideas are profound in their simplicity. They allow you to build your business to greater heights than ever before. For the people looking for a different perspective, entrepreneurship is something that will get you the results you want in all areas of life. Entrepreneurship is also something that is easy to get started with because of modern technology. The world of entrepreneurship will continue to grow and improve as technology changes.

Entrepreneurship burdens your shoulders with lots of to-dos, and you will have to do equal justice to all of them so that you run the business well and find success. There are common areas of mistakes in almost every startup, and identifying the problem areas and getting prepared for them even before you encounter the challenge will help you get over the challenge sooner with the already good understanding of apt problem solving for such issues.

Situations are faced the hardest by you when you are planning the startup, or when it’s just your initial days in this role. You face many dilemmas and confusions, and some of them are discussed below.

Do you know what to sell?

Entrepreneurship comes with a business plan and execution on that. But if you don’t have any plan, and yet you are all ready with time, money, and the zeal to become an entrepreneur, then you must decide first what exactly would be your product. Finding the right product or service to sell is one of the most important points in becoming an emerging entrepreneur. If you don’t know already what to sell, then now is the time you start thinking. Choose anything which appeals to you or a domain about which you have knowledge.

You may take the help of a contract worker or freelancer to do some research for you, and give you a complete SWOT analysis of the various interesting products and fields around you so that you have an idea of possible products.

Product marketing

You have the idea of thebusiness, the lineup of employees, infrastructure, and everything needed but the marketing plan. Now you must have a good marketing plan to create that market for the product, or else all the efforts put in the business will be in vain if things don’t sell. No sales mean no revenue, and thus a total disaster. Hence, you must get adequate marketing solutions from marketing experts and advisors.

Clinging to a budget can be exhausting

Although it’s all the game of budgeting and calculations, yet restricting the moves just because you have a narrow budget is not always easy to accept. You may get frustrated with the fact that you have a little budget for anything you plan, and especially that’s the reason the marketing suffers. If that is the case, then you should not put the whole moneyallocated for marketing in all sorts of marketing strategies. Rather you must try and target a different kind of marketing every month or quarter and see how it goes.

Some marketing ways may click, while some may not fetch any results. If you parallelly run all of those, then the non-productive ones will secretly eat away your money and resources, without any benefit. Rather save the money for the productive marketing ways, and hence experimenting in the initial days of the business is important.

Besides this, cost-cutting at relevant places is crucial and must be done religiously during the initial days of thebusiness to run things smoothly. Using funds only where needed is the best way to work in a restricted budget, and for that, you may have to sacrifice for some years on luxuries. Rather plan for the optional things when you have enough at hand.

Accumulating the business capital

Sometimes an entrepreneur has everything that’s needed for the business except for the business capital. Only the arrangement of capital is enough for the business to roll because of all other necessities havealready been met. If this is your scenario, then you simply need ample funds to start things. The most common way to get funds is to get a business loan.

Funding a business loan is not that easy until you have good business plans. You will have to grow a full proof business plan, and show your file to banks and other private and online lenders to get things approved from them. Not all will accept the plan. Many would straightaway reject, while many would keep you in a waiting queue for sometime before rejecting or giving a low loan approval. And some lenders may click for you and approve you the loan after some time or quite fast. But to get a loan fast and get the amount you actually need you must show a good business planning with no loopholes left.

What if you get into business debt?

By the time, you know how difficult it is to grab the attention of lenders to give you a huge amount of business loan. And sometimes you may have to play tricks to get different amounts of loansfrom different sources so that the cumulative amount meets up to your needs for the capital. In that scenario, you will have to play extremely safe so that you do not get into any unmanageable debt situation. You will have to concentrate well on earning revenues, getting funds on time, paying funds on time, paying all dues timely, meeting client expectations, and never delaying or affecting quality, and trying to put all the ends together to ensure business runs well.

This you must do so that your business revenues keep on coming smoothly and enables you to pay offthe loans on time. Once loans are all settled and paid back, you can be proud of the asset you have created over the months or years. But before that, you have to be super sure and safe in playing with money. Reading about debt consolidation, money management cases, debt settlement reviews, etc. will also keep you preparedfor facing the odds.

Finally

Managing business, and managing business finances, all needs thorough planning and execution, and with time you gain experience too. No entrepreneur enters the field with total experience. Someone has to start somewhere, and things are new then. But the attitude to keep your senses open and the open your mind to grab and absorb, and learn new things, and arrange for a solution toanticipated problemsis the key to good entrepreneurship.

Author Bio:

John Bell has been writing articles on Social Media, skilled business consultant and Financial advisor for the last few years. In this post, he has written about the benefits of Social Media Marketing, Business, Finance as well as the features related to the same.

 

Every day the number of Forex trader in the financial industry rising at an exponential rate. Majority of the new investors start their career with a hope they will become a millionaire within a short period of time. But do you really think this is possible? There is no shortcut way to become a rich person. If you want to change your life you need by trading the live assets you will have to work really hard. Today we will share some key reason for which trading is extremely difficult for retail traders. Let’s begin our journey!

Unrealistic expectations

The new traders don’t understand the key reasons for losing money on regular basis. But if you do some research on the losers of this industry you will understand why they are losing money. They always set unrealistic expectations from this market. For instance, if you want to double your account size every day it will be almost impossible for you. In fact, making 2 -3% profit per month is considered to be an excellent gain. But sadly the new traders never consider this small percentage as their profit. They always aim for 10-20% or even more in a single month. You need to leave this concept if you really want to become a successful trader.

Making things too much complex

Trading the market with a very complex strategy will never help you to become a successful trader. In fact, this is one of the key reason for which you will end up overtrading the market. If you can master the simple support and resistance level trading strategy you can easily change your life just by trading. Some of you might think the simple strategy will never be able to decipher the complex price movement of the Forex market. But just have a look at the professional UK traders in the spread betting industry. They are placing random trades in their spread betting account with a very simple strategy. Do you really think they are losing money in the long run? If so, no one would have traded for the large banks and institutions. So try to keep things simple in this profession.

Dealing with EAs and bots

EAs and bots are extremely popular among the novice trader. This is one of the key reasons for which you will be trading the market as a new trader. You might be thinking you will not have to work hard since all the calculations will be done by your EAs and bots. But do really think an automated software of bots can handle the world’s biggest financial industry. The manual trading strategy has always been the best way to trade the live assets and still now the expert traders are following it. So stop wasting your money on such EAs and bots. If possible find a professional trading course since it will significantly help you to become a successful trader.

Not following the basic rules of money management

Everyone knows trading is the most profitable business in the world. But how many traders consider the risk factors of this market. The newbie hardly knows about the proper way of managing their losing trades. In fact, they are always trying to win trades even though it’s impossible. Even the most experienced traders have to face losing months. Trading is all about probability and you will have to prepare for the worst-case scenario. Try to trade this market with a very low-risk exposure. It’s true that it will significantly limit the profit factors, but at the end of the day, you won’t blow your account like the majority of the traders. Protecting your investment should be your top priority. No matter what happens you should never trade with high-risk exposure as it will make trading extremely difficult.

Smartphones are everywhere. In both personal and working life, a handset offers a wealth of ways to connect. Indeed, mobile telecommunication is such a part of the fabric of daily life that individuals and businesses constantly rely on the connectivity options that smartphone technology provides. But with such a variety of plans available, it can be difficult and time-consuming to decide which one to go for. To make your choice a little bit easier, here are five essential features for a reliable and effective business smartphone plan.

Doing Business Wherever You Are

When looking at a business smartphone plan, you should always weigh up the costs involved. How important is it for colleagues and employees to have immediate access to the internet? If each person’s business activity involves constant communication and the ability to trade resources and discuss ideas while on the go, the answer to this questions will be extremely important.

A sound business plan focuses on the need for regular movement and the chance for everyone involved in a business project to be completely mobile. A suitable plan that offers this opportunity is sure to boost productivity and increase the possibility for building new contacts and business ventures on a wider scale.

Business smartphones enable a constant flow of communication. If your business activity relies on keeping in touch with clients and colleagues, this should be at the top of your list. Communication depends on a confident exchange of ideas, without the threat of missed calls or a dropped signal.

A recent study by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project discovered that 72% of cellphone owners experience occasional dropped calls. If you factor in how expensive this could be to a business through loss of trade or earmarking opportunities, it makes sense to go for a plan with extensive coverage and high-strength connection platforms.

International Coverage for Global Business

Communication technology is improving all the time throughout the world. Every business needs to stay up to date with this fact, which is why the means to tap into the international market should be looked at when assessing a business plan.
For example, T-Mobile has one of the most comprehensive international calling plans, as it offers unlimited free calls to landlines and mobile numbers in a wide range of countries. There is also an option to use SMS to virtually anywhere in the world. The ability to make international calls and texts in a cost-effective and secure way is fundamental.

Fast Network Speeds and Download Times

It is a generally recognized fact by businesses all over the world that a fast network speed is essential for activity and productivity. A recent report published by OpenSignal places T-Mobile top of the market when it comes to overall network speeds and download times. Whether making a call to a client or downloading essential information from a website while on the move, paying attention to the speeds that your provider can offer is of the highest importance.

Security Features

Security should always be paramount when dealing with any kind of business information. When it comes to smartphones, you should be able to expect to have absolute control over what information is held by the provider. The option to instantly delete or withhold sensitive details simply by using the handset is always desirable. Some business plans for smartphones may be able to offer built-in antivirus and firewall solutions to further protect the handset from incoming malevolent infiltrations.

An effective and resolute business plan making use of all of these essential features is key to assessing the overall value of a business smartphone plan and what it could mean to your working endeavors. Remembering to check how each of these factors is brought into focus could save you time, unnecessary stress, and money. In an increasingly global business world, the ability to reach out to international business partners on your smartphone is becoming ever more important. Keeping abreast of this trend will make the business process simpler and, ultimately, more profitable.