Is Franchising Your Business For You?

Franchising your business can be an excellent way of expanding your company's profile in any locations, states and nations. When you make the plan to franchise your business, you basically give rights to investors to use your trademarks, logo and proven business who in return of this pay you a fee on some pre-defined terms. Even if franchising is popular for many companies, it is not always necessary that it will be for your business concept too. Not all businesses can enjoy the benefits of franchising.

To franchise your business in a fruitful manner, a lot of preparation is required from your end. In fact, you should think about franchising only if your business is ready to franchise. The conclusion must be made from your end. But the question is how? Well it is very easy, just get answers to some questions such as: Is franchising right for you? Is your business expandable? Will the target audience like your products or services? Having answers to these questions will give you an idea whether your business is ready to become a franchise.

In fact, if you are not able to analyze yourself, take help of a franchise consultant. There are many companies and firms who offer franchise consultancy and are ready to help you in all possible manner.

A franchise consultant will help you to know:

·         The unique characteristics of your business that might help in franchising your business. For any franchise business to be successful there are certain elements such as unique product line, quality management, easily manageable concept and so on.

·         There has to be something unique about your product or service that investors might be interested upon to invest in your franchise concept. This unique element must be the highlighted part of your franchising network.

·         Market survey by professionals is must to come to a conclusion whether your business can be franchised or not. Franchise consultancy firms will first do a survey of the market to find what whether there is a demand for the products or services your company might be dealing with.

·         Experts will also decide on the budget required to franchise your business. Developing a franchise business needs both time and money. Once you are ready with the franchise proposal, you'll also need to market your franchise opportunity. Financing your franchise expansion is a very important part of your plan to franchise your business.

·         When franchising your business, you need to provide a blueprint of your business operation, training, marketing, financial and legal aspects of the company. By taking help of experts you can successfully franchise your business.

·         There are many franchise consultancy firms who even help in preparing a franchise agreement and business proposal that are must when you decide to franchise your business. It is the detailed business proposal that will attract investors towards your business concept, and on the other hand without franchise agreement no one will take your business as a genuine one.

To conclude, taking help of a franchise consultant helps in franchising your business in a legal manner and in a way that can help you earn profit. Hence, if you have an established, successful business franchising your business is just the right option for you to consider.

Being an Entrepreneur can Encourage Personal Growth

It has been said that in order to be an entrepreneur a person has to be selfish and self-centered so that they can achieve their goal. While success in any field requires dedication and focus it is disingenuous to tar all wannabe entrepreneurs with this rather outdated brush.

The truth is somewhat different. In reality, to become successful a person has to develop a number of characteristics that are all positive and will in fact help that person become a more rounded human.

The bottom line is that becoming an entrepreneur can assist personal growth in a number of ways that are key not just to successful business but also to the enhancement of an individual’s standing.

Sacrifice

To be a successful entrepreneur there is little doubt that sacrifices will have to be made. These could be a reduction in social life, getting up earlier than you might ideally like or working away from home. None of these situations should be forever, but many successful businesses require a much bigger commitment than the normal 9 to 5 of the world of the employee. Understanding and experiencing this can help the entrepreneur grow as an individual as they learn the importance of sacrifice in certain situations and how sometimes present hardships and inconveniences are not just inevitable but should be welcomed as they can help guarantee a brighter future.

Decision making skills

Another way in which the entrepreneur can develop their personal growth is through the process of decision making that is central to successful business. Being an entrepreneur means having to make a lot of decisions, some harder than others. This helps build judgment and a willingness to take those tough decisions when they come along. Becoming a person who does not shy away from decisions and can take control when others are hesitating can help personal growth.

Confidence

In many ways the one single attribute that separates those who succeed and those who do not is not money, influence or knowledge but confidence. This is not to be confused with over-confidence or arrogance, but rather is a core belief in oneself. After all, if someone does not believe in himself or herself how could they possibly expect others to believe in them? Self-belief translates into confidence that in turn equates to a more fully developed individual. Confidence in oneself is contagious and a person is much more likely to inspire trust and faith in others if they can see that person truly believes in what they are doing.

Planning

This may be somewhat of an umbrella term, but in the case of an entrepreneur it means the ability to formulate a clear, concise and robust business plan that is easy to explain to others (whether that be bank manager, investors or friends). The ability to have a clear plan means that the goals are always in site and a business is much less likely to go off the rails. This ability to plan well is a great way to build personal growth as it helps create clear thinking as well as the real-world benefit of making the most of time so friends and family do not suffer from a badly planned business.

Always Learning

Being a successful entrepreneur means never standing still. No one can know everything and therefore there is never any excuse to stop learning. The business world, just like the world in general is continuously changing and developing. It therefore does not just make business sense to keep abreast of new and interesting developments, but this thirst for knowledge can also be a great aid to personal knowledge that in turn will really benefit an individual’s personal growth.

Networking

A term that sometimes has a negative connotation, networking is in fact a great skill to posses. Not only in the business world where it makes the development of new businesses so much easier, but when these skills are transferred to the personal realm, they make for superb social skills which can make interactions much more pleasurable. As personal growth involves not just the inner being, but the ability to communicate as part of a community, the level to which an individual can engage with people from a wide selection of backgrounds can really help enhance the social experience.

Energy

Often overlooked, the ability to generate energy is of fundamental importance, after all, the greatest car in the world won’t go anywhere without fuel and the same applies to the entrepreneur. This should not be confused with caffeine or currently fashionable “energy” drinks. Real energy does not come from products, but from within. It is generated by a belief in what the business involves as well as its potential. This creates a sense of energy that not only powers the business forward, but also is infectious. This attitude can really enhance personal growth by helping develop a can-do attitude.

Overall, entrepreneurship can truly impact your personal growth in a positive way. Between learning from others through networking but also learned about yourself through the trials and tribulations of the field, being an entrepreneur is surely an educational experience.

From dreaming to doing

Well, you want start a business of your own.. right? But which one? Before you choose a business, it is important to understand that a start-up venture mandates entrepreneur to shoulder every responsibility by himself, ranging from operations to marketing and everything else. Hence, it is a very real probability that you will have to work harder for yourself, than you have worked for any employer.

Hence, before embarking upon the entrepreneurial voyage, first and foremost, it is really critical to dig deep, and find something you love intensely and are extremely committed to. A journey within self, this question enables us to open our mind and explore our past as well as our inner motivations. Don’t allow your mind to be held hostage by various mental blocks and biases, which have the potential to derail our honest self-assessment and cloud our vision. Instead, try to recollect those moments, when you felt vibrant, happy and alive. Remember, doing something we love is more satisfying as well as rewarding, than working for others.

Another important issue related to entrepreneurship is gaining relevant experience in the concerned field. Most entrepreneurs have little or no experience in their fields. Hence, an aspirant many attend seminars or start a job in related field, acquire some training in concerned business and opt for volunteer positions and related hobbies, so as to learn the desired trade.

In addition, one must also martial his network of contacts, to boost his future prospects in entrepreneurship. Whether former employers, teachers, friends and family members, everyone is a potential resource for further business networking. Another important factor to be considered is the resources or assets one possesses. Because if start-up cost is low, more assets mean your chances for success will be much higher,

Finally, before kick-starting our entrepreneurial ambitions, one must prioritize, so as to select a business that perfectly complements his skills as well as lifestyle. For example, if one is good with people, then he must opt for a business that relies heavily on interpersonal activities, such as sales, consulting or PR. The most important thing is to choose a business, which enables entrepreneur to be perfectly suited for its critical functions. Besides, if one wants flexibility in his schedule, then “project-oriented” businesses where keeping regular specific hours is not critical, will be ideal for him.

Remember that most start-up s don’t actually make money in the beginning. Hence, before entering into something that might fetch us enormous money, there’s a lot to consider. A major life decision, start-up businesses require enormous persistence as well as passion for whatever one believes in.

The 20 Most Important Words in Small Business

Words are powerful things and what they mean has a big influence on your customers’ expectations.  It is important in your business to understand and define each term.

 

1. Belief: What people think and accept as true, may not correlate with facts.  Have great sticking power, even when they are wrong.

2. Complain: What a customer does when they are unhappy. They complain to themselves, to friends, on the Web, and even sometimes to you.

3. Disney: A place where most customers are always happy. This takes a lot of employee training.

4. Empowerment: Training employees to make decisions on their own to help a customer without talking to “the boss.”

5. Feedback: Giving the customer the opportunity to tell you what they think at many different stages of interaction, and the opportunity to do it in many different ways depending on what is convenient and appropriate for them. Something smart companies listen to and take to heart. Associated with the Three Times Rule—if you hear something about your business three times, whether you like it or not, pay serious attention. It is probably true.

6. Forever: Relative time the customer feels they need to wait.

7. Happy: An impossible dream that is sometimes worth the pursuit.  No business strategy in the world can make all customers happy.

8. Humans: Who every customer wants to talk to when they call your company.

9. Kick the Cat: What employees do when they take their frustrations out on the customer.  Blowing a situation out of proportion. The kiss of death for a company.

10. Mistake: The hardest thing for the company (or the customer) to admit.

12. My Manager: The person the customer is seemingly always getting passed to or who always gets blamed by the employee if something goes wrong. The catcher in “passing the buck.”

13. Overpromise: Making a commitment to a customer or to all customers that the company is not economically able to keep.

14. Patience: What businesses think customers ought to have.  What customers think they have a lot.

15. Peer Reviews: Online references written by customers on the level of quality or service in your company. Sometimes called an open reputation system.

16. Pest: A customer the company may need to fire to be more profitable.

17. Promise: A solemn commitment to a customer that the company will honor and the customer will not forget.

18. Self Service: Tools such as kiosks and Web tools for customers to assist themselves.  Not always linked to satisfaction, but increasingly linked to high expectations of a quick turnaround.

19. Survey: A mostly ineffective means of getting customer feedback, especially when the company bribes the customer to do it.

20. Voice Mail Jail: Every customer’s nightmare, especially if they do not get a call back.

Today's Young Entrepreneurs See the World in a New Way

Every generation likes to thinks it's special, just a little bit "different" than the generations that came before. I know my generation, the baby boomers, sure did. Caught up in the unbridled optimism of youth, we thought we were so different that we were going to change the world.
I thought about this a few weeks ago while attending the Future of Entrepreneurship Education (FEE) Summit in Orlando, Fla. I met many driven young entrepreneurs under 30 who are determined to fix the mess the previous generations have made of the world (which kind of reminds me of what my generation used to think).
Don't get me wrong. I hope they can do what we boomers couldn't. And one thing this new generation, known either as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y, has going for it is the prevalence of entrepreneurs in the world today. In my day, most people aspired to get a good job and start climbing the corporate ladder. (Heck, most women aspired to get any job at all.) Today, it's obviously a different story. Entrepreneurship is taught at hundreds of colleges, and programs like the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) provide entrepreneurial education to at-risk teens.
For some, entrepreneurship and the self-empowerment it fosters can often be an escape route from a troubled or disenfranchised background. As Jerry Ross, the executive director of the Disney Entrepreneur Center in Orlando told me, "The way out of poverty is ownership. Let's teach people to own stuff."
But the young people I talked with came to entrepreneurship with various motives. Most intended to change the world; others just wanted to change their own lives. For some entrepreneurs it's about the pursuit of success and money; still others were just looking to do something meaningful.
Some want it all. Scott Gerber, CEO of Gerber Entertainment, author of Never Get a "Real" Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business, and Not Go Broke, founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, and already a serial entrepreneur at the age of 27, believes that "Young people need to be better served, and the people who serve them need to better understand how to serve them." Next week Gerber will be in Washington, D.C., speaking with the Small Business Administration about how it must do more to help young entrepreneurs. Because the business he started in college soared before it eventually crashed and burned (prompting his mother to advise him, "Get a real job") Gerber believes in the power of failure. "Be afraid if you've never failed," he warns. "Be afraid to wake up in the same place."
Perhaps one reason young entrepreneurs are so certain they can create an impact is the fact that if they fail now, there's still a lot of time to regroup and start over. Ankur Jain, who just turned 21 and started his first business at 11, also experienced failure early on. By the time he was 14, Jain's online quiz site had 2.5 million users. But then his servers crashed and he had no database backup. Instead of wallowing in negativity, Jain says he told himself, "That's it, move on."
And move on he did. While a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, Jain founded the nonprofit Kairos Society (kairos meaning "opportune moment" in ancient Greek), whose mission is "to foster and connect young people as they pursue their entrepreneurial goals, and to spark initiatives that create global, lasting, and game-changing impact through cooperation, collaboration, and action."
A lofty goal to be sure. But Jain, the son of a self-made entrepreneurial billionaire, told me his generation has several "massive needs" including "creating value for society." It's almost a compulsion. He likens it to being on "a powerful path to control their own destinies," and his personal mission is no less than "to change the world."
Back in the 60s and 70s many college students took to the streets to protest. This generation is still taking it to the streets, but they're hyper-focused on creating social change. While still a student at the University of Chicago, Kairos Society member Ted Gonder co-founded Moneythink, a mentoring organization designed to teach financial literacy and entrepreneurship to urban high school kids.
Lest you think these young entrepreneurs are driven solely by ideals and not profits, Ryan Allis, co-founder and CEO of iContact, an email marketing company, is proof you can do both. Allis' company has 65,000 customers and $40 million in annual revenues. But Allis also founded the Humanity Fund, a private investment fund that invests in early stage, socially responsible companies in the U.S., South America, and Africa.

Even the Smallest Things Can Help You Build Your Business

Many of us business owners devote endless hours trying to come up with the next big thing. That's not necessarily a bad exercise, but sometimes we need to give our brains a rest. I'm a realist though, and I realize it's hard for entrepreneurs to shut their minds down entirely, even for a short time.

So instead of thinking big all the time, maybe you should take a break and think small. Understand that small does not equal trivial; sometimes the smallest change can have a huge positive impact. Here are 9 little things you can do to advance your business without breaking a sweat.

1. Just say no. I hate to lead with a negative, but I know how hard it is for business owners to turn away business, especially when the economy is in slow recovery. However, some clients are not worth having. Before you take on a new client or renew an existing contract, do a quick ROI to make sure it's all worth it.

2. Stop worrying so much. I am not a worrier (though I sure know a lot of them). Worrying just saps your energy and diverts your brain from thinking about really critical things. So don't worry, be happy!

3. Don't hesitate. What are you waiting for? Being flexible is still an advantage small businesses have over the big guys. I am not saying you should blindly leap into new situations, but you should heed the words of George S. Patton who said, "Opportunities do not come to those who wait. They are captured by those who attack."

4. Seize control. This is possibly the reason many of you became entrepreneurs -- it certainly was a motivating factor for me. I truly believe you will not succeed unless and until you take charge of your life. However, and I believe I've said this before but it bears repeating: Don't try to control the uncontrollable. It's an impossible and frustrating task.

5. Give back. In last week's interview with JJ Ramberg, I discussed how you can do well by doing good. You don't need to make grand gestures or donate thousands of dollars. All of us can help make a difference. Participate in community events. Donate something of value to a fund-raiser. Volunteer. Teach a class. Just do something.

6. Be innovative. Most of us know small businesses drive innovation in this country. And yet many business owners are intimidated by the "I" word. Innovation is relative. It can range from the truly inventive to the more mundane (but highly effective) aspects of business ownership. Any business can be innovative. Restaurants can add "different" food to their menus, retailers can open new channels of distribution. All of us can change our marketing strategies. As one of the greatest innovators of our time, Apple's Steve Jobs says, "Innovation is what distinguishes a leader from a follower."

7. Give customers what they want. Remember, even as the economic recovery gathers strength, consumer behavior has changed. Consumers are (and likely will continue to be) looking for value when they shop. And they're expecting the companies they do business with to offer coupons and promotions to not only draw them in, but to keep them coming back. In fact, a new poll from ShopSmart magazine reports 91 percent of women shoppers use coupons to get a better deal.

8. Take inventory. I'm not talking about conducting a physical inventory. Rather, we should all do a top-to-bottom assessment of our businesses. The key is to be keenly aware of what's going on so we can quickly move in a new direction if we need to. Markets have changed. Consumers are looking for new products and demanding new services. Start by asking yourself these questions:

• What am I doing right?
• What am I doing wrong?
• How can I deliver more value?
• How has my market changed?
• What will I need to change in order to meet future consumer demand?

9. Speak up. Not just because the squeaky wheel gets the grease, though that is certainly true. If you don't ask, you won't get. But more important -- and this is one of my favorite quotes -- as Eldridge Cleaver once said, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."