ideas at Business Franchise

Karl Marx is dead. The inventor of communism is lying in a grave at London Highgate cemetery. But the ideas he has presented to the society are still alive and prosperous. Moreover they are taking their place today. We are turning to them today. If it is hard to you to believe me you have to read Funky Business by Kjel A. Nordstrem and Jonas Ridderstrale. You will know a lot about modern economic trends and Karl Marx. They are speaking about the value of workers and especially about the value of their brains and ideas.
They were clever guys – Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Mao, Che Gevara and all other communist leaders. They were nations’ leaders. And they knew the clue idea that people not the capital are the most important production resource.
And they knew the power of unions. It seems to me that even today we are not realizing the importance and power of united people. But those guys knew.
El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido! That is the Spanish expression that means “United people will never be defeated”. It became famous during the Cuba revolution. It’s the beginning of revolution hymn. And it had become very popular in sixties. Comandante Che was definitely right. Synergetic effect is the key.
2 + 2 = 7.
The system is much more than the sum of its elements.
And united people can reach unbelievable achievements. That is the thing that brings success to revolutions.
And that is the thing that brings success to franchises. That is an American way to unite people.
Do you need examples? I have them.
Let’s examine Holiday Inn. Good franchise system I think. Holiday Inn was recognized in 2001 by Franchise Times as a Top 100 Franchise Chain. So the system is good enough.
This chain of hotels was organized in 1952 by homebuilder Kemmons Wilson to provide inexpensive family accommodation for travelers within the USA. Its franchise system allowed Holiday Inn to grow up dramatically. By 1958 there were 50 Inns across the USA, 100 by 1959, 500 by 1964, and the 1000th Holiday Inn opened in San Antonio, Texas in 1968. The chain dominated the motel market, leveraged its innovative Holidex reservation system, put considerable financial pressure on traditional hotels, and set the standard for its competitors like Ramada Inns, Travelodge, Howard Johnson’s, and Days Inn. By 1972, when Wilson was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, there were over 1,400 Holiday Inn hotels worldwide.
Many think that the main reason of that irrepressible raise of Holiday Inn is its original creed that the properties should be standardized, clean, predictable, family-friendly, and readily accessible to road travelers. But I know one more important reason. It is the unity of the chain.
In 1955 just in three year from setting up that business Kemmons Wilson created an organization of Holiday Inn franchisees, which were charged with reviewing issues important to the Holiday Inn Hotel system. One year later it had been transformed into National Association of Holiday Inns. In 1959, it changed its name to the International Association of Holiday Inns to reflect the geographic expansion of our membership. Today, it is known as International Association of Holiday Inns Owners’ Association (IAHI).
The creation of that organization has driven Holiday Inn to its tremendous spurt.
Today the IAHI represents the interests of nearly 3,000 owners and operators of InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) hotel brands, including:

• Crowne Plaza Hotels and Resorts
  
• Holiday Inn Hotels and Resorts
  
• Holiday Inn Express
• Staybridge Suites
• Candlewood Suites

The mission of the IAHI, as it stated on their site, is to operate an association of hotel owners and operators that create a multi-level forum for exchange of information, ideas and best practices between franchisees and IHG company executives. As a result of this process owners and operators will enhance the value of their license agreement and IHG executives will gain insight to better achieve company goals. 
The International Association of Holiday Inns Owners’ Association is focused on 3 main objectives to help promote members’ long-term interests:

• Increasing hotel revenues and market share growth.
  
• Achieving earnings before interests and taxes, operating profit, and return on investment that surpasses the competitive set for each brand.
  
• Creating long-term brand and hotel asset value through excellent brands, quality operations, superior marketing, and team member development.
  

The International Association of Holiday Inns Owners’ Association also effectively represents members’ interests to the broader hotel industry on legislative issues, along with vendors and other resources, helping to achieve the objectives outlined above.
 The organization that shares the experience, promotes franchisees, teaches them is the key factor of Holiday Inn’s success. It makes entrepreneurs feel comfortable within the franchise system. It provides a kind of support to franchisees even if it has to lobby their interests through franchisor. As a result people are willing to invest large amounts of money (Holiday Inn franchisee’s total investment differs from 1 to 10 million dollars) in this business providing it by an extremely quick development.

The first legislative act I want to write about will be the Small Business Franchise Act (the SBFA). I’ve read its statements and decided to range them according to their importance (as I think) for small business in general and franchise business particularly.
 
That Small Business Franchise Act was signed in 1999 after it raised heated debate. The proponents believed that the Act was necessary to protect the rights of small franchisees and to create favorable conditions for their development. But opponents insisted that this bill is only a waste of time and tax money as there was the good franchise legislation on the one hand, and the good small business legislation accompanied by different government supporting programs. Anyway the bill passed and I’m going to say some words about its content.
 
The first (not by the order but by its importance according to my opinion) statement of the Act protects the franchisee against unlawful transfer of the business. I think this to be very important because in the most cases franchisee is very dependent on the franchisor’s behavior according to their agreement. I’m not against this dependence but in the case when franchisor decides to sell his business, or to merger the new owner can easily forget about the rights and problems of franchisee (especially if we are speaking about a small business). So the SBFA guaranties that franchisees would be given at least 30 day’s notice of the franchisor’s transfer of ownership to another entity. I want to draw attention to the number of days. To my mind it’s very good that the bill not only makes franchisor to provide the information but also establishes the period of time. It would help franchisee to prove that his rights were violated.
 
The second statement I want to speak about protects the franchisee from unreasonable termination. As I understand this guaranty is rather close to the previous one. It will protect the small company from franchisor’s groundless decisions. According to the bill the main company has to provide a good cause to explain why it doesn’t want to continue business relations with franchisee. At the same time a compulsory 30-day period must be given to the franchisee to cure any defaults. The only thing I need to mention here is that I have a doubt that 30-day period would be enough in some difficult cases (for example in the situation when companies are located in different countries). Anyway according to the Small Business Franchise Act after that period both companies have the rights to turn to the court.
 
The third very important part of the Act ensures procedural fairness in the relations between franchisee and franchisor. It means that the conditions of the Small Business Franchise Act are more important in comparison with the conditions of the agreement between the main company and its small franchisee. Nothing in the agreement can limit or eliminate any of the franchisee’s rights.
 
The number four in that list imposes limited fiduciary duty on the franchisor. In English it will sound like this: “Franchisor must provide financial information about their activity to the franchisor”. Why? Because franchisee’s business results depend on franchisor’s decisions and financial decisions are not an exclusion. But is it fair toward franchisor? Yes, because he will provide a full disclosure of disbursements and a full accounting only for the money received from franchisee. The main company must not provide any co-called secret information, or information about long-term investment in some projects that have no connection with franchise business at all.
 
The fifth important part of the bill is dedicated to relations between the franchisor and the franchisee after the franchise agreement has expired. This regulation protects the rights of both parties. On the one hand, it permits the former franchisee to continue business activity in any sphere and at any location. On the other hand, the bill prohibits using the franchisor’s intellectual property, trademark, or any other commercial or business secrets. Why do I consider this part of the Small Business Franchise Act to be less important than the previous ones? Because I really believe that every clever franchisor will include the same point in the franchise agreement and the Act only provides additional guaranty.
 
OK. I’ve reached the middle of the list of the important regulations in the SBFA. Let’s go forward! In the sixth part I’ll speak about trade relations between the main company and its franchisee. The authors of the bill decided that they needed to guaranty the freedom of any franchisee while buying goods and services for the business purposes. It means that it’s illegal for franchisor to include in the franchise agreement the point saying that franchisee is obliged to purchase raw materials, equipment, other goods and services only from the main company. I like this statement but don’t think this to be so important than the previous ones. I really think that freedom is a good thing but as I understand the franchisor has an incentive to provide beneficial conditions for franchisee to attract him and it’s better to buy from the main company and save some money on transactional costs.
 
The next item of the Act is very sound but a little bit naïve as I think. That’s why I gave it only the seventh place in my list of importance. It speaks about common to all mankind values as honesty, good behavior and good faith. The Small Business Franchise Act insists that every party in the relations has to “act honestly and in good faith with each other and observe reasonable standards of fair dealing in the trade”. But how measure the level of honesty, reasonability or faith? I have no idea…
 
 
 
Three more left… Brace up! The SBFA also says some words about the relationships with government and local authorities. The Act gives the right to an attorney general of any state interfere in the transactions between the franchisor and the franchisee by bringing a civil action on behalf of its residents in an appropriate U.S. District Court. It can happen if the government official believes that that the SBFA is being violated. I put it on the eighth place because I think that the same statement characterizes every legislative act. I mean that to ensure the law is the main role of every government. Am I right?
 
The last two statements are the least important. The first of them determines that small business franchisees have the right to form and to participate in trade associations. And the last statement of the bill acts as a slogan as I think. It establishes that perpetrating a fraud within the franchisor-franchisee relationship is prohibited. It’s not more than a remainder of the statements of the other general business laws.
 
At the end of my comments to the Small Business Franchise Act I want to remind that this list of more or less important regulations of the bill is only my personal point of view. Can anyone introduce his or her list? I will be very happy to hear any grounded ideas.

While thinking about modern trends in global economy I came to rather logical to my mind idea. Business needs to combine popular ideas or try to satisfy different wants together. I don’t say that I’m the first person who thinks about this. I only want someone with a creative power (not me as I’m too fond of exact sciences) to invent something that will improve our lives.
 

For example, one person invented a “sports-bar”. He combined the food (eating) with entertainment (ability to watch football or baseball matches, to talk to other fans – like at the stadium but in your town).
When I was writing this another thought came to my mind. Under the same title “sports-bar” we can see an extremely different idea. The businessman can combine the food with a sports training or fitness. Just at one place… I haven’t seen this before. And you? Just imagine: you cycle and eat pizza at the same time (certainly if you wish)…
 

Another good to my opinion combination of ideas is audio books. It takes together two different needs – education (as it’s important for career growth or example of entertainment) and free time (as it’s the thing of the greatest value in the modern society).
 

Healthful eating consulting plus retail selling also provides good opportunities for earning money. When someone explains you the benefits of healthful eating it’s almost impossible not to buy something fresh or full of vitamins and microelements!
 

I promise to think more about this synergy and add more ideas to this post (or will start a new one…). Any suggestions are highly appreciated too .

I hope to finish commenting franchise survey carried out by Franchise Recruiters Ltd. (FRL) today. If you read till the end you’ll know if I manage to do it. Check my previous article to know the beginning.
 
The next idea expressed by top franchise leaders was dedicated to old and branded franchise systems. In order to remain in a good position they have to prove that they are worth of it. Nothing can guarantee them a success in today’s fast-changing world. To hold their loyal customers they need to revamp, rehabilitate and regenerate their business systems. The respondents pay attention to the fact that most of the franchisors are concentrated on their first ideas rather than looking ahead an opening new products and technologies. It’s clear that they will face a rigorous competition.
As it’s mentioned it’s very important to adopt franchise business to demographic trends. Changes in today’s lifestyle and demographics help the development of the following business spheres:
-adult and senior day care,
-health care,
-home care,
-beauty, skin, aging treatments, and spas,
-different forms of entertainment.
 
My comments:
The survey shows the contradiction between main strategies of consumers’ behavior. These strategies are widely used in marketing while speaking about market segmentation. It’s evident that there are different types of people buying the same product. Each group of buyers has different reasons for purchase. The ones are driven by fad, fashion, and mood. They usually want to try something new. The others are very traditional and don’t change their tastes so fast. So if franchisor wants to develop his business he needs either choose the one group or to satisfy both.
The industries mentioned by respondents are rather predictable. There can be a lot of reasons why people become more self-oriented (exactly “self” not family- or community-oriented). Maybe this happens because of decreased role of Christianity and other constructive religions in the society in general. The advertising also influences the modern mentality saying that YOU are worth of this or that. Anyway the picture is very clear. People don’t want to take care of their parents and children themselves. Career plays the biggest role in dreams and aspirations. So the winning strategy is to provide people with more free time and with additional career opportunities (like better education on the one hand and better appearance on the other).
 
All the previous statements were dedicated to franchisors. But what about franchisees? The survey respondents decided not to avoid them. In the answers they pay attention to the fact that today prospective franchisees are “better capitalized, have better management experience, better education, and are increasingly diverse investors”. Also it was noticed that more and more seniors are coming into franchise business. They do not want rely only on government and social security. But most of them are not so aware in their talents to invent good and enough modern business idea themselves. The survey provides the following statistical information about older Americans: “the number of workers age 55 and above rose to nearly 24 million in 2004, up from 22 million in 2003, and from 20.7 million the year before. At the same time, the government is forecasting a significant labor shortage nearing the end of this decade. Franchisors tell us they want and need seniors as a reliable work force for years to come”.
 
In the same survey we found interesting information about so-called third party, not a franchisor and not a franchisee… For example, respondents notice that investors are considering franchise sphere to become rather interesting deal. They even called this a “new golden goose”. Why? Because of very short start-up period in many spheres. Think of it! Franchisor provides with a training program that lasts for 2 weeks. During the same time it’s possible for a franchisee to make all other necessary arrangements and he is ready to start! The only thing that can slow him down is money. So for both of them – investor and prospective franchisee – the goals are coinciding. They can start earning money very soon. TIME! It explains the investors’ interest toward franchise sphere, as I think.
 
Another third party is employees. Both franchisors and franchisees understand that employees contribute the biggest part to the company’s costs (directly and indirectly) and as a result to the company’s profit. When I say direct impact I certainly mean salary and corresponding expenses. As an example of indirect impact I will mention training expenses for every new employee.
At the same time for many businesses employees’ productivity influences the results most of all. That is why survey respondents expressed the opinion that franchisors of the next years will pay a lot of attention to different forms of health care insurance to their chain’s hourly employees. Also they will help to establish relations with banks opening accounts and contacting with financial institutions.
 
My comments:
I like this. When I’ve read this information I was thinking about inventing a high school program (or even senior school) to help franchisors and franchises to provide teenagers with the necessary information and to prepare them to their future jobs in that sphere… It can be based on “learning by doing” ideas and include a lot of practice…
 
And finally the last tendency was related to management. The top US franchise leaders believe that the previous years’ tendency will continue and more managers will be motivated not by strict annual bonus payments but by some reward programs depending on the results. As I understand that tendency is not a franchising innovation but overall trend in business.
 
Ok… I’m done with this survey. Will I get any comments on my comments?..

It seems for me that I spent enough time to express my opinion that it’s necessary to evaluate an idea before investing money. This statement completely refers to franchise business. Success of other franchisees doesn’t guarantee your success because as I mentioned before it depends on a particular region and particular conditions of that region.

Now I think it’s time to say a few words about conditions that make business idea practically acceptable.
1. Technological practicability. If to speak about business ideas in general there can be a lot of reasons for inability to realize them. Sometimes it’s too expensive, sometimes there is not enough space to build the plant and locate all the necessary equipment and so on. Even one of the most outstanding producers George Lucas faced the technological problem while realizing his creative ideas. He had to start his Star Wars from Episode IV and only after many years he found a good technological decision to shoot Episodes I, II and III.

Going back to franchise ideas I think that this problem is not so important as franchisor has already created the technological system and tested it. But still potential franchisee has to check the local situation. There can be some legal restrictions for particular region or ecological situation can influence technological practicability or inability to hire personnel of proper qualification can create barriers for the success.

2. Long-run future viability of new business. Starting your business you need to be aware that it will exist for some period of time. It’s important to see the difference between a project and a business. Project can last for several days (like organizing a show or a party) or for several years (like house construction). But when you plan your business it’s a good idea to create it for years and to foresee the conditions for its growth. Maybe one day you’ll sell it and get more money than invested or hand down to your kids.

3. Acceptable economic efficiency and payback period. One survey said that only 30% of all the small businesses were started in order to earn money. The other 70% of new-born entrepreneurs presented the following reasons:
-want to be “my own boss”;
-want to realize my personal ideas;
-want to achieve something in my life and to make a business career, and to help other people… and many other “bombastic” reasons.
As I think it’s possible that people really think that way and do not consider money and profit as important factors of small business. But my experience (not so big but enough to have an opinion) says that most of them will change their minds during the first year of business operations. As the owner of a small company you’ll deal with money everywhere – paying salary, rent, public utilities, and interest for the credit, administrative costs and Internet, advertising and promotion expenditures and many others. You’ll charge prices, calculate revenue and taxes, and so on. Of course, it’ll take some time. I even insist that it takes a lot of time. And every reasonable person wants to get something for the time spent. His family also wants to see the pecuniary results not only self-realization or happiness of other people.
That’s why I suggest everybody to think about economic part of any idea even if you really believe that money is the last thing in the world you want to speak about.

4. Acceptable idea from public or community point of view. Take it seriously! Today people as never before feel very lonely. As a result they try to solve this problem participating in different public organization and community projects. I do not recommend you to start any business that may conflict with public interests. You will loose in 99% of cases…

My conclusion:
Some of these factors are limitations; the others (like economic efficiency) can be used as the main criteria for a franchise idea evaluation. Want to add something? If so, I will highly appreciate your comments.

Ok… Few more words about declining a business idea. I’ve already mentioned very important factors: demand for good or service, possibility to win the competition, capital requirements and economic results, and risks. The last I want to speak about are the following:
A) problems with raw materials;
B) ecological problems;
c) public opinion.

For most industries and businesses raw materials play a big role. They represent costs and influence price of a product. Of course, for services they are not so important but still you need to think about them:
-where you plan to buy them;
-who are your main and alternative suppliers;
-is the price for each item stable or it fluctuates;
-is there a deficit material and is it easy to find a substitute and so on.
The main thing about materials is that your customers are not interested in your problems with them. Buyers want cheap products and that’s all… And if you can’t satisfy them you’ll loose your business.

Ecological movement is growing in strength. You need to evaluate your business idea from the following conditions:
-will my business pollute the air, water, and so on;
-is there any risk of accident that can do harm to the ecological situation in the town or city, or region.
While evaluating a business idea it’s necessary to remember that ecologists and environmentalists live among your prospective buyers. They can either improve or worsen your reputation.

Public opinion is the last but not the least in that list . It’s clean that it influences demand greatly. I’m not going to explain such an easy thing but will give only and example. In early 90s the market economy came to the former communist countries. At the same time most people had not enough education and business way of thinking. But everybody wanted to live better and to earn money. Many people were involved in network marketing and….. many of them lost money. Why? There were many reasons and I don’t want to discuss them in this article. The main thing I want to bring to notice that till today many famous network companies (already successful in US or UK) face the problems to overcome the public opinion that states: “Network business is not a business but a skullduggery”.

I hope I proved that it’s necessary to evaluate your business ideas before even thinking about investment. And thank you for your patience while reading all of my thoughts!

Today I was a witness of the dialogue between two students. They are 14 or 15 and were discussing how they would start their future businesses. I hope they will not have objections if I present a part of this dialogue here.

“I’m thinking about IT business. It’s the easiest… and the sphere is growing”
“Do you have an exact idea? E-commerce?… ”
“I don’t know. I think to take the list of franchises and will choose the one with the best program or the least investment…”

I wanted to interfere but decided to stay away and to express my opinion here.
I’m absolutely sure that it’s necessary to study a franchise program before investing your personal or borrowed money. But I think that studying the idea itself is more important. If you choose a franchise with an attractive program but the idea is not OK for your region or your country the result will never satisfy you. And it’s not necessary to be a prophet to say that to avoid bankruptcy you’ll have to invest more, to work harder and so on.

What factors can make an idea having no prospects? I found some and want to express my opinion with the potential readers of my blog.

At first I need to mention the demand for the product. You need to take into consideration as many as possible factors that influence the willingness and ability of people of the concerned territory or country to buy these goods and services. It’s not too hard if you live in this region yourself. You can spend some time listening to people’s complaints. You can ask your friends and neighbors. It’s not necessary to carry out a marketing research if you are planning to start a small business company. (Certainly if the matter concerns a big investment and large company it’s better to order a marketing research from professionals).
The factors you have to think over vary for different ideas and different markets. I’ll say some words about the most important ones as I think.

So, the first one is geographical, historical, religious and cultural traditions that prevail on the concerned market. I’ve read a story about McDonalds’ franchise in France (unfortunately it was some years ago and I can’t recall the source). It was a sad story. The idea almost collapsed because of cultural food traditions in the country. The author of the article explained that historically the French were in earnest about food. And the idea of fast-food itself was offensive for them. But if to add that the French have no special liking of American life style we’ll get the complete picture of extremely bad idea.
But at the same time the same franchise idea (I mean McDonalds’) became enough profitable in Japan. Why? Because it was absolutely uncommon for Japanese and was taken by them as something interesting, and unusual, and modern.

The next factor that influences demand is size and growth of the target market. It includes the number of potential buyers. Thinking about buyers you have to study their tastes and preferences on the one hand. Also you need to study buyers themselves: age, income, sex, life style and so on. You need to study their attitude to your idea before you start your business. By the way it will help in future while planning advertising and promotion activities.

Also it’s necessary to think about seasonality of demand. If sales change greatly during the year it means that your personal income will change too. Sometimes you’ll get nothing at all. Usually you’ll have to invest more money in inventory when demand goes down. Are you ready for this?

OK. That’s enough for demand factors for the first time. Read my next post to answer what other factors can make a franchise idea having no prospects.

I think that it’s time to write a few words about financing your future franchise business. It’s evident that to start your business you’ll need money. You have to cover franchise fee, buy equipment, hire personnel and bear some other costs. The exact sum depends on the type of business and many other factors. But there is at least one thing that remains invariable: you have to look for and to choose the sources of finances.
 

I decided to say a few words about choosing the sources as it seems to me that there are some facts of misunderstanding or even false beliefs in this sphere. I’ll describe the main of them using “pro&con”.
 

Personal savings
Pro:
- this money belongs to you and if something goes wrong you will not have problems with paying back; bad results will not influence your credit history;
-you can start using them immediately (or just after talking over with your family);
-it costs you nothing (except the opportunity cost).
Con:
- in most cases personal savings are not enough to finance even 50% of prospective business;
- there is an opportunity cost of using them (the things that you planned to purchase for that money and the interest you received for them);
-as you don’t borrow money this transaction will not impact your credit reference when your business succeeds.
 

Bank credit
Pro:
-it’s the most common way to finance your business;
-if everything goes OK, you’ll contribute your credit history;
-bank has an incentive to finance only profitable and pay back projects. As a result they insist on business plan development and carefully evaluate it. So you’ll get professional and unbiased opinion concerning you franchise business almost for free.
Con:
-it costs you;
-to get a bank credit it’ll take time.
 

Small Business Association (SBA) credit
It’s close to a bank credit (I’ll write more about this form of financing later)
 

Private venture capital firms’ credits
Pro:
-they even credit the ideas deflected by banks because of high level of risk;
-they can give professional advice concerning not only idea itself but your prospective franchisor.
Con:
-the interest rate usually is much greater comparing to the one given by a commercial bank.;
-it also takes time to get such a credit.
 

Franchisor’s direct financing programs
Before comparing advantages and disadvantages of this way of financing I need to attract your attention to the fact that it’s also one of the advantages of franchising in general. The previous ones are used by any form of small business.
Pro:
- about a third of franchisors provide such programs, loan guarantees or leasing programs. As a potential franchisee you have an access to them but competition is lower in comparison with bank credit and other standard financing variants;
- you’ll have an advantage in securing loans because franchises have the credibility, reputation and experience of an established trademark.
Con:
-you become more dependent on your franchisor;
- it still takes time and you still have to pay an interest.
 

And don’t pay with you personal credit card as the interest rate will be too high. It can eat all you profit…
 

I’m going to continue sharing my opinion about finances in general and franchise finances in particular in next posts.

Just an interesting fact – there are so many companies that are using franchising system that many people really consider every huge company a franchiser. I decided to confirm this idea by organizing such a survey. There were just a couple of questions and the main was: “Name the company you would buy a franchise at”. The most interesting results are below.
1. Gazprom (Russian natural gas giant). I even don’t need a franchise license. Just a couple of pipeline meters.
2. McDonalds. You could call it primitive but I have an idea how to organize a business even better than McDonalds do. I gonna add some new traits to the idea that would help me to be competitive.
3. Wal-Mart and you have no need to persuade me that they don’t have franchises. Still I want to.
4. Exxon Mobile. I want to get a little oil well and organize such a franchise.
5. Franchise? Could you explain please what is it?
6. I don’t know. Are there any franchises that don’t require hard work?
7. I WILL NOT ANSWER YOUR STUPID QUESTIONS, YOU, FRANCHISE FRANTIC!
 

Still I should state that the structure of answers mostly represents the common idea on franchising. There are too many food and fast-food restaurants and retail stores. Unfortunately I haven’t found the ideas that will be interesting to launch immediately.
So the main conclusion is that if you want to buy a franchise you have to think carefully on the industries and ideas. No one could help you more than you do.

In my previous article I discussed only consulting in the Internet sphere. But at the same time some companies sell franchises to provide general consulting or training using the Internet technologies and special systems of distance learning. It may cover all spheres of consulting: medical, psychological, economic, legal and any other. Some companies specialize on one direction, the others try to combine many. But in general the main idea remains the same – they teach and consult people through the Net.
 Why should you buy their business? In most cases the main reason to become a franchisee is the software provided by franchisor. Usually it’s much cheaper to get it from the main company than to develop yourself because the development costs are divided between many franchisees. Also franchisor provides the already tested system. So, you can start consulting or training immediately.
 

Also I want to say few words about one more hidden benefit. As you understand franchise package includes compulsory training. Training in some professional sphere! Usually in also includes ongoing training too. So, it seems that you can get professional knowledge and business at the same time (as if you attend the college for free….)
  As for me it’s one of the business ideas or opportunities when you exactly understand what you get.
 And what about weaknesses? To my mind they are the same as I mentioned in the pervious article.

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