What Color Is Your Parachute?

stuff.

www.bbb.org/us/article/4580: An article by the Better Business Bureau on the things you should beware of when considering a franchise.

http://tinyurl.com/97zy3a: You want specifics about home business offers that are scams? The government will be glad to help you. Here they list the business offers to avoid like the plague.

http://tinyurl.com/3vv97lw: This site goes over all the things you need to know the answers to, if you’re going to come up with a business plan.

www.bestfranchise.org: A site so new they haven’t posted their data yet, as of this writing, but it promises to be helpful once that data is up.

http://tinyurl.com/3bzbrxw: This site cleverly lists franchises whose owners have defaulted most frequently on their SBA (Small Business Administration) loans, as well as those franchises whose owners have defaulted the least frequently.

http://tinyurl.com/44yxdvh: Nolo Press has a good article here about fit, called “Starting the Right Business for You.”

After doing this homework please note that there isn’t a franchising book, or site, that doesn’t warn you eighteen times to go talk to people who have already bought that same franchise, before you ever decide to go with them. And I mean several people, not just one. Most experts also warn you to go talk to other franchises in the same field, not just the kind you’re thinking about signing up with. Maybe there’s something better, which your research can uncover.

You want to keep in mind that some types of franchises have a failure rate far greater than others.

And you want to keep in mind also that some individual franchises are terrible— and that includes well-known names. They charge too much for you to get on board, and often they don’t do the advertising or other commitments that they promised they would.

If you are in a hurry, and you don’t want to do this homework first, ’cause it’s just too much trouble, you will deserve what you get, believe me. You will rue the day.

Finding a Fit, Idea #2: Starting a Home Business. A home seems like an excellent place to create your own job. Low rent (ha!). Short commute! Low overhead. That’s the vision. Sounds like it might be a fit, for you.

So let’s start out with a dose of reality. It can be a great idea (I have a home business myself). But be aware that there are three major problems with home businesses:

1. The first major problem of home businesses is that this is a rich playground for scams, that can cost you lots of money but never give any back. A lot of people like the idea of a home business, so vultures have taken advantage of that. You will run into ads on TV and on the Web and in your e-mail, offering you a home business “buy-in.” They sound enticing. But, as AARP’s Bulletin of March 23, 2009, pointed out: of the more than 3 million Web entries that surface from a Google search on the terms “work at home,” more than 95 percent of the results are scams, links to scams, or other dead ends. Even the sites that claim to be scam-free often feature ads that link to scams. The statistic is: a 48 to 1 scam ratio among ads offering you a nice home business. That’s 48 scams for every one true ad. The swamp is filled with alligators!

2. The second major problem of home businesses is that even if you start a legitimate one, be it writer, artist, business expert, lawyer, accountant (doing people’s taxes), consultant, childcare, or the like, out of your home, it’s often difficult to maintain a balance between business and family time. Sometimes the family time gets shortchanged, while in other cases the demands of family (particularly with small children) may become so interruptive, that the business gets shortchanged. So, do think out thoroughly, ahead of time, how you would go about doing this well.

3. The third major problem of home businesses is that it puts you into a perpetual job-hunt. Yes, I know. You liked the idea of a home business because you hate job-hunting. You were attracted to the idea of a home business because this seems like an ideal way to cut short your job-hunt, by creating your own job.

The irony is, that a home business makes you in a very real sense a perpetual job-hunter—because you have to be always seeking new clients or customers—which is to say, new employers. Yes, they are employers because they pay you for the work you are doing. The only difference between this and a full-time job is that here the contract is limited. But if you are running your own business, you will have to continually beat the bushes for new clients or customers. Some of us have absolutely no appetite for that aspect of home businesses. Forewarned is forearmed.

Of course, the dream of most budding home business people is that you will become so well known, and so in demand, that clients or customers will be literally beating down your doors, and you will be able to stop this endless job-hunt. But that only happens to a relative minority, sorry to report. The greater likelihood is that you will always have to beat the bushes for employers/clients. It may get easier as you get better at it, or it may get harder, if the economy goes further south. But you must learn to make your peace with it— however grudgingly. Otherwise, you’re probably going to find a home business is just a glamorous synonym for “starving.” I know many home business people to whom this has happened, and it happened precisely because they couldn’t stomach going out to beat the bushes for clients or customers. If that’s true for you, but you’re still determined to start a home business, then for heaven’s sake start out by hiring someone part-time, who is willing to do this for you— one who, in fact, “eats it up.”

Anyway, there are a bunch of resources on the Web, to help you make a home business succeed, such as:

www.ahbbo.com;

www.ahbbo.com/articles.html: This is a great site, with lots of information for you if you want to learn more about a home-based business. There are more than a hundred articles at the second URL.

Finding a Fit, Idea #3: Starting Your Own Business, Outside the Home. It may be that, in thinking about creating your own job, you know exactly what business you’d like to start, because you’ve been thinking about it for years, and may even have been doing it for years—but in the employ of someone else.

But now, you’re thinking about doing this kind of work for yourself, whether it be business services, consultancy, or repair work, or some kind of craft, or some kind of product, or service. Maybe your dream is: I want to run a bed-and-breakfast place. Or I want a horse ranch, where I can raise and sell horses. Or I want to grow lavender and sell soap and perfume made from it. Stuff like that.

The first thing you should do is to read up on all the virtues and perils of running your own business. The Internet has lots of stuff about this. For example:

Business Owner’s Toolkit

www.toolkit.com/small_business_guide/index.a spx

Yikes, there is a lot of information here for the small business owner. Everything about your business: starting, planning, financing, marketing, hiring, managing, getting government contracts, taxes—all that stuff.

Small Business Administration

www.sba.gov

The SBA has endured some bad press in the face of the multiple natural catastrophes that have been striking the U.S. in the past five years, from hurricanes to tornadoes to floods. But keep in mind that it was established to help start, manage, and grow small businesses. Lots of useful articles and advice are online, here. Also, check out its Starting a Business resources at