Many people believe franchise ownership is for the classic entrepreneur – the type A personality with the desire to blaze new trails in the business world. The truth is actually quite different.
Franchising is all about following a proven system in order to replicate the success of the original business. That’s why “Steady Eddy” types who are willing to trust the system make better (and happier) owners than “disrupter” types with independent streaks.
Besides the ability to follow a system, there are eight personality traits common to most successful franchisees. You can determine whether franchising is right for you based on whether you see yourself in these descriptions:
1. Motivated by Results
You’re known to: Focus on production ∙ Create benchmarks ∙ Meet goals ∙ Evaluate results
You understand that action is not achievement. You revere the value of benchmarks and are always evaluating the process in order to achieve results. If a certain course isn’t working to meet goals – you immediately change the plan to find an approach that will work better for you.
2. Big Thinker
You’re known to: Imagine the future ∙ Recognize necessary tasks
You know that even though working long hours or doing a dirty job may not be the ideal situation at the moment, it will pay off in the long run. You imagine the possibilities for the future as a long-term result that motivates the day-to-day activities. You keep your eye on the prize.
3. Chief Cheerleader
You’re known to: Make business happen ∙ Care about success ∙ Recognize efforts
Sitting back and expecting business to just come to you is not your game plan. You’re always out there stumping, and you recognize others who exhibit a similar work ethic.
4. Optimist
You’re known to: Look forward ∙ Create solutions ∙ Stay positive
You always call the glass half-full. Solutions and opportunities are more obvious to you than problems or hindrances. You take care of problems by solving them instead of wasting time on how they happened.
5. People Person
You’re known to: Relate to clients ∙ Keep good morale ∙ Succeed at networking ∙ Be a voice in the community
You are quick to understand that regardless of what business you’re in, customers and employees are always the most important thing for achieving success. Building relationships and keeping in good graces comes naturally for you.
6. Seatbelt Enthusiast
You’re known to: Like direction ∙ Want a safety net
You take grand precautions in your everyday life. You always look to mitigate the risks involved in activity and want a proven track record in what you participate in. You’re not blazing trails while running with scissors – you want security.
7. Resilient
You’re known to: Trust in the future ∙ Keep setbacks in perspective
You can’t be held down in pessimism. Challenges excite you and you know that things will always get better. You keep bouncing back strong from adversity.
8. Cool and Collected
You’re known to: Stay Consistent ∙ Keep Composure ∙ Address Issues
You know what is happening around you, but don’t panic or cause a scene. Focusing on the essential and important tasks keeps you unruffled and gives your customers and employees peace.
While franchising may not be for everyone, it can be an ideal situation for the right person. These personality traits — in addition to sufficient financial backing and proper business experience — are essential to succeeding in the franchising world. If you see yourself in the above descriptions, chances are that you have the confidence, drive and motivation to be a successful franchise business owner.
An article by Jeff
Jeff Elgin has almost 20 years of experience franchising, both as a franchisee and a senior franchise company executive. He’s currently the CEO of FranChoice Inc., a company that provides free consulting to consumers looking for a franchise that best meets their needs.
Silicon Valley: The rise of the adolescent CEOs
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Josh Buckley, chief executive of an online gaming start-up, is looking forward to next month’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, particularly for the parties and the accompanying schmoozing with industry A-listers.
There’s one problem: Buckley, who will turn 20 this week on February 22, may be turned away from many of the parties because he is not old enough to drink. His fake ID was recently confiscated, and the two new ones he ordered from a company in China have not yet arrived.
Such are the dilemmas facing the ever-younger entrepreneurs that Silicon Valley investors are backing these days. While little data on the phenomenon exists, venture capitalists say they are funding more chief executives under age 21 than ever before.
“At a certain point, they can’t get much younger or we’re going to be invested in preschool,” quipped Marc Andreessen, whose venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is one of several that backs Buckley’s company, MinoMonsters.
Andreessen and other venture capitalists say the entrepreneurs they fund at 18 or 19 typically have been prepping for years — learning computer code, taking on ambitious freelance projects and educating themselves on the Internet.
Some are self-consciously molding themselves in the image of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 27, who created computer games as a child and was taking a graduate-level computer course by his early teens.
Internet businesses that target consumers make a sweet spot for the baby-faced, because online companies often require relatively little capital. A semiconductor start-up might require $10 million to $20 million in the early stages, noted Joe Kraus of Google Ventures, and that would be tough even for the most talented youngster.
“If I’m going to write that big a check, I’m going to invest in people who’ve done it before,” he said. “But if you look at it as, ‘Hey, I’m going to raise $500,000,’ there’s a lot of ways to raise that.”
Kraus helped back Airy Labs, an educational social-gaming company run by 20-year-old Andrew Hsu that raised $1.5 million. Hsu is now learning the same hard lessons as many of his elders: the company recently laid off staff and is looking to rent out some of its office space in Palo Alto, California. Hsu said the company is taking a different direction and focusing on a line of new products in math, language arts and science.
Kraus said his biggest hiccups with young entrepreneurs are the business references they don’t understand because they are too young to be aware of them.
Andreessen says more than one young entrepreneur has asked him: “What did Netscape do again?” Andreessen co-founded Netscape, which developed the first commercial Web browser and helped launch the Internet era, shortly after graduating from college in 1993.
“I was 9 years old” during the first Internet boom, says Brian Wong, 20, who runs reward-network Kiip. He has had his fill of stories about companies that tanked amid the dot-com bust of 2000. The first time he heard the name Webvan, a legendary dot-com failure, “I had to look it up,” he recalled.
Wong has raised more than $4 million from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and others.
He believes his age helps him and other youthful entrepreneurs. “You’re expected to be limitless,” he said. “Kind of destructive.”
While the freewheeling ways of youth may be a positive for venture capitalists, they are less appreciated by landlords. Tim Chae, the 20-year-old chief executive and co-founder of social-media marketing company PostRocket, said his age and lack of credit created problems when he moved to San Francisco last year and needed an apartment. Finally, his father had to drive the 88 miles from Sacramento to co-sign a lease.
Chae, a Babson College dropout, now lives in nearby Mountain View and attends 500 Startups, a crash course for young companies run by a venture firm of the same name. He has raised a small amount of capital and hopes the upcoming Facebook IPO will help investors look more kindly on young entrepreneurs. “Thank God for Zuckerberg,” he says.
Zuckerberg, who left Harvard after two years, is helping recast the notion of dropping out of college. Peter Thiel, an early investor in Facebook and a co-founder of PayPal, is encouraging others to try that path through two-year fellowships for students who take a break from school, move to San Francisco and pursue their entrepreneurial aspirations.
That’s what 17-year-old Laura Deming did when she won a fellowship based on her goal of finding and funding anti-aging technologies and left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Because she is not yet 18, she finds herself faxing documents such as non-disclosure agreements to her dad back in Boston to co-sign.
Other young entrepreneurs have trouble negotiating the highways and byways of Silicon Valley quite literally. Sahil Lavingia, 19, recalls a day last summer when he had several meetings scheduled on Sand Hill Road — home to many of the nation’s leading venture-capital firms — and no car to get there. The journey of just a few miles took hours by the time Lavingia rode a local train a couple of stops, caught a bus to Stanford University and then hopped a shuttle bus to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, which is on Sand Hill Road.
Another time, dreading the combination of a hot day and a sweaty walk around Palo Alto, he pulled on a pair of shorts, even though he was heading to a meeting with blue-chip VC Accel Partners. The outfit — casual even by laid-back Silicon Valley standards — didn’t stop Accel from investing. Lavingia, an alumnus of hot online bulletin-board company Pinterest, raised $1.1 million for his payments start-up, Gumroad.
Buckley also ran into problems getting himself to Sand Hill Road. One night he stayed up until 3 a.m. and slept too late to get to a scheduled meeting with a venture-capital firm. “It didn’t go down too well,” he said, adding that his profuse apologies and requests to reschedule were met with a curt “no thank you.”
Not to worry. Buckley, who had already sold a company while in high school for a sum he says was in the low six figures, raised more than $1 million from Andreessen Horowitz and others.
At the time of the missed meeting, he was attending Y Combinator, a three-month program for start-ups. In a nod to the boy wizard of book and movie fame, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham has called Buckley “the Harry Potter of startups,” but said he was not the youngest to win admission to the program.
That honor goes to John Collison, now co-founder of payment company Stripe, who was admitted at age 16, but did not go through the program, Graham says. Instead, he and his then-19-year-old brother merged their company with another, Auctomatic, and sold it to a Canadian company for $5 million in cash and stock.
Most of the young entrepreneurs say their interest lies in building rather than selling their companies. Buckley had to say as much in response to inquiries he said received recently from Facebook about a possible sale. His determination not to sell stems from advice he received from a successful executive he met last year at Y Combinator: Mark Zuckerberg.
(Reporting By Sarah McBride. Editing by Jonathan Weber and Maureen Bavdek)
Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/silicon-valley-rise-adolescent-ceos-062054386.html
How Pinterest Is Becoming the Next Big Thing in Social Media for Business
Move over Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Anothersocial media site is stepping up as a valuable marketing tool for businesses.
Pinterest, an online bulletin board for your favorite images, launched in 2010 and is already experiencing wild growth. The site registered more than 7 million unique visitors in December, up from 1.6 million in September. And it’s driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined, according to a recent reportfrom Cambridge, Mass.-based content-sharing site Shareaholic.
Why should small businesses care? To answer that, you first have to understand how consumers are using the site. Pinterest allows you to organize images — maybe pretty sunrises or wines you’ve tasted — into boards for specific categories. When you “pin” something new, your followers will see it. They can like, comment or re-pin it to their boards. Like Facebook content, your Pinterest pins can go viral.
Brides-to-be can pin pictures of different wedding dresses to review, and people shopping for a new car can pin images of their options. When I joined Pinterest I started a board to show the Major League Baseball stadiums I’ve visited. The possibilities are unlimited.
Here’s a look at why some business owners — particularly retailers — might want to seriously consider starting a business profile on Pinterest now.
How It’s Being Used
Perhaps the most powerful business application is the ability to post images of your company’s products on your Pinterest board and link them back to your website. It works as a sort of virtual store catalog.
But remember that this is social media. If you simply display images of your products without contributing other content or sharing other users’ pins, you’ll likely find that people don’t pay much attention. After all, no one likes a self-absorbed blowhard.
Related: What’s With All the Interest in Pinterest?
But savvy social media users know not to get too promotional. For example, Whole Foods Market pins pictures of delicious-looking food, food art and images of recycled or reused products to inspire customers to be environmentally responsible. Daniel Gordon, who runs Samuel Gordon Jewelers in Oklahoma City, pins pictures of his rings and watches, but he also has a board for images that make him laugh and other types of products he loves.
Driving Sales
Pinterest already is driving buyers to some websites. In the last six months, the retail deal siteideeli.com has seen a 446 percent increase in web traffic from Pinterest and sales resulting from those visits have increased five-fold.
“We continue the Pinterest conversation with [the] members by following their pins, and we love to give feedback outside of the shopping category — whether that means commenting on a great recipe or [giving] a heart next to our favorite pet pics,” says ideeli.com social media manager Sarah Conley. “We also see Pinterest as a growing resource to better understand our members and the larger retail landscape.”
Is Pinterest Right for Your Business?
The site does have some drawbacks for businesses. If your product or service isn’t particularly visual, your images may not tie directly back to your brand. Pinterest also doesn’t offer business-oriented features, and its search function prioritizes pin and board subjects ahead of “people,” the category that brands would fall into.
The best way to determine if Pinterest could attract buyers is simply to give it a shot. Set up an account and start pinning things that are relevant to your business but not too promotional.
If you run a lawn-care center, for instance, pin pictures of landscaping you find online or snap in your community. If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, pin shots of the interesting sites and people around your neighborhood and photos you take at community events. You also can search through Pinterest’s categories and add some inspirational, funny or beautiful images you find.
Then, follow interesting boards and individuals who post images that inspire you. Once you’ve done some pinning of other people’s content for a week or so and attracted a few followers, create a new board of your products. Add descriptions and perhaps the price to the images. Make sure they link back to your website and start tracking pinterest.com as a referral source in your website analytics.
Next, try creating an image of a special deal or coupon just for your Pinterest followers. Upload it to a new board for Deals. Perhaps offer a prize to the person who gets the most likes or comments on a re-pin of the coupon, and then see who shares it the most. Don’t fret about creating multiple boards. People who follow you will see them all.
In a month or two, see if you’re getting referral traffic or sales. Depending on the results, you may need to tweak your boards with new images and words.
One thing is clear whether you’re on Pinterest for personal or business reasons: the best images — be they funny, beautiful or thought provoking — attract the most attention and followers.
This was an article by 
JASON FALLS
Source: click here
25 Businessmen Who Broke The Rules (Part 2)
11. Rupert Murdoch
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is one of the most powerful men in the world, with the News Corporation, Fox News, and the New York Post among his many credits. The 109th-richest man in the world, and a Grand-Officer in the Catholic Order of St. Gregory the Great (an honor bestowed upon the Australian-American by Pope John Paul II, even though Murdoch is a Protestant), Murdoch has been widely criticized for wielding too much power over the media and unethically using his properties to promote his conservative political views. Throughout Murdoch’s entrepreneurial career, he has balanced his media and political interests on a finely drawn line, and not always without incident.
12. Kerry Packer
When he died in 2005, Kerry Packer was the richest man in Australia and the major shareholder of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited. When his father, media mogul Frank Packer, died, Kerry inherited the family empire, which would have gone to his older brother Clyde had it not been for a family dispute which ended with Clyde leaving for America. The arch-rival of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Packer was often surrounded by controversy, to the point of being accused of tax evasion, organized crime, and drug trafficking. Though all charges were eventually dismissed, Packer is still remembered in Australia as “the Goanna,” a title referring to his alleged role in organized crime.
13. Paris Hilton
She is an heiress, an opportunist, a pop icon, and the scandalous trend-setter responsible for making celebrity sex tapes hip. Many are reluctant to add “businesswoman” to the list. Paris Hilton has been dubbed the “Most Overrated Celebrity” by the Guinness Book of World Records, and is the second “Worst Celebrity Role Model of 2006,” according to an Associated Press/AOL poll. Yet, one could argue that all the controversy and disfavor is evidence of her daring and ingenuity. Paris Hilton has made millions of dollars by doing things that are supposed to get famous people into trouble: going to drunken parties, making sex tapes, and being a generally irresponsible, less-than-brainy presence. She does have several businesses, and she has released an album, published an autobiography, and starred in films and television shows. Despite all that, her greatest success is her ability to remain in the global spotlight. When she can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for making an appearance at a party, the fact that she has fragrance and clothing lines is beside the point.
14. Andrew Carnegie
A poor Scottish immigrant, Andrew Carnegie rose to become the richest man in America by recognizing the need to change. He adjusted to developing markets, invested heavily in new technologies, and was not afraid to question his own advice. At the age of 33, wary of the toll his devotion to wealth was taking on his well-being, he wrote a letter to himself instructing him to leave the world of business for good in two years. Needless to say, he did not follow that advice. This was not the only time his actions were not in line with his words. For example, Carnegie was unconventional in his outspoken devotion to political egalitarianism and the rights of workers to form unions; however, he approved the anti-union tactics of Henry Frick which famously led to an unknown number of deaths in the Battle of Homestead. Carnegie did make an effort to live up to his motto that “the man who dies rich dies disgraced”: By the time of his death, he had given away $350 million, mostly to establish libraries and support institutions of higher learning.
15. Boris Berezovsky
More than in most parts of the world, corruption is a known part of business and politics in Russia. Of course, businessmen and politicians generally refrain from alluding to the more nefarious side of their ambitions. Boris Berezoysky is something of an exception. While he has denied all allegations regarding his connections to criminal enterprises, the billionaire has openly threatened to take down Vladimir Putin “by force.” Berezoysky helped bring Putin into power and now accuses him of murder. It is no wonder Berezovsky has been the target of assassination attempts. An accomplished member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Berezovsky published numerous books and articles on applied mathematics before making his fortune buying and selling cars. He currently goes by the name Platon Elenin and lives with political asylum in the United Kingdom.
16. Arkadi Kuhlmann
He calls himself “sort of the bad guy” of the banking establishment. The founder and CEO of ING Direct USA, one of America’s fastest-growing retail banks, Arkadi Kuhlmann says he does not even like banks and he hates credit cards. Out to “reenergize” the banking industry, Kuhlmann is a strong-minded rebel who runs his bank without ATM machines or brick-and-mortar branches. All transactions are carried out electronically, without minimum deposits or customer fees. Unlike most financial CEOs, Kuhlmann says he is determined to help people save money, not spend it. As he says, he wants to make saving money “cool.”
Source
Taylor, William C. and LaBarre, Polly. Maverick’s At Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win (HarperCollins 2006), pp. 4-5.
17. Chris Albrecht
As CEO of Home Box Office (from July 2002 until May 2007), Chris Albrecht led HBO’s revolution of the television industry as the overseer of original programming, including such hit series as The Sopranos, Sex & The City, and Six Feet Under. Personifying the forward-thinking business executive, Albrecht takes the network’s slogan (“It’s not TV. It’s HBO.”) literally. Instead of hoping to follow up past successes using the same formula, Albrecht believed the future of HBO depends on its ability to stay in front of change, expanding beyond television technologies.
Source
Taylor, William C. and LaBarre, Polly. Maverick’s At Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win (HarperCollins 2006), pp. 26-29.
18. Michael Dell
Widely regarded as one of the most important innovators of the computer industry, Michael Delldefied convention by cutting out the middle man and selling PCs directly to consumers, allowing them to custom order machines by phone and mail. A college dropout, he is now one of the world’s top three PC manufacturers and one of the richest men in the world. (If you compare their net worths, it looks like Dell could buy 6 or 7 Donald Trumps.) Some of his competitors have coveted his unique business model, but without matching his success. He has won such accolades as “Man of the Year” by PC magazine, “Top CEO in American Business” by Worth, and “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Inc. magazine. Dell.com is one of the largest consumer e-commerce sites on the Web.
19. Roman Abramovich
Sometimes called the “quiet oligarch,” Forbes’ 15th wealthiest billionaire has always kept a closed lid on his affairs. A Russian oil magnate and owner of the Chelsea Football Club, Roman Abramovich has impressed the world with his daring and often surprising business decisions. Despite accusations that he has made his fortune by exploiting the malaise of others, Abramovich has been honored as Russia’s “Man of the Year” by Expert magazine and was awarded Russia’s Order of Honor for his charitable work developing the region of Chukotka, for which he has also been a representative and governor. Abramovich was making multi-billion-dollar business deals before his 40th birthday. He has admitted to spending billions of dollars on political favors.
20. Jeff Bezos
One of the pioneers of e-commerce, Amazon.com used to be all about books. Now it is on the leading edge of Web development, redefining how people buy and sell everything from movies and music to make-up and appliances. By exploring and mainstreaming technologies, such asAmazon Kindle and Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon is changing how people read books and how consumers interact with market leaders. Jeff Bezos, the man behind the phenomenon, says a lot of his success has to do with luck and intuition. Always with an eye on the customer, Bezos has taken enormous risks which have not always worked to Amazon’s advantage. Yet, he managed to guide Amazon through the dispiriting dot-com tumult of the 90s, making it one of the few enduring pillars of the Web. Unlike the CEO’s of other pioneering Web sites, such as eBay, Yahoo!, and Google, Jeff Bezos has maintained his executive position from the beginning, when it was just about selling books.
Source: http://www.businesspundit.com/25-businessmen-who-broke-the-rules-and-some-laws/2/
businesskoncept 