Should One Go The Entrepreneur Route?

Me too sailing in the same boat! Eager to see the wonderful suggestions

 

After working a few years in a corporate world , it's a common itch that most of us go through . Anyone can be an entrepreneur but it takes something " special " for him/ her to really succeed .

If you want to go the franchise route , I strongly recommend you to do as much research as possible about the particular franchise . Most of the franchise get a huge cut from the profits you make in the name of royalty so for the amount of effort and hours you put in , the net is not that much . This is an ongoing fees that you always have to pay to them so that itself is a huge dampner . Franchising also require huge start up costs like leasing offices , setting up the place, furnishing etc and they rarely provide any help with financing so the only option you have is to either dig into your savings or apply for small business loans which again comes with huge interest rates . Also , depending on the franchise , you may also have to the cost to procure raw material which can be quite high as some have monopoly to buy the raw materials only from them or their preferred vendors . This is one way they want to make money out of you . Please research all the fees about the franchise that you are thinking of.

Otherwise , there is something called as Red ocean and Blue ocean concept . I will not get into details but red means some product is already there , doing great business ( you can check on Amazon best sellers or other sources ) ,find what's missing and what users want and you tweak it or add some more functionality to this product . Blue ocean concept means you create a niche product which doesn't exist and there is a demand for it . But again , you have to do some market research to know more about consumers , their needs, any similar products and their limitations etc. You also have to spend enough $$ on sales and marketing in order to scale your business . You can build your products for cheap through Alibaba or AliExpress. There are lots of videos on you tube if you want to understand more.

Regarding work-life balance with a preschooler , an entrepreneur need much more time and commiment than a regular job. If it's a restaurant or some fast food franchise , your major sales will be early morning , late evenings and forget about weekends completely. Same goes with any other business . Since you will be hiring staff, leasing an office, you will be working lot more than a regular job at least the few years to break even the cost. And if you happen to get some angel investors into your company ,they for sure will make your life hell.

But if you are willing to work smart and get the right tools and techniques to scale your business , you sure can . Also ,make sure you have enough savings or your DH has a stable job as a fallback option if something doesn't work out .

 

I am not much of a risk taker so I am probably not the right person to comment here . I prefer the financial stability that a job offers. I assume your spouse ( my husband's twin ) is supportive, so you should give your business ideas a shot. Few of my extended family have ventured into businesses, most have succeeded but I know there is a lot of instability and lot of stress that comes with it. I have also noticed that being a entrepreneur requires a lot more investment in terms of time . Are you ok if it eats into your vacation / weekend plans?
Wishing you the very best !!

 

Mc Donald ,subway franchise is popular. Preschools can be franchised . I don't know about USA. But all these goes well in India.

 

Franchise concept is that they will help u set up the business , with place too. They will provide training to employees too and will standardise the service process. U may have to pay for the license as well as u need to pay later too maybe every month based on the agreement. It is good idea.Since the name or good reputation is established already , u will definitely have good amount of costumers. The only problem is we need to find the right locality where our target costumers are nearby or at least a prime area maybe like a downtown( example only) or some posh area if our target costumers are there. Great idea.

 

Kumon Franchise is good as many children are willing to enroll.this one I see here in USA.