Franchises Made Easier

I must admit that my thinking on franchises is a bit dated. I still envision someone being stuck making sandwiches behind a counter at their sub shop 52 weeks a year. While this is still true for many franchise opportunities there is a growing number of franchise businesses that offer more flexibility and opportunity for multiple operations.
StartupJournal has an article on how much easier some of the new franchises have become to operate.

The franchising world is letting loose. Gone are the days of one owner being chained behind the counter of a single store day in, day out. Today, there are absentee owners who oversee their operations from laptops and Treos, and owners who maintain dual careers or run multiple franchises. At Hollywood Tanning Systems Inc., more than half of the 330 franchise owners have another job. The chief executive of Sport Clips Inc. hair salons estimates that 10 hours a week is a “generous allowance” for owners to physically be in stores. And franchisees for the Decor&You Inc. interior-design business can receive decorating and product training at home whenever they like via online video seminars.

(Thanks to Matt Nicholson for passing this along).

A Good New Small Business Blog

The folks who hosted the discussion that led to the report that I linked to earlier today have a great new blog called smallbizlabs.com. Here is what they say about its purpose:

Small Biz Labs is the research blog for Emergent Research’s ongoing project to identify, analyze and forecast the key social, business and technology trends that will impact small business formation and operations.
Central to this work is our partnership with Intuit and the Institute for the Future to produce the Intuit/IFTF Future of Small Business forecast report series.
The primary purpose of this blog is to point to and comment on studies, research, surveys and data sources related to small business.

These are great folks and it looks to be a very good blog.

Small Business Catches the Technology Wave

I had the pleasure of participating in an all day discussion last year that examined the future of small business hosted by the Institute for the Future and sponsored by Intuit. In the first report that came out of this project, the changing face of small business ownership was examined.
In the second report, which was just released this morning, the emerging impact that technology will have on small business is explored. Although entrepreneurs have lagged in their use of new technologies in the companies, this report sees small businesses finally embracing the use and application of new technologies in their businesses. Here are a few of the findings:
– Small businesses will become integrated into the “networked” world. Small businesses will embrace technologies that will help them better manage customer relationships, inventory, distribution and employee productivity. Mobile devices will become integral in small business. Small business will have new productivity tools at their fingertips, including new generations of digital assistants.
– On-line tools and applications will become more a part of starting and managing small businesses. Such tools will become simpler to use, enabling small businesses to increase their connections through on-line social networks. This will open up the “virtual world” to any and all entrepreneurs.
– Small business marketing shifts from push to pull. Customers will be able to search for information about what they want with increasing power, no longer just accepting information they receive from the marketplace. The new media for such information will come through devices in cars and through cell phones.
If you want to sharpen your vision of what your business might become in the next ten years, and begin to prepare for what new and existing technologies can offer to keep you competitive, this report is an important first step.

Executive Compensation in Entrepreneurial Companies

As a business grows, attracting key team members becomes critical to success. However, since you often can’t compete with the salaries that key people may be able to get from larger companies, you have to find ways to create value for potential team members beyond their monthly paychecks.
In a new collection at eVenturing, the challenge of compensation for key employees is examined. Once again, the folks at Kauffman have put together a great set of articles, stories, and tools to help owners of growing companies.

Loans and Investments From Family

My column this week at the Tennessean examines taking business loans and investments from family:

Family members provide funding for many different reasons. Some are motivated by altruism — they just want to help the entrepreneur get started and be successful. Others can be driven by greed — they see the investment as a way to ride on the entrepreneur’s coattails to fortune and fame.
But no matter what the reason they provide financial assistance, defined boundaries and clear expectations should be clearly established.

Selling is Key to New Ventures

Eric Flamholtz has it right in his book Growing Pains (now in a 4th edition, by the way). In an early stage business almost all of your focus must be on two things:
1) You must get your product or service properly aligned with the market. Our business plans offer our best guess about this, but the reality of the reaction from real customers tells us the truth of what will really work.
2) Selling! We must actively engage the market to gain a customer base. They almost never just “show up” at our doorstep.
Entrepreneur magazine has a great feature story on selling in this month’s issue. Included are several specific tips on such topics as selling to department stores, selling on eBay, selling expensive products, creating a buzz and so forth. It is well worth a careful read whether you are starting a new venture or simply trying to expand the sales of your existing business.

Information on Financing

A couple of useful pieces of information on entrepreneurial financing:
– A new study released last week by the SBA Office of Advocacy finds that bank size in local markets affects the likelihood of a small firm receiving credit more than it affects the amount of debt provided. The research provides evidence of the impact of the two lending methods, relationship and standardized, on credit availability to small businesses and finds that one method is not apparently better than the other. The study concludes that entry of giant national and regional banks and bank holding companies into local markets may have increased market competition for small business loans, with the primary banks exploiting the niche in relationship lending, while large, more complex banking organizations use standardized methods to supplement supply.
– BusinessFund.com published a great financing summary titled “Top 25 Alternatives to Venture Capital.”

More Thoughts on the Entrepreneurial Generation

The blog site Marginal Revolution has a post on the entrepreneurial generation and a link to an article he wrote for the New York Times.

American youths are so successful at entrepreneurship in part because so many older and wealthier people are willing to help them. The broader American success at philanthropy, then, lays the groundwork for American entrepreneurship. By global standards, Americans may have looser networks of friends and family, but Americans are more willing to help relative strangers, and this often helps business.

(Thanks to Ben Cunningham for passing this along).