Buying a Franchise Verse Starting a Home Business Opportunity

With countries around the World either in recession or are about to go into recession you are like most worried about your financial security. The most vicious part of any recession is that it leads to job losses, which in turn affects discretionary spending which in turn affects businesses both large and small, which lead to even further job losses and the vicious circle continues.

When this happens it is advisable to consider how and what you should do and not wait until it becomes a reality for you because if you do you will be making decisions under duress and that is never a good thing.

So let’s have a look at a couple of options that you may want to consider, they being buying a Franchise or embarking on a home business opportunity both have their advantages and disadvantages which will be determined by factors like;
How much money you have to invest
How much time you have to dedicate to your business
How confident are you in your own ability and keep in mind we were put on this planet with the goal to succeed not to fail and we all have a unique ability that in most cases hasn’t been realized if it had been you would not be reading this article right now, but that’s OK.

Let’s have a look at the investment side first, with a Franchise you can get started from anywhere from $15,000 to in excess of $1,000,000 and this determined by how much you can borrow.
With a home business opportunity this can be as little as a few hundred dollars up to $3,000 or $4,000.

With the franchise purchase at the lower end it would mean providing services such as lawn mowing and gardening, domestic cleaning, window cleaning, courier, ironing etc all of which are an exchange of time for money which is the same as a job you only earn while you actually do the work.

When you move up the financial scale of franchises and I will stick with food related franchises for this example then the same applies until you get to a point where you can afford to borrow more money to create multiple stores or restaurants. By taking on that extra debt you now have more people working for you so you are starting to leverage your time in other words you are now getting paid more for working the same or maybe a little bit more time than you were previously. Remember that debt is what is driving this cuurent credit crunch and should be avoided like the plague.

The franchisee’s  customer base is largely determined by the geographical area allocated too them therefore exposing them  to the vagaries of factory shutdowns, general layoffs, extreme weather fires, floods, drought and tornadoes etc which affect the general economy and as people scale back their spending as they are doing now as I write, but the franchisee is still servicing the debt, paying the rent and has employees they are responsible for whilst all the while paying out royalty and marketing fees to the franchisor.

With a carefully researched and selected home business opportunity there is no debt, no rent, no staff, no royalties (there are some marketing costs but minor in comparison) and no geographical restrictions, you can operate all around the world with the majority of them.

With a franchise you are following a system some better than others but a system none the less and one that  is generally too slow to react to market shifts and the franchisee cannot implement what they feel would be appropriate for their situation otherwise they stand having their franchise revoked. In circumstances like that you are no better off  than an employee in that you have to do what you are told so therefore leaving your destiny for others to determine. Once again when this happens Franchisors make changes under duress due to the pressure placed on them the same pressures I referred to earlier when if you wait for someone else to determine your future then all decisions after that are not ones made with a calm rational mind.

With a home business opportunity you are free to make changes as the need arises with the help of many of the home business entrepreneurs through the many forums where you can stay ahead of the trend because it is in everyone’s interest and that is how the home business opportunity  operates and how they create the leverage for their incomes because if you don’t succeed neither does the person who brought you into the business and that is powerful.

Leveraging your income and residual income is the uniqueness of the home business opportunity where with the franchise it is either the product or the service offered that is their uniqueness, i.e. K.F.C’s 11 herbs and spices wouldn’t fair too well if the bird flu struck for example, showing both of which can go out of favor very quickly.

Let’s talk about how much time you want to spend in your business and at what cost to your family, your health and your sanity, the average franchisee would work 60 – 80 hours per week making it impossible to be with his family look after his health and sanity.
The home business opportunity offers the luxury firstly of working from already saving hours in commuting time plus they can work at times that suit them especially when they understand leveraging income and residual income.

As with both options it takes time to become successful and with both you have a steep learning curve to go through and it requires dedication and a clear reason WHY you are doing it, franchising is done in an environment where you told what to do, how to do it, when to do it and are continually assessed on your performance generally by people who have only a smidgen of your knowledge which can become extremely frustrating.

With a home business opportunity you have the freedom to make adjustments, add new streams of income and probably most importantly pursue the things that you enjoy, remember we are all unique and we all have something special to offer and there is no better place to be than to doing what you love and having people love what you do.

Too often people choose a career or a business based on its financial return instead of pursuing what their interests or hobbies are but as you look around you will start to notice that those that do become very successful financially, family wise and time wise.

So before you rush off to try and secure your future in these unsettled times( times which happen far too frequently to suggest that our boom bust economy model is floored from the start), take some time to explore your options before it is done for you.