Protecting the Future through Franchising

One method of preparing for early retirement is to think of retirement not as the end of working, but rather as the beginning of a new style of work. For my husband, that meant quitting his "career" job and starting his own business. The choice then became do we start your own business from scratch, or do we franchise. We decided to buy a frachise.

We didn't expect to rich, but we did get a proven business plan and support in getting started. Had we started a business on our own, we might have made more money, but we might have gone broke as well....We opted for what we decided was a lower risk method of starting our own business. With franchising you will give the franchisor a % of the revenue and have to follow their rules, but you will also be able to look before you start at the likely outcome, have a support network when you are starting, and reduce the risks facing startup businesses.

I kept my day job while my husband worked the startup. We thought we would do this for 1 year, but it has been about 5 years. In fairness, I could have quite 2 years ago if I wanted to, but neither of us wanted to be trapped into working full time for years to make less than we use to make. We decided to wait, build retained earnings and business volume, expand the business, and then retire when we could work the business as we wanted.......not work to survive.

Owning a franchise has been an interesting experience. It is rewarding and frustrating all at the same time. It has enabled us to start our own group insurance program (a personal requirement for early retirement), shelter some income, and to live in a community we wanted to retire in. There were stressful times in the beginning when we kept putting money in, not paying ourselves....which was not the goal.......but now we are looking at a building business that has the potential to pay a reasonable return without the requirment for excessive hours by both of us. My advice to those thinking about this method of early retirement is that it takes more money and time than you will be told during your due dilligence...but if you have the heart and choose the right opportunity franchising can be rewarding. Look long and hard. Ask qustions of the franchisor. Think about your personality........Do you like working with the public? Do you like sales? Can you and your spouse work together? Can you live with the rules of the franchise? We decided that for us the criteria were....no food, no weekends, and no business that was only profitable with the two of us there all the time. What do you want to do? There are great websites for evaluating franchises....spend time.....explore.....and then spend more time.