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I would not want to work that hard for under 200k.
Great advice. I am a serial entrepreneur and spent a short stint as entrepreneur in residence for my state. I have never seen a successful startup where the principle didn't work a minimum of 65-70 hours a week.
I'll just throw in a franchise up close that I've seen grow like crazy, i9 sports.
My son started flag football with them about 7 years ago when they were just getting started in the area. A young couple started it, the wife took care of the admin and the husband refed the games and did a little coaching. They started with one field, and now they have four fields going all day Saturday and Sunday. They've now got several employees helping them run game days.
They run other sports as well, but from what I can see flag football is their bread and butter.
Their model is great. It's one day (afternoon, night, whatever) a week, practice for an hour, play the second hour. The kids have fun, it's football without the health scare, it's the easiest season my son plays, I never see any hassle with parents. As a business, it's clearly a lot of time and work on game days, and depending on how many sports or days you run, you could be quite busy, but if you like to be outdoors and like to be around kids sports, it seems like a great business. And I have to imagine the popularity of flag football is just going to grow.
Lou,
My boy did i9 for the first time last year (U8) and I have to agree. The 1 day practice followed by a game is great.
But it's a LOT more than two hours a week during the week. 500 kids is how many teams? If you put 20 on a team, you have 25 teams. I bet it's closer to 35. Coordinating all that is a lot more than you would think. You're dealing with coaches who can't make practices, parents who have issues they think are important, continued dealings with the leases of the fields, dealing with setting up the inevitable picture deals, advertising for the next season, and a lot more. I am not saying it's a bad deal, but it's a lot more than an hour or two a week.
Oh, fair enough. I suspect doing that and making 120-180k may be a great thing to do as opposed to a lot of other options. And if you are good at it, you can expand it and hire people to do a lot. As long as folks know it's all hard work. The only other thing about which I wold worry is someone else coming and and taking over. Those are hard niches to maintain at times.
Instead of franchising consider buying a business (that may or may not be a franchise). You will have an established client base, you can sample the place, and you negotiate the price. It is WAY easier than starting anything from scratch and the odds of success are vastly higher. You also get to see revenue and profit before buying so you will know an approximate ROI. You will also be blown away at what businesses make money. Many do stupid amounts of money with tiny percentage profit where others do low money high profit. Subway and Papa Johns are brutally unprofitable from a percentage basis. I'm talking sub 10k per year per location in many instances while doing over 500k in sales. Meanwhile Cell phone screen repair places may only have 100k in sales and make 50k.
Also don't be afraid of getting into something different. My parents bought a pest control company (then 2 more and merged them all). Built it up and sold the whole thing to Terminix and True green (one took lawn, the other took inside). He was a finance / computer consultant for his career and knew nothing of the business. He liked it because it was one of the few businesses where you get recurring revenue with about 50 percent profit.
Funny you should mention this...aside from my post-rat race idea of driving Uber, I've been thinking of learning smartphone repair. I've done bit of screen replacement on my own phones over the years. There's places you can go for training, but you can also teach yourself a lot of it online. I was planning on starting teaching myself by buying broken screen phones, repairing them and reselling them until I got good enough at it, which can actually be a moneymaker itself if you do enough. It has the advantage of not being locked into storefront hours and not potentially destroying a customer's phone and having to replace it.
Assuming you get good enough just hit up a local Car Wash and ask for a space to do business. People are there already waiting and if they have a cracked phone and see they can have it fixed while they are waiting it's a no brainer. Split the profit in some manner with car wash owner. Doesn't cost the car wash a dime, potentially brings in business in the opposite way (need phone repair, may as well get the car washed while they are there). If it takes off hire a couple guys and call it a day.
A little background...forgive me in advance if this is a tl;dr scenario.
I turned 40, in May.
I have been in sales for the last 16 years. By my definition, I am "successful" at it (i.e. I hit my number all the time, make 6 figures a year, etc) but I absolutely hate it. It's sucking every last bit of life from me and a change has to happen in the near future or I'm going postal.
Some further background...My daughter is 14 years old, and a freshman in high school. She's taking all honors classes except for math, and she's overall a very good student (all A's and a B for her 1st report card, and progress report said the same for this term) but not an exceptional one. I say this b/c while I think she's certainly college bound, I anticipate needing to help her some for college, and I'm committed to doing that. Her mother (we're divorced, and sorry no pic) is too, but I don't think she's quite as committed to help as I am since she, to her credit, paid her own way through school and thinks if it comes to it, our daughter can too...so I could be giving a disproportionate amount of help when the time comes. I've saved a small but reasonable amount in a 529 plan for her and will continue to do so until she goes to school. Should have ~$30,000-$35,000 in it by the time she goes. Not enough to fully fund school by any means but enough to help in conjunction w/financial aid, scholarships (hopefully) and whatever my ex and I contribute out of our pay at the time.
So big picture, while I'm generally not happy at work, I know I've got a pretty good gig going, and for where I am in life (daughter nearing college) I can't go quitting the sure thing I have now...so I won't. But I desperately want to. I've got a history degree and a whole lot of sales experience...both of which are useless to me as I consider the next 20-25 years of my life.
I like making money, and I like controlling my own destiny while being rewarded for my effort (which is the only reason I've done well in sales) so the solution, I think, is for me to go into business for myself. Given my risk profile when it comes to investing though, (I'm not risk averse, but not a high risk investor either) I think I'd be a good candidate for a franchise of some sort, since there is generally a track record, of sorts. I confess that I know next to nothing about this realm though, so I want to start doing some homework now so I'm ready when the time comes. Maybe it's a bad idea, I just know I've got to start making headway on a plan, and for whatever reason, this continues to be the route I keep coming back to when I daydream about making a change.
Any franchisees in here?
Successes or horror stories?
General insight on what I've posted?
Lots of high school chicks...You could do a kiosk in a mall as well. That and develop some channel partnerships with local Verizon and ATT reps.
Boom...Lots of high school chicks...
This is a great idea. You could start as small as you needed to and not be under any pressure to grow. If it takes off all the better...Funny you should mention this...aside from my post-rat race idea of driving Uber, I've been thinking of learning smartphone repair. I've done bit of screen replacement on my own phones over the years. There's places you can go for training, but you can also teach yourself a lot of it online. I was planning on starting teaching myself by buying broken screen phones, repairing them and reselling them until I got good enough at it, which can actually be a moneymaker itself if you do enough. It has the advantage of not being locked into storefront hours and not potentially destroying a customer's phone and having to replace it.
Not outright IT, per se. I've sold higher ed technology and SaaS though, if you count that.Do you have any IT background in sales?
Send me an email. I might have something of interest to you. iambrianrowe at gmail dot com.Not outright IT, per se. I've sold higher ed technology and SaaS though, if you count that.
Just emailed you.Send me an email. I might have something of interest to you. iambrianrowe at gmail dot com.
Just resent.Try again didn't get it.
I know someone who bought several Subway franchises - they were in the NFL at the time and their Dad ran the business during the season and now that he's out of football he's active in running them as well. The Dad is a partner. You must stay right on top of your stores at all times.
There is definitely a stress level associated with franchises. If you're still single from your divorce you have no "partner" to help out, either.
Take a vacation and think about this. We've all had a mid life crisis when we just want to "run away" and start over, but think long and hard about it. Maybe instead of a franchise just start your own business.