Opening a restaurant can be a great way to pad your bank account if you are up to it. But it can come with a price tag higher than you could imagine.

The first year of any business is always one that sees added stress. More work is required as the “trial and error process” of launching a new business is in full force. Knowing what works and what fails is a vital part of business growth.

However, there is a great degree of risk in this, especially in a downed economy with scores of local competitors nipping at your heels.

Having the funds and the know-how to bring brand recognition to the community amid a sea of competitors can be that final point that can make of break any business. But what if someone approached you and presented an option that was already promoted, branded and had a proven success record?

Instead of taking on massive risk by launching your own restaurant from the ground up, you can own a Quiznos franchise, or a Subway sandwich shop. Why could this be a low-risk option for bringing in added revenue?

Branding
No need to spend loads of marketing dollars — the corporation already does this for you. Television and print adverts are already in circulation. The majority of a new restaurant’s startup costs can be in marketing and advertising.

When investing in a franchise, you are taking a massive head start by nixing the cost and time required to branding a business in its crucial startup period.

Training breeds success
When you start your own restaurant, nobody steps in to train you, nor do they give you a blueprint to a proven successful business model. However, when you invest in a franchise you get just that.

It may be your restaurant, but you are borrowing a corporate logo that doesn’t ultimately belong to you. Rather, it belongs to the corporation and all the others who invested in opening franchises under their grand umbrella. In order to protect the brand’s reputation and the reputations of other investors, companies provide training to franchise owners to ensure they will be successful.

In an article published by The Observer that profiles a young franchise owner, it is clear that his investment paid off bigtime. The investor says that the secret to making franchise ownership pay off is hard work and smart investing. In fact, he states that he plans to buy a second franchise in the near future.

Where to invest
Investing in any franchise restaurant regardless of type will provide you with the branding and training you need. However, by focusing on some special considerations and doing a little research you can make an even better investment that is more tailored to your community.

For example, health concerns and nutrition are subjects that are now more focused on than ever. In fact just this year the state of New York has banned the sale of extra large soft drink beverages in their endeavors to help keep people healthier.

Investing in a brand that offers healthy menu items with fresh ingredients in a kitchen void of fried food may be a better investment in areas where residents lead healthier lifestyles. Also, consider buying a franchise that sells food that working people can easily take back to the office.

When trying to decide between buying a recognized sandwich brand or a KFC, these considerations may help you make a better investment that will benefit both you and the community.

Image source: www.mbagateway.com

If you can’t make up your mind what business area you want to occupy, why not become an Originative Intellectual Worker, a phrase coined by H.G. Wells.

It is said that most blogs are read exclusively by other bloggers. At first sight that may not seem very remarkable. After all, there are more than 100 million blogs out there and like generally attracts like. But at a deeper level we’re seeing an irresistible convergence. A convergence of supplier and buyer, of producer and consumer. Communication is becoming conversation, not lecture. Big Media is downsizing into widely-distributed personal media.

Essentially, what we’re now observing is the whittling away of the conventional categories that have sustained literature, journalism and, more recently, broadcasting, for centuries. Top writers do still write and let their agents and publishers manage the rest. But they are becoming a smaller and smaller minority, held in thrall by the big guns of marketing and the “blockbuster” mentality.

Increasingly — down there in the long tail — writers typeset and copycheck their own material themselves, and often publish it on a blog, or through on-demand printers. They are now the largest revenue earners for the new open-market mechanisms, like Amazon and eBay.

At the limit, as the mathematicians say, writers are also photographers, graphic artists, publishers, and the principal marketers of their work. Writers are no longer just writers but, in H.G. Wells’s term, “originative intellectual workers”.

Finding a top-gun agent or publisher is all but impossible these days. On the other hand, the originative intellectual worker (OIW) quickly masters a skill-set allowing proficiency across crafts and technologies. The OIW emerges on both sides of the track, as producer and consumer. In blogging it’s almost impossible to separate the two. With the demise of Excite, the long tail is beginning to wag the beasts of medialand. The world will never be the same again.

Addendum : Here are two extracts which refer to the term “originative intellectual workers”. The first is from H.G.’s autobiography :

“Most individual creatures since life began have been ‘up against it’ all the time, have been driven continually by fear and cravings, have had to respond to the unresting antagonisms of their surroundings, and they have found a sufficient and sustaining interest in the drama of immediate events provided for them by these demands. Essentially, their living was continuous adjustment to happenings. Good hap and ill hap filled it entirely. They hungered and ate and they desired and loved; they were amused and attracted, they pursued or escaped, they were overtaken and they died.

“But with the dawn of human foresight and with the appearance of a great surplus of energy in life such as the last century or so has revealed, there has been a progressive emancipation of the attention from everyday urgencies. What was once the whole of life, has become to an increasing extent, merely the background of life. People can ask now what would have been an extraordinary question five hundred years ago. They can say, ‘Yes, you earn a living, you support a family, you love and hate, but what do you do? . . .’

“In studies and studios and laboratories, administrative bureaus and exploring expeditions, a new world is germinated and develops. It is not a repudiation of the old but a vast extension of it, in a racial synthesis into which individual aims will ultimately be absorbed. We originative intellectual workers are reconditioning human life.”

Here is an extract from Colin Wilson’s Beyond the Outsider:

“H.G. Wells had another explanation for the unsatisfactoriness [many of us feel with our lot in life]. Men like himself, he says — ‘originative intellectual workers’ — find normal human existence boring because they long for a more meaningful kind of existence. ‘We are like early amphibians, so to speak, struggling out of the waters that have hitherto covered our kind, into the air, seeking to breathe in a new fashion and to emancipate ourselves from … necessities. At last it becomes a case of air or nothing. But the new land has not definitely emerged from the waters, and we swim distressfully in an element we wish to abandon.’”

Interesting stuff, and just as relevant today, and applicable, I would say, to the modern world.

When starting a new business it is vitally important to know what your ultimate aims are.

Entrepreneurs tend to fall into five types, depending on their personal psychology and what type of business they want. However, personal satisfaction is often more important to them than growing a major company or brand. You need to sort out the psychology first and stick to it.

A well-known acronym for these five types of startup entrepreneur is SMILE.

S is for System. They are usually happy to buy into a proven idea, such as a successful franchise where everything is provided and the franchisor takes care of advertising and much else as well.

M stands for Money. If cash in the bank is your only goal — and why not — then you should know that this is the measure of your success and avoid all distractions and constantly bear down on costs.

I is for Innovator. New ideas and developments are your prime concern. Make sure you are equipped with the technical skills for the task, or be prepared to hire them.

L is for Lifestyle. Such would-be entrepreneurs often want to exploit their hobby. This can be very successful, but make sure there is a demand for your product.

E is for Empire builders who want to create a brand and spread it widely around.

Bear in mind that you might fall between two, or even more, of these categories. That is not a problem provided you create the right mix of ideas.

Would-be small business owners often dream of turning their hobbies into a business but don’t know how to go about it.

If you are a crafter pursuing a craft at home, but want to make the enterprise more professional, help is at hand.

Now there’s a new four-weekly British-based magazine that makes it easy for you. Craftseller is for everyone who wants to create and sell.

“Make money from your crafting today with this brand new magazine featuring quick projects and how to sell them. Now’s your chance to: try new crafts – knitting, cross stitch, papercraft, sewing and more, learn how to turn your hobby into a business, discover how to sell online and find out how to donate your makes to a good cause. Discover the latest best buys, useful apps and top websites with ask the experts features and reader stories.”

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