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Include Your Labor Value in Your Plan

Investors love it when entrepreneurs draw little or no money from their startups. It extends the cash available for research and other necessary fixed costs and gives the fragile, young company more “runway” to get to breakeven.

How to Get Startup Ideas by Interviewing Customers

The first step in building a product people love is to identify a problem that some group of people have. Solutions to clearly defined customer pain points make for the most compelling value propositions. You don’t need to start with a “startup idea.”

Tell a Story to Build Your Brand

Gone are the days when brands could just broadcast their message and reach their audience. They now need a good story to break through the noise.

Does a Low-Cost Franchise Mean a Low Return?

With a low cost franchise, you will typically be looking at the opposite end of cost factors than the higher-priced category. Items such as less employees, less physical space needed (sometimes none at all!) and less overhead to get started are all valued features of lower-cost franchises.

How to Make Sure Your Work Aligns with Your Values

A mentor once told me that the only way you truly know what your values are are when they are violated. When you betray your values, you feel awkward, uneasy, and even sick.

Building a Fan Base for Your Franchise Business

During your franchise search, you’ve probably seen photos of long lines at grand openings and stories of people driving from far away when a new franchise location opened just to get a taste of their products.

Accurate Assumptions Lead to Defendable Plans

The biggest error in planning may not be spreadsheet calculation error. Or cost estimation. It is most often missed assumptions about the market, the competition, the speed of adoption, or other critical metrics you’ve researched, or selected, or even just guessed at to create your plan.

Entrepreneurial Lessons from Detroit

Guaranteed lifelong employment and the comfortable pensions enjoyed by our parents and grandparents are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The once-risky path of entrepreneurship seems increasingly less fraught with peril when compared with the ever-present prospect of layoffs faced by regular employees.

Realistic Options for Financing Your Startup

One of the first challenges new entrepreneurs face is finding a way to finance their businesses. You have a great business idea but little money to implement it; and, like every entrepreneur before you, you try to scrounge enough money to launch your startup—your dream.

Networking for Your Franchise Business

Networking can really help grow your business—including a franchise business. The name recognition your franchise already has can help you gain attention and clout more easily in organizations like the Chamber of Commerce or the Rotary Club, so it makes sense to take advantage of opportunities to speak or to head up committees in these groups.

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