Franchising Classroom Lesson 2: Determine your interests and goals.
 
Before you set out to start your own business and enter franchising, you need to identify your desires and goals. After taking our Franchise Quiz, you should have a better sense of how well-suited you are to own a franchise. But there's more you need to consider. What sort of fields do you have experience in? Or, do you want to try something new? Do you want to start your own business to simply (in effect) buy yourself a job? Do you want to own a franchise or an entire business franchise territory? Are you interested in franchising for the long or the short term? And, importantly, how much risk are you willing to take?
 
The emotion factor. No matter what logic dictates, there will always be someone who says: "Risk, schmisk. I want to get into pizza franchising because I've always wanted to spin that dough in the air." The emotional attraction of a particular business franchise often can be strong.
 
However, there is a danger of falling in love with your product: You love this pizza, but will everyone else? Don't fall into the trap of romanticizing the business franchise opportunity beyond its actual proportions. Remember, it's a business transaction. Your goal is to start your own business by buying a franchise, not a pizza or a T-shirt or a service you liked. Is the market growing or shrinking? It's ok to let your emotions come into play--but be aware that you're doing it and don't let your ultimate franchising decision be purely emotional.
 
Spotting a growth industry. It's also important to assess a franchising industry. So how can you tell which business franchise category is going to experience the greatest growth in the coming years? How do you track the trends that can lead (ultimately) to franchising success? There are two relatively easy: magazines and newspapers.
 
Magazines are often ahead of their time. So if you see two or three new magazines coming out that are devoted, for example, to at-home microfarming, you know that there is some sort of growing buzz for at-home microfarming.
 
Where do magazine entrepreneurs get their leading indicators? Oftentimes, through newsletters. If magazines can be up to four years ahead, newsletters can be another four years ahead of that! But with that sort of lead time, many newsletter ideas fail before they are able to come to fruition. Basically, they can be farther ahead, but the margin for error also increases.
 
Government statistics, industry projections, and even general newspaper and magazine articles are all good sources of research.