Good golly, there were a lot of attractive opportunities (see yesterday’s “Franchise Me”). But because of who I am, I have to go with:

Ta da. Senior Magazine.

Is that what you guessed? Franchises are available right in my own back yard, and magazines are what I know. It’s in my existing set of core competencies. Negotiations have begun.

I don’t know for sure that this will happen. The devil, they say, is in the details. Getting financing will be, of course, the greatest hurdle. But if I can make it work, I will.

Nor am I saying that the other four options are off the table. They’re not mutually exclusive. The magazine gig apparently doesn’t approach fulltime status until you’re in five or six markets. You’re mainly selling advertising and soliciting some editorial content for an existing publication. So, it may be feasible to do one or two of these other ventures at the same time.

Stay tuned. While I might prefer to keep my own business to myself, the main reason I even got involved in the first place was for the educational value: For you.

Neurogenesis

Have you always believed (like me) that the human brain is endowed with only a set number of neurons (brain cells) from birth–and it’s all downhill from there? Hence the jokes about lowering our IQ every time we take a drink. (Which might be true, but not for that reason.)

The good news is that’s apparently not true. It seems that the inability to regenerate brain cells (neurogenesis) was more a function of the test animals themselves–caged primates. More recent research reportedly shows that uncaged primates do have the ability to regenerate brain cells.

The application for primates of the homo sapiens persuasi0n? Work cubicles = brain death. Or as Pamela Slim says, “(H)umans may not be meant to work in large groups. … You may not be cut out for corporate life, and didn’t realize it.”

Boy, do I, for one, relate to that. In days to come we’ll be exploring a few other thoughts from Pamela’s groundbreaking book, Escape from Cublicle Nation.

The envelope, please.

Following are the five business franchises that Stefan Silverman (see yesterday’s post “Start Your Own Business 101″) picked for me on the basis of my profile toward the poor man’s end of the food chain (under $100,000 investment):

1. Mark 5 Inc. — A costume jewelry distributorship via racks in retail stores. A $12,950 investment buys placement in 30 retail outlets for 2,100 pairs of earrings (retailing around $10-15 apiece) on c0nsignment basis. Really a part-time business that’s as close to risk-free as it gets. Technically a “business opportunity” rather than an actual franchise.
2. Discount Sport Nutrition — All of those vitanutrients and diet supplements for workout enthusiasts, like a discount GNC. Initial franchising fee of $25,000 plus inventory investment of between $40,000 to $70,000.
3. The Alternative Board — Executive roundtable coaching for local business owners and entrepreneurs. Investment can range from $17k to $52k depending on size.
4. Senior Magazine — Growing new publication for 50-plusers. Lucrative advertising arrangements primarily with health care providers. Investment of $40,000 to $50,o00 (including $30,000 initial franchise fee) per metro area.
5. Aussie Pet Mobile — Top-rated franchise opportunity by Entrepreneur magazine. Vans with licensed groomers provide curbside grooming service. Slightly more expensive, but your pet doesn’t have to cool his heels in a cage. Very popular & very trendy. Investment ranges from $65,000 to $90,o00 because of equipment.

No, you don’t have to put down cash on the barrelhead. Start-up business loans are available, partly underwritten by the Small Business Administration. So, lenders are m0re amenable to these proposals.

Now, these particular opportunities are just me. Your profile probably would suggest completely different options. The point is I never would have come up with even one of these on my own. But I am actively pursuing one of them.

Can you guess which one? Oh, come on. Try. If you know anything about me, you can figure it out.

There are many other franchise consultants out there. But for further info, I highly recommend contacting Stefan Silverman:

Cell: 651.263.6996 | www.thisismydreamjob.com
Office: 952-303-3820
“Helping You Find Your Dream Business”

Yesterday we noted that there are three primary ways to become self-employed: (1) Start your own business (2) buy an existing business (3) get a franchise. Today we’re going to focus on No. 3.

Trick question: You’ve probably heard the shock statistic about 80 percent of start-up businesses failing in the first five years. Now, on the other hand, what business model produces at a 94 percent success rate?

Trick answer: The franchise. That’s according to my friend, Stefan Silverman, a.k.a. “Franchise Jones.” Stefan says this success rate makes a properly selected franchise “a truly low-risk investment as well as a career that won’t disappear. Industry experience isn’t an issue because most franchisors prefer owners with no prior experience so they can teach them their methods.”

I’ve had my entrepreneurial eyes opened, thanks to Stefan. Franchising removes the guesswork to where it becomes more like falling off the proverbial log. Stefan, wh0 has owned seven different businesses, now works as a “franchise consultant” for Thisismydreamjob.com.

It’s a great business model: For those of us using his expertise, it’s free. But when someone buys, he gets a commission from the franchisor. That works for me.

I asked him to put me through the paces, just like a real client, so I could tell others how it works. I wasn’t really going to buy anything, of course.

So, Stefan has me fill out a confidential financial questionnaire that basically establishes my net worth, among other things. (If it’s less than about $300,000, that might be a problem.) Then there’s an hour follow-up on the phone, where he asks lots of questions about my professional experiences and personal preferences to get a feel for my business “fit.”

About a week later, Stefan comes back with five business recommendations for me to consider. That was the real game changer. From the little I knew about franchising, I really didn’t believe there’d be anything there for the likes of me–a freelance writer/editor who’s always admired entrepreneurs from a distance, even written extensively about them. But never did I really believe I could be one of them.

Guess what? All five of them turned out to be winners–things I could definitely believe in doing.

Clarification: Normally, Stefan would be recommending just tw0 or three business opportunities for a real client. In my case, he doubled it for the educational value. Nor is the p0int here to promote the business of Stefan Silverman or Thisismydreamjob.com.

But I will say this: As much or more than the picks themselves, I appreciated Stefan’s warmth, personableness, professionalism and sensitivity. He made it a real growth experience. You can check out his blog at http://franchisejones.blogspot.com/.

Tomorrow: The five picks. Which one will it be?

Considering the opportunities, being out of a job in 2010 just might be the most enviable place to be…

A personal note

For me, the beginning of 2010 is looking so much more positive than this time a year ago. Today I counted up six promising opportunities I have now, any one of which could potentially replace the income I lost 13 months ago when I lost my job. That includes my new book–”Back to Work!”–which certainly is the right idea at the right time–plus five other new business opportunities I’m working on. So, the odds are definitely in my favor.

Did you get a chance to visit Back to Work’s new LinkedIn networking/discussion group yet? If not, please do. (You’ll find it under Groups by the name of “Reinvent Your Work”–http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2618519&trk=hb_side_g). We’re at 26 members in the first week, most of whom are contacts from my personal network who are still gainfully employed in traditional jobs. So, the burden of this discussion is really on the rest of you, who are blazing trails outside the formal boundaries of the brick-and-mortar employment model. We need your input.

I’m also excited by some new material I’ve come across recently that I didn’t know existed. There’s a wonderful new book, for example, by Pamela Slim called “Escape from Cubicle Nation” that I’m halfway through and I’ll be discussing here. I’ve also been finding some great resources for starting your own business that I’m dying to share.

Speaking of business opportunities

A couple of weeks ago we featured the resource-rich–and free!–eBook by Jill Konrath, Get Back to Work Faster. See http://www.getbacktoworkfaster.com/. This thing is resources within resources that I’m still discovering. On page 172 is a link for another eBook by Amy Janecek called “Is Business Ownership Right for You in Today’s Economy?”

There are three primary ways to become self-employed: (1) Start your own business, including the various permutations of being an independent contractor/freelancer (2) Buy an existing business (3) Franchising. Janecek’s short book focuses on No. 3, including a particuarly valuable section, “Seven Myths of Franchising.”

I’m drawn to things I don’t know enough about, and I found this helpful. Take, for example, Myth No. 3: “There is no way for me to get financing, especially in today’s economy.” Not quite. There are nine ways: (1) Small Business Administration (SBA) loans (2) home equity loans (3) other lines of credit (4) 401K financing (5) family and friends (6) venture capitalists (7) investors (8) franchisor financing (9) leasing.

That should set some wheels turning. It did for me. In fact, the research I’ve been doing on the subject for this forum has set me on a new personal adventure. I’ll be sharing about some of that, too, in days ahead as events unfold. Stay tuned.

Get free. Or, if you’ve lost your job in this Great Recession, celebrate your freedom by recovering your humanity and self-reliance. Become independent.

“What? Are you crazy? My layoff is a personal tragedy,” you say. “My career’s in flames! Whatever am I going to do?”

Get over it, that’s what. This could be the best thing that ever happened to you. Maybe not right now, but eventually.

Break your addiction to the office/factory-model job that’s bred in way too many of us a dependency and even a helplessness. Find a way to transfer your skills into something that will allow you to make a living without having to raise your hand to go to the bathroom.

Really. Think about it. Do you sense that something of your humanity has been taken from you in your workplace? I submit that there’s something very wrong about a lifestyle in which we sell ourselves to a corporate john who can chain us to a desk or an assembly line for eight hours a day with total control over our minds, our bodies and our whereabouts.

“I can’t talk now,” a woman told me today on her cell phone. “I’m at work.”

By that I apparently was supposed to understand that talking to me could get her fired. I was simply trying to sell automated calling and other services to a political campaign that had listed her number as the contact person. Maybe it was just an excuse to brush off a sales call, but the fear seemed real.

Let me hasten to say I am very much a capitalist, and proud of it. But by the same token, I am dreadfully weary of working for jerks on Maggie’s Farm who think they own me. I’m done with that.

I’m going to the bathroom. Now. And I’m not raising my hand.

A classic behavioral science experiment involves a fish tank with a pike on one side of a Plexiglas barrier and feeder fish on the other. Try as he might, the pike fails time after time to close the deal with his jaws and the feeder fish. A transparent barrier keeps getting in the way. Eventually the pike gives up. After that, it doesn’t matter whether the barrier is in place or not. The pike has learned he can’t eat the fish in this tank, so he no longer tries. The feeder fish swim all around him, but he knows he can’t eat them, and he doesn’t.

Behaviorists call this phenomenon “acquired helplessness syndrome.” It’s a big deal in Russia and the former Soviet republics, where they’ve been trying to convert to a market economy. But their people are just too risk-averse, having become so dependent for generations on a paternalistic system that promised to meet all their needs.

Google Russian scholar “Igor Kon,” and you’ll get the idea. He talks about homo soveticus (his spelling), but he might as well be talking about homo americanus. In many ways, it’s not that different.

Unfortunately…

A gnawing feeling that you’ve done something wrong is a commonly reported experience of those who have lost their jobs during this Great Recession. We know it’s nothing we did, but it still feels wrong.

I clearly remember my first experience with joblessness 15 years ago: I felt naked, stripped of a garment I was supposed to be wearing. It eventually led me to question the basic rationality of traditional employment.

Having a traditional job, a regular paycheck and fringe benefits can breed a kind of security-mindedness that crushes the spirit and rots the bones when it’s withheld. For generations, Americans have assumed that such security is our birthright, and we do not handle it well when that security is withdrawn.

Bardwick

Judith M. Bardwick, a management consultant and psychologist, says entitlement results when people “don’t have to earn what they get” and soon “take for granted that they receive.” In Danger in the Comfort Zone (Amacom, 1991), she says this danger is greatest when “life is too safe”:

By protecting people from risk, we destroy their self-esteem. We rob them of the opportunity to become strong, competent people. Facing risk is the only way we gain confidence, because confidence is the result of mastering challenge. Confidence is an internal state. It cannot be given; it can only be earned. The only way to get genuinely confident is to be familiar with fear and then conquer it.

Bardwick wrote those words at a time when “re-engineering” the corporation–and flattening the organization’s employee ranks–was still a novel concept. Today it’s the name of the game. Organizations have had to make a lot of radical changes to survive–change product lines, re-brand their very identity and, yes, put quite a few people on the street.

Individuals today have to do much the same thing in terms of reinventing their careers. The old ways will no longer do. For many of us, making a living will no longer equate to “permanent” employment in a fulltime job.

That might be self-employment as a professional independent contractor or entrepreneuring a business from scratch. It might be a succession of temporary positions or what’s sometimes called the “composite career,” like my relative by marriage who delivers newspapers, sells Melaleuca, does home improvements and works weekends as a part-time associate pastor. It’s a living.

These days there’s not a lot you can really call “permanent,” anyway, is there? Unfortunately, we don’t get to choose the reality we have to deal with. We just have to deal.

Can’t find a job? Invent one. It’s what I call Working Outside the Box.

And it’s what Jill Konrath has done. (See last two days’ posts.) Go to her Web site http://www.getbacktoworkfaster.com/and hear her story of talking an employer into hiring her for a position that didn’t actually exist and for which no funds had been budgeted. She simply sold them on the value that she could bring to them in the sales area:

I think the current job-hunting system is hopelessly outdated, terribly degrading and fatally flawed. The truth is, companies create new positions all the time. Why? Because they face new challenges, because they set new goals, or even because they need someone who they think can make a big difference. Did you hear what I said? They create jobs, and sometimes they create projects before they create jobs.

That’s where we come in–creative freelancers who sell our services for projects that in many cases could turn into fulltime jobs.

What to look for? “Triggering events.” Jill’s definition:

A triggering event is a change within a company or external to it, that impacts an organization’s priorities. They can create urgent and compelling needs, ones that were nonexistent prior to the event.

That’s from her e-book, “Get Back to Work Faster” (which is available free on her Web site). She uses the example of a wholly owned subsidiary that has just been spun off and the CEO is now under tremendous pressure to show strong sales and profitabililty.

How often does that kind of thing happen? Probably a lot more than you think. In fact, just this week AOL was spun off from Time Warner and is in the throes of reinventing itself for the future. According to one account:

Since the summer, Aol has beefed up considerably its staff of “content creators,” like writers and journalists, so that it now has about 3,500 of them, he said, adding that more than 80 percent of the content on Aol sites is now original. ['Aol Becomes Independent, Counts on Content for Success,' http://www.pcworld.com/article/184203/aol_becomes_independent_counts_on_content_for_success.html]

Think there might be opportunities at AOL right now for people with Jill Konrath’s attitude? You bet. And that’s just one example right under our noses.

Need a job? Be daring and creative. Go make one.

Yes, “Back to Work!” advocates self-employment as one answer to the unemployment crisis today. But let’s face it: It ain’t that easy. If anybody could do it, most of us would. (Think here of your last Boss from Hell.)

There’s definitely something to be said for the security of a regular situation–especially the regular paycheck part. My late father, an electrical contractor, once said, “Son, you never get rich working for someone else.” But at least you don’t starve, either. It’s a known quantity.

In self-employment, both the upside and the downside are delimited. You can go broke as easily as you can get rich. Or at least fail to become profitable in a reasonable time frame. Think of the mortality rate for small-business start-ups, and you’ll see the kind of odds you’re up against.

Oftentimes it’s best to think of self-employment as a stepping stone in the stream, a temporary stop en route to the other side. That’s another reason I like Jill Konrath’s approach in “Get Back to Work Faster,” a free e-book available at www.getbacktoworkfaster.com. She suggests practical ways to do that.

Besides keeping your financial head above water, being an independent contractor can give you a significant leg up over other job applicants because you’re seen as someone who’s already making a living in this vocational field, not just another wannabe. (While it’s also generally understood that most freelancers don’t exactly have it made in the shade–and certainly no shame there.)

Here’s Jill’s prescription for breaking free from the traditional job-hunting strategies and exploiting your natural advantage:

● Clarify your value proposition [see yesterday's post here]
● Identify companies you’d like to work for based on criteria you established
● Determine potential needs based on your expertise
● Craft proactive campaigns to connect and meet with decision-makers [LinkedIn can be invaluable here]
● Direct to your professional website, which highlights your expertise and approach to business problems
● Share ideas on how you can help; have business-focused conversations where you’re seen as an intelligent person, not a desperate job seeker.
● Continue to keep in touch; share more ideas that can help your targeted contact with key business objectives
● Get invited in to work on a special “project” or to talk about newly emerged opportunity
● Job offer extended to you with no competition

Honestly, my first reaction to this? Come on, get real. Are employers really going to invite you in to “share ideas”? Then I remembered just how much my own freelance work had made the difference in landing my last two jobs. I’ve never actually gone to work for an employer for whom I’ve done freelance work, but others have.

The worst that can happen from employing this strategy? They don’t hire you. You “only” get more freelance work from the organization. Well, I could live with that. Couldn’t you?

Almost 15 years ago, Mel (Melinda) Marsha faced a monumental decision. She was director of the office of technology planning for NCR in Dayton, Ohio, where she had worked for 15 years.

But in the summer of 1995, the technology giant was planning major layoffs. Mel thought if the severance was big enough, this might be her ticket to getting out of the corporate rat race and starting her own business. It was, and she did.

“It is not often that you can get someone to essentially finance the first couple months of your start-up,” she said at the time. Mel was one of the handful of personal stories I used in my original 1996 unemployment book, then called Reinventing Your Career.

Fast forward to 2009. I tracked Mel down several months ago to see how her dream had fared in the intervening years. It turns out that Acorn Consulting (no relation to the community organizing racketeers) is alive and doing quite well in Springfield, Ohio, my old hometown.

The Change Game

There turned out not to be enough room in the new “Back to Work!” book to include all these updates, so I share it here. Her business has prospered and grown. Acorn Consulting specializes in helping companies improve organizational effectiveness, specifically through strategic planning.

See Acorn Consulting’s site at http://www.acorn-consulting.com/.

When the local paper did a feature story on her, Mel thought ahead about lessons learned and distilled her advice into talking points she calls “The Change Game”:

1.    Wake up. Realize that change is happening and you have to do something about it.
2.    Take stock of yourself, your own strengths, your own interests, your wishes and dreams.
3.    State goals very specifically. This is what will be different a year from now, a month from now, six months from now.
4.    Decide what is your first step.
5.    Take that step.
6.    Take stock. Assess what you’ve done. Assess where you still need to go and then go back and take your next step.

Mel took a big risk, and it paid off. She said, “Where people fall apart in that is making the decision to do something that will cause the change. People are really good at wishing and talking about it and saying, ‘I’ve always want to,’ but they very rarely will say, ‘What will I do to move me toward that path?’”

To read the entire Q&A interview with Mel Marsh:

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