The Advantages of Business Franchising For Franchisees

A business may choose to franchise for a number of reasons. They may be looking to catalyse growth, strengthen their balance sheet or leverage their brand to its full potential. While there are many advantages for the franchiser in entering into a franchising agreement, we take a look at why franchisees should consider franchising.

What Is Franchising?

When a company (the franchiser) licenses their brand and their expertise to an individual or company (the franchisee), this will often fit under the definition of a franchising agreement. One of the most famous examples of franchising is McDonalds. Rather than owning all of their restaurants around the world, McDonalds sells licenses to operate restaurants to franchisees. Franchisees pay an initial fee for getting things started, and they pay an on-going management fee too. McDonalds supplies all of the food; they spend money on marketing the brand; they spend money on developing recipes; and they help franchisees with management, accounting and human resources. Some research suggests that a franchisee will hit the ground running and experience far faster penetration, and a much higher success rate, because they can leverage an existing system that is proven to work – and also because consumers already recognise the brand that they are associated with.

Proven Business Model

Many founders think they have came up with a great business idea, but when they test it in the market the results are less than stellar. With franchising that risk is close to zero. When you buy a franchise you already know the business idea works, the brand works, and that there’s demand for the product. This is one reason why a franchisee may prefer opting for the franchise route rather than starting a business from scratch.

Marketing & Advertising

As a small business owner you would not have the luxury of being able to spend money on national advertising campaigns. But, when you’re a franchisee, you can benefit from them. A franchiser will usually pay a management fee – calculated as a percentage of revenue – which will go towards spending on central costs. The franchiser will then spend money on marketing if this is contained within the language of your agreement with them. From a marketer’s perspective, this is also much easier. When a franchiser is potentially representing hundreds of franchisees spread all over the country, they do not need to worry as much about geo-targeting – this will make advertising cheaper too.

Buy In Bulk

As a franchisee, you will usually have a powerful organisation behind you. Some franchisers represent hundreds, even thousands, of franchisees. Therefore when they are looking to buy anything – from advertising inventory to stationary—they will be able to negotiate good prices because they are buying in bulk on your behalf. You’ll then be able to take advantage of the savings that are offered. Having a powerful brand behind you also means that you will be asked to participate in promotions with other leading brands that you would not have the leverage to negotiate on your own.

CityLocal.co.uk offers franchise opportunities to motivated internet entrepreneurs. CityLocal is the UK’s most trusted business directory. www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie.

Starting An Internet Business: Understanding Common Legal Questions

Starting an internet business is much easier now than it was ten years ago. Now it is possible to use open source software, outsource software development overseas, have your website hosted in the cloud, and register a domain for $10. However, there is also more to consider when you’re starting an internet business. Here are answers to many of the most frequently asked legal questions by entrepreneurs getting started online.

Does My Designer Or Agency Own My Website?

When you pay to have your website designed you should double-check with your agency whether or not you will own copyright to the work. This should be outlined in your contract. If you do not discuss this with your designer they are unlikely to claim that they own copyright at a later stage, but they would certainly be entitled to. In the UK the creator of the copyright will own all of the work unless it was completed as a result of a work-for-hire agreement, or you have a contract with the designer that says otherwise. The same also applies if you use the services of a software developer, a writer, or even, potentially, a translator.

In this instance where you may have a dispute with your designer, it’s best that they don’t have the ability to take down your website. That’s why you should control access to where the domain name points and you should also make sure they are not given unregulated access to the server once things are up and running. Try not to become too reliant on one supplier – it’s an easy mistake to make. You are probably best to use a separate provider for domain names, hosting and web design.

What Legal Entity Is Best For Me?

When you’re starting an internet business you’ll be able to decide between starting a limited company and starting out as a sole trader. If you are going into business with a partner, you will have to become a partnership rather than a sole trader. As a partnership or a sole trader you will not have to submit paperwork to Companies House, however you will have full liability for anything that goes on with the business. As a limited company you will have more reporting requirements; however you will not be liable should your business get into debt. In the long run, should your internet business be successful, you will most likely have to incorporate your business and become a limited company.

How Do I Make UK Law Apply In All Of My Contracts?

It is most likely the case that you would like UK law to apply to all transactions, and for any court proceedings to take place in the UK. That’s why you have customers accept terms and conditions, and you should also have terms of use and a privacy policy which say the same thing. It’s important to mention that UK law will be used, and that any legal proceedings will take place in the English courts. It’s possible for UK law to be judged in an international court, or for an international law to be judged in the UK. This is particularly relevant for an internet business.

CityLocal has franchisee opportunities available for entrepreneurs looking to invest in the rapidly growing online advertising industry. CityLocal is a local directory. www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie.

Starting A Small Business On A Tiny Budget

Starting a small business is not as hard as it used to be. There is no need for lawyers, accountants, or a four figure budget. While it may be simple to start a small business, it’s only easy when you know how. In this article we explore how to get started with your very own small business.

Sole Trader Or Limited Company?

When you start a small business you will generally be looking to start off as a sole trader, a limited company or a partnership. Started as a sole trader or a partnership has no costs. If you are starting as a partnership you may choose to write a partnership agreement which will govern the relationship between the partners. If both partners will be equal in all ways – in terms of equity, employment and investment – this is probably not necessary.

Starting as a limited company will cost more than the other options to get started. However, there are advantages to this that will outweigh the costs for most entrepreneurs with a serious vision for their company. As a limited company, you will not be held personally liable should your business be taken to court. If you go out of business, you will not have to pay any debts that your small business owes. As a limited company you will also appear more professional.

DIY Accounting

In the future, when revenue comes in, or you raise a round of financing, you will be able to do your accounts on your own. For now, however, you should be able to do them yourself. When your revenue reaches a certain figure, and if you own a limited company, you may have to use the services of an auditor when it comes to your end-of-year accounts. This does not apply for a small business.

You may wish to use an accounting software package. Sage creates products that are relatively cheap, and simple to use for someone who has not been trained in accounting and bookkeeping. You could also choose to keep your accounts in a spreadsheet software package or even on paper. This approach will be cheaper, but the data will have to exported to a software package at a later stage should your business succeed.

Website Design, Logo & Stationary

When it comes to getting your company stationary and website designed, you will be able to save lots of money through outsourcing this work to a company based overseas. While you may have to pay £20-£100 an hour for graphic design services in the UK, you will be able to get work done in countries in the developing world for a fraction of that price.

Although it may be tempting to use the services of your local printing supplier, or even to power-up Microsoft Paint and give it a go yourself, it is highly advised that you avoid this. Consumers can usually tell the difference between a company that is professional, and a company that cuts corners. When you go for the DIY option, you clearly fit into the later category.

CityLocal’s small business directory is the UK’s favourite way to find information about local businesses online. CityLocal has a franchising opportunity available for motivated entrepreneurs. www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie.

Six Business Presentation Tips That Your Customers Will Love

In business, like in life, presentation is important. Your customers’ perception of your sales staff, your back-office staff, and your brand help to mould how they perceive your business and their likelihood of doing business with you. Here are ten tips that you can follow which will entice your customers to sign on the dotted line.

Look Smart: As the saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover. Unfortunately, people do and you can use this to your advantage. Make sure you’re looking well groomed for the occasion. The consequences are far less severe if you overdress, rather than under-dress, so keep this in mind when deciding on suitable attire.

Don’t Read From A PowerPoint Presentation: Slides are meant to enhance your presentation; not to be your presentation. Try to use PowerPoint presentations to show graphs, images and figures that are harder to understand when spoken. You should also try to make slides easy to digest; this means the customer will be focused on you more, and your slides less.

Practise Makes Perfect: Try to practise doing your presentation as much as possible. Try to focus less on the exact wording used, and more on the overall message. Ask a friend or co-worker to listen in and here what they have to say. While you may not have to follow their feedback word-for-word, it is hard to judge your own presentation when you’re the one presenting. It’s even better if you present to someone within your business who you don’t know as well.

Don’t Burry Your Head In Your Notes: It’s easy to bury your head in your notes when doing a business presentation. Try not to. One of the best ways to avoid this is to ensure that you don’t prepare what you’ll say word-for-word. Only work on an overall message. Or, if you must read from notes, only lower your head at the start of each sentence; read what you have to say; and then lift your head and address your audience. Retro tip: pick something, or someone, at the back of the room to focus on.

Adopt A Conversational Tone: When presenting, it is easy to sound like your doing a book reading. This is particularly the case when you have prepared too much. Try to only prepare by creating a list of bullet points, and this will allow you to make your business presentation sound more conversational. Through making impromptu comments you will be able to address this issue, and allow your prospects to focus on what your business can deliver.

Objection-Handle As You Go: When you are dealing with a small group, address their issues as you go. Make your prospects feel comfortable to ask questions when they come up, and address them before moving onto the next part of your presentation. This may kill the flow, but when the customer wants to interrupt let them. If something is nagging them, and they cannot get it out of their mind, then it will be harder for them to focus on what it is that you want to say.

CityLocal has lucrative franchise opportunities available for entrepreneurs looking to capitalise on the growing online advertising industry. CityLocal is the UK’s number one local directory. www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie.

Business Skills: Entrepreneurialism & The Art Of Delegation

In business, unless you can delegate, you’ll always be swimming against the tide. You can wave goodbye to any opportunity of running a billion dollar company unless you can put your trust in someone else to perform. Entrepreneurialism is as much about management and strategy as it is about execution. As your company grows, you should find yourself spending less time on execution. If you can’t, then maybe you should find someone else to steer the ship. This article explores the art of delegation, and how you can delegate more effectively to improve your business.

Entrepreneurialism at its finest doesn’t revolve around one person doing something on their own; it’s all about one or several entrepreneurs leading a team to succeed. An entrepreneur has to learn to delegate in order to be able to run a team successfully.

Understanding The Skills Of Your Team

A good manager will always be skilled at understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the people that they work with. To be able to delegate effectively, you have to be able to identify the best man or women for a given task. You also have to show that you trust them to deliver.

Encourage entrepreneurialism within your team by rewarding them for their performance. You should try to make a reward as closely tied to the person’s performance as possible. If someone works in the UK office and is responsible for handling complaints, then giving them a bonus that is linked to international P&L is not very aligned with their job. You could consider giving them a bonus linked to the following:

• Churn in the UK business. If the person deals with complaints effectively then they will limit the amount of business that is lost in the UK business, and therefore they will be highly motivated to keep customers on board.

•Customer satisfaction. It would be possible to find out customers’ levels of satisfaction, and link that to the bonus that the executive would get.

•The number of complaints the department manage to handle per member of staff. This would target the executive based on their ability to improve the efficiency of the business in dealing with complaints.

However, if the executive becomes too focused on one target, they may lose sight of other things that are important. If the person is trying too hard to limit churn, they might start offering the customer healthy price discounts that might compress margins in the long run. That’s why part of entrepreneurialism is not just about setting targets, and asking people to work to them. They have to be managed and be accountable for much more than that.

When delegating there has to be a clear chain-of-command, and people have to know that their successes and failures are noted and acted upon. People also like to know how you evaluate whether or not they’ve done a good job or a bad one. The key to delegation is setting other people targets, supporting them, and challenging them to meet or surpass the targets you set.

Citylocal’s franchise opportunity rewards entrepreneurialism. Find out how you can earn money from the UK’s local directory. www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie.

The Insider’s Guide To Business Networking

Business networking should not be underestimated in how important it can be for the success of the business you’re running at the moment, and any business that you would choose to run in the future. Have you ever wondered how much more successful your business would be if you knew someone who was able to put you in touch with a person high up in a company, or someone who knew how to set up a call centre, negotiate on advertising prices or raise a round of funding? For these reasons, and many more, being good at networking is vital.

Attend Industry Conferences & Business Meet-ups

When you get a chance to spend time with other business managers or owners, this is an opportunity not to be missed. You should grasp opportunities like this with open arms, and ensure you get the most out of them.

When you attend industry conferences it can be tempting to hit potential buyers with a sales pitch. This is not the best way to get the most impact from your time there. You should show them how interesting you are, share some of your knowledge, and try to show that you have expertise. It’s highly likely they will ask what you do, so you can tell them without trying to sell to them. At the end of the talk you can swap business cards. That way you will be able to get in touch with them later if need be. If the person asks about your services, and explains they may have a need for them, then it might be worthwhile going for the sale. But, make sure that you manage to build a relationship with them – that’s the key component of networking.

Rekindle Old Flames

When you know someone that’s important, or is likely to be an asset the now, or even in the future, then make sure you stay in touch – or get back in touch. Even if you do not need any favour from them at the moment. That way, when you do need a favour, you will not feel guilty asking.

Consider inviting someone to attend an event that your company is hosting, or asking them out for lunch. The wider your network and the stronger you make your relationship with your network, the better results you’ll see.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business networking website that’s great to be on. Make sure you get your professional network to add you on the website. Try to only build connections with people you meet, or people who you feel know you well enough. The weaker connection points you have with LinkedIn contacts, the less valuable it becomes.

Have Your Cake...

Make sure you don’t just take from your network, and that you give too. If someone asks for an introduction, you should give them it. If someone asks if you would consider using their services, at least consider it. That way, when you ask them for a favour, they will be more likely to oblige. Remember, networking is a two-way street.

CityLocal is the UK’s top business directory. If you’re considering starting your own business, why not get in touch with CityLocal and find out about our franchise opportunity! www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie.

Starting an Internet Business & Getting It Off The Ground

When you’re looking to start an internet business there’s lots to consider. Despite there being lots to consider, it’s also very easy to get started with a relatively low amount of capital. In fact, the barriers to entry are now so low that many investors say that there’s less opportunities for them to invest in. Through a disciplined approach, it’s possible to get an internet business cash-flow positive in a short amount of time, with little capital outlay, and few compromises. Following are the steps you should take to get your internet business off the ground.

Picking A Domain Name & Company Name

Before you pick your company name, it’s best to see if you can find a domain name that’ll work for your internet business. For some domain names, you will not be able to register them for $10. For more popular names, such as creditcards.com, hotels.com, and mortgages.com, you would likely have to pay over $1M. That’s why it’s best if you can think of a name that nobody else has registered before. If you can think of something memorable, quirky, cool, and short you’re onto a winner.

If you do, however, have a reasonable budget you may wish to consider buying a domain name that has already been registered. Usually the most expensive domain names will be generic domain names that are targeted to a product or service – shoes (shoes.com), or golf clubs (golfclubs.com). When you own a domain name like this you will get type-in traffic, and you will also find that your website ranks higher in search engines for your main keyword.

Hosting Your Website

Rather than investing in servers and eating into your budget for capital expenditure, wouldn’t it be much easier if you could host your website in the cloud? Now you can. You can use a hosting provider who will charge you a monthly fee for website hosting, and they will be in charge of making sure your website remains online. Furthermore, they will install software upgrades on the server and perform other administration functions so you don’t have to.

Designing Your Website

Depending on your budget, you may be looking to hire engineers to work in-house. However, if you have smaller budget you may wish to outsource the development of your website to a software development company or design agency. It’s possible to make even further savings on getting your internet business off the ground if you work with an offshore firm. They may be able to provide labour for $5-$20 an hour – this gives you more money to invest in marketing and bringing your business to a cash-flow positive position.

Marketing Your Internet Business Website

There are many ways to market your internet business website, and often the best strategy will depend on the business model that you have, and the market that you are participating in. The internet provides unique opportunities to target consumers by intent and demographics, while PR can often be the best way to reach the masses.

CityLocal’s local directories have all the information you need to find businesses in the UK. There are also franchise opportunities available for work-at-home entrepreneurs. www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie.

Understanding Business Franchising: An Insider’s Guide

Franchising is a business term that is often used more loosely than was originally intended. Business media may refer to franchising and mean licensing, distribution and agency relationships. However, when using the term franchising, there is usually an understanding that the person is referring to business format franchising. In this article we look at business format franchising, here in referred to as franchising, and how this benefits the franchisor and the franchisee.

A franchisor will grant a license to a franchisee to use their trading name, leverage their brand, and sell their products. The franchisee will usually pay a one-off fee for this right, and an on-going management cost which is often linked to revenue.

From the franchisee’s perspective, they will be able to gain the following benefits from entering into a business franchising agreement:

• They will be able to leverage a business idea that has already been proven to work. This means that you will be able to save money when it comes to product testing, and market research.

• Larger franchisors will usually be able to invest in national advertising, and have an established brand already. That is why many franchisees are able to report strong sales within a short period of setting up their business, where as their competitors may have to develop brand recognition before seeing similar results.

• Franchisors will often offer training in all areas of business. This will not only provide a franchisee with an improved skill set, but it should also provide them with an opportunity to see tangible results for their business.

From the franchisor’s perspective, they will be able to gain the following advantages from entering into a business franchising agreement:

• They will be able to save money in growing their business. Rather than diluting equity, or gearing the business to a greater extent, it’s possible to use franchisees to fund business development.

•Franchisees will have far more interest in running the business effectively, than other managers, because they have an equity position in the franchise. This means they are often willing to work longer hours, be far more prudent with expenses and wages, and also deliver improved revenue – which will usually lead to more management fees for the franchisor.

• With a franchising agreement, the franchisor has far less risk than if their company owned all of the assets that they sell to their franchisees. This is because they take a percentage of revenue from their franchisees. It’s therefore not possible for the franchisor to lose money directly from a franchisee. They can only earn less money from them than they were expecting. Furthermore, this means that franchisors can afford to ignore the profit margins of their franchisees and focus more on improving revenue – although many would argue this is not a good long-term strategy. It also means franchisors do not have to worry about cannibalisation. That is why franchisees will often request that they are given an exclusive licence within a certain area.

CityLocal’s a UK business directory which is able to offer franchisees an opportunity to leverage their brand and enter into the rapidly expanding online advertising marketplace. www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie

Lessons Your Small Business Can Learn From Big Business

As a small business, you have many advantages and disadvantages over a larger business. As a small business owner, you have the ability to go after smaller opportunities, be more prudent with expenses, and offer customers improved flexibility. While you may be taking advantage of the benefits of being a smaller business, you may not be looking at bigger businesses for ideas on how you can run your business more efficiently and catalyse your businesses growth.

Hedge Your Bets

Larger businesses will sometimes utilise hedging strategies to address over-exposure to a certain economy, asset-class, or commodity. To give an example, as an airline your business may be particularly vulnerable if oil prices rise. Therefore a larger business would consider going long on oil, perhaps through a leveraged account, so if oil prices rise they will earn money from their position and earn less money from tougher trading conditions. If oil prices fall, they will lose money through their position and earn more money from trading. An airline’s focus should not be on how they expect oil prices to move; it should be about focusing on their core competencies.

Hedging can be used in your small business too. Particularly exposed to a certain economy? Consider buying and selling certain currencies. It’s also not necessary to have large cash reserves to enter positions in currencies. You could use a leveraged account, and enter a $200,000 position for $1,000. If you reach the stage where you get hit with a margin call, your business should be thriving from its improved trading conditions.

Invest In Your Brand

Small businesses very rarely spend money on their brand. Most small business owners believe advertising and marketing serves one purpose: to drive action there and then. Larger businesses have patience and are willing to invest in winning business on longer sales cycles.

When Nike spends $150,000 on a TV advertising campaign, they don’t see an immediate lift in sales. They expect that those who view the advert will engage with their brand at a later stage, and when it comes time to buy a pair of trainers they will be at the front of consumers’ minds.

Consider how your brand is perceived. Consider how your company is positioned within your industry, and consider public relations too. What unique qualities do you want to portray in your business, and how do you intend to get the message across?

Say Goodbye To DIY

Smaller businesses are always focused on how they can do things cheaper. Bigger businesses are too, but only when there isn’t an obvious sacrifice involved. Many small business owners have their hands in too many pies; they will do their own accounts, create their own website, write their own terms and conditions, and create their own logo. For those that are bootstrapping their business, this may be the only way to get things done. But you should recognise that in most cases you are making a sacrifice; use an expert, and make sure you do your due diligence to ensure the expert is qualified.

CityLocal, the UK’s fastest growing local directory, provides a franchising opportunity for smart entrepreneurs that know the time is right to get involved in online advertising. www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie

Business Negotiation: Achieving Your Goals Through Successful Negotiating

When achieving your business goals, being skilled in negotiation can work strongly in your favour. Whether you would like to win a new contract to drive revenue for your business; work with a supplier to reduce your costs and increase your margins; or work with a problem customer to overcome potential legal ramifications; you can be sure that being a dextrous negotiator will work strongly to your advantage.

Define Your Goals

When you are entering negotiation on behalf of your business, make sure you understand the goals that you would like to achieve, and also how important each individual goal is. When you understand this, it’s far easier to be able to make concessions in other areas should the need arise. You should ensure that all key decision makers agree with the material points that you would like to achieve.

Think About Their Goals

Start to think about what the other party would like to achieve, and what their core focus is. When you understand this, you will be in a far better position to make offers that they will seriously consider. Far too often in negotiation, negotiators are far too focused on their business goals to consider how they could offer advantages to the party that they are negotiating with.

During this stage of the process, thinking outside of the box can work extremely well in your favour. To give an example of out-of-the-box thinking, let’s imagine that a marketing business is negotiating with another business over how much they are willing to pay for the provision of IT services. The companies can not agree on a price, and they are stuck in deadlock. The IT services firm is about to lose a large contract. What if the IT services company decided to start using the marketing business as their agency instead of their current one? The marketing agency will pick up a new customer, and the IT services firm will not lose anything – they will be paying the same price for their services, but the money will go to their new client, rather than to their existing agency.

Thinking About Plan B

When either party makes it clear that they have to succeed with negotiation, and the other party doesn’t, then one has a clear advantage. You should never appear to be too desperate to get things done, or this may make the other party feel they have a strong advantage.

If you feel the other party needs things just as much as you, or more, then you may wish to use the tactic of explaining what will happen when negotiations do not go ahead successfully. Different negotiators will use different approaches during this stage in the negotiation. Some people will try to be threatening, and may mention legal ramifications (if applicable) or the detrimental affect this will have on the other parties business if things don’t go through; others will try to coyly suggest that they may have to walk away. Whatever approach you decide to take during the negotiation process, make sure you always have a plan b.

CityLocal’s local directory is the UK’s best solution for small business advertisers. A franchise opportunity is also available for motivated entrepreneurs. www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie.

Advertising Your Internet Business With An ROI-Driven Manta

Business owners are consistently finding that internet marketing can be a highly effective marketing channel. Not only is it easy to track how effective your marketing is, but you can also use that data to consistently streamline and improve how you invest in marketing your business. In an internet marketing environment, it’s also much easier to target consumers; you can do so by intent, demographics and context.

Measuring Returns

In order to ensure you achieve a strong ROI for your business, it’s necessary to ensure you’re measuring everything – and also testing everything too. Thanks to website analytics software, it is possible to measure which sources send traffic that converts into sales or the action you are looking for the consumer to take. You can also use website analytics software to test two alternatives to the one webpage – you can then know for sure what factors are improving and what factors are reducing conversion rates.

You may be asking: isn’t it expensive? The answer is a firm no. You can use Google’s free analytics software and get things started for free. Many large companies rely on Google analytics; however others choose to invest in more expensive solutions. It’s up to you to decide for yourself. But, either way, getting analytics software installed is vital for your internet business.

Targeting Consumer Intent

The best way to target consumer intent is through search marketing. You can do this through either paid search advertising (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing) or through using the services of an SEO to improve your websites rankings in the natural search results.

So, how do you use search marketing to target consumer intent? If you sell shoes for example, then you can be relatively confident that of the thousands of people that type ‘shoes’ into a search engine each day, some of them would like to buy shoes. You can show up in this search result, and target the intent of the consumer. A shoe retailing internet business, for example, would most likely appear for hundreds, or thousands of keyword phrases -- black shoes, white shoes, ladies shoes, trainers, slippers, golf shoes, boots and many more.

Targeting a Demographic Profile

If your product is popular among, or targeted towards, a certain demographic, then you will be able to use internet marketing to target suitable consumers in a way you could never do in an offline environment. You can contact publishers, explain the demographic profile of your customer, and find out if they have enough inventory available at a reasonable price. Because they will know information about their visitors, and will be able to identify them by their IP address, log-in details, and other tracking methods, you’ll only pay for impressions that matter to your internet business.

Contextual Targeting

As a wedding planner, a wedding magazine would appear to be a great place to advertise your business offline. Internet advertising allows you to target consumers based on the context of the website or webpage that they are visiting. As a builder, wouldn’t it be nice to appear on a webpage which has an article about “How To Find A Qualified Builder”? You can buy adverts that only show up on pages related to your products and services.

CityLocal’s UK business directory has franchising opportunities available for motivated entrepreneurs. www.citylocal.co.uk & www.citylocal.ie.

Starting Your Own Business: 6 Reasons Why You Should Do It

Starting a business isn’t easy, but it can be rewarding. Entrepreneurialism has lots of risks involved, and it also has lots of potential benefits too. Following are six reasons why you should quit your day job, and start your own business.

Earning Potential

When you own your own business you have the ability to earn much more money than you are likely to ever earn in your day-to-day job. You’ll be able to earn money or lose money based on your drive, luck, commitment and ideas. That’s a big part of the benefits of entrepreneurialism.

Be Your Own Boss

Rather than doing what you’re told, wouldn’t it be better to be your own boss? When you own your own business it is likely that you will still have to work hard. But, you will do so under your own rules. You will choose when to go on holiday, when to go home, and when something is likely to be effective for your business. You should remember, however, that entrepreneurialism is as much about self-discipline as it is about freedom.

Hire People You Like

You’ll be able to choose who you work with. Rather than having to work with people that don’t work hard, who aren’t team players, and who are just plain lazy, you’ll be able to choose your team. However this can be much harder than it seems. You will also have to make difficult decisions when it comes to hiring and firing.

Achieve

There’s very little you can do that’s worthy of more kudos than building a company. Business helps the world go round, and many businesses do even more than. Imagine what the world would be like today without certain drugs and medicine that healthcare sector has innovated. Some ideas are much more than just a way to make money. Once you have achieved what you aim to do, there’s no better feeling. Aiming high is a key part of entrepreneurialism, and a common feature of successful people.

Change

Someone who has entrepreneurialism within their blood will always think of ways things can be improved. For example, have you ever been in a situation where you have considered how your current employer could be more efficient? Ways that they could drive more sales, decrease costs, and improve customer services? When you own your own business, you will be able to make those changes. And, not only that, you will also be able to profit from them.

Experience

When you start your own business, it’s possible you’ll fail. That’s part of entrepreneurialism. However, if you do you’ll have lots of raw experience that most people will never have. You’ll know what it feels like when the buck stops with you. This is something that will work well for you if you ever decide to start another business, or even go back into the workplace. Investors like working with entrepreneurs who have started other companies in the past. They do that for one reason: they think experience counts.

Visit the UK’s number one business directory and find out about how you could start your own business with our CityLocal franchise opportunity. www.citylocal.co.uk and www.citylocal.ie