Is franchising really worth it ?
Time and time again, I hear about people going into franchising. Time and time again people ask me to buy a franchise. It’s true that in the past few years franchising has really taken off, business start up’s in general tend in increase in time’s of economic downturn as people who are laid off simply can’t get a job so go it alone.
Franchising ‘claims’ to offer that needed helping hand into the scary scary world of business, you buy into a brand, they help you set up, you pay them a fee and an ongoing % and we are all millionaires. Easy right ? No actually, 2 out of 3 new start ups go to the wall within the first 18 months and franchises are certainly not exempt from these statistics.
If you are thinking of buying a franchise, you need to ask yourself one simple (double barreled) question.
Is it worth it & could I do it cheaper and better myself ?
Jim’s mowing service is case and point of what I am talking about here. For £15,000 and around 7 – 12% of your annual takings, Jim will essentially teach you how to cut grass. Worth while I reckon if that includes the training, the van, the trailer, the mowers and the cutters…………. eh no. For £15,000 Jim will teach you how to cut grass and build a business, you still have to buy the rest of the kit yourself. (more…)
The great eBay rip off
It has been a while since I sold anything on eBay and I was discussing it last week with my brother. Did you know they now charge 10% of the final price plus the listing fee’s ? He asked. I thought, no that can’t be right.
It appear’s he was absolutely right.
Here is a breakdown of the closing fee’s (and don’t forget you have to pay to list the damn thing as well)
Final Selling Price : Final Value Fee
| £0.01 and above
|
10.0% of the amount of the winning bid, up to a maximum Final Value Fee of £40.00 |
and for business users (more…)
Tracking where you’ve been through foursquare
A number of month’s ago, on a regular business trip to the west coast of Ireland, I stopped off at a random filling station somewhere between Dublin and Limerick. With the new carrageway opening up in stage’s every month or two it’s easy to get disoriantated on the journey and wonder just where in the midlands you are. Rather than do the ‘scouting thing’ and dig out the map from the boot of my car, I decided to just check in on foursquare which would geo-locate my exact location and publish it not only to the world but for me to glance at it again later on and see just where I had been. Another check in on the road back to Dublin the next day, secured me the mayorship and my place in Toomevara 4sq history.
Yesterday on a similar business trip, I stopped again at the same station and again checked into 4sq to see what had been ‘going on’ since my last visit, I had been outed as Mayor by my arch-nemesis Evert Bopp which is understandable as he lives near by but as I looked through the near by locations, my recent check in’s and where Evert had been checking into recently I began to think, wouldn’t it be great to see all these check in’s on a simple google map ? Perfect for any one who travel’s a lot like myself. (more…)
Is the reception area in a budget hotel really necessary ?
My business is built around the hotel industry so I spend my days meeting with general managers and hotel owners of every kind of hotel from a 12 bedroom one man ran operation to a sprawling 1000 acre 5 star estate.
Because the nation’s best hotels are not built within a 100 radius of my house, I often sleep in them too. Sometimes I am the mood for 5 star luxury and sometimes I just was peace, quiet and a bed.
Tonight, I just want the latter so I am staying in a Travelodge. Travelodge are a fantastic business which get a lot of flack but really, a clean room, flat screen TV and a shower for €35 – what could be better?
Obviously to get all this for €35 you lose a lot of the ‘extras’ other hotels give you. There is no porter for example, no breakfast, no bar, no foyer to speak off, no leisure club, no gym the list is endless but Travelodge do this to give you a quality room at a reasonable price. (more…)
BBQ at McQuillan Manor in 32 seconds …… and a great chance to chat about Gawker
Gawker is an amazing piece of software for Mac OS that I have just discovered. With very little effort it allows you to put together a short movie of still imagines to track a day of work or an event.
Time lapsed BBQ at McQuillan Manor – 11th July using Gawker from Russell McQuillan on Vimeo.
Can a change of fuel make that much of a difference ?
You might remember at the beginning of the year I had all that trouble with my trusty vRS.
Well it is all beginning to worry me slightly, not about the car but about the fuel I was putting into it (and the car a bit too). You see around 3 weeks before Skodagate, my company changed my fuel suppliers from Maxol Ireland to Direct Fuels UK. Direct Fuels do not have any actual stations however are more of a network of affiliated garages.
I had been using Maxol in Moira ever since I bought the vRS but as Maxol was not on the Direct Fuels approved list, I switched to the BP garage on the Glenavy Road, just off the Moira road roundabout. 3 weeks later my car was getting pulled into the garage for a major overhaul of broken parts. At the time I was asked had I put any dodgy fuel into the car, I told them I used BP and they (Skoda) seemed to accept that and rulled a fuel issue out of the equation. (more…)
Pornography to get its own space on the Interwebs but will it work?
After a ten year battle between Icann (the people who look after the www. protocol) and Stuart Lawley a British internet entrepreneur the .xxx domain has finally been approved.
The idea is that all pornography or ‘top shelf’ related material will move from .com, .co.uk, .net, .mobi etc to the new .xxx domain. Porn is still the most searched item on the web but it is only in the last two year’s that sites like Facebook and Twitter have kicked the porn sites from the Alexa top 50
It’s a good idea as it makes the Internet as easier place to police, it also makes it a lot easier for parents to content filter what their kids are looking at online by simply blocking the .xxx domain on their machines. Companies like NetNanny who specialise in web filtering will surely welcome the new domain and anyone operating a public machine will see the benefits.
That said, it will never work (in its current form). Believe it or not porn sites actually want you to look at their sites, no matter who you are so they go out of their way to step around web content filtering, this new domain is simply that, a new domain. It has been set up by a business man not an authority or a Government so it cannot be policed. Porn sites cannot be forced to use the domain and they are surely not going to give up their valuable .com domains in a hurry, In 2007 porn.com was sold for $12m and there has been a near 20 year battle over sex.com. (more…)
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