This week’s Entrepreneur University comes courtesy of Diarmuid Kieran. Diarmuid is the Webmaster for the franchise opportunity sites network. Diarmuid shares withs us the top factors franchisors consider when they are evaluating franchisees.

“When franchisers meet with potential franchisees, they will be looking for certain personal characteristics to judge whether they would be suitable to run a franchise or not.

It is very important that people wanting to be franchisees have enthusiasm for the company and are confident that they can help to continue its successful expansion. Therefore, a good understanding of what the franchiser does and how it operates is essential.

Even if the franchiser has not directly asked for a business plan, it is advisable to produce a document outlining how the business would go about raising its profile to attract customers and staff and some of the goals to achieve in the first few months and years.

Although an optimistic outlook is valuable, potential franchisees need to acknowledge that in the early stages it is unlikely that large profits or in some cases any profit will be made. Franchisers will want to know that their franchisees will not quit at the first signs of poor financial results.

They must also make it clear to the franchise company that they know they are chiefly responsible for the success or failure of their franchise.

Another key characteristic to have is being a good communicator, as a franchisee needs to deal with the franchiser, staff, suppliers and customers, otherwise it will be difficult to be successful.

Being able to effectively interact with people and explain things in a clear and straightforward manner will create loyalty, value and trust.

When talking to potential franchisees, franchisers will also be expecting a number of questions to be asked to demonstrate a great willingness to learn and seek help when needed, as opposed to believing you know how to run things with little assistance.

Each franchise company is different and so potential franchisees are advised to enquire about any unique practices and systems at the first meeting if they are not told about them initially.

Ideally, they need to show a balance between working on the development of the individual franchise and functioning as part of a team.

Ideas for improvement are welcome as long as franchisees are aware that they need to use the business systems and practices of the franchiser, which have enabled it to expand. They need to accept that decisions made on changes to each franchise are for the benefit of the whole franchise family.

In addition, it is important for potential franchisees to show that they will value their employees.

This is because a belief that employees deserve trust, a degree of responsibility and the chance to offer meaningful contributions to the business is very likely to make them more productive.”

Earlier this month we started a new Entrepreneur Poll on deciding when it’s time to cut loose from your day job and go full time into your business. It’s a question that I get asked frequently from young entrepreneurs and I thought we could open it up to the Young Entrepreneur community for some feedback.

After a couple weeks of feedback the number one answer so far is:

When Your business is paying you more than what you make at your day job.

Some of the replies included:

“When you make more than your current job with the extra time you’ll put towards it. Although, it must also be a growing business.”

“When the profit being produced is more then your job, and then go full time if you can see your self in the business in 5 years time.”

“I agree with the others: when you’re earning more money running your business than what your day job pays. You shouldn’t quit your day job immediately after you earn a bit, I suppose you have to be earning enough for several months doing your own thing, and then you can quit your day job.”

Some of the other replies included:

When your business income is double your earnings as an employee for 3 months straight

Before you have enough cashflow and start by living off of your savings

Whenever you’re ready!

What do you think? When is the best time to make the leap and go full time? Cast your vote in our Young Entrepreneur Poll.

Last week I discussed my involvement in SES Toronto 2008. Specifically I talked about how I went on a mission to find out why I’m still ranking in the same prominent positions for many of my important keywords but my traffic from Google (but not MSN or Yahoo) was down.

One of the people I connect with was Joe Dolson. Joe is I a freelance web designer living in Minnesota’s Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul). He has been operating as a free-lance web designer since the beginning of 2005, and has been building websites since 2002. I was referred to Joe at the conference because he is an accessibility and usability expert.

What was Joe’s response to my problem?

It’s a strange issue, certainly. I took a quick look at your site itself, and didn’t see anything which stood out as a problem. However, when I went to take a look at your server, I found a few odd issues.

First, several tools I applied returned an invalid name check on your domain — while I couldn’t confirm it, this implies some problems with DNS resolution for your site. It may be that you have some kind of behavioral sniffer running which is checking for robot activities – if that is the case, you may want to try disabling it to see if it’s been blocking legitimate traffic.

I also found that your server response time is pretty slow – based on ping queries from 38 different server locations around the world, the average query response time for your site was 2.09 sec. This isn’t particularly extreme, but two of the slowest locations were Philadelphia (5.12 seconds) and Portland (4.89 sec), followed by Los Angeles (4.63), Atlanta (4.36), and Orlando (4.28). This suggests that your server’s regional network is providing very poor response times to several major population centers of the US, which could also have a significant effect on your traffic – there may be a large percentage of people clicking on your results who never actually arrive at your site.

For comparison, my own website has an average response time of 0.80 seconds, with a high of 4.60 (from Moscow). The third slowest response time for me is 2.14 (also from LA.)

I suggest investigating a change of host, or at least taking up these connectivity issues with your host to see if they can help resolve any problem.

I didn’t identify anything which really behaved like a “smoking gun” in the limited time I had to check, but I’d definitely be concerned about this issue. It’s worth investigating further.

Best,
Joe

Thanks for the advice Joe! It looks like I have to connect with my hosting provider and see if they can lead me to the next step!

Forbes recently put out a list of nine ways to prevent job burnout. Most of the tips can also be applied to entrepreneurs who are stressed out running their companies:

1)  Get Away

You don’t have to take a vacation to give yourself a break. Spending some time on a hobby you love, such as golf or playing music, can quickly re-energize you. If you’re really stressed out, head for a relaxing place far from the stimulus of a TV, phones and e-mail, such as the park or a massage therapist’s table.

2) Cut The Processed Foods

Whether you’re eating out with clients or tucking into fast food at your desk, a steady diet of restaurant food means big portions and hidden calories. Take a breather in your hectic schedule to cut out the processed foods, alcohol and caffeine and instead eat vegetables, whole grains, fruits and vegetables. You’ll feel more energy and your digestive system, thanks to your increased fiber intake, will thank you.

3)  Champion The Cause

If you want to make sure you keep up a health regime, put your reputation on the line. Sponsor an employee health and wellness program. You’re much more likely to follow through with taking the stairs or avoiding the vending machine if you’re trying to encourage coworkers or employees to do the same.

4)  Fresh Air

A few deep breaths can clear your mind and refresh your body. Try taking six seconds to inhale and six seconds to exhale five times in a row once an hour. As you do so, focus on moving your stomach in and out, rather than just your chest. Done regularly, the practice will help relieve tension and may help prevent burnout.

5)  Eat In Silence

At Miraval Resort in Tucson, Ariz., corporate groups that take part in the new Executive Strategy Package enjoy a breakfast in complete silence. Instead of eating on the run or in front of a TV or Web site, the program shows executives the importance of putting their forks down in between bites, helping them eat less and feel more satiated, so they can taste a meal’s textures and flavors.

6) Get Your Assistant Involved

Hummingbird Coaching Services’ experts know that executive assistants can be a big help in keeping their bosses healthy. Assistants set aside time in executives’ schedules for health coaching and workouts and often play a role in choosing what restaurants they frequent.

7) Use Your Competitive Edge

If you’re a top executive, chances are you’ve got a competitive streak. Try leveraging your personality trait by setting a stress-reduction or fitness-related goal for yourself. If you really want to make sure you succeed, tell people about it.

Sweat

While it won’t actually rid your body of more than trace amounts of toxins, breaking a sweat will make you feel good mentally and physically. Take a run outdoors, get moving in the gym or step into a sauna to sweat out some of your stress.

9) Stretch It Out

The next time you’re on a plane and feeling stressed, let it out. Extend your legs under the seat in front of you, pushing your heels out and holding the pose for five minutes. Repeat three times. You’ll get your blood moving and your mind off what’s worrying you.

How have you prevented burning out from your business?

Back in November I mentioned a great video of MySpace founder Tom Anderson. I wanted to continue the MySpace profile today by sharing a some of Tom and Chris DeWolfe’s (co-founder) advice for entrepreneurs.

Together, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson have over 200 million “friends” and chances are you might be one of them. The two buddies are the brains behind MySpace.com, the online networking site that has taken the world by storm. The second venture for the pair, DeWolfe and Anderson’s first company was sold for several million dollars. Now, MySpace.com, which allows members to create interactive profiles, blogs, and post just about anything they want, is the sixth most popular website in the world, and the third most popular in the U.S. But it was a business that almost never got started.

“It’s certainly nice to make money off of it and become financially successful,” says DeWolfe, “but really the fun of it was to build the site and that continues to be the fun of it.” Anderson echoes the sentiment: “I’d like to do this as long as it’s fun, and that could be a long, long time.” They started off as two men who shared nothing but a love of indie music, a distaste for authority, and a simple idea for a website. So, how did these fast friends find themselves not only in the pages of Fortune magazine but also at the forefront of an Internet revolution?

“It sounds crazy, but even in the first plan that I wrote up, I mentioned AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail, knowing we would be big. And it’s crazy to think that it happened. We met about seven or eight years ago during the beginning of that Internet boom. Tom has a million ideas, and some of them are pretty good. Some of them are a little wacky. But oh, this one was just a phenomenal idea.

We started the company around the time that a lot of other social networking companies were starting up. But we saw that a lot of those companies had a very niche focus. We set out to create this next generation portal where we looked at the best social features around. 

We looked at how people live their lives. We didn’t get bogged down in creating the next new technology podcasting RSS thingamajiggy. We had classifieds, events, blogs, music. It definitely has its own voice. It’s a little bit edgy, it seems cool, it doesn’t seem overly produced. We’re not deciding what’s cool. Our users are. MySpace is all about letting people be what they want to be.

My vision for social networks is participatory, visual, based on dialogue. They can be as edgy as they want or as square as they want – it’s up to them. As a TV manager, the best thing to happen is your show gets really hot. But you always know that it’s going to lose popularity and become uncool at some point when you run out of ideas or people just get tired. We don’t have to deal with that because we are not creating the program – our users are. They can continually reinvent what’s new and what’s cool, based on changing their profiles, or new bands coming in.

There are 140 million different channels to watch on our site. They’re defining the experience, not us. We’re just letting it rip. What I’m basically trying to say is that as long as we don’t screw it up, we’ll be fine. 

We’re never arrogant, we’re always looking at the competition. But they have not been successful for a couple of reasons. The intent to socialize on a site like Yahoo! isn’t really there because the brand doesn’t necessarily stand for anything and there’s no real voice to it.

In the early days, there were a lot of bands signing up. They told us that they’d like to post their lyrics and tour dates. Users told us what they wanted to see, and we just built it. It gives those artists a longer period of time to develop themselves before they get signed, or make a living without getting signed at all.

For the most part everyone doubted we were a real company and a real site because we weren’t in the Silicon Valley. And we didn’t do things like everyone else. We had ten different features on our site. They considered that to be unfocused. The user interface wasn’t pretty. We weren’t using Linux operating system but off-the-shelf Microsoft products, which was unheard of.

Others try to do too many things at one given time. At any one time, we focus our developers on the top three to four initiatives and don’t get distracted with what others tell us we ought to do. That was the antithesis of what we aimed to do. Most of the sites that did that became boring after awhile. Once you choose your product road map, then it becomes very important to focus on the top three to four initiatives and get those things done.

So we are not doing what everyone else is doing. When we were getting popular, people were saying, ‘Why aren’t you doing this or that?’ I thought they were ridiculous, and they thought I was ridiculous.

I’d like to do this as long as it’s fun, and that could be a long, long time. A lot of the early growth had to do with the features and what our competitors were not allowing people to do. As long as it’s still fun to be here we are going to continue our work. For me it feels like the opportunity has just begun; it’s definitely not ending.”

This week’s Entrepreneur University is a special contribution that YE Founder Adam Toren lined up from Naomi Dunford. Naomi Dunford writes for IttyBiz, a blog for entrepreneurs, freelancers, and other work-from-home types. Come by for marketing tips, small business advice, and the occasional very bad joke. Naomi shares with use her top ways to get a new business off the ground:

Starting a business is fun. Planning a business is not as fun. So how do you take your fresh idea and turn it into a viable business without sacrificing your enthusiasm in the process? Here are some ways to get started now.

Plan well, but plan quickly.

You know you need a business plan. (You do know that, don’t you?) You also know that business plans are long, scary, and mind-numbingly boring. They tend to take a lot of time, time which you might not have.

The most important part of your business plan is your SWOT analysis. This is where you identify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The SWOT analysis is your new best friend. Run one on your business, on yourself, on your business partners, and on your competition. Figure out what’s helping you and what’s hurting you. Do not fall into the trap of shoving your head into the sand and thinking you have no weaknesses. Think about this. Write it down.

Since this is for your own use and doesn’t have to be prettied up for a banker’s benefit, there’s no reason this should take more than a day.

Identify your Unique Selling Proposition.

Once you know your own strengths and your competitors’ weaknesses, you can figure out what makes you different from them. This is your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP. It will be the driving force behind your marketing campaign.

What makes you unique does not have to be something earth-shattering. You don’t need to redesign the wheel. It could be as simple as actually listing your prices on your website, or offering 24 hour a day phone support. The only requirement is that it has to be something your customers actually care about. Pretty packaging on your plumbing parts is not a USP. Same-day delivery might be.

How are you going to market this thing?

You’ve identified your USP. Now you’re going to have to let people know about it. Sounds obvious? Apparently it isn’t. How many times have you been actively trying to spend your hard-earned money on a product or service, and all the companies looked the same? These companies are lazy marketers. They are telling you about all the fancy gizmos that every other competitor has, too.

You need to take your USP and beat your potential customers over the head with it. They should know why you’re different than The Other Guy before hiring you even crosses their minds. Do not make them think. Make your USP the most readily available piece of information to your customers. If you do that, the details of your marketing plan don’t matter as much. Since the thing that makes you better than your competition is now wildly obvious, whether you advertise in Text Link Ads or AdSense is just not a big deal.

Figure out your funding.

Unless your competition is Coca-Cola, the amount of money you have to start with is actually pretty unimportant. What is important is that you know how much you have, and that you allocate it wisely. Whether you have $500 or $5 million to start with, spend the most you can get away with on marketing. You need to get people to buy your product or service. Once they do, you can spend all the money you want on a new fax machine or 30-inch monitor or thicker stationery.

Start sooner rather than later.

There is a point, generally a lot earlier than most people think, when you have to stop thinking and start doing. It’s easy to sit back and ruminate on the absolute perfect way to launch your business. What’s hard is understanding that a not-bad business launched in a not-bad way makes a lot more money than an amazing business not launched at all because circumstances are not perfect. Make your service good, make it easy to buy from you, hang your shingle and prepare for a crazy ride.

Thank you to Marcel from getentrepreneurial.com for allowing us to use the article.

Vicky Mariano - Spiritual Haze – www.SpiritualHaze.com

It’s a combination of having way too much energy, way too many thoughts, and a lot of passion to make people happy.  All of my energy and ideas needed to be focused somewhere… otherwise I just wind up irritating people, or putting my momentum and mind into things that don’t produce anything worthwhile. It’s amazing to be able to start something good as result of all of my ideas and passions.

2. What is your definition of success and has your company achieved it?

My definition of success for Spiritual Haze is to become the first really powerful community venue of its type.  This means that it builds community wealth, happiness, and togetherness through entertainment, creativity, and true expression of individualism and partnership. I’ve seen very clear signs of being able to achieve this, and now that I’m out of school and really putting 99% into my business, I’m hoping to see some real growth and heightened community involvement.

3. How important have good employees and team members been to your success?

Since before I’d even opened, I wouldn’t make any decisions without involving my team.  I intended Spiritual Haze to be a community venue, meaning it is run by everyone who is passionate about being involved.  Therefore I don’t consider business success solely my own, rather the success of everyone who has put anything into it. My team, my loyal customers, anyone with positive spirits who comes into Spiritual Haze is extremely important because they ARE Spiritual Haze.  I am just setting up the stage.

1. Make sure to do plenty of pre-planning, and get a lot of advice to make sure your venture has a good chance of success. A college program like the Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at Clark University in Worcester, MA, which I participated in, can be a great source of information and support for entrepreneurs that are just starting out. As part of the program I had several mentors and was able to use their knowledge to help shape my ideas into concrete plans.

2. Once you know you have a good chance of success, start it before someone else does, and DONT GIVE UP!  The failures and tough parts are what allow your venture to be the best it can.  Without any failures you’re actually really missing out on the better things.

3. Start a social enterprise rather than a purely profit driven venture.  It’s better for everyone; you are helping them and they will surely help you in return.

Two people…  One is my father because he is always so positive about everything and has so much faith in me.  Also because he has had very creative and positive ideas that he stuck by through the toughest challenges and never give up hope of success. I learned from him to be very strong and positive even if things don’t work out as expected.  Another is George Gendron, the Founder and Director of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at Clark. Honestly, without his inspiration and direct support I would have never attempted to open Spiritual Haze in Worcester, MA – which is probably one of the toughest places to open a business.

I market my business through my website, spiritualhaze.com, a group page on Facebook, the events feature on SocialWeb, and sometimes by handing out flyers around the city and to nearby colleges.  My most successful and widely-used form of marketing is free—it’s called Word of Mouth.  We make it work because we care about people who come in, and in return they show they care about us by telling all their friends to come there.

7.  How do you achieve balance in your life? Or do you?

It’s a very typical saying but its true: I work really hard and I play really hard.  Without being very social and doing a lot of fun and relaxing activities I would never have the motivation to work as hard as I do.

In 5 years I see Spiritual Haze expanded 4,000 extra sq ft, doing very well economically and socially, and running virtually by itself. I also hope to be seeing enough success to be able to open additional locations—my eye is set on California.

In 10 years I hope to see the positive influence of Spiritual Haze everywhere in Worcester, and three other locations around the country getting to that same point. If the Spiritual Haze sites are doing well, then I can focus on getting involved personally in communities and helping other social ventures grow.

I think every business owner should have at least a few exit strategies. The one I hope to put into action is to hire a manager I can trust to run everything, so I can keep the business open but pursue other interests. If that avenue is not possible, then I would consider selling the business, or at the very least sell our assets.

10. If we could introduce you to anyone, who would it be and why?

I have to say Bill Gates—because with his money and all my ideas for social enterprises we could make this country a much happier place.

Today is an exciting day as I’m moving offices! I sold the building that I bought over three years ago to move the business closer to home. The commercial real estate market is still very tight here in Toronto but I managed to find an office for sale (I don’t believe in renting space and having money going down the drain every month).

This morning I’m off to sign the final papers to close the deal with the lawyer at 9:30. Then it’s off to the old office to pack everything up into the moving truck and then move everything into the new office this afternoon. It will be a whirlwind day as I decided to close both deal (selling old office and buying new one) as well as move all in the same day (not something I recommend highly).

My staff and family are helping me move – it’s definitely useful, as the graphic suggests, to make friends before you move as I couldn’t imagine doing it alone. Just sorting through three years worth of office stuff (junk) is time consuming enough – it’s hard to imagine how much you can accumulate over three years. Even though my business is online and we don’t have too many printed files, “stuff” still tends to pile up.

Moving closer to home will shave over an hour a day off my drive in and will definitely allow for a more productive work week. The space I’m getting is totally raw right now but it has big windows and granite floors. It’s on the third floor out of three and has a Starbucks on the ground level. I’m building out two offices and having one main open concept area. The contractor comes in on Monday (as well as the Internet company) to start working and he’ll hopefully be finished by the start of July.

I’m looking forward to the new space and writing more blog posts with my new view! Stay tuned for an exciting week of posts next week after I’ve worked my muscles moving today!

Enjoy the weekend!

Yesterday was Day 2 of SES Toronto 2008 and I enjoyed it even more than Day 1! To start things off the Press room had Internet today which made it easy to connect and take a break from the excitement that was going on outside.

Best Workshop: SEM Toolkit

The best workshop of the conference for me was yesterday’s SEM Toolkit. The description piqued my interest:

Competitive intelligence, keyword research, customer profiling, exotic analytics, and visual mouse tracking are just some of the tricks of the trade of search marketers. Guerrilla marketers on the panel show you the favorite tools in their kits. Many are low cost or free.

My favorite presenter was Ken Jurina of Epiar. With only 15 minutes to speak Ken listed off a new tool almost every 30 seconds and gave web entrepreneurs a fantastic list of SEO-related resources to add to their arsenal. Most of them were free and could be used immediately to help you grow your online business. I’m still waiting for Ken’s slides to be added to the conference website. He warned us that it would be too much to write down ourselves and he didn’t disappoint!

Man on a Mission

I also went to today’s conference on a mission. It always helps with these conferences if you have questions and know what you’re looking for – you’ll probably find an answer! Over the past month I’ve had a peculiar issue on my site where I’m still ranking in the same prominent positions for many of my important keywords but my traffic was down. MSN and Live traffic were up. Yahoo was consistent. But Google was down. Why would my traffic numbers be down if I’m still ranking #1 or #2 for the keywords? Seeing as I had some of the best from the industry in front of me, I figured I would ask their opinion.

Up first was Ian McAnerin of McAnerin Networks Inc.. Ian McAnerin is the “SEM Resources and Advice” moderator for the High Rankings Forum, the “Search and Legal Issues” moderator for the Search Engine Watch forum, a DMOZ editor, and has been vetted by the strict standards watchdogs SEOConsultants.com and SEOPros.com directories. Ian suggested that it might be an accessibility issue. His theory was that I was still getting the clicks but perhaps the pages weren’t loading properly and therefore the hits weren’t being recorded.

Lucky for me a speaker at the next seminar was Joe Dolson, a Web Design Consultant, and an accessibility expert. On the break I checked out my site on Browsershots.org. Browsershots (one of Ken Jurina’s tool suggestions) let’s you see what your website looks like in all the various browsers. I submitted my site and it looked fine in all the browsers except Internet Explorer 4 (does anyone still use IE4???). After the session I spoke with Joe and he couldn’t think of any problems off the top of his head. His only thought was that perhaps the site had a virus or a hack attack that would prevent the page from loading. He kindly offered to look at the site in more detail if I sent him a follow up email. Thanks Joe!

Next up was the Site Clinic where entrepreneurs could submit their websites and get them reviewed by the experts. In this case the experts were: Anne Kennedy, Manager, Managing Partner, Beyond Ink, Larry Bailin, CEO, Single Throw Internet Marketing, and Jim Hedger, SEO Consultant, Metamend Search Engine Marketing. Figuring that there would be a rush of people trying to submit their sites for review I got there early, introduced myself to Larry and got my site reviewed as the second example (good thing too because we ran out of time and didn’t get to everyone). Larry and Jim made some suggestions for the usability of my site and their theory on the Google issue was that either it was just a down time and people weren’t searching for entrepreneur related articles as much or Google was doing an update and some of my pages got downranked. If it’s a cyclical issue then there is nothing else I can do but wait it out. Anne suggested opening a new section devoted to how to “make it” in tough economic times to help drive new traffic.

Worried about the Google update issue I came home and checked my rankings across multiple Google Data Centers. I’m still ranked at the top so I’m glad that’s not the problem. It may be back to the drawing board for me but I’m going to connect with the speakers again to let them get a more in depth look at the site as it’s hard to make a judgment call on the spot without having done any research on the website.

Overall it was an excellent conference. I learned a lot of new tricks, made a few new connections, and left with a renewed passion to drive even more traffic through the search engines! As the slides of the presenters become available I’ll share a few more of the insights that we learned so you can also benefit from the experience.

Well I’m off to Day 2 of Search Engine Strategies 2008. Here is what I have planned to attend today:

10:30am-11:45am – Search User Behavior

How do searchers interact with search engines? New research is constantly revealing how searchers act. This session explores the latest studies and findings to provide tips and tactics for search marketers to consider.

12:45pm-2:00pm – SEM Toolkit: Marketers Share

Competitive intelligence, keyword research, customer profiling, exotic analytics, and visual mouse tracking are just some of the tricks of the trade of search marketers. Guerrilla marketers on the panel show you the favorite tools in their kits. Many are low cost or free.

2:30pm-3:45pm – Web 2.0 & Search Engines

An overused and amorphous term, “Web 2.0″ nonetheless encompasses an evolutionary shift from the typical web user experience of a decade ago. Some aspects of the “new” web environment are great for improving your search traffic. Other developments may lead you to make serious SEO errors. Among other things, Web 2.0 is about new user interface designs that speed up user actions with techniques such as AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), which allow users to perform operations nimbly without loading a new HTML page. This session will cover AJAX, CSS, user-generated content, and other new trends in web design and user experiences that may require a re-think of your SEO strategy.

4:00pm-5:15pm – Site Clinic

This interactive session takes volunteers from the audience and examines their websites live to provide general feedback about improving them to gain more traffic from search engines.

As usual I’ll report my findings after the day is through!