Have you always wanted to go into business for yourself? If so, it’s possible that you’ve considered whether buying a business franchise is the right choice for you. Starting a business in any field is a significant life and professional decision, and, as with any major decision, it is important to weigh all of the pros and cons before taking the leap into a business franchise opportunity.

There was a time when someone wanting to start a business would follow the traditional route of selecting an industry, researching and establishing financing, and then hanging a shingle on the doorpost. These “mom-and-pop” businesses in many ways became the backbone of economic growth and development. Yet, as many entrepreneurs will readily tell you, independent businesses, even with their allure, often carry great risk, and the vast majority of small businesses fail within the first few years of operation.

Enter the franchise business opportunity. Although franchising is a relatively new business concept as measured against the scope of history, it is a business option that carries a much higher success rate than traditional independent businesses, and this is particularly true if you are a first-time business owner.

According to AllBusiness.com, a leading business information and resource portal, among the advantages of purchasing a franchise over launching a traditional independent company are “instant brand awareness and credibility, administrative and/or technical support, franchisor-provided training, quicker return on investment, strong management, and a network of other franchisees and associations dedicated to supporting franchisees.”

While as an independent business owner, you are solely responsible for costly promotion and marketing of your product or service, as a franchisee, you usually have the benefit of national media marketing and advertising done by the parent franchise company. In addition, independent local businesses often find themselves in direct competition with well-backed franchises that simply have more resources to promote and operate their businesses.

That said, however, the very ordered nature of franchise business opportunities may come as a disadvantage to some, as by an established franchise system the creativity of the entrepreneur is often curbed. Yet, given the support available to franchise buyers and the numerous low-cost franchise opportunities, for many, purchasing a franchise still holds noticeable advantages over starting a traditional business.

Thus far, we have focused on the benefits and drawbacks of purchasing a franchise opportunity as opposed to opening a traditional business. But perhaps your choice is between buying a franchise and remaining at your traditional job or, if you are just entering the workforce, between purchasing a franchise opportunity and getting a traditional job.

There are unquestionably distinct advantages and disadvantages of buying a franchise business opportunity, and if you are considering taking the leap from employee to entrepreneur, it is important to carefully weigh both the pros and the cons of purchasing a business franchise.

Benefits of Buying a Franchise
As reported by AllBusiness.com and the International Franchise Association (IFA), the benefits of traveling the path of business franchise ownership are many, and they include:

1) Probability for success – With an established support system, franchisees are often able to avoid many pitfalls that lead to the failure of numerous small independent businesses.

2) Brand recognition – Customers become familiar with the franchise brand and learn to trust that brand, thus increasing business for franchise owners regardless of location.

3) Availability of training and support – Franchisors offer training programs for new franchise owners prior to the “grand opening” of their franchise outlet, and once the franchisee’s new business is “up and running,” franchisors provide ongoing support in the form of meetings, networking, additional training programs, research & development, etc.

4) Joint purchasing power with other franchises – While many independent business owners lack sufficient resources to do extensive advertising or even to maintain inventory at bulk levels, franchising allows entrepreneurs access to the franchisor’s purchasing system so they can leverage outlay to achieve a greater return on investment.

5) Experience of the franchising company – Perhaps the most compelling advantage of franchising is the benefit of the experience of the franchisor. This significant “pro” minimizes risk among franchise buyers both by helping them avoid common mistakes and by granting them access to proven systems of business operation.

Drawbacks of Buying a Franchise
Even with their allure, however, franchise ownership also carries several cons that should be carefully considered before making the decisions to become a franchisee.

1) Risk – Although franchising significantly reduces the risk of business ownership, it does not eliminate it altogether, and as with any entrepreneurial venture, the success of a business franchise depends largely upon the efforts and determination of the franchise owner. It is by no means guaranteed.

2) Comparison with other franchises – While brand recognition is listed under the “pro” column, it also has the potential to be a “con” in the world of franchising. Just as consumers learn to trust a brand based on positive experiences, one negative experience can turn a buyer off to your franchise, even if your particularly branch was not at all involved in the negative scenario. Thus, the very nature of franchises and one of their chief success components also can present a primary drawback of franchise ownership.

3) Lack of independence – Again, although proven systems of business offer great benefit to the franchise owner, operating within the franchise system also imposes limitations on the entrepreneur. He or she is often is not free to pursue creative ideas at will, as the franchisor requires adherence to established rules and regulations.

4) Management responsibilities – When considering buying a franchise, it is vital that you are honest with yourself regarding your management expertise and capabilities. This is an area that many do not automatically relate to franchising, but the reality is that franchise ownership often requires human resources and business management and development. And this is often easier said then done. Although prior experience is not always required, honest evaluation of your current skills is paramount to measuring your potential for success.

5) False expectations – Franchising is by no means a “get rich quick” opportunity, but sadly many franchisees carry unrealistic expectations regarding their capacity to earn significant income in a short period of time. Just as any business requires extensive determination, hard work, and steady commitment, so, too, does franchising, and it is important that anyone considering buying a franchise business opportunity keep realistic expectations regarding the effort involved.

Inarguably, franchise businesses carry great potential for success. Yet they also present unique disadvantages to the franchise owner. Through carefully weighing all of the pros and cons, you will be able to determine if buying a franchise is the right choice for you.

Today we frequently hear stories about traders blowing out their entire accounts or about people who started with 100k only to have it near 20k within a very short period. Time and time again, when I talk to people about trading or my career, I often hear phrases like “It’s way too risky for me..” or “the market is scary right now, how’s it treating you?” Usually my response to that is “It’s not how the market is treating me, it’s how I’m treating the market.”

What most people and most traders have not realized is the importance of having a plan for trading. Having a plan means a lot of things. In fact, the people who are successful at other careers generally all started with a plan. Trading is like a business and it must be treated that way. When a person is seeking a loan for a business or seeking for help in starting a business, most of the time you’ll hear the opposite party say “Ok, let’s see your business plan” or “what do you have planned?” People want to know where you are headed. The same thing goes in trading. Why would you want to risk your hard earned money in the markets without knowing what could or couldn’t happen? The markets don’t care about you or your feelings. It will gladly take your money in the blink of an eye, so it is extremely important that you have a plan of action.

Here are a few things you should write down:

What market will I be trading? (i.e. Stocks, Futures)
How will I be trading it? (daily, intraday, monthly)
What percentage of my capital will I be risking per trade?
Do I have a plan that produces a positive expectancy?
What is my risk to reward profile per trade?
What are my monthly/quarterly goals?
What is my year goal?

After you’ve written down those questions, spend some time fully answering them. You should really do this because it WILL CHANGE how you trade. Now, if you get to a question, and you don’t have an answer, like Do I have a plan that produces a positive expectancy?, what you need to do is really take the time to research and find ONE PLAN and MASTER IT. If it’s one of your own plans that you created, have you tested it? Back-testing is by far one of the most CRUCIAL parts to being a successful trader. Why do I say this? Here is an example. If you owned a business, and you wanted to hire someone, would you just let the first person who walked in the door get the job? Most likely not. What you are going to do is interview a few candidates and figure out which person best suits your business. But what are you really doing when you are interviewing though? Well, what you are doing is you are subconsciously figuring out or analyzing if this person is going to produce a positive expectancy for your business. Are you going to hire someone who is going to make you lose money and/or driveaway customers? Of course not!

The same thing goes in trading. You want to find a trading model that is going to be a net POSITIVE overall. You cannot take a losing system and turn it into a winner. This is why it is very important to test a model. After testing you will KNOW what to expect. If say you test 200 trades, and you find that 130 of them were winners and that your winners were 1.5 times larger then your losers, what does that tell you? It tells you that you have a positive trading system. So now when you start trading with real capital and out of your next 200 trades, you lose 70 of them, it should come as NO surprise. Losing trades is part of the business daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.

In the book Trading In The Zone, Mark Douglas makes some great statements that I truly believe are important. He states:

I AM A CONSISTENT WINNER BECAUSE:
I objectively identify my edges
I predefine the risk of every trade
I completely ACCEPT the risk or I am willing to let go of the trade
I act on my edges without reservation or hesitation
I pay myself as the market makes money available to me
I continually monitor my susceptibility for making errors
I understand the absolute necessity of these principles of consistent success and, therefor, I always follow them with confidence and joy.

What you’ll notice about his statements is that it is he is assuming that you have already done the first set of bullets up top; that you have already created a plan and you already have a set of RULES. Now you might ask, how do I know if my set of rules now will work next month or next year? GREAT question. The market dates back all the way into the late 1700′s. There is literally a few HUNDRED years of data. That’s why I say that back testing is KEY. Now that doesn’t mean that you need to back-test 200 years of data. Not even close. You want to back-test a reasonable time depending on your time-frame of trading. For example, if I plan on trading based on a daily system, then I might back-test the last 5-6 years. If I’m going to trade based on an intra-day 3 minute chart, I would probably backtest about a year.

There is no way to KNOW what is going to happen, but trading really boils down to probabilities. Time and time again the same things tend to repeat themselves. Why do you think the markets tend do to the same things over and over. Why does it seem that certain stocks that are in the same class look the same from a chart perspective? How come a company will report great quarterly results, but still go down? It’s because there is a greater number of traders that BELIEVE that this is where an equity is too much or too little. Why do you think there are people who are talking about a “recession” right now? Again, it’s because the same things seem to be occurring that did prior to a previous recession and people have that BELIEF.

So what does all this mean? What can you gather from all this? Well, a few things actually. One is to make sure you create, find and organize a PLAN for trading. Think about it as if you wanted to open up a company. Do the research and find out how some of these traders got started and what they did. Once you’ve done that, write down your plan and look at your questions from up top. Once you can answer ALL of them, then you are moving toward being a consistently profitable trader. Then take a look at what Mark Douglas wrote. You have to own these statements mentally. You have to truly believe that you are a consistent winner because of all of the statements above.
Remember, you are starting a business, and if you want your business to succeed, you need to have a PLAN!

“Plan your trade, and trade your plan” – Anonymous

High risk merchants includes tradesmen who are the entrepreneurs of large scale risky enterprises or industrial sectors like gambling, duplication of goods, pharmacy, telemarketing, travel related business models and many more. Merchants are grouped as high-risk merchants based on many dodgy issues such as the increased charge backs, compromised quality of products, unsatisfactory services, reduced reliability, financial instability, poor reputation etc.

Many processors or banks consider such trading accounts as a high risk issue and therefore only very small numbers of processors show valour to provide services for these merchant accounts. These institutions are often known by the name high-risk-merchant processors. Once began to process these services will perform ongoing analysis of the risks and tries to manage and minimize both charge backs and fraud funding.

These processors render a wide range of services through its enormous processing units like the offshore banks; check processors and third party processors. These options are provided irrespective of that they hold single or multiple accounts and the merchant is free to choose the one which caters their needs. Once permitted there is no limit for the amount to be resumed or number of money transactions to be performed under this account; also the risky merchant processors offers multi-currency dealings so as to enhance transactions according to merchants will.

While enjoying the benefits of the high risk merchant processors, the merchants could not only make use of the profits but also work under the relaxed schemes and policies especially in those matters dealing with money charge backs and transactions. However, being a commercial enterprise all these requires a money reserve and thus the total money expenditure sustained by the high-risk-merchant includes discount charges, monthly fees, transaction money and also the application fees.

Before supporting high risk-merchants and encouraging them, the merchant processors used to perform an enquiry regarding their business history and services as higher experienced entrepreneurs can be more trusted than that of short experienced.

Since the account provisions also depends on the capacity for reimbursement and susceptibility to bankruptcy, a credit report enrolling the credit history are also issued to all merchants.

Though the high risk-merchant invests exorbitant and excessive amounts for opening a merchant account, they entertain and enjoys discount in payment and profits as a part of this account. The high-risk merchants are tailored to pander their needs through various new technological methods and alternative payment options.