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You show up at an important meeting wearing your pajamas…. No, it’s not a nightmare, but a dream-come-true for home-based business owners gabbing on the phone with customers, colleagues or employees. Can you be both a franchise owner and work from home? Absolutely – there are many home-based opportunities available, both as a full-fledged franchise owner or as an independent business owner affiliated with a larger company.
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Hooray for the girls (or shall we say women)! I just read the article on www.franchisedirect.com about the growing trend of women franchise owners. It’s about time we take our place among the guys, and make our presence known in the franchising industry. Of particular interest were the stories of Two Men and A Truck that is a woman-owned franchise and a Candy Bouquet franchise in the California Valley. Each of the women owners of these franchises dared to dream big and achieved their goal of owning their own business. I would be interested in more such stories about successful women franchisees from your readers.

We live in an instant society. From coffee to communications, we want everything and we want it now. When it comes to considering our career options online (usually while we’re pretending to be working at our present job) we’re likely to be found on popular, well-designed sites that give us what we want. Which is why here at www.franchisedirect.com you may have noticed that we’ve been giving the site a makeover. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to find whatever it is you’re looking for. Providing you’re looking for a business that is, we leave all that social networking shenannigans to the Generation Y-ers. OK so we do have a Technorati Profile but that’s grown up stuff…honest!

In the same way that broadband users would never dream of going back to dial-up, franchise owners would never go back to the dayjob. Never. Ever. Think about it, being your own boss means doing things your way and having the backup and support to help you when times get tough. Franchising is as solid as Tiger Wood’s best driver on championship Sunday. So don’t worry if you haven’t found your ideal match yet, you never know what’s just around the next corner. Keep looking!

So many of our military veterans have trouble finding jobs when they come home, even though they may be educated and skilled. My brother is one such veteran. A colleague told him about “VetFran”, an organization that was formed to help veterans transition back into civilian life by offering incentives for them to buy their own franchises, and be their own bosses. I researched VetFran, and found that it is made up of about 200 member organizations of the International Franchise Association (IFA), and there are nearly 800 veteran owned fanchisees. You can find out more on the IFA website www.franchise.org, under “VetFran Directory”. Because of this organization, my brother is on his way to being a business owner! Please share your veteran franchise stories, as I’m sure there are others out there who could benefit from the information.

The dilemma of how to properly care for our aging population has generated a great many in-home senior care franchise opportunities. These businesses provide peace of mind, and are obvious alternatives to nursing homes. Services often include non-medical in-home care such as assistance in everyday tasks, running errands, transportation to appointments, household chores, or simple companionship. Other franchises offer medical personnel (mostly nurses) who visit from once a week to every day, and dispense medications, injections, dress wounds, take vital signs, and other medical duties. It seems to me that, as baby boomers near retirement, such services will be in higher demand than ever before. Those of us 65 or older (myself included) are currently 36 million strong, and it is projected that number will reach over 80 million within the next two decades. Any of my peers out there agree that these kinds of services are long overdue? Any viewpoints on the best ones?