Re: \"Service\" franchises
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There are a lot lot lot of these types of franchises in the world these days. Over the last ten or so years or so a lot of startups have been infected with the franchising craze. There is even a franchised business that picks up dog [censored] in people's yards. No kidding.
I am aquainted with a guy that owns a couple 'We Buy Junk' franchises, and those are pretty lucrative for him. Well, success is implied by his life-style, I have no idea if he's making any real money. But I do know that he is very busy, and it seems to me like he works just about 24 hours per day.
I'm not trying to discourage you at all. But I, like others here, think that you need to seriously consider the amount of work that owning a small business takes. It is a huge amount of work. Even if you buy a franchised system, you'll be acting as manager for a few years.
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Yeah, I'm definitely not going to rush into anything. I need to know I can commit to the commitment.
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I've owned small businesses in the past, but now I only do real estate. It takes less time and I enjoy it more because I like to negotiate, make deals, and solve problems.
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To be honest, if I felt I could continue to make $100k a year at poker, I would suck it up, grind, and invest in real estate. I find real estate interesting but I have a solid fear of either running out of income (i.e., poker is banned, or becomes too tough for someone of my skill level,) or either becoming so burnt out I just can't do it anymore.
Regardless of positive cashflow from a property, at my age and with my job it seems like I'd need to be putting 20% down on any property which I could continually do with making the money at poker but the future is very much in doubt.
How burnt out I am fluctuates alot, obviously correlated to how well I'm doing. I wish it wasn't this way, but it's a constant mental struggle to remain focused and put in the hours when running bad.
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Small businesses are very much about managing people - both employees and customers. RE is somewhat about managing people, but much more about knowledge. Its also much more passive. I work about 18 hours a week now, as opposed to running a small biz, where I worked about 100 hours a week. And all of those 18 hours are buy choice - there is rarely a time where I can't take off two weeks for vacation. This won't be the case in a small business.
Both RE and small biz require significant amounts of knowledge and expertise to make any real money. But in both you can learn as you go. Each will appeal to a differnt type of personality.
I'd suggest that rather than thinking about what type of biz you want to get into, you think about what kind of life you want to have, and then work backwards to figure out which course will get you there the easiest. IMO, it probably won't be a small business. My .02.
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Thanks for the advice, you give me something to think about. Real estate probably is a better choice for me (I have no problem doing exhaustive research when interested in something,) however I am concerned how I can come up with capital in the future.
If poker runs out, my future job possibilities probably involve the words "entry level" and "$30k a year."
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