Quarter 3 Reading Reflection Week 2

In this section of Start Your Own Business, the staff of entrepreneur media talked about buying a business instead of starting one by yourself.  I appreciate this change of pace.  The last book I read was entirely about starting it up all by yourself.  I'm happy that in this book, they acknowledged other methods of running your own business.  They talked about two options.  The first was buying a business out, purchasing a business that's for sale and then running it by yourself.  Although, I don't really know much about this type of business approach, it seems like something I could be interested in.  You already have the foundation set, however, you can add to it and alter it to make it more personal.  My only problem with this method is that you have to find something similar enough to your vision.  This could be a very hard task if you have a strong and specific vision.  On the other hand, if you want to run your own burger joint, buying out the neighborhood one seems like a pretty viable approach.

The second approach the authors discussed was franchising.  In other words, this is the acquisition of the brand of a name brand chain and starting one of their stores.  The most common example of this is McDonalds.  The pros and cons are pretty similar to buying a business.  The only major difference is that you have less freedom.  When you buy a business you can go wherever you want, but if you buy a franchise, the franchisor can impose strict regulations on you.  This, for me, would make the work seem rather meaningless and boring. I want to have freedom, so maybe franchising isn't the right path for me.  I would consider buying, but franchising seems to monotonous to me.  Either way, this section was a much appreciated change of pace and very interesting.