#Uber #franchisees #franchises
It appears Uber is more than a ride-sharing service.
It’s a good part-time job for those starting franchises and waiting for them to grow.
Lindsay Moore, reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, discussed how one man, Erik Lingren, decided to go from unemployed, to a Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt franchise owner, while driving for Uber part-time.
The story was published in the August 7, 2016, edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
When one buys into a franchise, it can take a while before the franchise makes enough for the owner to make a decent living.
In Lingren’s case, he went from one store to two, employing 18 and planning to add another 12 to 15 employees, Moore writes.
Between working on his franchises and driving for Uber, Lingren works 60 to 65 hours a week, Moore writes.
Besides having to set up a franchise and wait for it to grow, there’s another rub. The average Menchie’s store costs between $229,557 and $425,310 in startup costs, Moore quotes from the company’s Web site.
Not everyone who suddenly loses a job has the ability to jump into a franchise.
If you’re at a crossroads in your life, or, as Lingren calls it, a bridge, but can’t just jump into a franchise, there are other ways out there to make money without having a traditional W-2 job, and without having to dump your life savings, or borrowed money, into startup costs. To check out one of the best, message me.
Here’s a bonus: you have the opportunity to build an income that could surpass that from a traditional franchise, without the employees, overhead, inventory and other headaches. The startup cost is nothing close to that for a Menchie’s franchise.
Lingren actually likes driving for Uber. Moore writes that he intends to keep his ride-sharing account active as his frozen yogurt empire expands.
As job security becomes elusive for many, it’s important, too, that while you are working you save as much money as you can.
Put the money you save into investments that are comfortable for you, and get good, trustworthy advice.
If you’re a fro-yo fan, or a fan of another type of franchise, the money you save could allow you to buy in, should your job go away.
Though it is admirable to help others by creating jobs for them, managing people can be difficult. Making sure your business has everything it needs can keep you up at night.
Working part time as a driver as you wait for your business to grow may not be ideal.
A better idea might be to participate in something you can do part time with little sweat while you still have a job, that could produce an income that would allow you to walk away with a smile if your job suddenly goes away.
Peter
Author Archives: pbilodeau01
DLEAYED RETIREMENTS DON’T HELP TROUBLED ECONOMY
#DelayedRetirement #retirement #OlderWorkers
In decades past, one worked in a job, or for a company for 30 to 40 years and retired with a pension, Social Security and, perhaps, a no-stress, part-time job.
Some fortunate ones retired earlier than the traditional age 65. A scant few worked past age 65.
Retirements opened positions for younger workers to move up, and the jobs they vacated were available for newer workers. That was helpful to the economy.
In the last few years, since the 2008 recession, that dynamic has changed. More people are delaying retirement, largely because the relatively generous retirement benefits of decades past have been cut, or have disappeared. Another reason is that more people are being forced out of good jobs ahead of when they wanted, or had planned to, retire. They end up taking jobs that pay a lot less, so they have to work longer and retire later.
Michael Molinski, a Paris-based economist and writer, discussed this topic in a column for USA Today. It was published July 24, 2016, in The Tennessean newspaper of Nashville.
“People in the U.S. are working longer and waiting longer to retire – often not by choice – and that could be bad news for our economy,” Molinski writes. He quotes a study done at the University of Paris-Sorbonne that says, in part, “the most productive group is the group of core workers (ages 25 to 54) right in the middle” of the barbell-shaped labor force, Molinski writes.
In other words, more older and younger workers, starting at age 15, are being pushed into the labor force, he says.
He adds that older workers can be, and often are, valuable mentors to younger workers. But the average age for retirement in the U.S. has jumped to 62 in 2014, up from 59 in 2010, he writes.
“As a result, our economy is less productive than it could be, and that trend is expected to continue for the next 35 years unless something is done to turn it around,” Molinski writes.
Actually, when the traditional work cycle was alive and well decades ago, life expectancy was a bit younger than it is now. So, more people have more energy and, at least in theory, get “old” much later in life.
That isn’t to say that everyone WANTS to keep working later in life. Most of us, unless we really love our jobs, want to retire as soon as we are able. Also, many of us do not want to be FORCED to retire before we are able.
The key to making the work cycle work for you is to be retirement-able as soon as possible. You might decide to keep working even if you can retire, or you may be forced to retire before you want to. The key here is to make whatever you do YOUR choice. Circumstances may hit you in the face, but if you have options, you can hit back.
One option is to save and invest wisely throughout your working years, starting at the youngest age possible. Another is to have a Plan B, at which you work part time during your working years that will help you save money and earn an income that could enhance your options. There are many ways to do that, for those willing to look for them. If you’d like to check out one of the best, message me.
Working longer because you want to is commendable. Working longer because you have to could be torturous. At the youngest age possible, everyone should be thinking about how to enhance his or her options as life, and the labor force, takes its turns.
If you are an older worker and are able to retire, perhaps you should think about the younger person who really needs your job. If you are a younger worker and see many people working past when you think they should retire, don’t resent them. Instead, learn from them.
Peter
THE MYSTERY OF PARADOX
#paradox #mystery #change
Want to jump past the competition?
Want to be a better you, so you can better help others?
Consider the mystery of paradox, which includes these five statements:
• We know how to work less and accomplish more
• We know how to go more slowly, and move more quickly.
• We know how to sell more with fewer salespeople and efforts.
• We know how to get customers to chase us.
• We know how to communicate more effectively, often without saying a word.
Authors Mac Anderson and John J. Murphy discussed this mystery, among other things, in their book, “Leapfrogging the Competition: 9 Proven Ways to Unleash Change and Innovation.”
Regardless of what you do, working hard can be a waste of time, if you are working hard at the wrong things. Effective people indentify the tasks they should spend the most time on, and focus on those tasks.
Working hard on “busy work” won’t get you where you want to go.
Sometimes it’s best, and more cost-effective, to have others handle some tasks while you focus on what will make you successful.
How do you determine that? What tasks, if you concentrate strictly on them, will put the most money in your pocket? Which tasks will help make you grow more as a person? As a leader, do you lead by empowering others, and helping them succeed? Or, are you a “boss,” who gives orders for others to carry out?
Are you stuck in old ways, that don’t seem to work anymore? Do you tell people, “we’ve always done it that way,” or “we’ve never done it that way?” In the long run, sameness is the fast track to mediocrity, Anderson and Murphy write.
“While we don’t have a choice about whether change happens, we do have a choice about how we react to it,” the authors write. “The choice really boils down to this – either we manage change, or it manages us.”
If you need your life to change, but don’t quite know how to go about it, be open to looking at different solutions. There are many ways out there to improve one’s chances of success, that may require one to look outside his comfort zone. To learn about one of the best, message me.
Perhaps you are a person whose life needs to change, but you don’t know it. If so, take stock of where you are and ask whether you are where you want to be. Chances are, you’ll discover that you are not where you want to be.
Anderson and Murphy offer this checklist for success:
• Determine which behaviors will drive your values forward, and communicate those to all your employees (or all concerned, if you have no employees).
• Make your core values the guideposts that shape your decisions.
• Take every opportunity to reinforce those core values every day.
• Lead by example, especially when the going gets tough.
Success awaits anyone who wants it, is willing to look for it and willing to do what he or she needs to do to achieve it.
Peter
BOOK THE UNREALISTIC
#dream #TheUnrealistic #ReturnTheRealYou
Book the unrealistic, and return as the real you.
This statement’s meaning may not be obvious on its face, so let’s break it down.
Book the unrealistic means to prepare for your dream as if you were booking a trip.
The unrealistic part comes from all those dreams your parents, teachers and other influences on you as a child told you were out of reach for you. After all, you had to think practically, aim for the secure and go for the known, tried and true, quantity.
You may have been told you were silly to think you could be, say, an actor, musician, star athlete etc., or even be wealthy. You had to think in terms of getting a good job, with good benefits and stay there until you retire. You were expected to eventually have a spouse, children and other obligations that such security will help take care of.
Today, much of that secure reality is gone. So, why not book the unrealistic? What have you got to lose?
It may take a while to get to your unrealistic goal, so take pleasure in the journey. You’ve booked it, but you may not know exactly when you’ll get on the dream vehicle. You can reserve a date, but you may have to cancel and rebook if your date arrives, but your dream has not yet.
The great motivator Jim Rohn defines success as “a progressive realization of a worthy goal.” Progressive may be the key word here. The journey may take you steps toward your goal, and may even force you to step backward away from your goal for a time. Those may be the failures you will encounter on your journey.
The second part of the statement calls for a return as the real you. That means you’ve taken the journey, after booking your unrealistic goal, reached your goal and now must return.
The variable here is that you may not return to the home, security etc. that you left. You may return to a different home. To borrow from a John Denver lyric, you might be coming home, to a place you’ve never been before.
Hence, we use the word “return” to mean to come back from the journey to the unrealistic that you’d booked a while ago. Some journeys are so good, you may never come back from them.
Bottom line is that it’s OK to dream. It’s OK to have goals that others did not wish for you. As long as your goals are worthwhile, as Rohn says, don’t let anyone stand in your way.
Perhaps you are looking for a method, or a vehicle, to get you to your goal. That might mean being open for something to come into your life that may be totally different from the kind of good things that your influencers may have wanted for you. If you are looking for such a vehicle, message me.
Life journeys are not always smooth, and not always pleasant. There can be rough roads, turbulent air, flat tires etc. If you understand that mishaps can befall you, but you can still have your eyes on the unrealistic goals you have booked, you are at least halfway there.
You can take pleasure in the journey, overcome the rough patches, and return with a sense of accomplishment. Remember, too, that such journeys are better when you take others with you. Trips are usually better when taken with friends or family.
So book the unrealistic, and return as the real you. Don’t go it alone, bring others. Return with the sense that the journey, however long, was worthy.
Peter
GREETINGS: HOW THEY’RE PHRASED CAN SEND DIFFERENT MESSAGES
#greetings #messages #DifferentMessages
So how was your weekend?
Robert Lentz of Business Management Daily took on this greeting and phrased it in different ways.
“Good weekend?” says you don’t care about details. You are just being nice, Lentz wrote in an article published Aug. 7, 2016, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Did you have a good weekend?” That conveys more courtesy, Lentz writes.
“Did you do anything interesting this weekend?” commits you to a conversation, writes Lentz.
“What did you do this weekend” demonstrates actual interest in someone’s life, according to Lentz.
We greet each other in different ways for different reasons. Sometimes, we really don’t want to know how someone is, or what they have done, but ask anyway, just to be nice.
Other times, we genuinely want to know how someone is doing, or what cool things they have done, and really want to talk to them.
It’s not just how one greets people. It’s how one responds to a greeting.
If someone asks how you are, do you respond positively and with enthusiasm?
If someone asks you what you did over the weekend, do you proceed to tell them in great detail, whether you think they want to know or not?
Greetings, and responses to them, don’t just have different meanings, they say a lot about people.
If things aren’t going well in your life, do you want to dump your problems onto others, or do you want others to think all is well with you?
It’s best to have an attitude of gratitude. It’s best not only to be positive and enthusiastic around others, but to actually feel that way.
Sometimes, when you are going through a rough patch, it takes work to remain positive. A rule of thumb here is to always think about the GOOD things in your life, to get you through those rough patches. It may be easier said than done, but it can be done.
If you ask someone how he or she is doing, or how his or her weekend was, take a genuine interest in what they say, and invite conversation. Sometimes, that one conversation could uplift you, especially if you have hit a rough patch.
If you’ve hit a financial rough patch, there are many solutions out there. Message me if you want to know about one of the best. You’ll learn about lots of happy people who’ve built great relationships and solved their financial issues.
Happiness can take work, but it is well worth it. The next time someone asks how your weekend was, respond with enthusiasm and be curious about how that person’s was.
That may not only brighten your day, but it might enhance your life.
Peter
WOMEN EARN LESS THAN MEN IN RETIREMENT
#WomenInRetirement #EarningsOfWomenVs.Men #jobs #layoffs
During their working years, women tend to earn less than men.
When they retire, women are more likely to live in poverty.
So says an article by Adam Allington of the Associated Press, published in the July 11, 2016, edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Women who raised children and cared for the sick and elderly family members often take what savings and income they have and spend it on something other than their own retirement security, Allington writes.
He quotes the National Institute on Retirement Security, which reports that women are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age 65 and older. Women 75 to 79 are three times more likely, Allington writes.
“I’ve had jobs that included a 401(k) and I was able to put some money aside every month,” Allington quotes Marsha Hall, 60. “But then I would get laid off and have to cash out the 401(k) to have money to live on,” he quotes Hall, who was born and raised in Detroit, is divorced and has no children.
Hall works part time as a file clerk, and she and her siblings chip in to care for their 75-year-old mother, Allington writes.
“If it wasn’t for Section 8 (a housing subsidy), I don’t know where I’d be living,” Allington quotes Hall.
Many men also have undergone a layoff in the last few years. Many families have lost their homes and have had to liquidate some, if not all, of their retirement savings.
Some see themselves scraping together a living via Social Security, part-time or even full-time jobs well into their golden years – presuming they can find those. For many, trying to reproduce the income they had in a job they lost is nearly impossible, as they see it.
Fortunately, there are solutions out there that can produce an income – even a better income than one has ever had – that don’t involve subsidies, or working at a traditional W-2 job in your golden years, and allow a person to help others do the same. For one of the best, message me.
Traditionally, women have borne the brunt of caregiving. They have also, in many cases, had to take off some work time to have children.
Much research has shown that, in general, they have also earned cents on the dollar vs. men.
These phenomena may have put women behind in earnings, thereby putting them behind in terms of retirement savings.
But both men and women are facing what Hall has faced in recent years: layoffs and not being able to replace a lost job with one that yields as good or better income than what was lost.
It’s important for everyone to have a Plan B in case the worst happens. If you have a good job, stay with it and save as much of your income as you can. Invest those savings well, with the help of a trusted adviser. If life forces you to take a break from work, try not to deplete those savings, though that may be easier said than done.
Most of all, make a secure retirement a priority in your life by spending less and saving more.
Peter
BOOMERS VS. MILLENNIALS IN THE WORK FORCE
#BabyBoomers #millennials #GenerationsInTheWorkForce
“Managing multigenerational workforces is an art in itself,” says a quote from Harvard Business School.
“Young workers want to make a quick impact, the middle generation needs to believe in the mission and the older employees don’t like ambivalence. Your move,” the quote continues.
Eric Harvey and Silvana Clark have compiled a book titled “Boomers vs. Millennials: Listen, Learn and Succeed Together.” Half the book is written from the viewpoint of the millennials. The second half is written from the viewpoint of the boomers.
There is no right or wrong on either side, the authors argue. It’s just a matter of how different age groups see the world.
Millennials are tech whizzes. Boomers? Not so much. Millennials want things to happen quickly. They want to get immediately recognized for everything they do. They need constant feedback, the book says.
Boomers are a little more patient. They can be left alone without much feedback to get their jobs done.
Millennials look for a good work-life balance. Boomers can, and have, put their jobs first in many cases.
Regardless of your age group, we all want work to be rewarding. We all want to be paid fairly for what we do. We all want the time to have a full life and we all want to have enough in our elder years to feel comfortable about retirement.
Too often, jobs lack some of those provisions. Chances are, if you are paid well, you are working long hours. You are putting the rest of your life on hold to keep those paychecks flowing.
If you are not paid well, unless you have a certain degree of personal satisfaction from your work, chances are you are not happy.
It’s always good to find something good in any job, lest you do something rash and quit.
Boomers, and workers who are even older, have grown up with some degree of job security. Generally, if one worked hard and stayed out of trouble, he or she advanced at work. Millennials probably will not have that. They will go from job to job — sometimes by their own choosing, sometimes not — looking for the ideal situation.
Employers have to understand this phenomenon if they want to keep good people. The Harvey and Silvana book provides some insight to employers, as well as employees, to understand those from different generations.
If you are a millennial, and you bounce from job to job looking for the ideal, wouldn’t it be nice to have an income that is not dependent on a traditional, W-2 job? If you are a boomer, and approaching retirement age, wouldn’t it be nice to have an income that will augment what you will get when you retire? Wouldn’t each generation like to leave a legacy of helping others? In any case, you may find an answer at www.bign.com/pbilodeau.
We all have different needs. We may not always understand the folks from our children’s or our parents’ generation. But we all must work and live in the same world. It’s best if we try to empathize with each other, rather than criticize each other.
No one is right or wrong, the authors contend. So let’s accept each other for who we are, and try to understand where each is coming from. All will be more productive in that case.
Peter
TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE NOT ALWAYS GOOD, BUT …
It may not have been as devastating as the Great Depression, but the recession of 2008 changed a lot of lives, in many cases, not for the better.
As New York Times columnist David Brooks writes, after such a change, “a certain number of people are dispossessed. They lose identity, self-respect and hope.
“They begin to base their sense of self-worth on their tribe, not their behavior,” he continues.
“They become mired in their resentments, spiraling deeper into the addiction of their own victimology,” he adds.
Brooks discussed this in relation to national politics in a column published July 15, 2016, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
If you were dealt a blow sometime around 2008, or since, you probably can relate.
Perhaps you lost a job, and haven’t been able to find one that pays you anywhere close to the job you lost. Perhaps you lost your house.
You keep hearing that things are getting better. The economy is picking up, say the experts. Yet, you don’t feel it.
You tend to blame people, or things, that really are not to blame. Even the employer who canned you, if that happened to you, probably was forced to.
Bear this in mind: blaming takes valuable energy away from solving the problem at hand.
Blaming is also easy. Solving the problem may be more difficult.
You may also hear that employers WANT to hire more people now. Yet, you are not among those they are looking for.
An example might be that police forces and the military are looking for new recruits. But you might not be the best candidate for that because, for example, you are too old. Even if you are the right age, perhaps you are not in the kind of physical shape to deal with the rigors of the job.
Perhaps you’ve just graduated college, with a good bit of debt, but employers want something more than just your raw brain to train. They want built-in expertise that you don’t have.
Therefore, you feel you have nowhere to turn. The natural instinct is to blame.
However, there are many ways out there to take your problem into your own hands, and help others do the same. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau.
The economy is going through a transition to the information age. As Brooks points out, it went through something similar in the 1880s, when it transitioned from an agriculture base to an industrial base.
“America still has great resources at the local and social level,” Brooks writes. He believes local is more powerful.
When a natural disaster befalls us, we must decide to rebuild or move. The choice is clearly in our hands. In this era, we have choices. The choice to be a victim is not healthy. The choice to take matters into our own hands, perhaps with the help of great local resources, is preferable.
Doing so may mean changing what you did, and how you did it, or getting used to something new, different and, at least at first, uncomfortable. But it can be done if you just look for the right vehicle for you.
If you have the urge to blame, remember this: You can’t embrace what is gone forever. But it can help you embrace what comes next.
Peter
COLLEGE GRADS’ JOB PROSPECTS IMPROVING? DON’T STAND AND APPLAUD YET
#CollegeGrads #employment #jobs #StudentDebt
It may be the best time to graduate college since the Great Recession. But they are still not great.
So writes Ruth Serven of The Kansas City Star. Her story was published July 3, 2016, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The unemployment rate for college grads is less than 5 percent, and job prospects are getting brighter, Serven writes. But 45 percent of those recent grads have jobs that don’t require their degrees, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Serven writes.
Though there is more work available, grads still face stagnant wages and the highest debt load ever, the article says.
In fact, 42 million people owe $1.3 trillion in student debt, according to the cover story in the August 2016 issue of Consumer Reports magazine, which condensed and reprinted an article by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.
“I feel I kind of ruined my life by going to college,” the CR article quotes Jackie Krowen, 32, of Portland, Ore., who owes $162,000 in student debt.
We’ve recently discussed this topic in this space, but it bears hearing another perspective.
Many graduates are coming out of college with debt the size of a home mortgage. How can they be expected to 1) buy a house? 2) begin saving for retirement? or 3) buy some of the essential things they need to live a decent life?
On top of the debt, the students’ expensive education is not giving them work that would be worth the investment, in many cases.
Also, some students are getting calls at all hours with prods, if not threats, to make payments on that debt.
Though most consider a home mortgage not just productive debt, but an actual financial vehicle, college debt, without having a commensurate job to make its burden light, is not productive debt.
Certainly, all education has value. But some education has more value than others. If a student goes on to be a doctor, for example, and goes into debt to make that happen, that’s, more or less, expected.
A medical practice can be lucrative and usually, before the doctor gets too old, it is usually paid off. Some even practice medicine in less lucrative places, in exchange for some eventual debt relief, among other inducements.
But if one studies, say, the liberal arts, and goes into debt to pay for that education, it’s very possible, even likely, that, if he gets a job at all, it will not be terribly lucrative. The student debt, therefore, becomes perhaps a lifelong burden. As that student ages, the burden may be so great that he will retire with little or nothing to help him get through old age.
Fortunately, there are solutions that don’t involve stiffing one’s debtor. There are ways to earn an extra income for a few part-time hours a week that might not only pay better than the job you are doing, but has the potential to make you financially free eventually. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau.
By all means, before a student decides to go to college, sit down with parents and other advisers and do the math. If you have to borrow money to cover most of the costs, think about how you would pay it back. If you don’t have a good answer, reconsider your future.
Colleges and universities, too, should contemplate their futures. How good would it look to produce thousands, even millions, of graduates that are so crushed with debt, they’ll be paying on it forever? Someone needs to retool education to prevent this.
We have a love-hate relationship with education. We may love it while we’re in school, but, when we graduate, often we don’t love it nearly as much.
Peter
BUILDING A PERSON FROM SCRATCH — IN A LAB
#cloning #HumanGenome #BuildingAPersonFromScratch
A couple decades ago, there was talk of cloning, or making an exact copy of an animal, person etc. Dolly, the cloned sheep, became a household name.
Now, scientists are beginning a 10-year program that will re-create the human genome which, if successful, could lead to creating people without the help of parents.
The proposal was published June 2, 2016, in the journal Science, and was the subject of an article by New York Times reporter Andrew Pollack. Pollack’s article was republished in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The idea of building people in a lab is fraught with moral considerations. The potential for huge advancements in medical science is intriguing. Still, Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health — the main funder of medical research in the United States – said that while the NIH is interested in encouraging advances in DNA synthesis, it “has not considered the time to be right for funding a large-scale, production-oriented” project like this one, according to Pollack’s article.
Collins also said such a project immediately raises “numerous ethical and philosophical red flags,” according to Pollack’s article.
The nonprofit Center of Excellence for Engineering Biology, which will run the project, intends to get funding from several public and private sources, according to Pollack’s article.
It’s fairly easy to see the medical advancement potential here. “It might be possible to make organisms resistant to all viruses, for instance, or make pig organs suitable for transplant into people,” Pollack writes.
But to make a whole person, piece by piece, in a lab? That’s delving into areas that will challenge ethics, potentially alter population mix and a host of other things that could change mankind as we know it.
We live in a diverse world. We celebrate that diversity. We work with, and live with, nature, while allowing it to be natural. We certainly like to manufacture things that will benefit us, but manufacturing people may be beyond what we should be doing.
Instead, if we don’t like our situation, or we don’t like whom we’ve become, let’s remake ourselves without making a new person from scratch. We all have the ability to change, to become better people, without changing our DNA, or becoming artificial.
One of the ways we can change is to help others more. To check out one of the best ways to do that, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You can see how people helping people potentially can help make all involved prosperous.
There are many things we, as smart humans, can do to make the world a better place. There are diseases to fight, physical, economic and other challenges to overcome.
But creating people in labs potentially will dehumanize us as a whole. Imagine a person created in a lab being asked where he or she came from, what his or her family background is etc. Those are all things that make us who we are. How does adding to an already overpopulated world from a lab enhance the world experience?
If this project remains limited in scope, much good could come from it. The danger lies in carrying it out to its fullest potential.
Let’s hope the researchers, presuming they get the funding to do this, will be mindful of all ramifications of their research as they conduct it. Just because something CAN be done, doesn’t mean it SHOULD be done.
Peter