Bill Bradley launched America’s Best Franchises in 2005. I recently asked him how he got into the business.
Post 9/11, after owning a venture capital firm for more than 10 years, I decided to investigate the purchase of a franchise. I had vast experience in doing due diligence on a variety of business concepts but didn’t really know where to start when considering the purchase of a franchise. Fact is, most people don’t have a clue what kind of business they want to buy. You can look to your skill sets and passions but there may not be a franchise in that industry that fits your budget or is available where you live.
Little did I know, there are about 3,500 franchise concepts and most of them are not household names. Everyone knows, McDonalds and Burger King and AAMCO and Meineke but if you think about it, you can probably count on one hand the franchises you are familiar with. Ultimately, I used the search engines using broad search terms like franchises or franchise opportunities to uncover possible opportunities. My search led to a few franchise web portals featuring hundreds of franchise opportunities in a variety of industries. They proved to be a great resource for my investigation into a good franchise for me.
As I perused multiples of franchise portals, I found myself wondering why the portal didn’t offer some of the information I was looking for in my due diligence. How could I possibly narrow my search to a handful of opportunities if I didn’t know how much liquid cash I would need to get started. Or how many employees would be required. Or if the opportunity was available where I want to live and work. Given that, the entrepreneur in me using my knowledge of due diligence, decided to start my own franchise opportunity web portal.
At America’s Best Franchises, we try and provide the aspiring entrepreneur with information they can use to help in the decision process. We try to do a better job than anyone else in our industry. We currently feature more than 250 franchise opportunities in approximately 30 different industries. In addition, we post guest blogs from experts inside the industry to give our visitors an opportunity to get up close and personal with franchise opportunities they may have an interest in.