About this item
A no-nonsense, start-to-finish roadmap for aspiring franchiseesIn The Ultimate Guide to Franchising, straight-shooting author Joe Mathews delivers a practical and hands-on "how-to" guide for aspiring franchisees seeking to start their own businesses. In the book, you'll explore real-life stories from the franchising trenches that illustrate how to effectively look past the obvious and dig deep into the bones of a franchise to establish fit, predict success, and mitigate risk. You'll discover the personality types most likely to experience success and failure at franchising and identify the entrepreneurial traits that can expose you to additional risk. You'll also find: All the info you need to know about franchising before you start looking for the right fitStrategies for properly and fully investigating a franchise opportunity in your areaTechniques for conducting proper diligence to determine a franchisor's skills and viability.
About the Author
Joe Mathews, a fourth-generation Californian, writes about his home state and its politics, media, labor, and real estate as the Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan think tank. He is co-author, with Mark Paul, of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (University of California Press, 2010). His previous book was The People's Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy (PublicAffairs, 2006), an account of Governor Schwarzenegger's first term and his use of ballot measures as governing tools.Joe serves as a contributing writer at the Los Angeles Times, as lead blogger at NBC's California site Prop Zero, and as a contributor for The Daily Beast. His work appears in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, The American Prospect, Politico, the Scientific American, Los Angeles magazine, and Fox & Hounds Daily.Before joining New America, he was a reporter for eight years at the Los Angeles Times, where he covered state and presidential politics, education, labor, and the city of Compton. Previously, he covered the Justice Department for The Wall Street Journal. He began his career in 1994 as a reporter on the city desk of the Baltimore Sun, where he wrote about urban issues and the environment. His coverage of a down-on-its-luck neighborhood of former slaughterhouses earned him the incomparable title, "Bard of Pigtown."He also is co-president of the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy (www.2010globalforum.com) - a free, public meeting of academics, journalists, activists and other experts on initiative and referenda in San Francisco, July 30-Aug. 4.
