Laura Spaulding, is the owner of Spaulding Decon. She's a former Kansas City Police Officer, who transitioned to entrepreneurship through a series of tough lessons, school of hard knocks and the joys of the freedom of business ownership. Today Spaulding Decon cleans up messy, toxic, and at times emotionally traumatic crime scenes. But that's only...
Hannah Perry is the founder of The Giggling Pig Art and Party Studio, located in Connecticut (USA). She owns one studio, with a second studio, as of July 2021, franchised. Join Hannah, and Ramon Ray, founder of SmartHustle.com, on this new series of the Smart Hustle Podcast, Hannah's Journey! We’ll follow Hannah on her journey through the...
Josh Cohen, founder, and CEO of Junkluggers took a “garbage” idea and turned it into a business that’s booming. Starting a business is challenging, and when it’s a niche business, those intricacies become even more complex. Josh faced this challenge head-on when he took the mainstream offering of hauling junk and made it environmentally...
NFL football players are some of the best athletes, but do they make great entrepreneurs? I interviewed, Shawn Bouwens who owns, with his wife, over 30 Scooter's Coffee shops. On why franchising? Shawn said, "Why reinvent the wheel". There's a case to be made for being an entrepreneur through franchising. He said one of the...
Starting a business with a friend? It could be a recipe for disaster. And yet, these two best friends decided to drop out of Corporate America to buy and operate a t-shirt franchise. Have they lost their marbles, or are they geniuses? Robyn Brewington and Lisa Hughes, who have been friends since 2014, met at...
You’ve decided to buy a franchise. Whether franchise ownership represents freedom from the corporate world, the fulfilment of a lifelong goal of business ownership or an addition to your business portfolio, investors are attracted to franchising because of the possibility of financial success. Owning a franchise can give you a tested business model with...
In a 2009 Sports Illustrated article about why many professional athletes go broke, it was reported that “78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.” And all of this takes place within two years of retiring from the NFL. Gary Brackett, a former linebacker and...
Franchise businesses are engines that keep the U.S. economy churning. For several years now, the franchise sector has outpaced the overall economy, and that strong growth is expected to continue, according to the annual economic outlook of the International Franchise Association. It’s no wonder that prospective business owners look at the franchise sector as a...
There are at least 28 million small businesses in the US which account for about 54 percent of all sales. There are also 900,000 franchise businesses across 300 business sectors of the economy. And yet, despite these numbers, it’s not often that you will come across small business brands that are also franchises. This is where...
Growing up, most of us heard from our parents, “go to college and get a good job!” Sounds like a good plan, right? However, have you ever wondered if there was a better way? Alternatively, have you been curious how the greats like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg created their empires –...
