So if anything has become crystal clear during the Covid-19 pandemic is that Americans needs to support the US farmers by buying locally produced items.
And US FARMED foods.
If you know your history about the great depression in the early 1930s , then you know that farmers had to destroy crops and food supply even when millions of Americans where unemployed and hungry.
So we need to try and not repeat this mistake in 2020.
So to all Americans across this great nation the word has to be to support your local farmers.
So instead of bringing in food from outside the US , try and buy as much as you can locally farmed.
Hi,Guys, Maria your in-house relationship expert here at mrlifeadvise.
So the panic and fear that we see around the world has crashed the world economy into bits and Pisces.
So let me just start by saying that i dont really underestimate the COVID-19 pandemic.
But i together with a lot of other people in the world , questions how long are we gonna crush the world economy for a death rate of 0.6%.
What about the other 94.4%.
So let me give you an example that we had this week at mrlifeadvise, a long time client who owns one 40 room hotel and two family restaurants.
And he has been building these business for the past 30 years time, and he has put in sweat blood and tears into his businesses.
By law he has been forced to shut down all 3 businesses and also to lay of 50 people in the process.
He was used his saving to pay all employees two months wages from his own savings.
But he is out of cash in around 14 days.
So the summer season is the busiest for the hotel and the restaurants so this will be really a make or break year for him.
What is saving him is that , he owns all three properties where the restaurants and the hotel is located.
But he is questioning opening up one of the two restaurants since it has been only breaking even for the past 10 years time!.
The thing that he is struggling with is laying off 12 employees by closing this one restaurant.
He is one of the lucky ones, because he has been smart enough but also lucky enough that he has been able to acquire the properties along these 30 years that he has been operating.
He says that maybe he can employ 3 out of the 12 people that will be laid off for good if he closes one of the restaurants.
But what about the other nine employees,
This is what keeps him and i am sure millions of other employee up all nights, thinking about what to do and if they will ever open up their business again.
Or does it make more business sense to not re-open a break even establishment.
Most people outside of the resturant industgry do not now that the profit margin is often 2-3% after taxes.
So there are a lot of companies that survive on pretty much the break even concept.
And many do not think about the situation that many of the business that where around prior to the finanical crisis of 2008-2009 never came back.
There is a risk that we can lose more than 200 million jobs world wide for every month that the world is closed down or in a lock down.
At some point we need to start living again , because the cost for the society will be huge when in comes to suicide and alcohol and mental health issues.
It really saddens me that i have to write this upcoming text, but i am pretty sure that America will have the highest unemployment percentage wise since the great depression or even higher inside the next 6 months time.
And there is a pretty good chance that the unemployment level will be two digits for the next 2-3 years time at least.
And this is really bad news for the US.
So President Trump saying that he will have to make the biggest decision in his life in the upcoming weeks, is no joke!.
He needs to make the decision to either save 99% of the populations future or to save 1% or less of the population , and sacrifice the other 99% in the process.
We simply have to understand that life is fragile and it always had been.
And we can not keep the economy locked down for much longer, if we are gonna be able to climb back inside 5 years to where we where before the lock down.
I do not believe that the medical community understands the mental problems that this lock down creates for business owners world wide.
It is sad to see life come crashing down in front of our eyes, but this is what we are witnessing right now.
It is time to get back to the new normal inside the next two weeks time.
The absolutely latest day based on all data at we have gathered at mrlifeadvise is 1 Th of May, and if we do not open up the world again our grandchildren will suffer financially for our fear, that many feel right now.
It is so important to understand that we need to live our lives without fear.
Fearing things are often 10 times worse that actually living true the things that you fear.
So we understand the fear and panic many feel about the COVID-19 virus, but what about the fear of the unemployed people and their fears about putting a roof over their children heads and also putting food on the table for the same children.
So please be safe, but try and accept that life is fragile and it always has been!.
So we can pretty much say that the world has changed a lot in the past 60 days.
And there is no going back to the life we had prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Now most of us, who have been around for awhile have been waiting for a corona virus outbreak for some time.
And we know that several other strains will hit us in the next 15 years to come.
But of course when it happens it is not fun to go around and say to people i told you so!.
And we are not doing that at all!.
So we have made some models of how life will look like in the next decade to come from 2020-2030.
And here is a few things that we have come up with.
No1: Air travel both for pleasure/vacation and business will go down more than 50% from the the year 2019 levels.
No2: More people will use Microsoft teams and similar video conference tools to connect with customers, suppliers and co-workers.
No3: More people will leave the big cities like New York to live in smaller less dense cities and towns across America.
No4: The economy will be in a recession for the next decade to come.
There can be some spikes here and there, but in general the middle class that was not wiped out in the 2008-2010 financial crisis will be almost ex-stint with this first convid-19 outbreak.
What will happen is that more and more companies will automate as much as possible since robots do not get sick!.
Basically every other desk in an office will disappear.
And there is two ways an employer can do this, the first is that the person that gets to keep his or her job will have to do two peoples jobs with the same pay as before.
and this will mean that the person will have to work also on the weekend but from home to be able to keep up with the added workload!.
And the second is that everybody gets to leave the office and then half of the staff will get rehired at basically half the salary and perks.
This will of course affect the GDP spending from private consumers a lot in the next decade.
No5: The bond market has lost 6 trillions in less than 30 days and will lose another 6 trillions in the next 60 days, and this will be the beginning of the end for cheap consumer credits in Europe but most likely also in the US.
No6: The real-estate market will look much different in 10 years compared to how it looks today.
Meaning that most markets will see a drop and more families will live together in generation living.
So you will see that there will be the working parents the grandparents and the youth and the children all in one home.
Because this will be the most cost effective way of living when the middle class turns into working class.
No7: Many companies will not have a physical location like today in one place.
You will see co-workers scatter around the country and the world.
And this will be the end for a lot of commercial real-estate globally, why have an super expensive office building when you can work on video-link and similar added products.
There is a reason why Carl Icahn, has shorted the commercial real-estate market heavily these days!.
No8: Large parts of the professional sports and concerts will not be with live crowds, but they will be televised as we see many new corona virus outbreaks with different strains than the COVID-19, that we see today.
No9: Colleges and higher education will be shifted from on-sight campuses to online school.
And this will be the beginning of the end for the over priced universities.
The ivy league schools will still have on sight classes but these schools will be closed in, and the students will have to return after breaks into isolation for 2 weeks, after returning from leave.
This will end the student loan crisis for new students , when education will be 1/10 of the normal cost today when it will be online instead of on campus.
I hope that i will be around for the next decade to see all this for myself.
But i can say that this is a changed world, and it will be a changed world out there for many years to come.
So be very prepared that the life that you know has changed for good, and it is not coming back.
So we started our consulting business in 2006 and after the financial meltdown in 2008-2009, we had a lot of companies/clients that needed our advice on what to do.
The reason we call ourselves mrlifeadvise and not mrlifeadvice is that we want to offer our experience and and give good advise as advisers.
But we dont want to advice you what to do since it is your business and you need to make the decision yourself, we can not make them for you as advisers.
But like during the financial crisis years 2008-2009 , we have been asked by clients please take the wheel and be hands on advisers(meaning help us make the tough decisions).
Here is the cold hard truth, all these financial rescue packages are good, but they are being financed by your children and your children’s , children.
So we are just kicking the can down the road.
So simply put this is the reality for a lot of small business.
If you where on the brink of survival before the COVID-19 CORONA virus, you will not be able to re-open your business again!.
Being closed for 4-6 weeks will not allow you to re-open your business since you where on the brink before the COVID-19 SHOWED UP.
For some production companies it will be a tough year to get supplies from the supply chain on time this year.
After we helped a client of ours yesterday who has 50+ workers in a global production company, meaning this company buys and sells components globally.
He has been forced to close this week, and all workers are on 2 months paid leave, which the government will cover 90% of the salary for that period of time.
But he has made several large investments in machinery and tools over the past 2 years time and these bills for that equipment still needs to be paid every month to the leasing companies.
So we went over the numbers today and he is lucky that he has taken our advise to put a side a rainy day fund, but that will only last him for 3 months time!.
And then it is all over after that, if we are closed longer than 3 months or that he does not get cash flow in after 3 months time from customers.
We talked to all local banks today on his behalf and they flat out said no, they will not lend his company money if we runs out after 3 months time.
He owns a AAA triple A company meaning that he has had a really good credit rating for many years, but that does not mean anything in this current situation.
And if he loses his company, more than 50 families will lose a good salary.
The average age in his company is 53 years of age.
And it is highly unlikely that many of these 40 workers who are closer to 50 or over 50 both female and male, will find a similar paying job, or a job in the first place if he has to close his doors for good.
And because he is a smaller company on a global stage in a specific product market, nobody will take over(buy) his company if he closes.
So even if we see airlines, cruise lines, restaurants,coffee shops,bars and hotels are taking the biggest hit, there are many smaller family own businesses in production and other markets that will go under, if we do not open the world up again inside the next 20-25 days.
So even if the 0.5% mortality rate is horrible for the family of the deceased, the big question all experienced business people understand is at what point is the cure deadlier than the disease itself?.
Human life is valuable, but we have a larger issue at hand, how many lifes will be destroyed by depression and suicide when companies close and people lose their income/job.
No matter how hard it is to accept a virus like the COVID-19 , taking over our lives,because it truly has hijacked the world economy.
We have to move on and move forward.
And at some point we need to re-open our society again inside the next 3 weeks time, otherwise we have broken our world economy in a way that we can not undo!.
So we have to do a triage here do we accept a 0.5% kill rate and keep 99.5% with food on their table and a roof over their head, or do we sacrifice 99.5% of the population to save 0.5% of our population.
I think all sane people know the answer to this hearth wrenching question!.
So be safe out there and take care of yourself and your families.
Due to so many of our old/existing clients contacting as day and night at this point we are not gonna be able to respond to emails as fast as normal from new clients or clients who maybe wishes to join our community.
So please bare with us for the next 3-4 weeks time, and hopefully the world has opened again for business.
So this is a blog post that we never thought we would have to write.
But here it is, the world has gone into a hysteria that we have never ever seen the magnitude of in the past.
And we have exactly 30 days from today March 20th 2020, to April 20th 2020, to get everything to re-open again.
(We know that many restaurants and mom and pop mortar and brick stores will never ever open again!.
Because once they have now closed they will not re-open again, and these are the companies that have been joggling for more than 10 years after the 2008 financial meltdown.
These are companies that did not have enough money to close for 30 days, they had money for 14 days.
And many have already been closed for almost a week now!.
This is a pandemic with less than 1% kill rate, and still we are treating it like it would be EBOLA that has a 25-90% kill rate(mortality) in infected patients.
So we understand that the triage that will be done now around the world, is horrible at the moment.
But millions of people die of the fly each year, and we dont really pay much attention to that.
We have in America today an opioid crisis that has been killing on an average of 60.000 people a year.
Now we are shutting down the world economy for a few thousand deaths!.
So there is no reason for this shutdown, what so ever.
The way this should have been handled is that people who are in the risk group like elderly people with several underlying diseases should have been protected, the best way possible and the rest of the world should have gone on like any other normal day in early January!.
So we are sinking the world economy like the Titanic to save less than 1% of the population, most likely the kill rate would be 0.4-0.5%.
So we have 30 days to come to our senses, and start to live our normal lives again, because if we do not do that, it is game over for a very long time.
And the 1929 stock market crash and the great depression will look like a breeze compared to what we have going on right now!.
Our world economy is so tied together today compared to what it was in 1929.
And in 2008 it was the subprime loans and overspending that created that crash.
But we never corrected the mistakes and issue on the markets from 2008 we swept them under the rug, and we have had almost free money to everybody in low interest mortgages and car loans for 10 years now, and this was a huge mistake by all the decision makers, not to correct the issues 10 years ago.
So to all the people in the world, mark our words we have 30 days to correct this mass hysteria and if we do not do so, we are completely screwed for a very long time to come.
We would almost go so far that we will most likely have a lost generation.
If you lose your job or home, do not abandon your pets , they will love you even if you live in a tent for one or two years to come.
And buy a 50 dollar www.tractive.com or similar gps for your cat or dog, so if you get separated for any reason you will find you beloved pet again!.
Stay safe and help each other out, in anyway you can.
We have in America a huge problem today with guardianship and how elderly people get bleed dry by lawyers and corrupt judges and senior leaving management.
So this problem is not contained to only America but it is very bad in America.
You have so many people benefiting from putting well of elderly people with or without relatives to look after them.
There is around 1.4 million people under guardianship in the US in 2019.
Many of these are being well taken care off by family members or relatives/friends.
It is usually the wealthy ones without family that gets targeted.
Because poor people dont pay lawyer bills, because there are no assets to benefit from.
There is an estimate that more than 900 billion dollars in America is under guardianship from elderly citizens.
For a country like America that has so many federal laws(if you ever seen a federal criminal code book you know what we are talking about!),it is strange that they dont regulate the state guardianship problem.
The biggest issue is that it is very easy to sign up to become an guardian, and you need to sign up and basically go in front of a local judge to get approved.
And this is just ridiculous, considering that you need a degree for so many other jobs out there, but not this one, where you can get access to the funds of a multimillionaire that you dont even know.
So let us give you an example a person of the age of 75 years old, has a stroke or other illness.
He recovers but the state issue a guardian to handle his finances anyway.
The person has no relatives or they are not involved in the persons life.
So here often people figure out that there is a few million dollars in assets and it in these cases where you see how the wheels starts to spin faster and faster.
Lawyers can bill up to 50.000 dollars easily and the guardian can in many states get 5% of all the assets that are sold off.
There can also be one guardian to take care of the private part and then one guardian who handles the financial aspects of the person under guardianship.
Both these guardians gets paid anywhere from 2000 to 4000 dollars a month.
And if there is assets like property what you often can see is that this can be sold off to (friends of the lawyers or the guardians) for a way below market value.
So the name of the game is to empty out all the assets of the person who are under guardianship.
There is also a lot of other aspects involved here in being able to control the person who under guardianship.
Often this involves over medicating the person, or moving the person from there home to be able to sell the home and benefit from this personally.
When you look at the cases that has been prosecuted over the years it is very clear that there is a large number of people involved in these cases.
And it can be the judge, a lawyer sometimes even 3 lawyers, a doctor, and then one or two Guardians, and on top of that a nursing home manager that is also involved.
And everybody is making money from the wealthy person under guardianship.
So usually they can slowly drain the bank accounts and sell of assets over a few years until the person has no assets left what so ever.
And then they move on to the next elderly victim.
Let us just say that there is only a few bad apples out there in each state, but these do a lot of damage to a lot of people.
So you work hard all of your life and then you get railroaded at an old age, it is just horrendous that this can go on year after year.
By the way at least in Texas you can have up to as much as 32 people under one guardianship on the personal side at least.
So do the math here yourself that if you can earn around 2000 dollars a month and you have as much as over 30 people under your guardianship you can earn 60.000 dollars a month or 720.000 dollars a year!.
So this is a problem that the federal government has to fix A.S.A.P since the states do not seem to be able to police themselves and fix this issue.
It is always important to a society that we take care of our children and elderly people who often have no voice in the community.
So for a person without children today, or a person who has children but no contact, for you what you need to do is to find a good and trustworthy lawyer and a good and trustworthy accountant.
And preferable find people who are 15-20 years younger than you are.
So if you get issues when you are 75 year of age they are 55-60 in age and can protect you in many ways going forward.
So getting a good lawyer and a good accountant when you are younger can save you from the gates of hell that the forced guardianship can be on you as a person!.
So we are now in a full blown global panic with the pandemic of the COVID-19 the so called Corona virus.
And business owners are calling and emailing us non stop on what to do?, with their business and employees.
So let us from a medical perspective run down what this virus does and how dangerous it actually is to you.
So this is a virus that is airborne and that means that when somebody sneezes or you come in to close contact with them you can get infected if they are infected themselves.
It can also infect by drip(fluid) so if somebody that has this infection is using a chair or gym machine or whatever you can catch it.
But if the sweat has dried the risk is much lower to catch it!.
So basically you can say that for a normally healthy person this COVID-19 corona virus is not any more dangerous than the normal flu.
There is people saying that you can get long-term problems even if you recover from the COVID-19 , but we still dont know that for sure.
What we can say for sure is that the normal flu can also cause some serious long-term side affects in a small number of patients.
So this is something that we need to determine later on in the future when we actually have some real data supporting one way or another, if there is long-term side affects involved or not.
So if you like visiting the gym, some gyms are closed some are open.
We would suggest that you train with long sleeves and also use gloves, and make sure that you have cleaning products with you to clean weights and machines , if the gym does not provide that already.
So this is everybody’s own choice if you should visit the gym or not!.
Most of us at mrlifeadvise consulting are still visiting gyms and we live our lives like we have done in the past before the COVID-19 BREAK OUT.
Of course if any one of us catches it, we will isolate ourselves very quickly for a 7-10 days time period, to avoid spreading it to others, who are not as healthy as we are.
So dont be selfish even if you are healthy yourself and you catch the virus.
Because you can spread it to people that are not healthy and you can actually kill them by infecting them.
So isolate yourself if you get infected with the virus.
The big issue with COVID-19 is that if you have any underlying diseases like diabetes, cancer, asthma or any lung issues or what ever else serious that we would call underlying diseases, you need to be more vigilant than normal.
But this is the same advice that you would need to follow during the normal flu season.
And also if you are over 65 years of age , you need to use caution with this COVID-19 BREAK OUT.
And for all you grandchildren out there you should not visit your grandparents during this time period or if you are gonna visit you use a medical face-mask and dont kiss or hug your elderly grandparents at this time.
So one thing to remember is that in America more than 36.000 people dies on an average from the normal flu each year.
And in the year 1990 more than 90.000 died that year from the flu in America.
So the most important thing is to remember that the panic and the chaos is actually much more dangerous than the COVID-19 actually is for the world today.
What we have advised our corporate clients is that if the office work can be done remotely by the employees , then that is a good idea.
For the production workers this is not an option , but as a business owner you can make sure that you screen your workers so if somebody has even a normal cold that they dont come in to work.
And also bring in an extra cleaning crew that comes twice a day to clean door knobs and all common areas with strong determent products(cleaning products)of the medical antibacterial type.
One other option can be that if you only work one shift in the production you could turn that into three shifts, to avoid having the full crew of workers in at once.
There still is very little that says with the COVID-19 that you need to close your production or company in general at this point.
But we will keep monitoring the COVID-19 Corona outbreak and keep in touch with all of you our clients.
And our clients you all know that you can contact us 24/7 true email if you have any questions for us about your business, and somebody will get back to you A.S.A.P.
So for now, we dont recommend any companies to close down their operations because of the current COVID-19 outbreak.
The H1N1 (Swine flu) was much worse as a disease in 2009 so around 10 years ago and we recovered from that!.
So in general as it is always the people that are sensitive to infections and have a lot of other illnesses and underlying diseases should be very careful with every pandemic that comes our way, and the same goes for the yearly normal flu season for those who are in the so called risk groups.
What we have seen so far is that mostly elderly people have died so far.
But there have been younger healthy people also that have passed away, in China for instance the doctor that first reported the CONVID -19 in Wuhan died from this.
So there is no guarantee that younger people can not also get serious issues from the Corona virus.
So use common sense and use cleaning gel ,antiseptic gel and be smart out there.
We will keep you updated, if something new breaks.
As many of our clients now is that we have a lot of contacts with the bio-hacking community and also with a lot of medical doctors in different fields.
So we get a lot of information from non official channels at mrlifeadvise, that we can then give to you our dear and much valued clients.
So a lot of talk has been around why people are leaving LA and NYC and cities like Chicago for small town America!.
And yes the cost of living in these cities are really high and the real estate prices are ridiculous in places like LA and NYC.
But this is not the full picture of why people are living for greener pastures.
Yes cost of housing,day care and taxes are higher in LA and in the NYC, but there is a big driver why millennial and others are moving out in masses from the Metropolitan areas , towards small town America.
And yes millennial are also moving to hot spots like Phoenix,Austin and Atlanta, but many are also moving to small town America.
And it is not just millennial who are moving out of these larger metro areas, also people in their 40s are moving out.
So now you are wondering what is the big reason for people moving away from bigger cities with all the amenities towards more rural communities and smaller towns.
SO HERE IS ONE OF THE NEW AND REAL REASONS THIS IS HAPPENING SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!
COMPANIES ARE ALLOWING PEOPLE TO WORK MORE FROM HOME!.
The first reason why this is happening more and more right now, is due to a lot of companies having changed out the old school management that has retired in large parts and younger people in their late 40s has taken over, and they younger folks have all been around the internet boom from the earlier days so they know that not everybody has to sit and work in the same office to be productive.
Most of the old school management taught that al workers should be under one roof for getting out the most of the productivity.
The second thing is because of the big problem that most companies in America and Europe is facing in today’s world is the lack of educated and/or experienced workers to hire for corporate openings.
In today’s online world and great video meeting possibility you can sit in South Dakota and work for a New York city company.
Or you can sit in Colorado and work for a Los Angeles based company.
In most cases you need to go in to the office maybe 2 days a month, to meet face to face with your co-workers but other than that you can sit where ever you want for your job!.
There is also a great benefit for many companies allowing this, working from home thing.
And that is that is is much easier to requite highly skilled personal at a reasonable cost compared to what the cost would be to have to relocate a person cross country.
Let us say that you are a company that in certain positions do not need the employees to sit in the same building or city, then you have a much wider net to search for that very talented co-worker/employee all over America, instead of just within the city limits.
It is also easier to keep the costs down salary wise for a job if the person can sit and work from home in a much cheaper city than the LA and NYC are for instance.
So let us say that you need to pay 120.000 dollars to get a skilled person in the bigger cities for this job that you need to hire for.
If you are willing to accept a person working from home in South Dakota you might find the sale talent for 90.000 or even slightly less than 90.000 dollars.
So this is a win win for al parties, companies can recruit better and also save some on salaries.
workers/people with good skills that are living in smaller towns and cities can get work that might not be available in here region without having to move to the metro areas.
And with good internet speed, you can have video meetings or face time your colleagues a few times a day, and it will work pretty much the same as it would if you where all sitting in a conferee room together.
So this is one of the major driver for millennial and others leaving a high cost and high stress life in a big city for a more laid back life in small town America.
Lets face it, living in Los Angeles is stressfull you need to make 150K at least a year to live somewhat decent and even that is not enough.
If you are gonna live a more comfortable life in Los angles or NYC you need to make upwards to 250K .
And there is not that many 250k a year jobs to go around.
There is also on other area that is to come and that is for smaller and medium sized companies to figure out how to get access to highly skilled workers but only for part time jobs.
So let us say that you run a small factory or a company in Los Angeles ,and you are in need of a part time expert on something that you can not find in your area.
Then maybe finding a retired expert on this specific topic in Pittsburgh PA, that can offer your company 15 hours a week at a reasonable price point over video link.
So mrlifeadvise strongly believes that we have just seen the beginning of this trend where a lot of office type of work can be done online with co-workers and employees are sitting here and there.
There is also one other great benefit to having people sitting in other cities and that is that they might be able to drum up some new business for the company by being abler to represent the business in their own region/state/city.
So one of our clients had noticed that we talk a lot about gambling addiction at mrlifeadvise at the moment.
So we will explain here why we currently are pushing this topic on our site.
More people than ever are today 2020 addicted to different things than ever before in our history.
Also we have never ever seen so many gambling addicts around the world as we do today 2020.
And it is increasing in the same amounts as the opioid crisis is.
For us this is an emergency that needs to be taken seriously.
The deregulation of the gambling markets are destroying people and families like nerver before in human history.
Also the big danger with gambling is that a person that gets addicted, if it is the wife who gambles on the slot machines or the husband or sports-betting or poker or black jack.
Regardless of what people are betting on , it is absolutely crazy right now around the world.
The children’s college funds can be gambled away in a few months time or in a year.
And those kinds of things can tare a family apart completely.
And also gambling affects your work in so many different ways on the negative side.
If you lost a big bet on NFL Sunday games, you will be in a shitty mood come Monday.
And that will affect your work preformance a cross the board.
Wayne Rooney, the very famous soccer/fotboll player lost huge amounts of money when he was younger, and he said that his performance on the pitch absolutely was affected by this gambling.
There are smart managers in many different companies around the world that are starting to study what the employees do on their free time.
Because a gambler in debt or short on cash, is actually a danger to the business even as an employee.
There are a lot of CFOs from smaller and medium sized companies who have lost their job because they have borrowed money from the tilt so to speak to try and gamble back their losses, which of course never work out well!.
So we see more and more when mrlifeadvise in called in to advise on different situations in smaller and medium sized companies that gambling is a huge problem for many in the management team, but also with the floor workers.
Addiction does not discriminate, and gambling addiction is one of these things that if you lose half you salary every month to gambling it does not matter if you make 2.000 or 20.000 dollars a month.
It will affect you equally, it is just the sums of money that are different.
So do yourself a favor if you have started to gamble use NEGA our program to quit gambling , and if you have never gambled in your life, never ever start.
You can never become a winning player.
We dare the people who say that they can live on gambling, as their main source of income to proof that over a longer period of time!.
These people are very few and very far apart, that we can guarantee you.
There are of course always exceptions.
But in general 99.90% of the people who gamble are losing gamblers, and the 0.1 that are winners they would make much more money holding down a regular mid level job!.
So dont fool yourself, you are not gonna win.
And most of all you will never ever catch up with your losses.
So stop chasing you losses, the money is gone and stop flushing down more money down the toilet!.
So as formers business owners to many different types of business globally, we can once for all debunk the so called franchise ownership/system.
This opinion is strictly our own,and we are very much a where that there are a number of very successful franchisees out there.
But our blog and our advises are meant for mainly smaller business owners who lack big amounts of working capital.
So a lot of people come to us and ask about different franchises, and if they should buy in to one.
Often they will have to borrow that money from family and the bank.
Our general answer is always a big NO!.
So what is a franchise?, so very easily put you buy the right to open a business that already exists.
What it is means in layman terms is that somebody has started a business somewhere and they are selling you their business model for a cost, so you can run a smilar business in your area/town/city.
So usually there is a upfront cost to acquire the rights to a franchise.
This can be anywhere from 5.000-1000.0000, so from 5000 dollars up to a million dollars.
And the average cost is around 150.000-250.000 dollars.
Then there is usually a license cost also involved in the this deal.
And this can be either a percentage of your turnover or your profits or even sometimes a flat fee every month!.
So as you see here, the initial start up costs are very big, on top of that you have to continue to pay monthly fees to the franchise owner.
So in general you will be paying true your nose as a franchisee!.
There are some studies that show that almost 40% of franchise owners makes less than 50.000 dollars a year.
And then you should really take into consideration that many of them work 14-16 hour days.
So if you would find a job that will pay you 50.000 dollars a year for 8 hours then you are much better off based on the statistics.
There are also other studies that show that 15% of franchise owners makes more than 200.000 dollars a year.
What you need to know about these people making 200.000 dollars a year is that they usually have a lot of capital behind them and they run a big food franchise or another large franchise.
So they are not a corner store so to speak!.
Sometimes when clients come to us, we see jaw-dropping agreements from franchise owners to franchises, that we would never see in agreement around the world for normal buying and selling of services and goods.
So we can become very sad, when we see how a franchise has been taken to the cleaners by the franchise owner.
We would never recommend anybody buying into a fitness or a gym franchise under any circumstances.
Because this is not a hard thing to run on your own with one or two very experienced gym rats by your side.
To open up a gym/fitness center you first just need to know what customers you are targeting with your business.
Is it normal gym training with some spinning classes and some group classes that you want to cater to.
Or are you looking at cross-fit type of customers and maybe even half a gym and half martial arts gym, MMA and similar stuff!.
Once you know what customer group you are targeting then you need to do a very proper due diligence to make sure that the area you are looking to open up in, does not have to much competition and that there is enough of a customer base for you to open up a training facility of some sort.
Then try to find a location with enough parking spots, and where the rent is not gonna be true the roof.
Because your fixed costs will be the one major player in your business and it will determine if you make a profit or not.
There is a huge difference in paying 4000 dollars and 8000 dollars a month for a similar space.
Sometimes the 8000 dollars is justified based on the location but you have to really do your due diligence before starting up any kind of business.
So it was quite fun to see the last episode of undercover boss in January when one gym franchise chain sent out a women who basically new very little about training and running a business.
There is always that problem when you enter into a franchise that is owned by a large company who has a lot of employees and many of them are sitting in there ivory towers and they have no experience from running their own business of any kind!.
So when they make cooperate decisions that will affect you as the franchise, they do not really understand how bad those decisions can affect you and your business.
What was also jaw dropping with this particulate gym chain was that they even admitted not having any contact with the owner of one gym for over a year.
As every good franchise owner knows, the communication with head office is always a major key, so you know what is going on and what is coming in the pipeline the upcoming year/years so you can plan for your business.
The cost to buy a franchise is often way to high, and it is usually much better to spend that money of your own equipment for the gym for instance, than to pay somebody-else.
There are also some issues when you want to get out of a franchise agreement, because it is not always that clear cut that you can sell your business to anybody upright.
Usually you need approval from the licensee to do this!.
And not every buyer of your business will qualify to become the new franchisee , with the head office.
So then if we speak about food franchises of course many of them are well branded, but that does not mean that you will as the owner make a lot of money on a smaller store, once you have paid all the monthly cost that comes with being an franchisee.
In general you also need to be careful with franchise opportunities that require a lot of money upfront.
Because a lot of the bad franchise option will take most of there money upfront from you.
And very often leave you high and dry after that.
One other very important thing you need to know is that for a franchise to success you need to be working for the first 5 years yourself in the business to make sure that everything runs smoothly and cost effective.
So if you come to us as a client and ask us about if you should open up a franchise, we would almost always tell you not to do it!.
And for you out there saying we dont know what we are talking about.
We have created over 10.000 lasting jobs around all continents, over the past 50 years time.
And these jobs are stil there, in Sweden in Germany in America, in France, in Taiwan, in England and many other places.
So we have started with nothing and built and lost companies over the years, so we are in a very good situation giving business advise to smaller and medium sized companies, because we have been there, done that!.
So if you are looking at entering into a franchise , you really need to have your eyes wide open, and understand what you are entering into!.
One final note on franchises is this!.
Just because a franchise works well in California does not mean that it will work well in Iowa or Texas for say!.
So that is why it becomes so difficult to look at the success stories that the franchise owner is trying to pitch to you as the possible franchisee.
Thank you for reading.
Mrlifeadvise.
Live and business coaching at its best!
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mrlifeadvise is a business consulting company specializing in smaller and medium sized companies.
We have 60+ years of experience from building companies, and we have created over 10000+ lasting jobs during that time frame.
We will help your business with good advise, regardless of what business branch you belong to and regardless of what part of the world you are active in.
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