Business Opportunity or Opportunity to be Taken Advantage of?

Search the web and you will find business opportunity after business opportunity telling you that you can "start part time", "quit your job", "become financially independent", so on and so forth. While, there are a lot of great business opportunities out there, mixed in with them are a lot of not so good ones and also many that are outright shams and scams. Offerings that are deemed to be "Business Opportunities" are required to register and file in State which require them to do so; the number being 26 at last count. The list of the states which require business opportunity registration can be found at the following:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/franchise/netbusop.shtm


One must do a significant amount of soul searching and homework about the opportunity in question prior to "writing the check", and jumping in. This is the major area where prospective business opportunity buyers fail to spend enough time seeing if the opportunity is a good and legitimate one and also if the opportunity is actually a good fit for their personality and skill set.

Unfortunately some sellers of business opportunities sadly are not honest and ethical people and will set up elaborate systems to "encourage" the prospective buyer to buy. They will use the same people all the time to tell the buyer how good the opportunity is and that it is a legitimate one. In the business it's called "validation". Often a buyer asks, Who can I talk to that is doing the business now?". It is assumed that the people they direct you to, are actually "happy buyers" of their opportunity. Sadly, in many cases this is not true. Many times the person that a prospective buyer is calling is really not doing anything in the business or just someone that is saying that they are doing the business. While it is sometimes hard to be skeptical and ask the hard questions it is necessary.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people looking to separate others from their money by any means possible. In upcoming posts I will be talking about a lot of things that need to be taken into consideration with regard to self examination and also examination of any business opportunity or franchise prior to turning over your hard earned money and time.