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The American Dream is Alive and Well! by Kapil Manocha, Consultant, The Franchise Consulting Company
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hat do Elon Musk (Tesla), Sergey Brin (Google), Jan Koum (Whatsapp), Vinod Khosla (Sun Microsystems) and Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post) have in common? They are all immigrants and they are entrepreneurs. Can you imagine what America would be like without them and hundreds of thousands of other immigrants who have started small businesses here. In fact, immigrants are the fastest-growing group of people achieving the American dream through small business ownership. According to the International Franchise Association®, immigrants are taking on a significantly increasingly role in the business environment. Today 900,000 out of approximately 4.9 million small businesses are owned by an immigrant (that’s almost 1 in 5!). Not only that, but immigrants are
twice as likely to become entrepreneurs than nativeborn Americans! One of the most popular avenues for many emerging entrepreneurs towards the path to business ownership is Franchising. This is also true for established entrepreneurs looking to diversify their investment portfolios. There are several reasons for this. For one, franchising provides a proven model of success.
TODAY 900,000 OUT OF APPROXIMATELY 4.9 MILLION SMALL BUSINESSES ARE OWNED BY AN IMMIGRANT (THAT’S ALMOST 1 IN 5!). 40
FEBRUARY 2020 | WWW.FRANCHISEJOURNAL.COM
The management team has made good and bad choices and fine-tuned the model by learning from their decisions. As a result, it reduces the risk and shortens the learning curve for franchisees. Franchise companies also have brand equity that has been built over time. This name recognition helps franchisees grow faster than they would had they gone it alone. Finally, franchisors also have systems in place – everything from partnerships with realtors to help find the ideal location, to architects and contractors to help with the build out, proprietary CRM software, marketing plans, social media platforms,
