My First Post!

by Jeff Northrop

This is my very first blog post so I think it's best if I start with a brief introduction My name is Jeff and I'm a geek. I realize now that I've been a geek all of my life but really didn't embrace it until 1990 when I was working for a market research firm doing, among other things, software development. Since then I've gone through a handful of computer-related jobs across a wide diversity of industries. I landed here as CTO at FBR about a year and a half ago and it is my first foray into franchising. I've learned a number of interesting tidbits about the business of franchising in the past 18 months and I'm going to take this opportunity to share these with you over the next week or so in this blog.

I'll start with the most obvious lesson in franchising: if someone out there has found a profitable business model, someone is offering a franchise of that model. Honestly, the number of franchise opportunities available is astounding and there is no doubt one that a perfect fit for you.

However, finding that opportunity is hard and I'll talk more about that in the next post but I'll wrap up this post with the most bizarre opportunity I've run across. It is/was (I don't think they are in business any more) called Merkinstock – they specialized in merkins. If you don't know what a merkin is look it up, but don't do it at work, wait until you get home and the kids have gone to sleep.

- Jeff