Animal Career Secrets Explores Animal Business Franchises. All content copyrighted 2007 by Diana L Guerrero. Some rights reserved.
I am pondering some longer articles on specific careers but had a thought about some of the current trends I am seeing. The trend is towards animal franchises. Franchises are established businesses that have a whole strategy behind them. They usually include national advertising, demographic studies as to where might be the best location to open shop, branding or name recognition, and much more.
If you are engaging in a profession that is a business that doesn’t deal with live critters that is one thing, but if it is something that requires skill—well, that is a whole other ball game. I recently came across two different franchises that concern professions that require skill for handling animals…skill that is developed over time or that comes from academic training, certification, or years of experience.
I have heard complaints about one of them–because it is related to dog training and behavior–but the other sort of shocked me.
My concern is that not everyone has the skill sets to engage in these specific professions. I need to do more research and exploration before I give a final opinion, but over time I have seen more harm than good for well meaning but unskilled people who are working with animals.
Franchises usually mean that you will be successful because they have a proven business plan and follow that successful model. They often provide ongoing education for a fee. You buy into the franchise and then pay the franchise a regular fee.
In these days I am pretty sick of the big box stores and lack of personality, not to mention customer service, behind many businesses, so I am leery of animal franchises beyond pet product retailers.
I am going to be traveling this week but be sure that I am going to get into the topic in depth in the future.
Diana L Guerrero is an animal career specialist and has extensive experience in many areas of the animal world. A well known animal expert, she has worked professionally with animals for over thirty years. Guerrero is the author of several books and the host of the syndicated, Ark Animal Answers.
