GNT Productions

Archive for April, 2011

Put your feet up and kick back. Now, think about what might be the perfect home business. Drawing upon your imagination, what home business would fill these requirements to be perfect – No skills more complicated than the ability to read and write, demand is always there, and the state of the economy has little to no affect. Such a home business would allow you to start with no more cost than filling your car with gas once on Monday and have customers putting money in your hands by Friday.

Such a business is not a fantasy. This perfect home business is to become a print broker and you can begin operating this business now. Consider: Businesses need documents, forms and business cards. Besides businesses, other organizations such as groups, clubs and nonprofits needs all sorts of printed documents and forms no matter where you live.

The reality is that printed documents and forms are necessary for the operation of any business. These forms are also needed in an on-going basis. At the very least, two types of forms need to be printed for just about any business you can imagine.

Being a home business print broker is rather simple. You take orders from your customers, send them to a wholesale printer who then ships the finished work on to your customers for you.

Being a home business print broker is a cake walk. You can develop it to bring you as much money as you could want without the cost of advertising or even having to keep finding new customers. What makes this work? Well, the print business has something called co-op printing. What this means is one customer has a document printed with another customer’s non-conflicting document on the back of it.

Co-op printing, with you as the print broker, is how you expand your home business to be as profitable as you want it to be. The beautiful thing is that you don’t pay for your advertising. Now, here is how this actually works. Sally’s Florist wants to attract more business, so Sally decides to locally distribute 1000 flyers printed on pink colored paper. She prices the flyers at a local printer for $50, plus tax. You counter offer $40 for the same job, provided she agrees to let you print your non-conflicting ad on the reverse side. Sally realizes a savings of 25% on the printing cost while you get your ads printed and distributed at no cost to you.

You and Sally are both very satisfied with this winner of a plan. The real beauty of this deal is that you just got paid for your advertising and to expand your home business because the wholesale printer you used only billed you $25 for the job. Now your discount printing services will be seen by 1000 businesses and other people. This will result in many more orders without you lifting a finger or paying for ads. Any time you want to, you can make use of this free growth technique to make your home business mo0re profitable. Just offer this co-op printing service to businesses and other customers when you want to attract more business.

This technique can be used too much, as some have learned. They ended up being inundated with orders and money. So be wise and use this method when you can handle the incoming orders easily and not be overwhelmed. It is hard to think of any business that can be started so easily, with such a small startup cost, strong even during a recession and even pays you to advertise it.

So, what is the perfect home business? Why, print broker, of course!

The Famous “Pizza Pizza”

Back in 1959, Marian and Mike Ilitch opened their very first pizza bistro in Garden City, Michigan. The restaurant served traditional Italian dishes such as spaghetti and fried chicken but pizza proved to be its best seller. The owners then realized that the future of their business lay in that direction. Two years later, they established another location, and the first Little Caesars franchise officially began in 1962. After 10 years, the Little Caesars franchise reached its 50-unit mark that includes one location in Ontario, Detroit. Came 1980, the Little Caesars franchise reported $63.6 million in sales from 226 locations. The company’s “Pizza Pizza” advertising campaign, which offers two pizzas in a single takeout order, became a fad in the Midwest. Little Caesars franchise for sale popped up anywhere in the country throughout the 80s. By 1989, its corporate sales remarkably increased to five times the figures at the start of the decade. Below are interesting facts about the Little Caesars franchise.

Little Caesars Franchise: A Quick Review

There are thousands of Little Caesars franchise branches across the US and in different foreign countries around the globe. You can actually spot a Little Caesars franchise in Honduras, Korea, Dominican Republic, Slovakia, and the Philippines. Little Caesars still has ongoing plans to expand and develop not only in Canada and US, but also overseas. Exposure is an essential advantage in owning a franchise. Fortunately for Little Caesars, the company has locations in various regions nationwide. Among its major move is its collaboration with another Detroit-based retail company called K-Mart. Today, there are about 1,500 Little Caesars franchises situated in K-Mart outlets all across the country.

Little Caesars Franchise for Sale Costs

To buy a Little Caesars franchise, you need to be prepared to pay around $15,000 to $20,000 for the franchise fee. This amount is due once your application and location proposal have been accepted by the corporate office. Prospective Little Caesars franchisees who are interested in a single franchise location should have a net worth of at least $150,000; $50,000 of which should be in cash. A Little Caesars franchisee applicant must be financially ready with the initial investment amount of $200,000 to $600,000, covering the standard carryout site – a 2,000 square feet floor space that is usually situated in strip malls. Expect a bigger initial investment if you are planning to buy and run a modern store situated in a standalone building. Here is an example and approximate breakdown of a Little Caesars franchise costs:

$50,000 to $250,000 – for improvements and construction of an existing location $15,000 to $27,000 – as startup inventory $80,000 to $170,000 – for equipment, signage, and fixtures $10,000 – for training and grand opening expenses $1,500 to $5,000 – for rent • $500 to $1,500 – for insurance $1,000 to $5,000 – for utilities $20,000 to $50,000 – operating expenses for three months

How Little Caesars Helps the Community

A lot of entrepreneurs these days do not just look for lucrative or attractive business ventures. They also look for franchises that do something good to the communities where they live. Owners of the Little Caesars Corporation encourage all Little Caesars franchisees to become involved in any one of the charitable programs sponsored by the parent company. Its most popular charitable event is the Little Caesars Love Kitchen, which is a travelling pizza kitchen inside a tractor-trailer that goes around the US and Canada. The program aims to reach out and feed the homeless, as well as provide nourishing meals to disaster survivors. Little Caesars also offers specialized franchising program for all military veterans.

The summer of 1969 was filled with a number of firsts. I graduated high school. (Big deal.) Neal Armstrong took the first step on the moon. That was a big deal. And the Chicago Cubs were in first place. Sure you have to admit landing on the moon was a more significant event, but this was the Cubs. But to die hard Cubs fans being in first place was just as important. The Cubs had never been in first place in my life time, but then again at the time I was only 17 years old. Not only were they in first place, everyone and his brother were saying we had the best team in baseball at the time.

Chicago was in frenzy–a Cub’s frenzy! They didn’t know how to act. Everyone was talking about the Cubs. It many times was the lead story on WGN news. People were taking their radios to work to listen to the game. You have to remember the Cubs played all their homes games in the afternoon. Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau were household names as were Jack Brickhouse and Lloyd Pettit. The games were usually over by the time people got home from work so we would turn on the news for the highlights. This was pre-ESPN time. I was too young at the time but the neighborhood bars were all full.

Going to a game meant you had to go early. The only presold tickets at the time were box seats. Grandstand and bleacher seats were sold on game day only. It was the first time that I knew of there was something called standing room seating. Fans were hanging from the rafters.

I remember there was a game with the Mets before the great collapse. It was raining. We were in the upper deck because that is all we could get. It kept raining and the fans were getting rowdy. The rain would stop and they would take the tarp off. Then as soon as they got it off it would start raining again. We waited and waited. You could tell the players were frustrated. They would come out and throw the ball around just to keep loose. We waited all day. Everyone stuck around and didn’t want to leave. They finally had to call the game knowing they would not get it in because it would get dark.

The season started out with a bang. Opening day extra inning 6-5 win over the Phillies highlighted by a walk off homer by Willie Smith. The Cubs went on by winning 11 out of 12 to start the season. They were in first place on the 4th of July. By mid August they had an 8 ½ game lead. Everything was going as planned. Each time they would win at home Ron Santo would run off the field toward the club house down the left field line jumping up and clicking his heels.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, Ken Holtzman on August 19 threw a no hitter against the Atlanta Braves. Billy Williams saved the no hitter by catching a ball hit by Hank Aaron in the well against the wall.

But then September came. The Cubs started the month in first place but had lost some of their luster. They lost three straight to the Pirates, the first two weren’t close. Then we lost the final in extra innings after losing the lead in the top of the ninth.

They headed to New York for two games with the Mets. They would lose both games to the Mets. It was also the time of the infamous black cat that strolled onto the field that some say was the down fall of the team. In any case they limped out of New York with only a ½ game lead. They had now lost 6 in a row.

Next up was Philadelphia, a team that would lose 99 games that year. But the Cubs couldn’t win there either and were really looking tired. With those two loses the Cubs fell out of first place for the first time that year and the Mets were leading the division. 1969 was also the first year of division play. You could feel the air being let out of the balloon.

It didn’t get any better the rest of September. In August we felt we had the division locked up. The Cubs only had to play 500 ball over the last 50 games to finish out the season and they would win the division. But as things turned out we finished the season a very respectable 92-70. But we went 21-29 the last 50 and a dismal 8-17 in September. The amazing Mets finished 39-11, 8 ½ games ahead of the Cubs. That is an incredible 17 game difference from the mid of August.

There were a lot of Monday morning quarterback debates that would go on for years talking about the 1969 season. Some say Durocher didn’t give the regulars enough rest as they just got tired playing all those day games in hot humid Wrigley Field. Some say it was the infamous curse of the billy goat. It would be 15 years before we would win a division title, 1984. But that has a story of its own.

1969 was as fantastic year until September. The high that we all lived with was never higher. That just meant the low we felt when it all fell apart just that much worse. Some even called it a “Curse.