Monthly Archives: January 2007

Should I Franchise or Build My Own?

The Small Business Administration reports a first-year failure rate of over 30 percent for independently owned, non-franchised business. The flip side of that is the statement by the U.S. Department of Commerce that annually since 1971, less than 5 percent of franchise outlets have failed. Not to mention that nearly 50 percent of all retail sales in America come from franchising.

An English Lesson Plan for Beginners

Gavin Bielski (Teacher, Smith’s School of English - Kyobashi)
Teaching English in Japan has been an incredible learning experience for me. I studied Japanese in Colleges including Kansai Gaidai so I have some idea what it’s like to work toward not only grammatical understanding, but actual functional mastery of a foreign language. I had [...]