I always knew I wanted to be in business. It sounds like a cliche but I actually had my first experience with self-employment when I was in grade school. I would take my allowance and buy candy and gum after school and sell it to the other kids at recess the next day. They got what they wanted, I made some extra cash - it was a win-win situation all the way around.

The feelings from that early success stuck with me. After high school, I had to make a decision. Even though I had offers from several decent colleges, I just couldn't see myself sitting in a classroom for four more years. I wanted to get out there and make my mark in the world.

I decided to dive head first into the world of self-employment via franchising and at age 22, I bought my first franchise - a convenience store. Four long years later, I sold it.

Next, I became an independent convenience store owner, which lasted three years. But after seven years in the convenience store industry, I was worn out. I literally worked 12-hour days, seven days a week, 365 days a year, at times for 36 hours straight.

I have to say that the experience was a great education in being self-employed - the Wharton Business School couldn't have taught me what I learned firsthand. But all the work and time I put into it was killing me. I was starting to dread getting up in the morning and I just wasn't happy. My goal had been to own a business, not buy a job. But the whole convenience store deal became more a job - the business owned me instead of me owning it.

I saw many people who were self-employed and had varying degrees of financial success, but they were tied to their business every day. They were required to be there in order for the business to run. I didn't want to do that. I knew I wanted to have multiple stores, and be an investor instead of a worker. I wanted to be able to hire smart people - more educated and talented than I am-in order to run the business, and I knew that wasn't going to happen with what I was doing.

Oddly enough, a mentor friend of mine changed my mindset and showed me how to achieve my goal. He is a fast-food franchisee with about 10 units, but every time I saw him, he seemed to have a lot of free time because he had a staff of well-trained people who did all the day-to-day stuff for him.

Granted, in the beginning, he had put in a lot of time and a lot of effort into getting his system built up, but once he reached that point, he managed the system instead of the system managing him.

He gave me books to read and recommended seminars to attend, and I spent every spare minute submersing myself in learning about entrepreneurship. Even-tually it clicked, and I understood what he meant about the freedom that owning your business affords you versus buying a job. I learned how to manage a business and still have a life.

I spent hundreds of hours researching franchise opportunities. I used both the online and print version of The Franchise Handbook, and it was a great resource. It consolidated information about franchises in a single place, giving me all sorts of information about different franchises in different fields and industries.

I also used the Internet, attended trade shows and read magazines about franchising. I spent a lot of time talking to other franchisees in other industries about franchising in general and called franchisors for their UFOC (Uniform Franchise Offering Circular) to learn about the company.

I knew it was important that the franchisor had a good support system Ðnot just a good product or a good location or a good name. And I looked for consistency: the same quality and the same price so each location would meet the customers' expectations.

I really encourage prospective franchisees to do a lot of research to get a sense of what's right for them. Just because you find a franchisor that is successful, it doesn't mean that you will be successful in that system. A franchisor is your partner whether you like it or not. While you have to have that entrepreneurial drive and the desire to be your own boss, you also have to realize that you can't make up your own rules.

I settled on the Supercuts franchise for several reasons. Supercuts stylists are very high quality, talented people, and the franchise mandates advanced training courses to ensure that they continue to expand their abilities.

I was also looking for a system that was feasible for multiple store growth - where it was the goal rather than exception. With Supercuts, most of the franchisees had multiple stores, and I saw that franchisees could have as many as they liked. One of the rules for success in this industry is having economies of scale. While you can be successful with one or two stores, you really need to have a decent number to be successful.

I started with two Supercuts stores in late 2000, and currently I have eight open, with construction started on the ninth and three more in the works for this year. I have great people working for me - they are 110% the reason for my success. As long as I have talented people to run my locations, I'll continue to open more.

Researching franchises, you'll occasionally hear franchisees grumble about the amount they have to pay out in royalties. But I know it would take me millions of dollars and at least a decade to replicate the support system I get for my royalties.

Supercuts allows me to focus on my business while its support network is ready to answer any questions, from operations and marketing to education and real estate. I can pick up the phone and someone who is an expert can answer my questions. It's worth every penny I pay in royalty fees.

In my case, the Supercuts franchise came with a bonus: Cheryl Sabatino, who is not only my Director of Recruitment and Education but also my fiancee. She was an area manager running corporate stores I bought, and she decided to stay on. After eight months of being work partners, we decided to date and have been inseparable ever since. We are the perfect match: where I am a left-brained, analytical number-cruncher, she is creative, a real people-person, and the most talented hairstylist.

Looking back, I recognize that my decision not to continue with my education did create many challenges for me. When you are young and you don't have a college degree, creating your mark in the world is a little more difficult. However, while I had no formal education, I love to learn and have benefited greatly from my self-education in the real world.

In retrospect, the book education I would have gotten from attending a college or university, while important, would probably not have helped me. I learned more in that same amount of time because real world experience is much more valuable than reading about it.

That's what Warren Buffett meant when he said, "Can you really explain to a fish what it's like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it. And one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value."

While being in business for yourself involves risk, if you don't take chances, you don't get rewards. You have to be prepared to fail on occasion and have a contingency plan.

If I can do it, anyone who has that drive and commitment can do it.

The only reason I have whatever I have is that when I failed, I kept getting back up and learning from my mistakes. I wanted a balanced life, and while I probably spend more time working than the 9-5 people, it's my time now, and I have more control over my schedule. I love it!

Entrepreneurs have many different forms of education available to them, and they take many different paths to achieve success. For me, the combination of ambition and a willingness to learn in a real-world environment was the right formula, and franchising was its catalyst.