Just before Michael Daniel bought his ACFN, Inc. (American Consumer Financial Network) franchise three years ago, he was already a very busy man. Married and the parent of a young child, with another soon to come, he held a full-time management job with the Veterans Administration in Baltimore and was finishing up graduate studies for a Master of Business Administration degree.

ACFN is a franchisor of private networks of automated teller machines. It promotes its business as a part-time franchise that can help support a full-time retirement, so the fact that Daniel was already working full-time was no obstacle at all to him becoming an ACFN franchisee.

In fact, the company's founder, Jeffrey Kerr, originally started and ran the business on a part-time basis while working full-time at another company he had owned and operated for 10 years. After about three years, however, ACFN became larger and more profitable than Kerr's original business, and he began devoting all his time and resources to developing the company and its franchise program.

"The fact that ACFN was something I could do part-time while continuing to work at my regular job is one of the things that originally attracted me to it," Daniel says. "I did that until the income I was generating from my franchise began to outstrip what I was making from my job, then I decided to go full-time with the franchise."

Giving up the security of a government job was not a decision Daniel made lightly. "It was something I had to ponder," he admits. "But I've always had a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and becoming a business owner was a goal of mine the entire time I was studying for my MBA."

Daniel had spent a quarter of a century in management jobs, working at some of the top corporations in the private sector as well as in the public sector. It gave him a background he says he wouldn't trade for the world, in terms of the experience he accumulated and the people he met along the way. But the entrepreneurial dream was something he'd always hung on to.

"I looked forward to becoming a business owner as something that would be the pinnacle of my career," he says. "I wanted an opportunity that would be free of the cap on salary you face in the corporate world, no matter how well you do your job, and that would give me greater control over my time so I could be more involved with my family."

When Daniel was researching franchise opportunities, he had one unique requirement in mind. "I wanted a business that would provide residual income; that was the key for me," he says. "One thing that came through loud and clear to me while I was doing my research was that the types of small businesses that seemed to flourish and remain profitable all generated some kind of residual income stream."

ACFN franchisees install and service ATM machines on the premises of qualified businesses but retain full ownership and control of the equipment. The franchise targets hotels and other facilities in the travel and entertainment industries as prime candidates for ATM placement.

The host facility is not charged any fee for the machine, which is a significant departure from the conventional business model in this industry. Quite the opposite, host businesses benefit from a new revenue stream with ACFN ATM machines on their premises. They receive a share of the revenues generated by each machine as compensation for the space utilized.

"What's different about this franchise-and one of the things that made it so attractive to me-is that you don't have to resell the same thing every month," Daniel explains. "Once you make the initial sale, that's it. The sales cycle may be a little longer than with some other types of businesses, but once you complete the sale, it continues to generate revenue for you for years to come. You get paid over and over again."

With an MBA and more than 25 years of managerial experience, Daniel considered the pros and cons of both independent business ownership and franchised business ownership. "I chose franchising because of the high success rate I found for franchise businesses when doing my research," he says. "It was the complete opposite for independents, with nine out of 10 in that venue failing within a relatively short time."

Daniel acknowledges that the upside potential for that one-in-10 independent business that did succeed could be enormous, he says. But weighing that risk against the added security of the proven business model he knew he would get in a franchise system helped him make his decision.

"I was older and had more financial and family responsibilities than some entrepreneurs, so I decided to go with the odds," he says. "In fact, I wanted to stack the odds as much in my favor as I could. Any business startup involves some risk, but my goal was to minimize that risk while maximizing my potential for return."

Clearly, the decision was the right one for Daniel. He has been honored as the company's No. 1 franchisee each year since he signed on, and he is the first franchisee to make the jump from part-time to full-time status with his business.

Based on his own experience in conducting a franchise search, Daniel offers a number of tips to prospective franchisees currently going through or considering the process. "First and foremost, the most important thing to keep in mind is whether or not a franchise you are considering is a good fit," he says.

"They say that in life you really should aspire to do something that comes naturally to you and that you enjoy doing," he adds. "I think that is important to how successful you will be as a franchisee."

Other issues he suggests prospective franchisees should focus on include:

Daniel was impressed by ACFN's low-key approach after he contacted the company to inquire about franchise opportunities. "When they called me back, they were extremely open, honest and forthright; not pushy at all."

At first, he thought it was "too good to be true," he says, but he saw the same attitude in every person he encountered.

"They spent a lot of time explaining how the system works, how the company gets compensated on the back end of the network, how the franchisee gets the transaction surcharges and how the money flows from one end of the network to the other," Daniel says.

While Daniel is currently focused on growing his business, he doesn't see successful entrepreneurship as being the last chapter in his life story. Ultimately, his primary goal is to become a significant philanthropist, he says, and he hopes to leverage his business success to support that objective.