While finding a recession-proof business opportunity presents a daunting task, there can be significant advantages gained from focusing on a well designed franchised business to bear up to a difficult economy. As you have heard me say before, a franchise in a proven system that has embraced a collaborative culture with its franchisees is a recipe for a successful business experience.

In tough times, the franchising option is particularly compelling. A strong franchise network provides economies of purchasing, marketing, pricing, and a compelling support network in place to ride out tough times. As part of a franchise, you have an entire network of fellow franchise owners for support. While the individual independent business owner is left to his or her own devices to figure out a way to better run their operation during troubled economic times, the franchise owner has a franchisor and fellow franchisees as a sounding board. That can make a huge difference in developing a plan of attack.

The upside to a recession (yes there are those who profit from economically depressed times) is that with tight credit come bargain investment opportunities. Franchising is a method of business expansion that has always sought investor (as opposed to lender) capital, and the current recession will certainly offer significant investment bargains for investors who have capital or sufficiently strong credit to unlock lender vaults.

But if your objective is to choose a franchise that’s recession-proof, you might be searching longer than the recession lasts. Why? Because even services you assume consumers will always need are not immune to difficult economic times.

Take, for example, gas stations. People will always need fuel for their automobiles in good times and bad. Yet we have recently seen a significant, and unexpected, drop in consumer demand for gasoline that has led to a welcome free fall in gas prices. With the fluctuations in gas prices, longer warranties offered by dealerships, changes in driving habits initiated by rising gas prices, many service station franchises appear to be struggling.

When choosing a franchise, perhaps the best you can hope for is a business that’s fairly recession-resistant. For example, in today’s economy, families are eating out less. This is likely worse news for fine dining restaurants than the quick service restaurant (QSR - commonly called ‘fast food’) segment, as many diners will downgrade their experience to watch how much they spend.

So while buying a fast food franchise might not translate into success during the recession, it is likely that this segment will fare better during bad times, and may retain good fortune once the economy improves.

Other recession resistant businesses to consider include tax preparation businesses - as Mark Twain said, the only certainties in life are death and taxes - and employment service businesses. Both of these industries have solid opportunities and good prospects when good times return; both also have important question marks that need careful scrutiny.

Both of these industries have experienced some serious franchise relationship issues over the last several years. The tax preparation industry seems to experience intra-brand competition - competition between the franchisor and its franchisees. Employment services businesses face an inverse economic struggle in both good and bad times. During a recession, there is a huge supply of talent looking to be placed but poor job demand. And in good times, the reverse is true.

Of course, there are better risks than others, and a good franchise situation-with a franchisor committed to supporting its franchisees-offers more resources to better weather the current financial storm than you would have as an independent owner.

For example, independent owners bear the sole brunt of the cost for their advertising or marketing efforts. On the other hand, fellow franchise owners can not only brainstorm marketing or advertising strategies, they can also jointly retain the services of an ad or PR agency.

As a franchise owner, you also have group purchasing opportunities that can also reduce the impact on your bottom line-an invaluable commodity during tough economic times.

Selecting a recession-proof franchise really is more about choosing the best franchise opportunity. So, how do you do that?

When shopping for a franchise company, you want to select an organization that’s primarily interested in distributing products and services to its customers. That may sound pretty obvious, but there are some franchisors whose primary interest is geared more toward selling franchises.

You also want to make sure the company is dedicated to franchising as its primary mechanism of product and service distribution. Avoid franchisors that compete with their franchisees through other channels.

Another key component to selecting a franchise opportunity is market demand. Ideally, the franchise produces and markets quality goods and services for which there is an established market demand and, preferably, potential for growth. Some franchisees attempt to get on board with a widely recognized franchise, but when that falls through, they go to a lesser-known franchise of similar type, thinking the franchise concept is more important than the product and trade name. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Name brands are called that for a reason. To reduce the risk, go with a proven concept and be sure to select a franchisor with a well-accepted trademark.

Be sure to thoroughly evaluate your franchisor's business plan and marketing system. The more established and better-designed marketing systems promise and deliver substantial and complete training as well as overall franchisee support.

Do your due diligence and investigate the relationship the franchisor has with its franchisees. Franchisees with a strong franchisee organization have strong negotiating leverage with the franchising company. If the franchisor does not permit its franchisees to organize, avoid that opportunity. Strong franchisee associations pave the way to successful and cooperative franchise systems.

When doing your research, focus on companies that provide sales and earnings projections that demonstrate an attractive return on your investment. Both state and federal laws encourage franchisors to provide performance data, and a claim by a franchisor that it is prohibited to provide such information should be a red flag.

While following these guidelines may not help you find a recession-proof franchise opportunity, it will help you find an opportunity that can withstand the current turbulence and provide a pathway for long-term success.

At the American Association of Franchisees and Dealers, we’ve developed a Franchisee Bill of Rights. When shopping for franchise opportunities, you want to select a franchisor that supports the AAFD's Franchisee Bill of Rights and agrees to respect these rights as they apply to your franchise. Among them are:

One potential solution is for companies to provide employees with elder care benefits. "Employers who show sensitivity to employees’ elder care issues and provide whatever assistance they can may benefit in terms of increased worker loyalty, employee retention and boosted morale," said Steve Rhatigan, president of Stemark Associates, a Houston-based consulting firm.

Although the number of companies offering their employees elder care benefits is still relatively small, it is a trend that is likely to grow. According to a survey by Johnson & Johnson, 71% of employees using such benefits and 58% of employees not currently using them but entitled to them rated the benefits as very important in their decision to stay in their current jobs.

As more companies start to see the value of offering elder care benefits as a competitive tool to attract and retain employees, established franchise companies providing senior care and services will have a leg up on the competition. And while the opportunities in this segment of franchising are immense, they come with some noteworthy challenges. A big one is the unique nature of the population segment that is evolving into the industry’s largest target market: the baby boomers.

The baby boom generation represents a massive wave of some 80 million men and women who are fast approaching age 65. Historically, people of that age could accurately be described as "old," but marketers who try to stick that label on graying baby boomers risk incurring their wrath rather than their patronage.

Even those aging baby boomers requiring some level of assistance in their daily lives generally don’t consider themselves “old” in the traditional sense of the word, and franchises targeting this market segment must take that into consideration, experts say. In fact, marketers should even be careful about using accepted euphemisms such as "senior" and "silver" in crafting their pitches, says consultant Charles Stevens.

Boomers are different in a number of ways. For example, a survey conducted by Harris Interactive for a major bank found that boomers fear illness and the prospect of winding up in a nursing home three times more than they fear dying. Other findings from the same survey include:

"We asked boomers for their hopes, fears and thoughts about retirement, and what we got was the systematic dismantling of our preconceptions about the future, for not only this generation, but for nearly all of society’s institutions," said Dychtwald, who co-authored the survey.

As William Novelli, chief executive officer of AARP and author of 50+: Give Meaning and Purpose to the Best Time of Your Life, put it, "Boomers want to live well, and they want to live comfortably, and they want to live in familiar surroundings." That means that millions of them are likely to choose to "age in place," and that they will be avid consumers of the products and services provided by thousands of franchisees in the elder care industry.