Building a business has many hidden costs. But learning from those who've gone the road before you can be a great money-saving tactic.

They say that wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from making mistakes. How true. This article intends to help you gain wisdom from the experience of others rather than having to pay the cost of learning from your own mistakes. These mistakes can represent real dollars--and avoiding them can make a big difference in the total investment you need for your new business and ultimately how profitable the business becomes.

Here's how franchises can offer you a jumpstart toward owning your own business in 2008.

It's the time of year for setting goals for 2008 and preparing to start the new year with a big jumpstart of activity toward accomplishing these goals. For many people, these goals include the desire to start their own business and become the master of their destiny, and franchising can fit very well into that picture.

Here are the top 10 reasons to select a franchise opportunity if you want to own your own business.

1. Track Record of Success. Any good franchise company has developed a method of doing business that works well and produces successful results. Even better, they're required to provide you with a great deal of information in their required disclosures so you can investigate and verify the results with existing franchisees prior to making your final decision.

You want a franchise business, but not just any old thing--you want something big time. We're talking about a multimillion-dollar enterprise. So how do you go about accomplishing that goal?

The easiest way to do this is to simply start at that level. Buy yourself a multimillion-dollar operation from the get-go, and you've already arrived. Of course, the challenge with this approach is that most people don't have the capital available to purchase such an operation or the experience to run it effectively once they buy it.

For most of us, if we want to "hit the big time," we're going to need to grow to that point rather than start there. It may take a little longer that way, but the advantage is that you'll have learned everything you need to know to run the big operation along the way. You'll also have built a huge equity stake that belongs to you, because you created it with your own sweat and perseverance.

If you are thinking about purchasing a franchise, keep the following 5 tips in mind.

• You are a customer to the franchisor. Many people believe that going into a franchise is like joining a partnership where you, the franchisee, will be protected from failure. This is not true. While franchisee companies have a much higher success rate than individual start-up companies, up to 20 percent of all franchises do not do well. However, this failure rate is far lower than that of individual start ups.
• You and the franchisor have different goals. Although both parties; franchisee and franchisor, have the common goal of building the brand, the franchisor’s goal is to sell franchises and the franchisee’s goal is to service the consumer or end user.