Wisconsin carpenter Efrain Campos just retired this summer after 30 years, working mostly in commercial multi-story buildings — “from 15 floors and up,” he said. For him the last four years have been a boom period.

On Labor Day, Campos, 68, was among the thousands of union members and their families who turned out for Laborfest on Milwaukee’s festival grounds on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Idaho’s state government was facing a problem.

In 2018, its 86 state agencies were operating with a mix of outdated, mismatched business systems that ran internal processes like payroll and human resources. Some of the programs dated back to the 1980s, and many were written in programming languages they don’t teach in engineering schools anymore.

As we’ve covered in this column before, there are essentially three different ways you can become a business owner. You can start from scratch, buy an existing business from its current owner, or purchase a franchise - options I like to call “build, buy, or join.” Yet of these three pathways, only franchising offers multiple advantages designed to ensure your success.