Minding Your Own Business

inRich.com:

Olivier Hecht is a corporate dropout.

Just three months after getting laid off from Circuit City in June 2007, he purchased a Handyman Matters home-improvement franchise and struck out on his own.

He hasn’t looked back.

Nor have Betsy and Beau Dabney. They both worked at Capital One Financial Corp. Beau wanted to get out of the corporate world - “it was not a good fit,” he said.

The Dabneys bought a Virginia Barbecue franchise and opened it in 2006 in the Lakeside area of Henrico County.

Hecht, who lives in Richmond, and the Dabneys of Ashland are part of what franchise experts say is an unprecedented growth spurt in the industry over the past decade.

From 2001 to 2005, the number of franchised establishments jumped 4.3 percent annually and jobs in those businesses grew 3 percent annually, according to the International Franchise Association in Washington.