Franchisee Stories

We have one franchisee so far. Rather than write a success story about him, we asked him the questions a person in your position would ask, and published what he said.

If you want to check any of it, ask us for his number on your discovery call and speak to him without us on the line.

Nader trained as an engineer and had already owned a franchise before he came to us. Twelve years ago he bought into the home inspection industry, and he still runs that business alongside this one. Adding a HandyForce territory was an extension of what he already did rather than a leap into something new.

Why a franchise, and why this one

He knew from the first one what a franchise system does and does not give you. What decided it here was size. In his words, because it is a smaller company they take care of you personally, and he did not want to be a number in somebody else’s system.

The first year

Better than he expected, and he puts that down to having done it once before. He was not blindsided the way he had been with his first franchise, because this time he knew what he was walking into.

The hardest part, and it was ours as much as his

Finding him premises. We wanted somewhere visible enough that people would notice the business, at a rent a first-year franchise could carry, and those two things fight each other. It took the best part of a year to find the North York unit he works from now. That is a long time to run a new business without a proper base, and it is the part of his first year we would want to handle faster for the next owner.

The other thing that caught him out

Quoting. He could price the labour, but at the start he did not know what the materials cost, so the numbers were guesswork until he learned them. His own description of the fix is that he spent a lot of time in Home Depot. Nobody warns you about this and every owner has to work through it.

What the week really involves

He describes wearing different hats. One hour he is in front of a customer working out how to fit a bathroom into a basement, the next he is on the financial side of the business, and then he is hiring. He is clear that finding people who can represent the franchise properly is part of the job rather than a distraction from it.

What he would tell someone considering it

“Know yourself,” he says. “You know yourself better than anybody else.” He is blunt that money is the wrong reason to do this, and that the better question is whether you have the skills, and enough support from the franchisor, to make the business work. He also wishes he had understood the financial side sooner: get a good bookkeeper early, learn to read your own numbers, and keep building your knowledge of the trade rather than assuming you know enough already.