Greg Van Horn@gvh41
Eighteen months after buying into a roofing franchise, I was no longer a roofer.
Still writing a $4,800 check every month on an SBA loan for a business I no longer own. Which I'll be writing for the next 99 months.
This message is for anyone at the brink. If there's one thing I can promise, the decision to buy into a franchise will change your life. For better or worse.
If I could start over again, I'd want someone to tell me about the conversations I never had that could've changed everything, so here we go:
When I decided I wanted to own a business, I landed on franchising after a few months of research.
Once I did, that was it. The blinders were on.
The question stopped being "how should I get into home services?"
It became "which franchise should I buy?"
I did what I thought was thorough research. Around 6 months worth:
- 3+ franchise consultants.
- Franchise sales organizations like Franchise FastLane.
- Franchise development reps (glorified sales reps) at 2+ dozen brands.
- I bought a course.
- I went to Discovery Days.
- And I talked to A LOT of franchisees.
If I was looking at a painting franchise, I called painting franchisees. Power washing, same thing. Roofing was trickier- I was the first franchisee in my specific system, so there was nobody to call within my brand. But I called franchisees from other roofing systems. And I called franchisees within the parent company's other brands.
I talked to 50+ of people who had made the same decision I was about to make.
I thought I was being diligent. And I was, but only within a very narrow frame.
Here's what I missed: every single person I talked to had already bought into franchising.
They were invested. Financially and psychologically. They needed the model to work because they were already in it.
And so I wasn't getting perspective, I was getting confirmation.
Nobody I spoke to had looked at franchising, weighed it against the alternatives, and chosen a different path.
Or just went out and did the thing on their own without looking back.
I never heard from the other side.
If I could start over, I would have called an equal amount of independent home service business owners.
Not franchisees. Independents.
The guy running a roofing company he built from scratch.
The woman who started a painting business without paying royalties to a corporate office.
People doing the exact same work I wanted to do, but without a franchise agreement.
And here's what they would have told me:
1. They would have made me think about royalties differently.
When a franchisor says "7.5% royalty," it sounds manageable (hindsight is a bitch sometimes). But that 7.5% comes off your gross revenue- not your profit. In roofing, net profit margins typically run 20% at best after you pay for materials, labor, overhead, insurance, marketing etc. So that 7.5% royalty is 37.5% of your profit. If you perform like the best.
An independent owner would have asked me: "What exactly are you getting for that?"
2. They would have told me what the best operators are doing to perform like the best.
The top-performing independent roofing companies are hitting ~20% net margins. They're doing it through tight job costing, smart hiring, efficient crews, and systems they built themselves. They're not paying a franchisor to tell them how to answer the phone. They figured it out, or they joined a peer group and learned from people who had.
3. They would have pointed me toward resources I didn't know existed.
There's an entire ecosystem of contractor networking groups, coaching programs, and peer communities that exist specifically to help independent home service owners grow. Groups like Nexstar, CCN, and HSA. Even the more intensive coaching programs are a fraction of what you'd pay in franchise fees over a ten-year agreement.
And here's the difference- you're paying for education and community, not permission to operate under someone else's rules.
4. They would have told me the real challenges.
They would have told me about cash flow crunches during slow seasons, the nightmare of finding reliable labor, the reality of building a brand from zero. Most importantly, they would have told me those challenges exist whether you're in a franchise or not. The difference is, when you're independent, you have the flexibility to solve them your own way.
5. They would have given me confidence.
Maybe most importantly, talking to successful independents might have shown me that I didn't need to buy into a system to succeed. That the "support" I was paying for wasn't magic- it was stuff I could learn, build, or buy a la carte for a lot less money and a lot more freedom.
I'm not saying franchising is always the wrong choice. For the right people in the right systems, it works.
So if you're in the research phase right now, and you've landed on franchising, do yourself a favor.
Don't just call franchisees. Call the people who looked at franchising and said no thanks.
Call the independents doing the same work without the royalty check.
They don't have confirmation bias or anything to sell you, and that's exactly why you should listen.
