Success Stories

Challenging Corporate

I opened my franchise six years ago, in a 1,000-square-foot strip mall space in Elmhurst, Ill. It was so small that during the holidays, when I had 15 workers cutting pineapple, dipping fruit into chocolate or designing arrangements, they were literally tripping over each other. As my lease was expiring, I found a landlord who […]

Carrying On

After my husband, Doug, was downsized from a corporate job in 2002, he used his severance money to open this cleaning franchise in Traverse City, Mich. My name was on the contract and I helped at the beginning, then backed away and used to joke that if anything happened to him, I wouldn’t know how […]