Children Join Moms to Run Home Franchise Concepts Businesses
Four female business owners in the Home Franchise Concepts family of home services brands have taken the meaning of its tagline, “Building Futures Together,” to a new level, now working alongside their adult children in their family-owned franchises. Below, they tell how this came about – and how it’s working out – just in time for Mother’s Day.
Shannon O’Dore and Daughter Ashley Heller
Aussie Pet Mobile of Tucson
Shannon O’Dore’s children were young in 2008, when she and her husband, Mark, invested in Aussie Pet Mobile, one of the brands in the Home Franchise Concepts family. Mark continued to work full time as a senior mechanical engineer while maintaining the franchise fleet of mobile grooming vans, and Shannon worked from home managing the franchise, which provided the flexibility she was seeking to be available for the family, she says. “When I was growing up, I did training and home grooming on my dogs and cats, so having the opportunity to work with them as a career made it an easy choice. The pet industry is fairly recession-proof, which was another plus for Aussie Pet Mobile.”
Their daughter, Ashley, came into the family-owned franchise at age 16 when she got her driver’s license and car. Shannon and Mark told her she’d need a job and money if she was driving. “We offered our daughter her first job helping one of our groomers bathe dogs and cats for the summer. When Ashley got to college, she helped dispatch on the weekends,” her mom says. Ashley now is their operations manager and plans to eventually take over the franchise, which added a territory last year. Her husband, Rylan, will soon join as fleet manager, handling repairs and maintenance on their vans.
Day to day, Ashley says she and her mom wear many hats and constantly bounce ideas off each other. “Many of our best systems and processes have come out of these ongoing conversations with each other and our staff. We’re growing at a rate of about 20%, and you can’t achieve that by staying stagnant.
“My primary responsibilities include ensuring we deliver top-quality service and maintain clear communication with clients and team members,” she adds. “I work closely with both the office staff and the groomers to make sure our company standards are upheld.” Through the time Ashley has spent in her role, she has learned to pivot quickly on days with scheduling issues, client emergencies or an unexpected team need. When an especially thorny challenge occurs, the Home Office team and other Aussie Pet Mobile franchisees are valued advisers.
Advice for working with family: “Establish clear roles and boundaries early on,” Ashley says. “Treat each other with the same level of respect and professionalism you would expect in any other workplace.” Communication and separating work from personal time are also vital, she says.
Lori Morgan and Son Chad Morgan
Kitchen Tune-Up of Colorado Springs
When Lori and Bruce Morgan needed help with their Kitchen Tune-Up business seven years ago, their son Chad signed on. He and his siblings had helped out in the family-owned franchise while growing up. As an adult, he was managing Marriott Hotels, “and the timing just worked out,” he says. Now, serving as general manager of his parents’ Kitchen Tune-Up business, he says, “This isn’t what I wanted to do when I was 18. I went off and got my own professional experience. By doing that, I brought something to the table that they didn’t have.” Another plus of the collaboration: stronger ties between Chad and his mother. “I think our relationship and our family dynamic have gotten a lot better because of it. We have a good dynamic professionally, too.”
Lori and Bruce, who formerly worked in banking, opened the single-territory franchise in 1994. “We had gotten laid off twice. We were tired of our fate being in somebody else’s hands,” she says. “My side business was woodworking, so Kitchen Tune-Up felt like something we could do. We were tired of working in a big corporation. With a franchise, we benefited from the expertise of other people who would help us with things we didn’t know, like marketing. We would also have the opportunity to build a business for ourselves.”
Lori and Chad have run the shop themselves for about four years since Bruce became a senior trainer with the Kitchen Tune-Up franchise corporate team. Lori travels about one week a month, often seeing grandkids, but still shoulders all accounting and non-customer duties.
Chad sometimes helps their salesperson and handles customer-facing matters, doing the job measures, managing the crew, workshopping different aspects of the job “to make sure we’re providing a superior product at customers’ homes,” he says. “We also spend part of our day looking at big-picture stuff. What are we doing in marketing? What are we doing in other aspects of the business? These are some of the questions we ask ourselves to assess the direction we’re going.”
Lori and Bruce didn’t start the business expecting to create a legacy beyond financial success and a respected name in the community. But other Morgans have been, and will be, welcomed into the fold. “Another one of our sons, Tyler, helps us with commercial sales,” Lori says. And Chad expects his 16-year-old son, Donnie, will be doing odd jobs this summer, “cleaning and maintaining the shop like I did when I was a kid, just to help with the family business and start learning things.”
Advice for working with family: “It’s important to identify key roles for individuals because everybody’s got their strengths,” Chad says. Lori elaborates to say each person must know his or her particular responsibilities and communicate about status with no micromanaging: “Once we’ve made the decisions, that individual is responsible for doing it. If you get somebody who’s got their fingers in everything, it causes issues.”
Jennifer Lentz and Daughter Ciera Lentz
Kitchen Tune-Up and Bath Tune-Up of Bend/Redmond, Ore.
Jennifer Lentz and daughter Ciera say they’ve learned from each other while operating the family’s kitchen and bath remodeling franchises. “It has brought us even closer,” Jennifer says. “Ciera and I work very well together, and she has taught me a lot. Ciera is a blessing.” Ciera says working with her mom has taught her about responsibility, teamwork and the inner workings of the family-owned franchise. “I’ve developed better skills in communication, time management and adaptability in a business setting. I look forward to my future here,” she says.
Jennifer and her husband, David, were house flippers before opening their Kitchen Tune-Up franchise in 2020. “We enjoyed flipping, so we thought Kitchen Tune-Up would be a good fit. When Bath Tune-Up was introduced as another brand in the Home Franchise Concepts family, we figured we should do both as we had experience in remodeling bathrooms, so we added Bath Tune-Up in 2022.” Ciera, a beautician by trade, “wanted a change and wanted to be closer to family,” her mom says.
Jennifer serves as office manager and Ciera is project manager. “I am in the office most days,” Jennifer says. “I typically do data entry, follow up with our clients, handle our paint jobs, and so on. Ciera does our measuring, ordering, scheduling, problem-solving, updates to clients and much more. I could not imagine running this business without her.”
The franchises may well end up being a family legacy. After retirement, Jennifer says, “I hope Ciera will continue the family business and possibly bring her daughter onboard. From the purchase of these franchises to training to today, this has been a fantastic journey with great support. The Home Office corporate staff are there to help wherever you need it.”
Advice for working with family: “Ciera is amazing at communication,” Jennifer says. “My advice would be communication is the key, respect the fact that you are in a work environment, and don’t bring personal or family issues into the workplace.”
Dana Carlisle and Son Julian White
Two Maids of Tacoma, Wash.
Julian White and his mom, Dana Carlisle, wanted to invest in a recurring-services business model and opened their Two Maids franchise in July 2023. Dana happily appraises the partnership as “more fun than I expected. It’s neat to see his business strengths and how much he is respected and appreciated by customers and employees.”
Julian formerly played professional soccer overseas and then began work managing commercial real estate in the U.S. His mom had a 30-year career in civil engineering and also holds a law degree. When Julian told Dana he was thinking of quitting his job, she suggested they go into business together. “We wanted to invest in a franchise because neither of us had any direct business ownership experience,” he says, adding that they appreciate the support of Home Franchise Concepts and the Two Maids brand’s support, such as its credit card processing system and helpful business coach.
Julian and Dana are semi-absentee owners who each devote about 15 hours a week to the residential and commercial cleaning franchise. Julian says he concentrates on “customer procurement, marketing, sales. I do all of our lead calls and a lot of the back-end and financial processes. My mom is in charge of the office and operations side of things – managing the manager and making sure our office runs smoothly. I’m driven by numbers, and she’s a lot better at managing people than I am. My mom has taught me things like employees are the lifeblood of your business, so when in doubt, always err on being fair and overly fair to the employees.”
In turn, Dana shares her insights: “I knew Julian was tenacious, but I didn’t know how tenacious. That’s a good characteristic to have in sales and business development. As the business has grown, I believe he is more understanding that listening and compassion can go a long way in business.”
Advice for working with family: “You have to have the ability to turn it off,” Julian says. “My mom and I figured out that during business hours and on Sunday night, we would talk about Two Maids. Other than that, we talk about life – ‘How are you doing?’ and whatnot.”
About Home Franchise Concepts
Home Franchise Concepts has helped inspiring entrepreneurs cultivate successful businesses for over 30 years. In addition to the franchises described above, Home Franchise Concepts brands include AdvantaClean, Budget Blinds, Concrete Craft, Lightspeed Restoration, PremierGarage and The Tailored Closet.
The services provided by Home Franchise Concepts enjoy strong demand. The International Franchise Association’s 2025 Economic Outlook predicts that the number of U.S. franchise establishments providing residential and commercial services will grow 2.4% this year, reaching more than 85,000 units, with total output climbing 4.9% to more than $65 billion.
For more information about franchising opportunities, visit Home Franchise Concepts’ website.
