A friend's positive review helped Todd Mayo become a JAN-PRO Master Franchisee

It was 2001 and Todd Mayo was looking to start a business. A friend of his was in the same boat, and after coming across JAN-PRO with the help of a business broker in the Bay Area, he started with the brand.

“I was still employed and working and didn’t have the same sense of urgency as my friend,” Mayo said. “But after four or five months of hearing about how great it was from him, I decided it was time to jump in and become a Master Franchisee in the San Diego market.”

Mayo wasn’t immediately taken with the JAN-PRO brand, but he recognized the potential of the business model right away.

“The model was for a local territory, and I had been in charge of international territory for my previous job, but my kids were being born and I was becoming more of a family dude and didn’t want to be gone all the time,” he said. “Also, I was very drawn to the recurring revenue model.”

Mayo had a history of working with start-up companies which would then be sold off, leaving him without a job. By the time he got involved with JAN-PRO, he had decided he wanted more control of his own professional destiny.

“The other thing was I had a soft spot in my heart for helping other people,” he said. “I wanted to help people start their own businesses. It sounds a little corny, but it gave me the opportunity to bring people into independent business ownership, and that appealed to me. And the truth is, as I’ve become more established, that part has become way more important to me than the model.”

Of course, while Mayo gets a lot of satisfaction from helping others succeed, he’s also been very successful himself.

“We started experiencing some good growth right off the bat,” he said. “San Diego was one of the top markets in the country. In the last three or four years, we kind of leveled because of the recession, but we didn’t regress. We stayed even, and now we’ve started growing again. That speaks to the industry always being in need.”

Mayo is also quick to spotlight others in helping him grow his business.

“The personal support is huge,” Mayo said. “Dennis Thompson [vice president of JAN-PRO Franchising International] was the guru; he came out and spent a couple weeks with me after I spent a couple weeks with him, and that was invaluable. On an ongoing basis, the support you require is less and less.

The irony is, before I went into business in franchising, one thing I read was, as a franchisee, you wonder why you’re paying royalty as you become established. Weirdly, I don’t hear people complaining about that with JAN-PRO. People don’t mind doing it because the brand continues to find ways to support everyone, from established Master Franchisees to unit owners.”