To whom this may concern,
Our son Scott had been working his way through school selling shoes at Sears for spending money. He had almost completed his junior year of college with a business & marketing major when he came to his mother and me to ask us about an opportunity to work for College Pro as a franchisee. At first we were quite skeptical. Our thoughts were that this must be some kind of a scam or rip-off program to get cheap labor from our son during his summer break. My wife and I had lots of questions about why he wanted to do this; and who and what was this College Pro Company?
I was impressed with his desire to get first-hand experience in running his own business. I had to agree that this kind of experience would definitely compliment his majors and actually help him understand many business concepts that simply cannot be taught in school. He showed us the information about the franchise program, start-up costs for equipment, etc. And after grilling him about the company and learning that it was part of a parent corporation called The Franchise Company which included recognized companies like California Closets & Pillar to Post home inspections, we knew it was not a rip-off program or scam. In fact I was impressed by how the accounting for each franchise was done via College Pro’s web based system thus eliminating most of the accounting requirements of running a business.
His mother was very reluctant and felt it was just too risky. I felt it was time to let go and allow our son this opportunity to get some invaluable work experience running his own franchise business and to build his resume beyond selling shoes at Sears. Even if he failed, the work experience would be invaluable. So, we fronted the modest investment for an old beat up van and some painting supplies. Scott was able to make much more money than he ever could selling shoes. He was nominated for rookie of the year in his first summer and partnered with another franchisee to run the largest business on the West coast the following year.