Give Yourself Some Grace

Franchising isn't always easy-but if you acknowledge when you're doing the best you can, the way Weed Man CEO Jen Lemcke has, then everything will be okay.

- EMILY HOLMES

When Jen Lemcke and her father bought the entire Weed Man company in 2018, its Canadian franchises were declining, and had sales of $43.6 million in U.S. dollars. By last year, Canadian franchisee sales were up to $66.2 million, and the U.S. business was worth $259 million.

How'd they do it? "People talk to you all the time about work-life balance," she says. "Honestly, it doesn't really exist at times." Instead, she says, if you throw yourself at a big opportunity, and accept what you don't know, you'll figure it out.

That's exactly what Lemcke and her father did. He had a background as a chemical engineer, but wanted to be a franchisee-so he bought his first Weed Man unit in 1986, just as the brand was starting to expand across Quebec. Lemcke went to university, met her husband, and then joined her dad in buying a Weed Man territory in Ottawa. In 1995, her father (through the parent company he founded, Turf Holdings) bought the rights to expand the brand in the U.S., and Lemcke joined five years later to lead that effort. Then in 2018, Turf Holdings bought the entire Weed Man brand-going from a multi-unit owner to the actual franchise owner.