A Very Profitable Work Ethic

How do you run a brand’s highest-grossing franchise location? This former cop has an answer: Get your hands dirty.

- CARL STOFFERS

Larkin Combs was always a hard worker. During his childhood summers, while his friends went to the Jersey Shore, he worked on his grandparents’ farm in Georgia. “Ten hours a day, from when I was seven until my teenage years,” he says. He eventually spent 25 years as a police officer in Union County, New Jersey. That’s how he met Jason and Steven Parker, founders of K9 Resorts—a dog boarding and daycare franchise that was founded in 2005, now has 40 units and 130 in the works, and often runs community initiatives like donating Kevlar vests to local police departments. When Combs retired in 2019 and prepared to move to Apex, North Carolina, to be near his elderly mother, the Parkers asked if he wanted to open a franchise there. Combs said yes, and he turned