5 Franchise Owners on How to Scale a Home Service Business

Featuring Zach Peyton, Pat Monegan, Brandon Corey, Justin Albright, and Drew Raymond of Superior Fence & Rail.

I drove the East Coast for two weeks to learn why Superior Fence & Rail became the largest fencing franchise in the world. The answer had nothing to do with machines, materials, or marketing budgets. It came down to five owners who put people first and solved their own problems.

I run NaiL, the AI phone platform that answers calls for Superior Fence & Rail locations. That gave me a reason to show up in person instead of running a Zoom. I started in Jacksonville with brand president Zach Peyton, then drove north through Charleston, Columbia, Richmond, and Hartford. Five owners, five backgrounds, one shared playbook.

I went in looking for tactics and I left with something simpler. The fence is the product, the people are the business. Here is what each owner taught me, office by office.

Put people first, then build a system worth copying

Zach Peyton has scaled Superior Fence & Rail past 130 locations, and he runs the North Florida group as the model every other owner studies. He frames the place not as his crown jewel but as a teaching tool.

"Jacksonville is just the proving ground. It's what I call the shining city on the hill for all of our franchisees and what they wanna aspire to."

Every process he refines becomes a playbook another owner copies. He repeats one idea more than any other. People come first, then process, then technology. Reputation is the scoreboard that proves the order is right.

"All the marketing in the world can't overcome bad customer service. And great customer service can overcome all the bad marketing in the world."

Build the manufacturing engine once, then share it

Jacksonville buys raw extruded posts and finishes them in-house. Buying bundled raw material instead of a finished job lot saves close to a 50 percent markup. The crew pulls a bill of materials out of Fence 360, tags the posts by hand, and feeds them through a wash booth, an electrostatic powder station, and a curing oven that runs ten to fifteen degrees hotter than the Florida afternoon outside.

The payoff is breadth of product offering. Using the RAL color chart, the team matches any color a customer can name, including custom brand colors. They coated an entire perimeter for Yuengling Beer Co and built the company logo into every tenth panel. A plate-punching machine they bought for around 20,000 dollars paid for itself on a single job.

The crazy part is commercial work is only about 35 percent of the Jacksonville business, yet it justifies this entire operation. Zach made the call to buy a second property when the fab shop ran out of room.

"It's all asses and elbows in there."

That same capacity now feeds far locations like Hartford and Savannah, which turns one shop into shared infrastructure for the brand.

Respect that commercial is a different animal

Residential sales move fast. A rep can estimate a yard on the spot and promise an install date. Commercial runs on a different clock, and Zach is blunt about the gap.

"It's a completely different sales cycle than going and visiting with a homeowner, being able to instantly estimate their project on the spot, give them a firm proposal, and then say, 'We'll be here in three weeks.'"

A commercial job goes out to five or six general contractors, who each bid it to five or six subcontractors. Superior usually sits in the subcontractor seat. Zach has spent years refining that model in Jacksonville so the brand can hand other owners a finished commercial playbook instead of a guess.

"We could easily do as much in commercial, or more, than we are on the residential side. When I say out loud that I think we're gonna be a billion-dollar enterprise, it's stuff like this that makes that within our reach."

Point AI at the boring work first

Zach and his commercial lead Randy are testing AI to qualify bids and run takeoffs, the grunt work of pricing a thousand-page plan set. Two virtual assistants handle that today at a cost near 6,000 dollars a month, and a single bid can take two days to turn around.

Most owners chase the flashy AI demos that earn likes. Zach attacks the repeatable work first. If a task runs the same way every time, automate it and move your people to the work that needs judgment.

Treat your inventory as a weapon, not a burden

Pat Monegan opened Charleston after a corporate career in automotive and medical-grade plastics, where he set up manufacturing operations in the United States and overseas. He understood operations, lean, purchasing, and hiring. He had never built a fence, so he hired for the gap.

"That's why it's important when you're hiring to hire for your weaknesses."

A framed Kramer poster hangs in his office which a former boss kept the same picture as a reminder that the wrong cast member breaks the whole show, and Pat now walks every new hire past it.

"The cohesiveness of the team is what makes it work. You gotta get the right team together so you can have any chance of success."

Find the business by naming what you refuse to do

Pat almost bought a pre-K school. He ran a couple hundred hours of due diligence before his wife vetoed it. Then a second business consultant flipped the question that pointed him home.

"Don't tell me what you wanna do. Tell me what you don't wanna do."

Pat did not want food. He did not want a 24/7 business. He wanted something with resale value and weekends off. That filter pointed straight at home services, and one conversation with Zach closed the deal.

Earn the building before you earn the brand

Charleston was a seller's market when Pat started. Six landlords told him no because he had no operating history. He finally won a lease by writing an oversized security deposit check to a stranger who later refunded most of it. Then he paid to build two offices inside a building he only rented, because the front room was too small for two people to talk at once.

The lesson is grit. A new owner has to invest in a space that is not theirs, sometimes twice, to give the team room to function.

Stock the few SKUs you sell the most

Pat keeps three aluminum SKUs that cover more than 95 percent of what he sells, bought by the container. His CMM router cuts those few parts into almost every fence type he offers, which slashes the number of SKUs he has to carry. Nearly all of his vinyl is a single white Hamilton style.

"I buy these panels at roughly half the price that that other guy in town is gonna pay."

Charleston has 50 fence companies fighting for the same yards. Pat installs faster and earns a better margin because the material already sits in his lot.

Quote stock against custom

When a customer wants exotic custom aluminum, Pat prices the special order and the stock version side by side. The custom job can nearly double the price.

"Very rarely do they end up going with that very sexy, abnormal material that they wanted. Almost always they go with one of the three that we have in stock."

He wins the job either way, and the customer talks themselves into his margin. Even the small choices teach a lesson. After other companies kept filling his open dumpster, Pat fenced off his own yard, because a dumpster on your property is an invitation.

Switch to subcrews before they break you

Pat tried to build in-house crews first. He bought a truck, a trailer, and the equipment, then watched it fall apart. He ran through five lead installers in the first months, and the worst moment came in Wando.

"The crew leader had just walked off the job. We never saw him again."

Other owners had already cracked the subcrew model, so Pat copied them and got good at it fast. A fellow owner named Kinjal later handed him a system that uses AI to find skilled installers with weak websites and no social presence, the ones who build well but never learned to run a business. That method brought on two new subcrews and a second operations hire who used to own a fence company.

Steal blindly from the owners around you

Pat's best advice has nothing to do with fence.

"You have to steal blindly from those around you."

Not in a malicious way, but by taking processes that already work and replicating them for your own office. He sees young owners hold back on asking for help out of pride, convinced they should run the playbook alone. They struggle for years before they ask for help. Pat works the phones with his flight group and benchmarks shops in person.

"Get over yourself, and be willing to steal ideas from others."

That same instinct shows up in how he reads his own numbers. When we walked through his call data, Pat did not want raw appointment totals. He wanted to compare his conversion rate against the rest of the brand, because a green check mark in his inbox from Nail on a weekend tells him an appointment booked itself while the office was closed.

Win on follow-up and a culture you can measure

Brandon Corey ran car dealerships up and down the East Coast before opening Columbia, and he now runs Columbia, Augusta, and two Bumble Roofing offices under the same Empower umbrella. Columbia does around 7 million in revenue with a 10 percent growth target. His pitch is that the product changes but the skill does not.

"Regardless of what you're selling, sales is sales."

Ask his single secret and you get one word.

"Follow-up is everything."

Fencing is a need, not an emotional buy like a car, so the turnaround runs slower and persistence wins.

"I have guys that are following up well over a year and still closing contracts."

Make salespeople master the craft

Every Columbia rep works one month with an install crew before selling anything. They learn that you cannot float a corner on a vinyl fence. They learn to spot footers and to rack a gate. Brandon calls his people sales professionals on purpose, because a professional has mastered the craft or works to master it. When they present, they speak with authority instead of guesses.

Build culture on rhythm, not slogans

Brandon builds culture through cadence. Every team member writes yearly goals tied to a personal why, and managers check on those goals through the year. One office staffer wanted to learn French, so the team trades emails in French. The office sends a daily summary up the chain, and the managers meet Friday to review the week, Monday to align, and Tuesday for sales.

"There's a reason why I have two black steel doors in my buildings. Life happens outside those doors."

His standard for the team is plain.

"If you want to be average, go be average someplace else. We're gonna be 1% better every single day."

He runs a next-man-up shop where everyone can do most jobs, so a sick day never stops the business.

Sell to pool code, not to whatever closes

South Carolina has areas with no pool code requirement, and some competitors sell whatever the customer asks for. Brandon refuses.

"Some of my competitors will just sell whatever. We will not. We will only sell pool code specific fencing and hardware."

Columbia runs heavy on wood, around 60 percent, even as new developments open the door to vinyl. Brandon would happily change that mix.

"If I could never touch a wood fence again, I'd be perfectly fine with that."

Treat marketing as amplified reputation

Brandon sponsors the local high school football team, works with the ASPCA on adoptions, and puts his name on the back of barber shop chairs because barbers never stop talking. He cross-promotes with a dumpster company and a container company, and his coasters at a local marina once pulled a call from a vendor in Texas. A general manager email goes out monthly and has closed contracts on its own.

"Our competition are any two able bodies and a pickup truck."

The product sizzle fades once the fence sits in the ground. The relationship is what people remember, which is why his follow-up runs from the first call to long after the install.

"From the cradle to the grave to the afterlife."

Use the franchise to skip the hard-won relationships

Brandon could have opened a solo fence company. He chose the franchise for the vendor terms a new business cannot get alone.

"For you to try to go to a Stevens Pipe and Steel or a Master Halco with no franchise, you need to present at least two years of financials to show that you're stable enough to get terms."

He also runs a volume mindset borrowed from cars. He will take a skinny deal to break into a neighborhood, because the next ten houses on that street tend to follow.

Scale with discipline and sell on quality, not price

Justin Albright came from finance and partnered with Cole and Joe, two colleagues from a previous job that did retail build-outs. The nudge came from Cole's former neighbor Ryan Gamble, the Charlotte owner, who kept calling to say the business worked. A virtual meeting with Zach around Christmas closed it.

"Zach just has this gravity to him."

They opened Richmond as roughly the 20th location and one of the first non-Florida owners, then added Norfolk and Northern Virginia for about 12 million across three locations. The category choice was deliberate.

"I wanted to get into something that is fairly recession-proof."

Survive your own fast start

Richmond set a first-year goal of 800,000 and did 2.3 million in the first eight months, riding both demand and a COVID boom. Justin still remembers dropping a full pallet of nails on day one. The fix for that pace was structure. Joe came in to run operations, Cole moved to sales manager, and Justin ran sales and the office until the team grew under them.

"You're a mile wide with your responsibilities, but only an inch deep."

Protect net income as you grow

The early playbook traded profit for footprint. Justin would not run it again.

"What we're not gonna do, which we did in the early days, is sacrifice net income to open up more locations."

The team built market share on price, then made the hard turn, pushing gross margin from 33 toward 40 percent. That meant raising prices around 10 percent and white-knuckling the change. It also forced a culture shift on the sales floor, away from matching price and toward defending quality.

"Have you talked about quality X, Y, and Z that make us better than our competition?"

The reps who only took orders did not survive that shift, and the ones who learned to sell the deeper footing and the rails that will not sag did.

Run commercial with three seats and a cash cushion

Commercial is a project management problem, and Justin built a team to match. A salesperson meets the customer, an estimator builds the bid all day, and a project manager runs quality control before the sale and manages the job once work begins. They grew into that structure, from 600,000 in their first commercial year to 2.5 million last year. The cash risk is the part most owners underestimate.

"We were owed $100,000 for six months."

If residential cannot float that gap, one bad commercial job sinks a year. The other edge is technical. Reading a plan set is hard, and winning the bid often means catching what the architect missed.

"Sometimes it's not even easy to identify where the fence is."

Giving that value before the sale builds the rapport that wins the job.

Decide faster than your competition

Finance trained Justin toward analysis, and his own growth target is speed. He points to wholesale and a possible fab shop as ideas the team studied too long without a call.

"If you care enough to own something, like own it."

His warehouse backs that discipline with economics. Railing serves as the entry point for commercial, vinyl runs about 40 percent of the business, and a pre-buy locked in 12 percent off before prices rose another 5 percent. He even sorts pullback chain link by knuckle and twist, and stocks one-piece Katyva caps because the five-piece caps from a big box split after a few rains. Norfolk alone needs seven crews to keep up with a 1.8 million person market. His parting line is the one I think every owner needs to hear.

"I would say just don't be an absentee owner. If you care enough to own something, own it."

Lead calm, centralize the brain, and solve your own problems

Drew Raymond spent 27 years in the Marine Corps before fencing. He owns Hartford, Albany, Rhode Island, and Western Connecticut, targets 19 to 20 million in revenue, and runs the most commercial work in the brand. He is the calmest high performer I have met, and his calm is a method, not a mood.

"No one's dying today. We're gonna sell fence and we're gonna put fence in the ground."

Let chaos settle before you react

When a crew's Airbnb caught fire on a job in Albany, Drew did not flinch. He told his people to take their time, get there, and report back.

"The initial call is probably 80% to 90% wrong. Chaos doesn't bring clarity."

He learned in combat that panic shuts down good decisions, and the second report always carries better information. He adds a leadership warning to it. If you freak out every time someone brings you a problem, people stop bringing you problems, and you lose sight of your own business.

Control the small circle and ignore the rest

Drew studies stoicism, traced back to a book on Epictetus a friend handed him years ago. He draws three circles. The small one you control, which is really just your thoughts. The circle of influence, your team and vendors and family, which grows as you grow. The massive circle of the uncontrollable, which deserves none of your energy.

"The only thing I truly control is my thoughts."

He wears the same outfit every day, five identical sets, so he spends zero attention on what does not move the business.

Translate experience instead of starting over

Drew had no civilian business background. He ran his first construction job at RHY Construction, took over Connecticut two months in, and lifted revenue 40 percent while doubling net profit in four months. As a project executive he ran 180 people across roughly 55 crews and kept a 20-foot board of initiatives. He treats every new problem as an old one in disguise.

"Of the Fortune 500 companies, 160 CEOs were former Marines."

He chose a franchise for the same reason he thrived in uniform. He has run on standard operating procedures his whole life, and a franchise hands you a playbook to execute and improve. To start, he went all in.

"Burn the boats at the shore. Then you have no other option but to succeed."

He dumped his 401(k) and took an SBA loan to avoid putting his house up as collateral.

Centralize the brain, satellite the hands

Drew runs four locations on one model. Phones, procurement, and permitting all run from Hartford. Each location is an operational footprint with a manager, a warehouse, and reps, which makes a new acquisition easier to absorb because he reshapes a small scope instead of a whole back office. He keeps his office door open on purpose and learns more by listening to the business work than by reading a report. He hires veterans because a clear task, a clear why, and a clear end state give people wide freedom.

"I don't care how you make the sausage. I just want sausage at the end of the day."

He was one of the first NaiL pilot locations, and he shaped the product with the same blunt feedback he gives everyone.

Respect commercial before you chase the dollar figures

Drew built an Afghan army base for 2,200 soldiers nearly alone, then ran 40 million in commercial work as a project executive. That is why commercial fits him, and why he warns owners away from the deep end.

"They're attracted to it because they see the dollar figures. They don't understand the complexity."

He coaches owners toward business-to-business work first, the vet office or the warehouse down the street, which carries high ticket without the full general-contractor machine. He also treats every contract term as a starting point.

"Everything's negotiable."

He will present a general contractor with 15 requests while knowing only three of them, like retainage or a 50 percent deposit, truly matter. He gives on the rest to win the few that do. His view of the mix keeps the whole thing grounded.

"Residential work keeps the lights on."

Commercial layered on top is bonus. His leadership philosophy is the same downhill push.

"My philosophy on leadership is how do I make your job easier?"

And his closing wisdom is the line that defines the whole tour.

"No one's coming to solve your problem. You have to locally solve your problem."

The franchise hands you every tool. After that, you solve your own problems, and you would rather ask forgiveness than beg permission.

What home service owners should take from the SFR playbook

Drive 1,000 miles and a pattern appears under five different personalities. Steal these three.

• Put people ahead of process and technology. Every owner hires for the gap, trains the craft before the pitch, and treats reputation as the engine. The fence is the product. The people are the business.
• Turn your balance sheet into an advantage. Stock the few SKUs you sell most, buy by the container, cut raw material in-house, and quote stock against custom so the margin protects itself.
• Solve your own problems and decide fast. The franchise hands you the tools. Growth belongs to owners who act locally, sell on quality, steal good ideas openly, and do not wait on anyone.

Watch the full tour and book a Nail demo

Each of these owners runs the same playbook in a different voice, and watching them work taught me more than any spreadsheet could. Zach builds the system, Pat stocks his yard like a weapon, Brandon follows up until the deal closes, Justin scales with discipline, and Drew stays calm and owns every problem.

Watch the full conversation on our Superior Fence East Coast tour and see how Nail answers every missed call .

Article by George Paladichuk, founder of Nail. Featuring Zach Peyton, Pat Monegan, Brandon Corey, Justin Albright, and Drew Raymond of Superior Fence & Rail.